Mace’s emotional departure drew attention because she had publicly identified herself as a survivor of sexual assault earlier this year. Her previous congressional remarks about alleged abusers also prompted a federal defamation suit that a judge later dismissed on immunity grounds….
Lazy Caturday Reads: Donald Trump, Chicken Hawk
Posted: September 6, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: cat art, caturday, Department of War, Donald Trump, Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura, North Korea, Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, Seal Team 6, Venezuela 5 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
NOTE: The images in this post are examples of Monmon cats by contemporary Japanese artist Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura. You can read about him at The Great Cat.
On to today’s reads.
Trump at War
By Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura
Trump is demanding that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize, while at the same time trying to rebrand the U.S. Department of Defense as the Department of War. He doesn’t have the power to change the name of the DOD or any other Department without the approval of Congress, but he’s doing it anyway.
Jason Breslow at NPR: President Trump signs order to rename the Defense Department as the Department of War.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to give the Department of Defense a new name: the Department of War.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said the rebranding reflected a new tone for the country and its military.
A White House fact sheet explains that under the executive order, the name “Department of War” will serve as a “secondary title” for the Department of Defense.
According to the fact sheet, the order will also authorize Defense Department officials to substitute the word “war” into their titles. For example, the Secretary of Defense could use the title Secretary of War.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge the change in a post on social media on Thursday, writing simply, “DEPARTMENT OF WAR.”
President Trump had previously signaled that a change was in the works. During an appearance in the Oval Office last month, Trump said that War Department “just sounded to me better.”
Trump does not have the authority to change the department’s name without congressional action. The legal name was established by Congress in 1949, when it renamed the newly unified military service branches under a new “Department of Defense” following World War II.
In a statement to NPR, constitutional scholar Steve Vladeck confirmed that, while the president is free to refer to the Pentagon by whatever name he chooses, its “legal name can’t change without Congress.” After signing the order on Friday, Trump indicated that the administration would ask Congress to codify the change into law but also said, “I’m not sure they have to.”
I hate him so much. Why do we have to have a “president” who speaks and behaves like an 8-year-old child?
Erica L. Green at The New York Times: Trump Says U.S. Military Has ‘Never Fought to Win’ Since World War II.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that ceremonially recognized the Defense Department as the “Department of War,” a name that was dropped after World War II and that the president claimed had caused the country to enter wars it “never fought to win.”
“We won World War II. We won everything before, and as I said, we won everything in between,” Mr. Trump said at an event in the Oval Office, where he signed the order. “And we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn’t fight to win.”
Mr. Trump argued that the name, which was changed by President Harry S. Truman to combine all of branches of the military, had been changed because the country “decided to go woke.”
“I think the Department of War sends a signal,” Mr. Trump said. The change, he argued, was a “much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”
He added: “We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or wokey, and we just fight forever.” [….]
Mr. Trump said that he anticipated pushing to codify the name change into law. He added that in the meantime, “we’re going with it, and we’re going with it very strongly.” The Defense Department, he said, would be moving ahead with the name as a “secondary title,” including by using it on stationery.
This is the same guy who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by claiming to have bone spurs.
This change is going to be annoying and expensive for the military. Politico: Pentagon officials fume over Trump’s Department of War rebrand.
Pentagon officials grappled Friday with the Herculean task of fulfilling President Donald Trump’s executive order to remold the enormous, global agency into the Department of War.
Many expressed frustration, anger and downright confusion at the effort, which could cost billions of dollars for a cosmetic change that would do little to tackle the military’s most pressing challenges — such as countering a more aggressive alliance of authoritarian nations.
The details of the order Trump signed Friday are still vague, but officials may need to change Defense Department seals on more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries and all 50 states. This includes everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to embossed napkins in chow halls, embroidered jackets for Senate-confirmed officials and the keychains and tchotchkes in the Pentagon store.
“This is purely for domestic political audiences,” said a former defense official. “Not only will this cost millions of dollars, it will have absolutely zero impact on Chinese or Russian calculations. Worse, it will be used by our enemies to portray the United States as warmongering and a threat to international stability.” [….]
More on the internal response:
…[T]he seemingly ad hoc rollout of the name change has caused confusion within the building. One Pentagon official, who independently decided to squat on the Department of War LinkedIn page to prevent a foreign adversary or Trump administration critic from taking it over, openly asked on the social network to whom he should hand the page.
The Pentagon rebranded its X account as the “Department of War,” replete with a different seal for the avatar, but the page’s banner still had the old DOD logo. The Pentagon on Friday afternoon redirected users from defense.gov to war.gov, which was temporarily down.
It took the Defense Department weeks to scrub agency websites that contained references to diversity, equity and inclusion after the Trump administration demanded it be removed, said another defense official. Officials are imagining a longer-term headache this time around.
“That was just taking down photos,” the person said. “The seal will have to change and thus anything with it.”
The change is bound to flummox the many universities, nonprofits and contractors that rely on the Defense Department for funding — and potentially pose a huge messaging challenge.
“On a tactical level, it would mean having to rebrand a mountain of contracting, marketing, business development materials, you name it, both digital and otherwise, that specifically cite the Department of Defense or DOD,” said a defense industry consultant.
“More strategically, even philosophically, it could raise new questions about what it means to be supporting the Department of War, which likely sends a more belligerent message to our allies and adversaries alike.”
The whole thing is o childish. But so are Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.
Meanwhile Trump is acting pretty warlike toward Venezuela. First he blew up a speedboat with a drone strike and killed everyone onboard, while offering no evidence the boat was carrying either drugs or gang members. Now he’s talking about target people inside Venezuela. CNN: Trump weighs strikes targeting cartels inside Venezuela, part of wider pressure campaign on Maduro, sources say.
President Donald Trump is weighing a multitude of options for carrying out military strikes against drug cartels operating in Venezuela, including potentially hitting targets inside the country as part of a broader strategy aimed at weakening leader Nicolas Maduro, according to multiple sources briefed on the administration’s plans.
Tuesday’s deadly strike on an alleged drug boat departing Venezuela was a direct reflection of those options, sources said, and marked a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against drug cartels, many of which it’s designated as terrorist groups. Multiple sources told CNN Tuesday’s strike was just the beginning of a much larger effort to rid the region of narcotics trafficking and potentially dislodge Maduro from power.
Asked by a reporter on Friday if he would like to see regime change in Venezuela, Trump said, “We’re not talking about that.”
“But we are talking about the fact that [Venezuela] had an election, which was a very strange election, to put it mildly,” Trump said, referring to last year’s presidential race in Venezuela marred by accusations of electoral fraud.
The US has moved substantial military firepower into the Caribbean in recent weeks, a move meant in part to be a signal to Maduro, according to multiple White House officials.
Eric Schmitt at The New York Times (gift article): What to Know About a Rapid U.S. Military Buildup in the Caribbean.
The rapid U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean Sea culminated this week with a deadly strike against a drug vessel that the Trump administration said had departed from Venezuela.
U.S. officials said the attack on a speedboat on Tuesday killed 11 drug traffickers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both said the military would carry out more strikes in the coming weeks as part of a counternarcotics and counterterrorism campaign.
But on Thursday, two armed Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets buzzed a Navy guided-missile destroyer in the region in a show of force, dialing up tensions between Washington and the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.
In response, the Pentagon dispatched 10 F-35 stealth fighters to Puerto Rico on Friday to deter more Venezuelan flyovers and to be positioned should Mr. Trump order airstrikes against targets in Venezuela itself.
President Trump signed a still-secret directive in July ordering the Pentagon to use military force against some Latin American drug cartels that his administration has labeled “terrorist” organizations.
Around the same time, the administration declared that a Venezuelan criminal group was a terrorist organization and that Mr. Maduro was its leader.
Soon after, the Pentagon began amassing a small armada of ships and planes to monitor the supposed drug traffickers and to pick targets to attack.
The U.S. Navy has long intercepted and boarded ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters, typically assigning a Coast Guard officer temporarily in charge to invoke law enforcement authority. Tuesday’s direct attack in the Caribbean was a marked departure from that decades-long approach.
No kidding. It very likely was a war crime. Use the gift link to read the whole article.
More warlike talk from Trump, according to Danai Nesta Kupemba at BBC News: Trump says Venezuelan jets will be shot down if they endanger US ships.
Donald Trump has warned that, if Venezuelan jets fly over US naval ships and “put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down”.
The president’s warning comes after Venezuela flew military aircraft near a US vessel off South America for the second time in two days, US officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News….
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said that the US allegations about his country are not true, and that differences between the nations do not justify a “military conflict”.
“Venezuela has always been willing to talk, to engage in dialogue, but we demand respect,” he added.
When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Friday what would happen if Venezuelan jets flew over US vessels again, Trump said Venezuela would be in “trouble”.
Trump told his general, standing beside him, that he could do anything he wanted if the situation escalated.
Since his return to office in January, Trump has steadily intensified his anti-drug-trafficking efforts in Latin America.
Maduro has accused the US of seeking “regime change through military threat”.
We also learned yesterday that Trump authorized a dangerous failed mission in North Korea during his first term and didn’t notify Congress. Dave Philipps and How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart.
A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink-black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right.
The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump.
The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence. But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil — a move that, if detected, not only could sink negotiations but also could lead to a hostage crisis or an escalating conflict with a nuclear-armed foe.
It was so risky that it required the president’s direct approval.
For the operation, the military chose SEAL Team 6’s Red Squadron — the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden. The SEALs rehearsed for months, aware that every move needed to be perfect. But when they reached what they thought was a deserted shore that night, wearing black wet suits and night-vision goggles, the mission swiftly unraveled.
