Posted: September 13, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: bullet engravings, cat art, cats, caturday, Charlie Kirk, Groypers, Helldivers 2, internet memes, murder of Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes, oxytocin, Tyler Robinson |
Good Afternoon!!
By Natália Elizete Franco Pedroso
It has been a terrible week in the news, and it has also been a difficult week for me personally. I’m having trouble thinking clearly today. It all seems like a bad dream. Today I’m going to focus on Tyler Robinson and why he might have hated Charlie Kirk. I know there’s plenty of other news, but I’m still trying to understand this awful event and its aftermath.
Since it’s Caturday, and since we all likely could use some comfort, I’m going to begin with this article about people and cats by neuroscientist Laura Elin Pigott: The Conversation: What owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs).
Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry.
The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin is important for cat-human bonding too.
Oxytocin plays a central role in social bonding, trust and stress regulation in many animals, including humans. One 2005 experiment showed that oxytocin made human volunteers significantly more willing to trust others in financial games.
Oxytocin also has calming effects in humans and animals, as it suppresses the stress hormone cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest system) to help the body relax.
Scientists have long known that friendly interactions trigger oxytocin release in both dogs and their owners, creating a mutual feedback loop of bonding. Until recently, though, not much was known about its effect in cats.
Cats are more subtle in showing affection. Yet their owners often report the same warm feelings of companionship and stress relief that dog owners do – and studies are increasingly backing these reports up. Researchers in Japan, for example, reported in 2021 that brief petting sessions with their cats boosted oxytocin levels in many owners.
In that study, women interacted with their cats for a few minutes while scientists measured the owners’ hormone levels. The results suggested that friendly contact (stroking the cat, talking in a gentle tone) was linked to elevated oxytocin in the humans’ saliva, compared with a quiet resting period without their cat.
Many people find petting a purring cat is soothing, and research indicates it’s not just because of the soft fur. The act of petting and even the sound of purring can trigger oxytocin release in our brains. One 2002 study found this oxytocin rush from gentle cat contact helps lower cortisol (our stress hormone), which in turn can reduce blood pressure and even pain.
Click on the link to read more about oxytocin’s effect on the human-cat relationship.
Yesterday, we learned that the man who murdered Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is the product of a gun-owning, Republican family who for the past couple of years spent most of his time on-line. There are suggestions that he may have been a follower of Nicholas Fuentes, who hated Kirk because he wasn’t far right enough. Fuentes followers call themselves “groypers.” Regardless of whether that hypothesis pans out, Robinson clearly was not a “far left lunatic,” as Trump claimed the murderer must be. We can’t be sure of Robinson’s motives, because he is not talking to investigators.
What we know about Tyler Robinson
The New York Times (gift link): From Scholarship Winner to Wanted Man: The Path of the Kirk Shooting Suspect.
In the conservative southern Utah city where Tyler Robinson grew up, neighbors and classmates described him as a reserved, intelligent young man raised in a Republican family who was deeply interested in video games, comic books and current events.
On Friday afternoon, people who knew Mr. Robinson struggled to reconcile their memories of him and his seemingly ordinary suburban upbringing with his notorious new image: the latest face of political violence, accused of fatally shooting the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus earlier this week in what the authorities have called a political assassination.
By Irina Babichenko
“It’s really sad that someone with his mind put it to that sort of use,” said Keaton Brooksby, 22, a former high school classmate of Mr. Robinson’s.
Mr. Robinson had recently spoken with a family member about the fact that Mr. Kirk was going to hold an event in Utah, according to a police affidavit, and he and his relative discussed “why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had.”
But as elements of the nation’s political left and right scrambled for motives, the image that has initially emerged of Mr. Robinson is not at all clear. Neither is his trajectory from a scholarship-winning high school student to an apprentice electrician to a suspect.
Mr. Brooksby said that Mr. Robinson was generally considered a quiet pupil when they were growing up in the conservative St. George area, but one day in high school, the topic of the 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, came up during lunch. Few there knew exactly what had happened, but Mr. Robinson was sure of himself.
“He gave us a whole spiel on what happened,” Mr. Brooksby said. “I just remember thinking, he’s got a lot of information on this for someone who’s 14.”
A bit more info:
Mr. Robinson is registered to vote in Utah, but he is not affiliated with a political party and had never voted in an election, according to the Washington County Clerk. His parents are registered Republicans, both with active hunting licenses in a part of the country known for its outdoor life, near Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks.
Social media photos posted by his family over the years show Mr. Robinson and his two younger brothers shooting and posing with guns….
Adrian Rivera, 22, who had been in a high school woodworking class with him, said that Mr. Robinson would often hang around the area designated for the Junior R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, with other students who were interested in the military program. It was unclear whether Mr. Robinson had actually been a member of the corps.
Mr. Rivera said that Mr. Robinson was a “massive Halo guy,” referring to the popular science fiction game, and that he also liked to play Call of Duty, and other shooter games.
Sam New, 23, remembered a different video game, Minecraft, which Mr. Robinson, an introvert from a conservative family, played obsessively.
Use the gift link to read more, if you’re interested.
The Wall Street Journal: Tyler Robinson’s Descent From Promising Student to Murder Suspect.
Tyler Robinson was the pride of his Utah family. He was a 4.0 high-school student who won a prestigious college scholarship, according to social-media posts.
“His options are endless,” his mother wrote on Facebook.
Four years later, authorities say the 22-year-old Robinson used an old bolt-action rifle to fire a single shot that killed Charlie Kirk while the conservative activist spoke Wednesday at Utah Valley University. He allegedly had ammunition etched with phrases borrowed from internet and gaming culture like “Hey, fascist! Catch!” and “If you read this, you are gay, lmao.”
Authorities, friends and even his own family were trying to understand how Robinson went from a top student raised by parents who were registered Republicans in a Mormon stronghold in southwest Utah to a suspected assassin who authorities said targeted one of the country’s most popular conservative youth leaders. Robinson was in the past registered as nonpartisan….
As everyone knows by now, Robinson’s family turned him in to authorities after he confessed to his father.
Robinson was from the small city of Washington, nestled in southwest Utah between red-rock canyons and snow-capped mountains. Striking national parks like Zion and Bryce Canyon aren’t far.
Like many boys in this area, Robinson grew up hunting and was well-versed in the use of firearms, according to law-enforcement officials. Photos shared on social media show the family shooting rifles.
State records show his parents own a custom-countertop business, and his mother is a licensed clinical social worker. The family lives on a suburban street that a neighbor described as quiet with many households attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robinson, who has two brothers, was a stellar student, according to his mother’s posts on her Facebook account. He had a perfect GPA and scored a 34 out of a possible 36 on his ACT….
Robinson’s mother hoped he would stay close for college, and in the fall of 2021, she posted pictures of him in his dorm room at Utah State, a 5-hour drive north of the family home in Washington. He arrived with a scholarship worth $32,000 over four years.
But he wasn’t there long. Utah State said he attended the school for just one semester. More recently he has been enrolled in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, where he is a third-year student, according to the Utah Board of Higher Education.
On the speculation about Robinson’s political leanings:
One thing is apparent about Robinson: He lived much of life on the internet. By age 15, he had developed enough of an online presence that he dressed up as “some guy from a meme” for Halloween, according to his mother. Writings on the bullet casings found by police appeared to reference various memes and online culture.
One unfired casing was inscribed with lyrics from “Bella Ciao,” an Italian song dedicated to those who fought against fascism during World War II that has been revived on TikTok.
“It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” Cox said in an interview with the Journal.
Online, however, X users have noted that a version of the song also appears on a Spotify playlist for Groypers, the name for followers of Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist personality who has criticized Kirk, including for his support of Israel. Fuentes has publicly condemned the shooting of Kirk and posted on X that “my followers and I are currently being framed” for Kirk’s killing “based on literally zero evidence.”