A North Korean boat appeared out of the dark. Flashlights from the bow swept over the water. Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire. Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead.
The SEALs retreated into the sea without planting the listening device.
The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged, or even hinted at, by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and are being reported here for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law.
I’d love to know who talked to the NYT about this. The author claims to have have 2 dozen sources:
This account is based on interviews with two dozen people, including civilian government officials, members of the first Trump administration and current and former military personnel with knowledge of the mission. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the mission’s classified status.
Several of those people said they were discussing details about the mission because they were concerned that Special Operations failures are often hidden by government secrecy. If the public and policymakers become aware only of high-profile successes, such as the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, they may underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake.
The military operation on North Korean soil, close to American military bases in South Korea and the Pacific region, also risked setting off a broader conflict with a hostile, nuclear-armed and highly militarized adversary.
Use the gift link to read the whole thing.
According to ABC News, Trump claims he knows nothing about the Seal Team 6 debacle: Trump says he doesn’t know ‘anything’ about reported violent, failed SEAL Team 6 mission in North Korea.
President Donald Trump said Friday he didn’t know “anything” about what the New York Times reported was a classified 2019 SEAL Team 6 mission in North Korea in which unarmed North Korean civilians were killed during an aborted operation.
The Pentagon and U.S. Special Operations Command declined to comment to ABC News about The New York Times report.
Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump was asked by a reporter: “Can you confirm that it happened?”
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m hearing it now for the first time,” he responded.
The account, citing “two dozen people, including civilian government officials, members of the first Trump administration and current and former military personnel with knowledge of the mission” who spoke to the Times anonymously, said Trump had approved the mission.
Either Trump is lying or the memory is lost to dementia.
This story by Paul McCleary and Daniel Lippman suggests that Trump is more focused on attacking Americans and nearby allies than foreign enemies: Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat.
Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China.
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.
“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”
The report usually comes out at the start of each administration, and Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring. The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.
A U.S. military strike this week allegedly killed 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in international waters, a major step in using the military to kill noncombatants.
The Pentagon also has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians, a job normally reserved for law enforcement.
The authors note that this doesn’t seem to reflect Trump’s rhetoric.
The shift “doesn’t seem aligned with President Trump’s hawkish views on China at all,” said a Republican foreign policy expert briefed on the report, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The president has continued to express tough rhetoric toward China, including imposing staggering tariffs on Beijing and accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of “conspiring against” the U.S. after he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade in the country’s capital.
Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, is leading the strategy. He played a key role in writing the 2018 version during Trump’s first term and has been a staunch supporter of a more isolationist American policy. Despite his long track record as a China hawk, Colby aligns with Vice President JD Vance on the desire to disentangle the U.S. from foreign commitments.
That’s interesting. I wonder if this is coming more from the Project 2025 group than Trump himself.
A few more stories to check out:
Politico: Trump seeking ways to take over 9/11 memorial in NYC.
The Guardian: Kennedy Center ticket sales take a nosedive after Trump takeover.
Ann Applebaum at The Atlantic (gift link): America Surrenders in the Global Information Wars.
Jonathan J. Cooper at AP: How Donald Trump is weaponizing the government in his second term to settle personal scores.
Ariana Baio at The Independent: ‘Chipocalypse Now’: Trump threatens Chicago with ‘Department of War’ and suggests ICE raids imminent.
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
Wednesday Reads
Posted: September 3, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: Alien Enemies Act, Donald Trump, Epstein Files, Epstein survivors, FTC, Jeffrey Epstein, Kim Jong Un, Nicolas Maduro, Posse Comitatus Act, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Rep. Nancy Mace, Rep. Ro Khanna, Rep. Thomas Massie, Venezuela drone strike, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping 8 CommentsGood Day!!
The Epstein Files are leading the news again, as Congress returns and Epstein survivors speak out publicly. Trump is not happy about it and is threatening any Republicans who vote for the files to be released.
The House Oversight Committee released some Epstein files yesterday they received from Pam Bondi, but they were the same ones that have been available for a long time–the same duplicates that Bondi gave to right wing influencers back in in February. Apparently, the DOJ is going to keep releasing the same stale, heavily redacted files over and over again.
A rally is taking place right now in Washington. Julie K. Brown and Emily Goodin at The Miami Herald: As many as 100 Epstein victims will attend Washington rally Wednesday.
As many as 100 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and other victims of sexual abuse are expected to attend a rally Wednesday in Washington, D.C. as a bipartisan Congressional effort gains steam to force the U.S. Department of Justice to make public its controversial files on the disgraced sex trafficker.
Annie Farmer, left, and Courtney Wild, far right, both women who say they were molested by Jeffrey Epstein when they were teenagers, faced the wealthy sex offender in 2019 inside of a Manhattan courtroom. Emily Michot. Miami Herald
Two lawmakers, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) are pushing for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives that would mandate U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the files on the Epstein case. The lawmakers are holding a press conference 10:30 a.m. Wednesday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with 10 survivors, some of whom have not spoken publicly before. In advance of the press conference, some 100 survivors are expected at a rally organized by several victim advocate groups near the Capitol.
“The voices of survivors have been omitted from the conversation for far too long,” said Lauren Hersh, National Director of World Without Exploitation, one of the groups organizing the event.
“This is the moment to stand united to ensure that those who’ve been exploited and abused are heard loud and clear.”
Epstein victims have mobilized in recent weeks as his convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, appears to be pressing for a pardon from President Donald Trump. In July, she was interviewed by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, and was then moved from a maximum federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum-security prison in Texas. The lawmakers also could be using Wednesday’s event as a form of public pressure. Massie and Khanna’s resolution – if it passes the House – would then have to be passed by the Senate before going to President Trump for his signature. It’s unclear how quickly Senate Republicans will want to bring the matter to the floor and whether Trump would sign it.
Yesterday a group of Epstein survivors met with House members. From yesterday’s
Guardian: Trump faces new Epstein headache as Congress returns from recess.
Congress returned to session on Tuesday, and with it comes a political headache for Donald Trump in the form of renewed attention on the investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and his death, a subject that the president has sought to avoid in recent weeks.
While the president got a month-long break from the Epstein issue when lawmakers left town for the annual August recess – with the House of Representatives wrapping up a day early because of the controversy over Epstein – the calm will probably end quickly. Representatives from both parties have planned press conferences and legislative maneuvers intended to put pressure on the Trump administration for more transparency over Epstein, whose suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019 has been the subject of conspiracy theories the president amplified while on the campaign trail.
The Republican congressman Thomas Massie announced he had filed a legislative maneuver known as a discharge petition that could force a vote in the House on legislation mandating the release of investigative files related to Epstein, over the objections of the speaker, Mike Johnson.
Represenatives Ro Kanna and Thomas Massie
The petition needs 218 signatures to succeed and is expected to attract support from most, if not all, Democrats as well as some Republicans, but it is unclear if it will prevail. However, even if the bill passes, it still must be approved by the Senate, and it is unclear if the majority leader, John Thune, will allow it to be considered.
Meanwhile, victims of Epstein are on Capitol Hill to meet with Johnson, a source familiar with the speaker’s schedule told the Guardian. They will also sit down with lawmakers on the House oversight committee, which is investigating the government’s handling of the financier’s case.
The Democratic congresswoman and oversight committee member, Ayanna Pressley, said the encounter “is a step toward the healing, accountability, and transparency survivors deserve”.
“As the oversight committee continues its investigation, I continue to demand the release of the full, unredacted Epstein files with the names of survivors protected,” she added.
Nancy Mace, Lauren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Greene plan to vote for the discharge petition, according to MSNBC. Nancy Mace, who has talked publicly about her sexual assault, left the meeting early after having a “full-blown panic attack,” according to Newsweek:
Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, left a closed-door House Oversight Committee briefing with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse on Tuesday after she said she suffered a “full-blown panic attack.”
Representative Mace wiped tears as she exited the meeting, and she later said in a statement that she was “sweating, hyperventilating and shaking.” [….]
The closed-door briefing formed part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into how federal agencies handled Epstein’s case and the release of related records. Lawmakers said it was intended to give survivors a direct forum to convey their experiences to Congress, as per The Hill.
Lawmakers convened a closed-door Oversight Committee briefing with several women who have identified themselves as victims of Jeffrey Epstein and members of his network as the committee pursued documents and testimony related to the case.
Cameron Adams at The Daily Beast: Frantic Trump Tries to Kill Vote to Force Open Epstein Files.
The White House has warned Republican rebels in Congress that pushing for the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile abuse files would be seen as “a very hostile act” by President Donald Trump….
Kentucky Rep. Massie, and Californian Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna have led a bipartisan push in the House for the GOP to be transparent about Epstein.
A tearful Nancy Mace leaves the meeting with Epstein survivors.
“People want these files released,” Massie said. “I mean, look, it’s not the biggest issue in the country. It’s taxes, jobs, the economy; those are always the big issues. But you really can’t solve any of that if this place is corrupt.”
“There’s a major pressure campaign from the White House right now, and also from the speaker,” Massie said on Tuesday. “But I think there are enough Republicans who are listening to their constituents and care about these victims that we’ll get the 218 signatures we need.”
Greene, a normally full-throated Trump ally who has disagreed with him over the Epstein case, backed Massie in a post on X.
“I’m committed to doing everything possible for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Including exposing the cabal of rich and powerful elites that enabled this,” she wrote. “I’m proud to be signing @RepThomasMassie‘s discharge petition.”