Tyler Robinson, 22, the man arrested in connection with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, comes from a MAGA family, his grandmother has revealed.
Yoga with my cat, Sharyn Bursic
Although MAGA figureheads have been quick to point fingers at the left for Kirk’s death, Tyler’s grandmother, Debbie Robinson, 69, insisted that they come from a family of Trump supporters.
She spoke with the Daily Mail on Friday after news of Robinson’s arrest broke. “My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump,” Debbie told the outlet. “Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”
According to the outlet, Robinson’s father, Matt, 48, was the one to turn Tyler into the authorities after he confessed to the grisly crime. Debbie has not been able to get in touch with her son since news of her grandson’s arrest went public.
“I’m just so confused,” Debbie said of her grandson’s arrest. “[Tyler] is the shyest person,” she said. “He has never, ever spoke politics to me at all.”
Extreme right groups, Charlie Kirk, and Tyler Robinson
It ideologies of far right groups are more complex than us “normies” generally realize.
David Gilbert at Wired: Extremist Groups Hated Charlie Kirk. They’re Using His Death to Radicalize Others.
For years, extremist groups, white nationalists, and militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw Charlie Kirk not as their ally, but as their enemy.
Though Kirk denigrated trans people, Muslims, unmarried women, and many minorities and advocated for an America with Christianity at the center of every aspect of life, he was, in their view, a moderate. For some, his staunch support of Israel’s government made Kirk a target rather than a friend.
But in the immediate aftermath of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, these same groups were quick to frame the incident as an attack on one of their own, portraying Kirk’s death as part of what they see as an ongoing war against white, Christian men. The same groups were relatively quiet on Friday after police announced they had arrested a 22-year-old from Utah for the killing who had no obvious ties to the left.
By Giuseppe Mariotti
These groups, many of which have been relatively dormant since the mass arrests surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, have used the outpouring of grief around Kirk’s death as a lightning rod, a signal that they need to mobilize and take action. Many of them, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have used Kirk’s death as a recruitment and radicalizing tool to convince his supporters to take a more extreme worldview.
“Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, the leader of the far-right National Network, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, wrote on his Telegram channel. “We are mobilizing young Nationalists to defend our communities against the Radical Left—we need your help!”
The appeals appear to be at least somewhat working: Sánchez’s post was accompanied by a screenshot showing a $1,000 donation he received on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.
“This is the beginning of a movement that may define our nation,” the donor wrote on the site. “Use it for good and purge the country of these insane ideologies.”
Read more at Wired.
Also from Wired: Bullets Found After the Charlie Kirk Shooting Carried Messages. Here’s What They Mean.
On Friday, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native, was identified by federal law enforcement as a suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk. During Friday’s press conference, officials said that several bullet casings recovered from a hunting rifle found near the crime scene had messages inscribed on them.
During the press conference, officials appeared to take the inscriptions literally, to the extent they ascribed meaning to them at all. But the four messages apparently written by the alleged shooter instead seem to invoke a variety of memes and video game references.
One of the casings was said to be engraved with the phrase “Hey Fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow, a right arrow, and three downward-facing arrows. That sequence is an apparent reference to the “Eagle 500kg bomb” in the popular third-person-shooter game Helldivers 2. The bomb has become a meme in the Helldivers community for being comically excessive.
By Elias-Mollineaux-Bancroft
Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers of Helldivers 2, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Launched in 2024, the game has grown a cult following for its Starship Troopers–like storyline. The cooperative shooter allows teams of up to four players, called “Helldivers,” to spread “freedom” across a fictional universe—fighting bugs, robots, and squid-like aliens rather than other humans. Their form of managed democracy is “basically fascism,” says independent extremism researcher Harry Batchelor, who works with the Extremism and Gaming Research Network.
Helldivers 2 is satire, and the vast majority of players are in on it. The game, says Batchelor, “takes “the whole ‘pretending to be democracy while actually being a fascist government’ so seriously, it’s obviously a joke.” The community around the game has generally maintained a positive reputation, even working together to combat “review bombing”—coordinated negative reviews intended to hurt a game’s chance of success.
The arrows that activate the Eagle 500kg bomb have been used in other memes to show that a user is “going to do a big, violent action,” Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, tells WIRED. “That’s maybe a cheeky way of expressing it on the casing.”
More bullet engravings and their meanings:
One of the other alleged memes on the casings says, “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” which seems to be more of a common online insult than a specific reference. “I believe this person is genuinely just always online,” Batchelor says.
“They knew that they’d be discovered and posted about,” says Caldwell of the decision to include meme references on the casings. “People understand that memes are very powerful and get a lot of attention. As soon as people read them, they’re going to desperately try to figure out what the reference means. It makes it more interesting.”
At Vanity Fair, Joshua Rivera write about the on-line culture that Robinson may have tapped into: Groypers, Helldivers 2, Furries: What Do the Messages Left by Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Killer.
As of yet, little is known about Robinson’s alleged motivations or ideology. But the few details surrounding the 22-year old point toward a troubling trend: young shooter suspects who communicate primarily via obtuse memes and digitally inflected irony.
All sorts of young adults are familiar with the culture of video games, Twitch streamers, and YouTube, speaking a language completely foreign to those who do not spend as much time online. Is that language inherently sinister? No more than, say “Skibidi Toilet,” a series of crude animated shorts about toilets from which talking heads emerge. (There’s a movie in the works.) None of the phrases Robinson allegedly wrote are known code words for anything nefarious; they signal little beyond a connection to a contextless internet, where memes take on a life of their own and are used by the benign and malignant alike.
By Tatyana Ornisana
Some memes, however, aren’t so neutral. The young men who admired, and still admire, Charlie Kirk tend to be extremely online—which doesn’t necessarily mean that they all share exactly the same ideology. Internecine conflict between conservative factions is common, both on social media and at events for young conservatives. The most notable of these are the “Groyper Wars” of 2019. “Groypers” are fans of white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes who like to hide their racism behind ironic jokes; when Kirk began making an effort to mainstream his ultra-right-wing Turning Point USA movement, Fuentes instructed them to publicly troll Kirk.
A Facebook photo in which Robinson appears to reference a Groyper meme has led to early speculation that Kirk’s killing may have been an outgrowth of these intra-far-right skirmishes. But another feature of the modern far-right is an embrace of the post-truth huckster. In these circles, it’s always possible that someone is playing a character—or will claim to be doing so, muddying the waters so no one can accuse them of having a sincere belief beyond the desire to rile up their targets. For people like this, the whole world is a forum board, where lewd public comments and real-world violence are becoming increasingly interchangeable. (Consider the messages left behind by the deceased shooter of Annunciation Catholic School, which were full of references to both other shooters and innocuous memes.)
I think Rivera’s last paragraph is important:
In every respect, the circumstances surrounding Kirk’s murder are alarming for those with the understandable impulse to make some kind of sense out of terrifying events. It is true that real-life violence is the end result of our cultural coarsening. It is also important to remember that Robinson’s generation is entering public life with frames of reference that are totally foreign to its elders, regardless of individual ideology. We cannot properly comprehend the harm of bad actors or the concerns of the innocent until we have taken the time to learn their language—and sometimes, even then we won’t understand.
I’ve tried to gather the latest speculation about Tyler Robinson’s possible motives and ideology. We’ll likely learn more in the coming days, especially if he begins talking to investigators. We are dealing with a right wing culture that is very dangerous.
Related stories to check out if you’re interested
Justin Glawe at Public Notice: Kash Patel’s FBI is a total mess.
The New York Times: Hasan Piker on Charlie Kirk.
Mother Jones: Streaming Star Hasan Piker Was Set to Debate Charlie Kirk. Now He’s Warning of a “Reichstag Fire Moment.”
Zeteo: Charlie Kirk in His Own Words.