A White House official told CNN, “Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.”
Massie also suggested that “Trump ‘may be covering for some rich and powerful people’ in Epstein files,” according to The Hill.
Courts rejected some of Trump’s fascist policies yesterday.
Charlie Savage at The New York Times: L.A. Ruling Complicates Trump’s Threats to Send Troops to More Cities.
A federal judge’s ruling that President Trump has been using troops illegally to perform law enforcement functions in Los Angeles will — if it stands — pose impediments to any plans Mr. Trump may have for sending the military into the streets of other cities, like Chicago.
Mr. Trump has made those threats in the context of his anti-crime operation in Washington, D.C., which has involved both civilian federal agents and National Guard troops under federal control. But because the District of Columbia is not a state, the federal government has greater latitude to use the Guard there.
The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic policing under normal circumstances. So to keep from running afoul of that law, Mr. Trump would need a legal rationale for deploying troops to cities like Chicago.
Judge Charles Breyer
One potential model for Mr. Trump might be the reasoning his administration offered for sending troops to Los Angeles over the summer, ostensibly to protect federal agents and facilities. But on Tuesday, Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco held that the administration has been using those troops too expansively.
The judge barred the federal government from using troops anywhere in California to engage in “arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.” [….]
There are reasons for caution at this stage. An appeals court has already overturned an earlier decision by Judge Breyer, in which he tried to strike down Mr. Trump’s assertion of federal control of California National Guard troops over the objections of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.
But if other courts adopt Judge Breyer’s reasoning, it would limit Mr. Trump’s ability to use the operation in Los Angeles as a precedent to justify deploying federal troops into other cities to fight crime.
Devon Cole at CNN: Federal appeals court says Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act for deportations.
A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday said President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members is unlawful and blocked its use in several southern states, issuing another blow to Trump’s invocation of the 18th century law.
The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that Trump cannot move forward with using the sweeping wartime authority for deportations in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The president has not leaned on the 1798 law for removals since mid-March, when his invocation of it sparked the first in a series of legal challenges.
Tuesday’s ruling is notable because it’s likely the vehicle through which the issue will reach the Supreme Court for the justices to potentially review Trump’s use of the law in full.
The Fifth Circuit’s opinion, penned by Judge Leslie Southwick and joined by Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, concluded that a “predatory incursion” by members of the gang, Tren de Aragua, had not occurred, as Trump claimed as a reason for invoking the act.
“We conclude that the findings do not support that an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred. We therefore conclude that petitioners are likely to prove that the AEA was improperly invoked,” Southwick wrote.
Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Venezuelan detainees in north Texas who are challenging Trump’s effort to deport them under the Alien Enemies Act, said that the appeals court “correctly held that the administration’s unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act was unlawful because it violates Congress’ intent in passing the law.”
Cecilia Kang at The New York Times: Federal Appeals Court Reinstates an F.T.C. Commissioner Fired by Trump.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a Democrat who was fired by President Trump from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, dealing a blow to Mr. Trump’s monthslong attempt to permanently remove her from the consumer protection and antitrust enforcement agency.
In a split 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the Trump administration’s attempt to block the commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, from resuming her role at the F.T.C. had “no prospect of success.” The court said that Mr. Trump had fired her without cause rather than on the required grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter
In March, Mr. Trump dismissed Ms. Slaughter and another Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya, in an attempt to assert control over agencies that regulate companies and workplaces. A letter to one of the commissioners, which was reviewed by The New York Times, said: “Your continued service on the F.T.C. is inconsistent with my administration’s priorities.”
Mr. Bedoya fought the dismissal but resigned in June, citing financial reasons. Ms. Slaughter pressed on with her suit to resume her role at the F.T.C., saying she was fired without cause, and in July a federal court ruled in her favor. The Trump administration filed for a stay of that decision with the appeals court, whose decision on Tuesday rejected its arguments.
Trump may have committed a war crime yesterday.
Jennifer Hansler at CNN: US military kills 11 in strike on alleged drug boat tied to Venezuelan cartel, Trump says.
The United States conducted a deadly military strike against an alleged drug boat tied to the cartel Tren de Aragua, President Donald Trump said Tuesday.
The US president said 11 people were killed in the strike in “international waters.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the “lethal strike” as taking place in the “southern Caribbean” against “a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela.”
The use of military force against Latin American drug cartels represents a significant escalation by the Trump administration and could have serious implications for the region.
“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!” he wrote.
Read more at CNN.
There’s no evidence the small speedboat was carrying drugs or even whether it was headed for U.S. waters. From The Guardian: US conducts ‘kinetic strike’ against drug boat from Venezuela, killing 11, Trump says.
The development will add to fears over a possible military clash between Venezuelan and US troops after the US sent war ships and marines into the Caribbean last month as part of what Trump allies touted as an attempt to force Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
Officially, Trump’s naval buildup is part of US efforts to combat Latin American drug traffickers, including a Venezuelan group called the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) which Trump officials accuse Maduro of leading.
In August the US announced a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture – twice the bounty once offered for Osama bin Laden. In July, Trump signed a secret directive greenlighting military force against Latin American cartels considered terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group.
Republican party hawks and Trump allies have celebrated those moves as proof the White House is determined to end Maduro’s 12-year rule. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, declared recently, encouraging Maduro to flee to Moscow.
Maduro’s allies have also claimed that a regime-change operation is afoot, with Maduro himself this week warning that White House hardliners were seeking to lead Trump into “a terrible war” that would harm the entire region.
“Mr President Donald Trump, you need to take care because Marco Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood – with South American, Caribbean blood [and] Venezuelan blood. They want to lead you into a bloodbath … with a massacre against the people of Venezuela,” Maduro said.
The article quotes experts who doubt Trump plans for “a military intervention.” I don’t know. Trump is pretty crazy.
Trump apparently feels left out after his idols Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping meet in China and watch a military parade.
BBC News: Putin and Kim join Xi in show of strength as China unveils new weapons at huge military parade.
The watching world saw a significant display of diplomatic unity in Beijing today, as China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un met in public for the first time.
Alongside a vast military parade marking 80 years since the country’s victory over Japan in World War Two, the meeting formed part of a day of statements for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Putin, Xi, and Kim lead huge military parade in China.
Crowds of over 50,000 in Tiananmen Square witnessed laser weapons, nuclear ballistic missiles, and even robotic wolves – a display that will now be heavily scrutinised by Western defence officials, our security correspondent writes.
All but two Western leaders chose not to attend the parade, while 26 heads of state joined. Xi inspected the waiting ranks of thousands of troops from the roof of his state vehicle, before warning the world must “never return to the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak” in a speech.
After the parade, diplomacy continued with handshakes and hugs marking the end of Putin and Kim’s two-and-a-half hour meeting.
Putin invited Kim to Russia after the pair discussed North Korea’s contribution to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
Emily Atkinson at BBC News: Trump accuses Xi of conspiring against US with Putin and Kim.
US President Donald Trump has accused Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of conspiring against the US with the leaders of Russia and North Korea.
Trump’s comments came as China hosted world leaders at its largest-ever Victory Day parade in Beijing on Wednesday – a showcase of China’s military might.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un as you conspire against the United States of America.”
Trump previously rejected suggestions that the warming of relations between China, Russia and other nations poses a challenge to the US on the global stage.
As if that is surprising. They are enemies of the U.S., even if Trump looks up to them.
On social media, the US president also mentioned the “massive amount of support and ‘blood'” the US gave China during World War Two. China’s parade marks 80 years of Japan’s surrender in the war and China’s victory against an occupying force.
“Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice!”
Xi was joined at the parade by 26 heads of state, including Kim and Putin – viewed by some observers as a message to the Western nations that have shunned them.
China has sought to position itself as a possible counterweight to the US since Trump’s tariffs rocked the global economic and political order.
Trump has pitched his tariffs as essential to protecting American interests and industry. It appears that any diplomatic cost is something he is willing to pay.
Asked by the BBC if he believed Beijing and its allies were attempting to form an international coalition to oppose the US, Trump said: “No. Not at all. China needs us.”
More idiotic thoughts from Trump at the link.
More interesting stories to check out:
Eoin Higgins at MSNBC: A political novice’s campaign to unseat Sen. Susan Collins is off to a strong start.
Aaron Glantz at The Guardian: Alarm after FBI arrests US army veteran for ‘conspiracy’ over protest against Ice.
Randy Kaye and Rachel Clark at CNN: Epstein survivor says his impact on her is clear from her school yearbooks.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Trump’s long weekend of humiliation.
Avery Lotz at Axios: Hegseth: Hegseth: Venezuela mission won’t stop “with just this strike.”
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Space Cat on Mars, Plus Some News
Posted: August 30, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: authoritarianism, Donald Trump, India Prime Minister Narenda Modinda Modi, Kamala Harris, mass deportations, Nobel Peace Prize, Trump's health issues, Trump's tariffs 6 CommentsGood Day!!
I’m going to illustrate today’s post with another Space Cat adventure: “Space Cat Meets Mars,” by Ruthven Todd, drawings by Paul Galdone. A summary of the story from Amazon:
I woke up at 3AM and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Naturally I picked up my phone and checked to see if anything was happening. It turned out that lots of people on Twitter (I don’t call it X) and Bluesky Social were discussing the fact that Trump had not been seen in Public since Wednesday, and even White House reporter had had no word from him for 48 hours. The conclusion of many posters (somewhat tongue in cheek, but hopeful) was that he must be having a health crisis or even have died. It was pretty funny. Sadly, Trump is golfing today, so it was a false alarm. There’s something wrong with him though, and I don’t think its just “chronic venous insufficiancy.” Some commentary:
Stephen Robinson at Public Notice: Alert the media: The White House is lying about Trump’s health.
Donald Trump held a bonkers press conference last Friday during which he lied about his authoritarian occupation of Washington DC and fantasized about sending troops to occupy other cities with Black leaders.
Given the stakes, it might seem inappropriate to focus on attire. Trump, however, was noticeably casual for an Oval Office event. Unless he’s on the golf course, he typically wears a suit with an obligatory red tie. But last Friday, he didn’t bother with a tie, and he wore a baseball cap that boasted “Trump Was Right About Everything.”
Trump’s boundless egomania is not unusual, but the head covering did raise larger questions. He also made a determined effort to hide the back of his right hand from cameras….
Flyball relaxes in hammock.
Trump wanted to hide his right hand for a reason. Pictures from Friday show it slathered with what seems like several coats of Sherwin-Williams. (I’m not going to post the photos; you can click the link to see them.) [….]
Trump’s hand still looked rough during a press event on Monday where his hand was no longer coated with makeup, but visibly bruised.
Something clearly is up with the 79-year-old president, and the official explanations don’t make sense. That’s not surprising given that Trump is a world historical liar surrounded by toadies who surrendered their shame long ago. But it’s past time for reporters to ask some questions.
The mainstream press is still in self-flagellation mode over how they purportedly “ignored” former President Joe Biden’s decline. (In reality, they never stopped talking about.) But this soul-searching is apparently only backward looking and exclusive to Democratic presidents.
Trump has never behaved in a manner you could reasonably define as “rational,” but since returning to power, he’s been more unhinged than ever — launching destructive trade wars, persecuting his political enemies, and sending troops into US cities. Biden’s age was an ongoing story even while he otherwise governed like a normal person, but so far the media has not even considered a connection between Trump’s disordered actions and his health.
I completely agree that the White House is lying. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a president’s health issues were covered up, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.
Read the rest at Public Notice.
Jon Passentino at Status: Burying the Bruises.
On Monday, press photographers gathered in the Oval Office to capture President Donald Trump meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung when one unusual detail stood out. A large bruise on the back of Trump’s right hand.
It wasn’t the first time the 79-year-old president was seen with a noticeable bruise. Just days earlier, Trump was photographed with a large smear of makeup covering the same hand as he spoke to reporters at the White House about the FIFA World Cup. The images circulated widely online, drawing speculation from tabloids and social media sleuths. “WHAT IS GOING ON? PRESIDENT HEALTH DRAMA DEEPENS,” the Drudge Report banner blared. Yet from the country’s most powerful newsrooms, there was little more than silence. No front-page write-ups. No broadcast packages. The visible health problems of the oldest president in American history barely registered in mainstream coverage.
Flyball floats in weightlessness.
The White House has offered narrow explanations but refused to put Trump’s physician before reporters. In April, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella issued Trump’s annual physical, declaring the president in “excellent cognitive and physical health” and “blood flow to his extremities is unimpaired.” But within weeks, photos showed Trump’s ankles swollen enough that the White House acknowledged a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition common in older adults. In July, Barbabella released a short memo attributing the bruises to aspirin use as “part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen” and “minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking.”
Are we seriously expected to believe that? I asked Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the renowned cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University who served as the cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, for his thoughts on the matter.
“The president’s recent swelling in his ankles has been dismissed as being ‘chronic venous insufficiency’ (despite the fact that during his yearly physical exam in March it was reported that he had no swelling, making the current issue really acute venous insufficiency),” Reiner said. “His hand bruising was described as the result of aspirin therapy and hand shaking which is not a plausible explanation. (Particularly if he also has bruises on his left hand).” Sure enough, recent images show Trump with bruises on the back of his left hand as well, raising more questions about the White House’s explanation of supposed aggressive hand-shaking.
Reiner noted that bruising of this kind is often linked to the use of strong blood thinners for heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation. “During his March exam the White House physician did not disclose that the president is taking a medication like that,” Reiner said. “I think the press should be asking these questions and the White House should make the president‘s medical team available to answer questions.” The press, however, has largely turned a blind eye to the matter.
When President Joe Biden ran for reelection at 81, his age and health were subjected to persistent scrutiny. Fox News and MAGA Media personalities relentlessly pumped out absurd claims about Biden’s health as if he was secretly on the brink of death and promoted “Dementia Joe” hysteria. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers published dozens of stories about his age and physical fitness. Cable news devoted endless hours to the topic. In Trump’s case—the oldest person to take the oath of office who regularly fabricates stories and misremembers names—the bruises and swelling have barely merited a wire-service brief. A review of cable news transcripts shows virtually zero mentions of Trump’s bruises all week. Some who served in the Biden White House now rightfully see it as a clear double-standard.
Read more at the Substack link.
One more on this topic from Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Conservative Strategist: ‘MAGA Hunger Games’ Taking Place as Trump Health Slips.
Conservative political consultant Rick Wilson says a “MAGA Hunger Games” is playing out in Washington as President Donald Trump, 79, shows his age.
Wilson said “rumors from the Trumpverse” indicate that Vice President JD Vance is “moving fast” in this shuffling of power behind the scenes, positioning himself to take over the MAGA movement sooner rather than later, according to Wilson’s Substack.
Flyball meets a Martian insect.
“Slow or fast, he’s headed down,” Wilson said of Trump. “The circle who knows what’s up is very, very small and very, very paranoid. JD Vance knows, and he’s moving fast.”
Wilson pointed to Vance’s interview this week with USA Today—in which he said he is prepared to take over the presidency, having received “on-the-job training” in the first seven months of this term—as further proof of jostling behind the scenes….
Publicly, both Vance and White House spokespeople have brushed off rumors that Trump’s health is slipping.
In the same interview in which he declared he was prepared to become president, the vice president said Trump “is in incredibly good health” and has “incredible energy.”
“While most of the people who work around the President of the United States are younger than he is, I think that we find that he actually is the last person who goes to sleep,” Vance told USA Today.
Vance continued, “He’s the last person making phone calls at night, and he’s the first person who wakes up and the first person making phone calls in the morning. So yes, things can always happen. Yes, terrible tragedies happen, but I feel very confident the President of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of this term, and do great things for the American people.”
If that “terrible tragedy” takes place, Vance will have to stop taking so many vacations. Seriously though, he is so unlikable that I don’t think he would be able to appeal to Trump’s MAGA base.
Last night a federal appeals court ruled that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.
Doug Palmer, Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Desrochers at Politico: Federal appeals court strikes down major chunk of Trump’s tariffs.
A federal appeals court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers granted by Congress to impose tariffs, opening the door for the administration to potentially have to repay billions worth of duties.
Flyball encounters a Martian metal covered mouse
The 7-4 ruling raises doubt about deals Trump has struck with the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other major trading partners to reduce the “reciprocal” tariff rates on their imports, from the levels the administration originally set in April.
“We conclude Congress … did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs” of the kind Trump imposed in his sweeping executive orders, the majority wrote.
The ruling also invalidates the tariffs that Trump has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico to pressure those countries to do more to stop shipments of fentanyl and precursor chemicals from entering the United States.
The decision, however, will not take effect until Oct. 14, giving the Trump administration time to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholds a May decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which concluded that Trump exceeded his authority under the 1977 law he invoked to impose both the fentanyl trafficking tariffs and his worldwide tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“We are not addressing whether the President’s actions should have been taken as a matter of policy,” the majority wrote in its ruling, which was in response to a combined set of cases brought by several small importers and multiple Democratic-run states. “Nor are we deciding whether IEEPA authorizes any tariffs at all. Rather, the only issue we resolve on appeal is whether the Trafficking Tariffs and Reciprocal Tariffs imposed by the Challenged Executive Orders are authorized by IEEPA. We conclude they are not.”
Read more at Politico.
Adam Gabbatt, Dominic Rushe at The Guardian: Here’s what to know about the court ruling striking down Trump’s tariffs.
Donald Trump suffered the biggest defeat yet to his tariff policies on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled he had overstepped his presidential powers when he enacted punitive financial measures against almost every country in the world.
In a 7-4 ruling, the Washington DC court said that while US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, none of those actions allow for the imposition of tariffs or taxes.
Flyball sees a Martian fish.
It means the ultimate ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which were famously based on spurious economic science and rocked the global economy when he announced them in April, will probably be made by the US supreme court….
The decision centers on the tariffs Trump introduced on 2 April, on what he called “liberation day”. The tariffs set a 10% baseline on virtually all of the US’s trading partners and so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on countries he argued have unfairly treated the US. Lesotho, a country of 2.3 million people in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% tariff, while Trump also announced a tariff of 10% on a group of uninhabited islands populated by penguins.
The ruling voided all those tariffs, the judges finding the president’s measures “are unbounded in scope, amount and duration”. They said the tariffs “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration used to pass them.
Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, but Trump claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.
The court ruled: “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”
Trump invoked the same law in February to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, claiming that the flow of undocumented immigrants and drugs across the US border amounted to a national emergency, and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Another legal loss for Trump, this time on his “mass deportations.”
Zach Montague at The New York Times: Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign.
A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from carrying out fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border, removing, for now, one of the cornerstones of President Trump’s campaign to carry out mass deportations.
The case focused on a policy shift announced during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term that authorized the Department of Homeland Security to launch quick deportations, across the country and without court proceedings, of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the country for more than two years.
Flyball sees Moofa for the first time.
Such quick deportations, known as expedited removal, have been carried out for decades, but they were concentrated among people arrested at or near the southern border. The Trump administration sought to expand the practice nationwide, to hasten the removal of people arrested deep inside the country.
In a 48-page opinion, Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration had acted recklessly in a frenzied effort to quickly remove as many people as possible, likely violating due process rights and risking wrongful detentions.
She wrote that the administration had taken over a process that was once as simple as turning back migrants with negligible ties to the United States “after a single conversation with an immigration officer” near the southern border, making it a default practice in places as far away as New York.
“When it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” Judge Cobb wrote.
Dakinikat wrote yesterday that Trump cancelled Secret Service protection for former VP Kamala Harris. California Governor Gavin Newsom will pick up the slack.
The Los Angeles Times: CHP to protect ex-VP Kamala Harris after Trump pulls Secret Service detail, sources say.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris will receive protection from the California Highway Patrol after President Trump revoked her Secret Service protection, law enforcement sources said Friday.
California officials put in place a plan to provide Harris with dignitary protection after Trump ended an arrangement that gave his opponent in last year’s election extended Secret Service security coverage.
Fred, Moofa and a reluctant Flyball swim in the Martian canal.
Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday ending Harris’ protection as of Monday, according to sources not authorized to discuss the security matter.
Former vice presidents usually get Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office, while ex-presidents get protection for life. But before his term ended, then-President Biden signed an order to extend Harris’ protection beyond six months to July 2026. Aides to Harris had asked Biden for the extension. Without it, her security detail would have ended last month, according to sources.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who would need to sign off on such CHP protection, would not confirm the arrangement. “Our office does not comment on security arrangements,” said Izzy Gordon, a spokesperson for Newsom. “The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulses.”
The decision came after Newsom’s office and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were in discussions Thursday evening on how best to address the situation. Harris resides in the western portion of Los Angeles.
Trump has alienated India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and may have driven him to align of China, Russia, and North Korea.
Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager, and Anupreeta Das at The New York Times (gift link): The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was losing patience with President Trump.
Mr. Trump had been saying — repeatedly, publicly, exuberantly — that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, a dispute that dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr. Trump was making it out to be.
Fred and the cats walk to the spaceship Halley.
During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation. He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.
The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term.
The dispute has played out against the backdrop of trade talks of immense importance to India and the United States, and the fallout risks pushing India closer to American adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. Mr. Modi is expected to travel to China this weekend, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.
I’ll end with this disturbing piece from Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian: Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode.
If this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …
Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.
There’s something else, too. Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It’s like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked “Swag”: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing.
Flyball and Moofa weightless and happy as kittens.
But here is what we are seeing. Trump has deployed the national guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles to put down protests against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an “insurrection”. Demonstrators were complaining about the masked men of Ice, the immigration agency that, thanks to Trump, now has a budget to match that of the world’s largest armies, snatching people from street corners or hauling them from their cars.
Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump’s rule and he wants them under his control. The constitution’s insistence that states have powers of their own and that the reach of the federal government should be limited – a principle that until recently was sacred to Republicans – can go hang.
A bit more:
Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way. That is the guiding logic that explains Trump’s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government. It helps explain why FBI agents last week mounted a 7am raid on the home and office of John Bolton, once Trump’s national security adviser and now one of his most vocal critics. And why the president hinted darkly that the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in his sights.
It’s why he has broken all convention, and possibly US law, by attempting to remove Lisa Cook as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve on unproven charges of mortgage fraud. Those charges are based on information helpfully supplied by the Trump loyalist installed as federal housing director and who, according to the New York Times, has repeatedly leveraged “the powers of his office … to investigate or attack Mr Trump’s most recognisable political enemies”. The pattern is clear: Trump is using the institutions of government to hound his foes in a manner that recalls the worst of Richard Nixon – though where Nixon skulked in the shadows, Trump’s abuses are in plain sight.
And all in the pursuit of ever more power. Take the firing of Cook.With falling poll numbers, especially on his handling of the economy, he craves the sugar rush of an interest rate cut. The independent central bank won’t give it to him, so he wants to push the Fed out of the way and grab the power to set interest rates himself. Note the justification offered by JD Vance this week, that Trump is “much better able to make those determinations” than “unelected bureaucrats” because he embodies the will of the people. The reasoning is pure authoritarianism, arguing that a core principle of the US constitution, the separation of powers, should be swept aside, because all legitimate authority resides in one man alone.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Those are my offerings for today. Have a great Labor Day weekend!
Wednesday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual
Posted: August 27, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: another school shooting, Charles Borges, Doge, Donald Trump, Edward Coristine, Fascist crackdown on Washington DC, FEMA, Governor Tim Waltz, Janet Yellen, Lisa M. Cook, Social Security Administration, Trump attack on the Federal Reserve 13 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Everything is awful again this morning. Trump’s coup is advancing rapidly as he increases his control of Washington DC, attempts to take over the Fed, and threatens Chicago and other large cities. He has already politicized the Department of Justice, and now his goons are working to destroy the Social Security Administration and the Department of Defense. He is even speaking openly about wanting to be a dictator.
Here’s the latest:
BBC News live updates: Multiple people injured in Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis, police say.
Summary
— Two people have been killed and up to 20 are injured following a school shooting in Minneapolis, authorities tell CBS, the BBC’s US media partner
— Minnesota Governor Tim Walz says the attack happened at Annunciation Catholic School – and calls it an “horrific act of violence”
— There is “no active threat” in the area now and the gunman is dead, authorities say
— Of the 20 people who are injured, 10 of them are in a critical condition, CBS reports
— The shooting reportedly happened during a school-wide Catholic mass for students in kindergarten to eighth grade
— Police are due to give an update on the situation at about 11:30 local time (16:30 BST) – watch live at the top of this page.
Follow live updates at the link.
AP: Shooting occurs at Minneapolis Catholic school and authorities say shooter has been ‘contained.’
A shooting occurred Wednesday morning during the first week of classes at a Minneapolis Catholic school, Minnesota governor’s said. Authorities gave no immediate information on the number of injuries, but Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “horrific.”
The Minneapolis city government said the shooter had been “contained” after the gunfire at Annunciation Catholic School and there was no longer any “active threat” to residents.
A spokesperson for Hennepin Healthcare, which has Minnesota’s largest emergency department, said in a text message that it was actively dealing with an emergency and provided no additional details. A social media post from the company said it was caring for patients from the shooting.
This is a developing story.
Yesterday Trump escalated his efforts to take over control of the Federal Reserve.
Charlie Savage at The New York Times (gift link): Trump Again Escalates Power Grabs in Bid to Fire Fed Member.
President Trump’s bid to fire a member of the Federal Reserve board is a new escalation of his efforts to amass more power over American government and society: Congress generations ago structured the agency, crucial to the health of the economy, to be independent of White House control.
In purporting to fire the board member, Lisa D. Cook, Mr. Trump is setting up another test of how far the Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court will let him go in eroding the checks and balances Congress has long imposed on executive power.
His attempt to fire Ms. Cook presents a new twist. It raises the question of whether he alone can decide whether there is cause to fire an official at an independent agency whose leaders are protected by law from arbitrary removal — or whether courts will be willing and able to intervene if judges believe his justification is a pretext.
But the move to oust Ms. Cook, whom the Senate confirmed for a term that ends in 2038, also fits into a now familiar arc, joining the various ways Mr. Trump has systematically accumulated greater authority.
Trump is drunk with power. Can anyone stop him?
Mr. Trump has stretched the bounds of some legal authorities, like prolifically declaring emergencies to unlock more expansive power, sending troops into the streets of American cities, unilaterally raising import taxes and blocking spending Congress had directed. In this case, he is pushing at the limits of a statute that says Fed board members serve 14-year terms unless removed “for cause” by a president.
Mr. Trump has also openly weaponized government power in ways that post-Watergate norms had forbidden, including directing the Justice Department to investigate perceived foes. In this case, a loyalist he installed atop the Federal Housing Finance Agency has scrutinized mortgage documents associated with various people Mr. Trump does not like, apparently finding a discrepancy in two loan applications Ms. Cook submitted in 2021.
And Mr. Trump has unabashedly violated statutes in which Congress set limits on when various types of officials may be fired, while seeking rulings striking down those laws as unconstitutional constraints on his powers. The restrictions apply to an array of officials, including board members of other independent agencies, inspectors general and civil servants.
But in telling Ms. Cook he was firing her, Mr. Trump invoked a provision Congress wrote into the Federal Reserve Act that says Fed board members may only be removed before their terms are up for cause. He said he had determined that sufficient cause existed to remove her.
That provision does not define what counts as a sufficient reason. In general, such provisions have been understood to mean something like significant misconduct or neglect of office.
Use the gift link to read the rest.
This is a true emergency. Fortunately, Cook plans to fight back by suing Trump.
CNBC: Trump White House pressures Fed Governor Lisa Cook to go on leave as lawsuit looms.
President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said Wednesday that Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook should go on leave from the central bank even as she plans to file a lawsuit challenging her removal by Trump.
“If I were her in her circumstance, I would take leave,” Hassett told reporters outside the White House.
Lisa M. Cook
“I think it’s the honorable thing to do,” he continued, after a reporter asked about whether Cook should be presumed innocent of allegations of mortgage fraud raised by another Trump-appointed official….
Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, is expected to soon file a lawsuit over Trump’s move, her attorney, Abbe Lowell, said Tuesday.
Trump’s “attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis,” Lowell said in a statement.
The Fed said Tuesday that “Cook has indicated through her personal attorney that she will promptly challenge this action in court and seek a judicial decision that would confirm her ability to continue to fulfill her responsibilities as a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.”
The battle over Cook’s removal could end with the Supreme Court issuing a final decision on the matter.
Would the Supreme Court allow Trump to take control of the Federal Reserve? I’m not sure they will challenge Trump over any of his power grabs.
Alexander Willis at Raw Story:
As President Donald Trump continues to stand behind his decision to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, one former leader at the agency warns that the consequences of the firing, should it ultimately go through, could be catastrophic.
Trump announced on Monday that Cook would be fired “effective immediately,” alleging the Biden-appointee of mortgage fraud, claims that have yet to be litigated in court. Cook immediately rebuked Trump in declaring her intention to continue to serve out the remainder of her 14-year term.
Bill Dudley, a former president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, however, warned that should Cook ultimately be fired, the new makeup of the agency’s board could set off a series of “standoffs, showdowns, chaos and uncertainty” that he said “would be truly frightening,” in an op-ed published in Bloomberg Wednesday.
“The attack on Cook represents a major escalation that could end very badly,” Dudley wrote. “Never before has a president tried to fire a Fed governor, and there’s much more at stake than one person’s job.”
Dudley went on to note that, should Cook be removed from her position, Trump would then have appointed four of the central bank’s seven governors, granting him a powerful majority that would grant the president far more leverage at the Fed.
“The Board of Governors could, for example, refuse to reappoint some or all of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, whose five-year terms come up for renewal in February 2026 – and five of whom vote on the FOMC on a rotating basis. In theory, this could be a way to populate the (Federal Open Market Committee) with members that would do Trump’s bidding, empowering the president to get the big rate cuts he seeks.”
One more on the Fed crisis from former Fed Chair Janet Yellen at Financial Times: Trump’s attack on the Fed threatens US credibility.
US President Donald Trump’s claim that he has “fired” Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook “for cause” is not only unlawful. It is profoundly dangerous.
It represents a direct attempt to politicise the Fed, intimidate its leadership and bend monetary policy to the president’s will. This action threatens to end the independence of the Federal Reserve — and with it, the credibility of the US’s monetary policy both at home and abroad.
Janet Yellen
The law is clear: Federal Reserve governors serve 14-year terms precisely so they cannot be tossed aside by presidents who dislike their views or who seek their allegiance. Removal “for cause” is intended for documented misconduct. “Accusations” are not “cause”.
Cook has done her job with integrity — weighing evidence and voting for policies designed to achieve the Fed’s dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment. For Trump to invoke cause here is a fiction; it is a pretext to justify an autocratic power grab.
This is not about one Federal Reserve governor. It is about intimidation. By targeting Cook, Trump is sending a chilling message to every member of the Federal Reserve board and to the regional reserve bank presidents who take part in the Federal Open Market Committee: express disagreement with the president’s views and you are next.
Such threats could stifle these Federal Reserve leaders in their duty to offer honest, professional and independent views on monetary policy to the public. It could alter their voting behaviour. It would turn an institution renowned for its independence and strong record of accomplishment into a puppet stage for presidential whims and priorities.
A bit more:
At the moment, a key Trump administration priority is for the Fed to substantially cut interest rates to reduce the cost of servicing the US government’s $37tn debt. The consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
History offers a blunt lesson: chaos follows when leaders capture their central banks and force them to buy government debt or cut interest rates to hold down debt service expense. Germany in the 1920s, Hungary after the second world war. Likewise, Argentina and Turkey quite recently — the names change, but the story is the same.
Politicised central banks deliver higher inflation, volatile growth and weakened currencies. Such a road cannot be good for the US. We took this road once before: during the second world war, when the Fed was obliged to hold interest rates down to help the Treasury finance the war. The result was high inflation.
In other news, what is happening at the Social Security Administration is terrifying. A whistleblower has accused former DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine of endangering every American’s Social Security data.
Nicholas Nehamas at The New York Times (gift link): DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says.
Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.
The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.
Edward “Big Balls” Coristine
The account by the whistle-blower, Charles Borges, underscores concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency built by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data. In his complaint, Mr. Borges said DOGE members copied the data to an internal agency server that only DOGE could access, forgoing the type of “independent security monitoring” normally required under agency policy for such sensitive data and creating “enormous vulnerabilities.”
Mr. Borges did not indicate that the database had been breached or used inappropriately.
But his disclosure stated that as of late June, “no verified audit or oversight mechanisms” existed to monitor what DOGE was using the data for or whether it was being shared outside the agency. That kind of oversight would typically be provided by the agency’s career information security professionals, Mr. Borges said in his account.
And his complaint cites an official agency security assessment that described the project as “high risk” and that warned of “catastrophic impact” to Social Security beneficiaries and programs if the database were to be compromised.
“Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital health care and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for reissuing every American a new Social Security number at great cost,” Mr. Borges’s complaint said. He alleged that DOGE did not involve him in discussions about the project, despite his role as chief data officer, leaving him to piece together evidence of what had happened after the fact.
Included in his account, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, are more than two dozen pages of internal emails, memos and other records to document his claims. Mr. Borges’s complaint said that DOGE’s actions “potentially violated multiple federal statutes” designed to protect government data.
Unbelievable. Use the gift link to read the rest.
Trump’s crackdown on Washington DC continues. A couple of updates:
The Independent: National Guard called in to deal with ‘crime emergency’ in DC are now picking up trash outside the White House.
The National Guard, called in to deal with a “crime emergency” in DC declared by Donald Trump, have been spotted picking up trash.
Troops were seen donning yellow marigolds and orange high-visibility vests over their camouflage gear Tuesday as they picked up litter in Lafayette Park, just outside the White House.
According to officials, the military was deployed as part of a “beautification and restoration mission” in Lafayette Square, the National Mall, and the Tidal Basin.
At least 2,234 active guardsmen are on duty throughout the city; 929 of those are from the D.C. National Guard, while 1,305 come from Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, say the Joint Task Force-DC Office.
Trump previously said he’d deployed the National Guard to grapple with “complete and total lawlessness” in the city, despite crime rates hitting a 30-year low earlier this year
Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark: Trump Is Strangling the Life Out of D.C.’s Restaurants.
BY DONALD TRUMP’S TELLING, WASHINGTON, D.C.’s restaurants are doing great. And, naturally, it’s all because of him.
“Friends of mine are going out to dinner,” Trump told reporters Monday, claiming that his deployment of federal forces brought unaccustomed tranquility to the streets of the nation’s capital. “They haven’t gone out to dinner in four years, they were petrified. Half the restaurants closed because nobody could go because they’re afraid to go outside. Now those restaurants are opening, and new restaurants are opening up, it’s like a boomtown.”
Hold up. We’re supposed to believe that “half the restaurants” in the city were closed? Because Washingtonians were cowering at home, peeking through their blinds? Famed chef and humanitarian José Andrés fired back in a tweet:
I understand why you are confused…all your time in DC you haven’t eaten ONCE outside the White House or your own hotel. I’ve lived here for 33 years, and it’s a flat out lie that half the restaurants have closed because of safety…but restaurants will close because you have troops with guns and federal agents harassing people…making people afraid to go out. Cities and towns and rural areas of America need policies that allow small business to thrive and all people including immigrants to live and work with dignity. People shouldn’t be afraid of their government…government should have respect for its people, not terrorize them.
Andrés is right. Trump’s deployment of 2,300 National Guard troops and 500 federal law enforcement agents has hurt foot traffic, chilled business, and made people cancel trips and nights out. It is slowly choking the life out of Washington, D.C. restaurants, which were still struggling to gain their post-pandemic footing just as Trump returned to town and started firing tens of thousands of their customers.
Shawn Townsend, head of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, announced that the city’s annual Restaurant Week is being extended because of the business-dampening effects of Trump’s actions, noting that “reservations were down in restaurants pretty significantly” the week after Trump launched his federal takeover. Data from OpenTable shows restaurant reservations down 24 percent from last year’s Restaurant Week, the New York Times reported.
But numbers tell only part of the story. In interviews with restaurant owners, chefs, and workers, another picture emerged: that of small businesses being harmed by a president who was elected because of his purported business acumen; of a man whose obsession with appearing tough on crime now threatens to sabotage urban economies across the country.
“People used to say Washington is recession-proof. Today Washington is a recession magnet,” Immigrant Food cofounder and “Restaurateur of the Year” candidate Peter Schechter told me. “We’re back to a very pandemic-feeling city. There are fewer people going to work, fewer people walking around, fewer cars, reservations are down, events have been canceled.”
“Everything Trump touches dies” — Rick Wilson
Another potential disaster is in the making. Trump and Kristy Noem have decimated FEMA and it has gotten worse.
Maxine Joselow at The New York Times: FEMA Suspends Staff Who Signed a Letter Criticizing Trump.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday suspended around 30 employees after those workers wrote to Congress warning that the Trump administration had gutted the nation’s ability to handle hurricanes, floods and other extreme weather disasters.
Of the 182 FEMA employees who signed the letter to Congress, 36 attached their names, while the rest withheld their identities for fear of retaliation.
Those who used their names received emails on Tuesday night saying they had been placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to copies of the emails reviewed by The New York Times.
The emails did not provide a reason for the decision. Representatives for FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Colette Delawalla, the executive director of Stand Up for Science, an advocacy group that helped publicize the letter, said the move appeared to be an act of retaliation.
“Once again, we are seeing the federal government retaliate against our civil servants for whistle-blowing — which is both illegal and a deep betrayal of the most dedicated among us,” Ms. Delawalla said in a statement.
The letter to Congress rebuked President Trump’s plan to drastically scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response — and more costs — to the states. It was sent on Monday, days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms ever to strike the United States.
As I said, everything is awful. Here are a few more stories to check out if you can bear it:
CBS News: Denmark summons U.S. envoy over report people linked to Trump trying to foment dissent in Greenland.
Paul Waldman at Public Notice: Chairman Trump’s Great Grift Forward.
Huffpost: Trump Has Forced Out Nearly 10% Of The Federal Workforce.
Jennifer Rubin at The Contrarian: The Police State is Here. While proposing otherwise, Trump luxuriates in aspiring dictatorship.
Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: All the Things Trump Thinks He Owns.
AP: Trump’s transportation secretary takes management of Washington’s Union Station away from Amtrak.
CNN: Pirro’s office fails three times to win felony indictment of alleged attacker of FBI agent.
That’s all I have for you today. As I said, everything is awful. Take care everyone!
Lazy Caturday Reads: Space Cat Visits Venus (and some news, unfortunately)
Posted: August 23, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Fascist crackdown on Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro, John Bolton, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, mortgage fraud, National Guard troops in cities, Pete Hegseth, Pulse nighclub, rainbow crosswalk, sanctuary cities, Space Cat Visits Venus 13 Comments
Book Cover
Good Afternoon!!
I think I’ve hit a wall this morning. I’m feeling so exhausted and overwhelmed with what Trump is doing to the country, that I just want to lie down and give up. I hope I can raise my spirts somehow as the day goes on.
Anyway, it is Caturday, and I have a new installment of Space Cat to share today. It’s the second book in the space cat series, Space Cat Visits Venus. Here is the synopsis from Amazon:
Flyball the Space Cat is back, and this time he’s living in Luna Port, the first city on the Moon. Workers at the lunar station are building a rocket to transport him and his pilot buddy, Colonel Fred Stone, to Venus. The two friends take a long voyage to the planet, where they encounter violet skies, torrential ammonia rains, and strange plants that can communicate without speaking.
This new edition of a charmingly illustrated storybook from 1955 is the second of a four-book series starring the intrepid feline known as Space Cat. Young readers will delight in taking a look at space exploration from Flyball’s point of view and following his escapades across the solar system.
It’s hard to believe these books are still in print after all this time, but I think they are really cute. See some of the illustrations scattered through this post.
As you know, John Bolton’s home and office were searched by the FBI yesterday. Below are some articles that analyze and comment on Trump’s retribution project.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton.
President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term.
His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.” Agents showed up unannounced at his Bethesda, Md., home at 7 a.m. They confiscated his wife Gretchen’s phone because it was visible and not on her person. Mr. Bolton had already left for his office, which is where FBI agents greeted him….
Cat with Venus rocket
It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication. The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material.
The book investigation faded away under President Biden, but now it looks as if Mr. Patel is reviving it. Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. Mr. Patel knows what the President thinks about Mr. Bolton, and the President’s minions in Trump II don’t serve as the check on his worst impulses the way grown-ups did in his first term. The presidential id is now unchained.
Mr. Trump made clear that he was out for blood against Mr. Bolton when he pulled the former adviser’s protective detail after his re-election. Mr. Bolton is widely known as a defense hawk, and in 2022 the Justice Department charged an Iranian national it said planned to murder him.
A bit more:
It’s unlikely that Mr. Bolton broke any laws on national secrets, and he certainly didn’t share any with us over our long association with him. But perhaps Mr. Trump intends for the process itself to be the punishment even if there is ultimately no criminal charge. Mr. Bolton has to pay for legal counsel, and his family has to endure the anxiety of being under federal government siege.
Mr. Bolton has continued to speak candidly about Mr. Trump’s second-term decisions, pro and con, including in these pages this week. The President may also hope the FBI raid will cause Mr. Bolton to shut up, though knowing him we can’t imagine that working.
The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.
Shane Harris at The Atlantic (gift link): The Bolton Raid Feels Like a Warning.
FBI directors don’t customarily announce raids in progress. But early this morning, Kash Patel celebrated the search of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home as agents were rolling into his suburban-Maryland driveway: “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission,” Patel wrote on X. Agents also executed a search warrant at Bolton’s office in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump later told reporters that he had learned about the raid on one of his most voluble critics from TV news, but he took the opportunity to call Bolton a “lowlife” and “not a smart guy.” Then he added: “Could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”
Flyball dreams of mice
The FBI’s actions were hard not to read as payback for Bolton’s years of criticism of the president, even as the facts that persuaded a judge to approve a search warrant remain unknown. That’s the problem with a politicized legal system—even if an investigation is legitimate, it’s easy to assume that its motives are corrupt. Trump has spent years vowing retribution against Bolton, particularly after Bolton published a 2020 memoir that portrayed the president as incompetent and out of his depth on foreign policy.
If this was revenge, it wasn’t an isolated act. As agents were still packing up boxes of Bolton’s effects, The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had pushed out yet another senior military officer, firing Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In June, its analysts delivered a preliminary assessment that U.S. bombers had caused relatively limited damage to Iranian nuclear facilities, undercutting Trump’s pronouncements that the sites were “obliterated.” And just three days ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked the security clearances of more than three dozen current and former national-security officials. Several played key roles in efforts to counter or expose Russia’s 2016 election interference, what Trump calls the “Russia Hoax” and Gabbard has described as part of a “years-long coup” against the president.
Put it all together, and this may be remembered as the week Trump’s campaign against the “deep state” kicked into high gear. To some intelligence professionals I spoke with, it felt as though something fundamental had shifted in their historically apolitical line of work.
“Given the dystopian nature of it all—clearance revocations of former officials who did no wrong, forced retirements of long-standing intelligence officials, reductions in force that include junior officers who were just hired, and a wildly politicized leadership in the intelligence community—I no longer recommend young Americans to pursue careers in intelligence,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a veteran CIA officer who had his own security clearance yanked earlier this year, told me.
Purge doesn’t adequately capture what national-security experts see happening here. Chilling effect is too mild, though revoking the security clearances of two senior intelligence officers, as Gabbard did, effectively ending their government careers, will indeed send a message. Terrorizing the workforce is a phrase I heard a lot this week. And that may indeed be the point.
“Instead of being honest about what we think, now people will just keep their mouths shut or tell Trump what he wants to hear,” said one former official, who would only speak anonymously. The administration publicly identified this person as part of the “Russia Hoax,” and they’ve hired personal security for outside their home, fearing that Trump’s most fevered supporters might pay a visit.
Forget about calling out misbehavior or wrongdoing by administration officials, the person added: “Where would we go to file a grievance, or to report misconduct? Who’s going to do that?”
You can use the gift link to read rest. I wonder if they will target Hillary Clinton? I’m sure Trump would like to do that.
The Trump DOJ seems to have hit on mortgage fraud as their go to accusation against critics.
Flyball and Fred look out at Venus.
The Wall Street Journal: Mortgage-Fraud Accusations Are Trump’s New Political Weapon.
The Trump administration has a new weapon at its disposal in its efforts to take down Democrats and their appointees: mortgage records.
Members of the administration have now alleged three public officials have committed mortgage fraud, referring each to the Justice Department. The administration has signaled that it has just gotten started: U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin was recently tapped “to investigate fraud by public officials in mortgages,” according to a letter Martin sent.
The targets have denied wrongdoing, but the probes represent an aggressive new spin on opposition research that has long dug into tax records and financial disclosures public officeholders have to make. Mortgage applications go beyond the typical disclosure requirements.
Another twist is the allegations are coming from a government official overseeing an agency able to access massive amounts of mortgage data.
At the forefront of the campaign is Bill Pulte, a homebuilder heir Trump tapped to lead the government agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest players in the mortgage market.
At the historically quiet but powerful Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte has turned himself into a Trump attack ally, probing mortgages of prominent Democrats and a Biden-appointed official at the Federal Reserve.
So far, DOJ has announced investigations of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, Senator Adam Schiff, andNew York Attorney General Letitia James.
Heading into an election season, mortgage documents could become even more a source of contention across the country, for both sides of the aisle. Mortgage fraud allegations have also emerged against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who is campaigning for a Senate seat. (Paxton’s campaign has declined to comment on his properties.)
Mick Mulvaney, a former chief of staff for Trump who had faced questions about taxes on his nanny when he was facing Senate confirmation, says the attacks are going to be part of the new normal for Republicans to use versus Democrats now.
“Right now it’s classified documents and mortgage applications,” Mulvaney said of the new opposition research. “Whether or not you pretend to need a wheelchair at an airport to get on the plane faster, that may be used next if that’s illegal.”
In other news, the troops (and FBI agents and ICE thugs) are still occupying Washington DC. Here’s the latest on that story.
CNN: Hegseth orders National Guard troops in DC to carry weapons.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered National Guard members patrolling the streets of Washington, DC, to begin carrying their service weapons as they fulfill President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital, according to a US defense official.
Taking off their helmets
The directive from Hegseth represents a notable shift in guidance from the Pentagon, which had previously indicated that National Guard members could be armed if the circumstances warranted, and suggests hundreds of guard troops deployed in DC will soon be carrying weapons despite serving in a support role.
“At the direction of the Secretary of Defense, (Joint Task Force) JTF-DC members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our Nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training,” the official said….
It comes as other states’ National Guard members have begun arriving in Washington, DC, to be in-processed to assist the DC National Guard.
More than 1,900 troops from multiple states have been called up as part of the mission including from West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Louisiana, and Tennessee National Guards, according to a release from Joint Task Force – DC on Thursday.
What could possibly go wrong? I wonder if Hegseth has heard about Kent State?
ABC News reports that National Guard troops will now be permitted to act as law enforcement: National Guard in DC to carry M17 pistols, conduct law enforcement duties, task force says.
National Guard troops deployed on the streets of Washington, D.C., will now carry weapons for personal protection and are allowed to carry out law enforcement duties, defense officials announced Friday.
The decision is an escalation in President Donald Trump’s use of military troops to address what he insists is “out of control” crime in the nation’s capital. Since his announcement, Trump has mobilized nearly 2,300 National Guard troops from Washington, D.C., and six states with Republican governors. But troops had remained unarmed until now.
ABC News first reported Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had officially authorized the troops to carry weapons if their mission required it. On Friday, the joint task force overseeing the troops confirmed the move, noting that Guard personnel sent on missions would carry M17 pistols, “which are intended for person protection.” The task force said Guard members would receive proper training on how to use the weapons before being allowed to carry them.
“This decision is not something taken lightly,” said Army Brig. Gen. Leland D. Blanchard, III, the Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard, in a statement.
Flyball and the Venus Mouse.
Really? I think it is taken very lightly, considering there’s not as serious crime problem in DC and it’s illegal for the military to perform law enforcement functions in the U.S.
The task force also noted in its statement late Friday that Guard troops can carry out law enforcement duties because they are operating under Title 32 status, a law that exempts troops from restrictions under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, because they are still technically under a state governor’s command.
Legal experts have long warned about how presidents might use Title 32 as a kind of legal loophole to Posse Comitatus, which is supposed to prevent the president from using the military as a domestic police force. Under Title 32, a president pays for a Guard mission while keeping troops under control of the governors; in this case, Trump asked red-state governors to send their troops to D.C.
While those governors technically retain control of the troops, their missions are being decided by the White House, according to several administration officials.
Reuters: Trump crime crackdown deploys troops in Washington’s safest sites.
Hundreds of National Guard soldiers in military fatigues and combat boots mingled with tourists, posed for selfies, and treated themselves to ice cream from food trucks on Thursday along Washington’s National Mall, one of the safest parts of America’s capital.
On occasion an angry local would hurl verbal abuse at them, but the soldiers simply shrugged and carried on what appeared to be an undemanding assignment.
Outside the National Museum of African American History and Culture, five members of the West Virginia National Guard were standing on the street corner far away from the city’s crime hot spots.
A grateful rescued mouse.
“It’s boring. We’re not really doing much,” said Sergeant Fox, who declined to give his first name.
Fox is among almost 2,000 troops, including 1,200 from six Republican-led states, who are being deployed in Washington as part of an extraordinary militarization inside the Democratic-led city.
The soldiers, some of whom told Reuters they did not get involved in arrests, are officially in Washington to support a federal crackdown on what President Donald Trump calls a crime epidemic. But that depiction appears to run counter to the fact that crime rates overall have shrunk in recent years.
That disconnect, combined with the troop concentration near the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and in view of the U.S. Capitol, highlights criticism by the city’s Democratic leaders that this massive deployment is more a show of power by Trump, rather than a serious effort to fight crime.
No kidding.
This is something I hadn’t heard about before. Trump is also mobilizing National Guard troops in other parts of the country. The Independent: Trump mobilizing up to 1,700 National Guardsman in 19 states to widen crime and immigration crackdown.
The Trump administration reportedly plans to mobilize up to 1,700 National Guard troops across 19 states in the coming weeks to support its immigration and anti-crime crackdowns, a dramatic expansion of the controversial operation that’s seen federal agents and Guard troops carrying out activities across Washington, D.C.
The troops, who will largely be activated across Republican-controlled states, will serve in support of the administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, as well as other law enforcement priorities, according to comment from unnamed Pentagon officials and documents obtained by Fox News.
Taking photos of the plants
The Guardsmen assisting ICE will be carrying out tasks that may include “personal data collection, fingerprinting, DNA swabbing and photographing of personnel in ICE custody,” an official told outlet.
The deployments will take place across the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, per Fox.
Texas is reportedly slated to have the largest deployment.
The Guardsmen will be serving under Title 32 Section 502F authority, in which they technically remain under state command and control, but can assist with federal missions and are paid with federal funds. The status allows them to avoid running afoul of a federal law limiting military involvement in domestic law enforcement.
Read more at the link.
Trump is also fantasizing about occupying Democratic cities like Chicago and New York. The Guardian: Trump targets Chicago and New York as Hegseth orders weapons for DC troops.
Donald Trump has threatened to take his federal crackdown on crime and city cleanliness to New York and Chicago, as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered that national guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC under federal control will now be armed.
The US president talked to reporters in the Oval Office and said: “When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess.” He added that then the administration “will help with New York”, amid the controversial and aggressive federal efforts to control leading Democratic-voting cities, each of which has a Black mayor….
Touching the telepathic moss.
On the issue of suddenly announcing that it would now arm the federalized troops in DC, the defense department did not immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.
The step is an escalation in the federal government’s rare intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and came as nearly 2,000 national guard members are stationed in the city.
Earlier this week hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states arrived to bolster the DC national guard.
The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.
There’s more information about the DC occupation in the Guardian article.
Hegseth’s orders come just a day after Jeanine Pirro, the District of Columbia’s top federal prosecutor, instructed prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible in cases stemming from recent arrests, limiting their discretion as the Trump administration intensifies its law enforcement presence in the capital.
That directive, first reported by the New York Times, was issued this week and narrows the ability of line prosecutors to decide how cases are charged and prioritized. By pushing for the maximum charges allowed, the new policy could lead to longer prison terms for convicted defendants….
According to the White House, federal agents have made more than 630 arrests as of Thursday, though the justice department has not clarified how that figure compares with typical city police numbers.
While Pirro has committed to filing the toughest charges possible in most cases, she has also relaxed enforcement of one local gun law. This week she directed prosecutors not to pursue felony charges against people for possessing rifles or shotguns in the city, despite a DC law prohibiting them.
Finally:
On Thursday, Trump declared his takeover of the Metropolitan police department to be a success.
Yeah, right.
A few more interesting stories to check out today:
NBC News: Kilmar Abrego Garcia notified by ICE that he may be deported to Uganda.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongfully deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador, was notified by immigration authorities that he may be deported to Uganda, less than 24 hours after his release from federal custody.
Abrego was released Friday from a jail near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had been held since his return to the U.S. in June after being mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
Flyball’s first vegetarian meal.
Immigration authorities were expected to attempt to deport Abrego upon his release. Abrego “may be removed to Uganda no less than 72 hours absent weekends,” a source familiar with the case told NBC News on Saturday.
That is in line with standard procedure that ICE must give immigrants 72 hours notice before removing them to third countries.
Abrego, originally from El Salvador, had a withholding of removal order from 2019 that prevents his deportation to his home country due to concerns that he would be persecuted by violent gangs.
The removal order was violated when the Trump administration accidentally deported Abrego to the El Salvador’s CECOT prison, notorious for its harsh conditions, in March. However, the 2019 protective order does not bar Abrego from being deported to another country.
Abrego’s lawyers have now notified the judge in the Middle District of Tennessee that ICE has informed Abrego of its intent to deport him to Uganda. Abrego could not face the criminal charges of human smuggling brought against him by DOJ in that case if he is out of the country.
They are never going to leave this poor man alone.
AP: Judge blocks Trump from cutting money to Chicago, LA and other cities over ‘sanctuary’ policies.
A judge ruled late Friday the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and 30 other cities and counties because of policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco extended a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from cutting off or conditioning the use of federal funds for so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. His earlier order protected more than a dozen other cities and counties, including San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
An email to the White House late Friday was not immediately returned. In his ruling, Orrick said the administration had offered no opposition to an extended injunction except to say the first injunction was wrong. It has appealed the first order.
Orrick also blocked the administration from imposing immigration-related conditions on two particular grant programs.
More at the link.
Newsweek: Florida Locals Defy Ron DeSantis By Restoring Pulse Rainbow Crosswalk.
People in Orlando have defied Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and reinstated a rainbow crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub, after Florida officials removed the painted crossing installed in memory of the 49 people killed at the site in 2016.
Fleeing the ammonia storm.
The restoration was led by local community members and LGBTQ+ advocates who gathered at the intersection following the overnight state-directed repainting. In a video shared to social media by the account @jeremy_rodrigue, people can be seen DIY-ing the rainbow crosswalk and drawing the colors back onto the ground.
“While this attack was meant to demoralize us and push us back in the closet, Orlando refused to be erased,” Democratic state Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, who became the first openly gay Latino elected to the Florida legislature in 2016, told Newsweek. “It was inspiring to see so many local residents spring into action in response to the Governor’s cowardly abuse of power.” [….]
The removal of the rainbow crosswalk— painted in 2017 and approved during the administration of former Republican Governor Rick Scott—has sparked fierce backlash from city officials, survivors, and LGBTQ+ organizations who say it was eliminated in the dead of night with no warning.
The crosswalk was painted over following a directive from the Trump administration. In a letter to governors last month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy instructed states to “eliminate” distractions on public roads. He wrote on X at the time: “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”
That’s it for me today. I’m going to try to ignore the news for awhile. Please take care of yourselves, everyone.
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