NBC News: Pete Hegseth tells Pentagon staff to hunt for negative Charlie Kirk posts by service members.
NBC News: After Charlie Kirk’s death, teachers and professors nationwide fired or disciplined over social media posts.
USA Today: ‘No idea what you have unleashed’: Charlie Kirk’s wife delivers first public address.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope your weekend is a peaceful one.
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Posted: September 10, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: Donald Trump, Epstein birthday book, ICE, israel, Jeffrey Epstein, NATO, Poland, Qatar, Russia |
Good Afternoon!!
I’m even more overwhelmed than usual with the news today. It’s absolutely insane.
Yesterday we got to see Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, and it is simply disgusting, as JJ wrote yesterday. Trump can deny he wrote the note with his signature all he wants. No one is buying it. He was closse friends with this man for 10-15 years and had to know what Epstein was up to. Not only that, Trump makes other sickening appearances in the book, including one about buying a “fully depreciated” woman from Epstein.
That would be enough horrible news to deal with today, but there’s much more. Poland shot down Russian drones that entered their air space. Israel bombed a building in Qatar. The Supreme Court decision to legalize racial profiling continues to be a top story (Dakinikat covered that extensively on Monday.). ICE is continuing to terrify residents of numerous cities. Trump ventured out of the White House last night with some cabinet members and was called Hitler by citizens of Washington DC.
The Birthday Book
Charley Warzel at The Atlantic (gift link): You Really Need to See Epstein’s Birthday Book for Yourself. This time, the conspiracy theorists were right.
Looking back, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I opened “Request No. 1,” the PDF file containing the contents of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and co-conspirator, created the book in 2003 by soliciting tributes from the financier’s friends and associates. Given the crimes Epstein was convicted of, I steeled myself before scrolling. Somehow, my internet-addled imagination failed me. This book is a nightmare.
The book was released yesterday by Congress after Epstein’s estate, which was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, provided a copy. It is the same book that contains the now-infamous letter and “bawdy” sketch from Donald Trump that ends: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” When The Wall Street Journal reported on the letter’s existence in July, the newspaper described it but did not republish the letter itself, so Trump vehemently denied that it was real and sued for defamation. But the now-public letter certainly looks real, and so does Trump’s signature. Many of the people who encountered it for the first time yesterday made a similar observation: Its creepy prose is framed by a markered sketch of what looks like the caricature not of a woman’s body, but of a girl’s. (The White House can no longer plausibly deny that the letter exists, but it now insists that Trump did not write or sign it.)
The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.” Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document. Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself.
The book’s contributors apparently include former President Bill Clinton, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, the billionaire retailer Leslie Wexner, and, of course, Maxwell herself, as well as a prominent fashion designer, financiers, and a media magnate. Clinton, Mitchell, and Wexner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Clinton referred The Wall Street Journal to a previous statement that said, “The former president had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein’s 2019 arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.” Wexner declined to comment to the Journal but previously told reporters he cut ties with Epstein in 2007.
Not all of the entries in the book allude to sexual activity, and it’s plausible that not all of the contributors knew about Epstein’s crimes. Still, the document is conspiracy jet fuel—visual and textual confirmation of the long-held suspicions that Epstein’s sex pestery was an open secret, enabled by powerful people who may have participated in it themselves or laughed it all off as a friend’s roguish quirk….
Sanitizing this document would be wrong, so I’ll be blunt: The Epstein birthday book is full of contributions from wealthy and powerful people who appear fully aware of Epstein’s attraction to “girls.” In fact, they seem to celebrate it and, in some cases, allude winkingly to Epstein’s predatory lifestyle.
Use the gift link to read the rest. I haven’t looked through the entire book yet. I suppose I should do it, but I’m not looking forward to it after what I’ve already seen and heard.
One more on the birthday book from Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Steve Eder at The New York Times: A Phony Trump Check and a ‘Depreciated’ Woman in Epstein’s Birthday Book.
The splashy focus of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book released by lawmakers on Monday was a lewd drawing apparently signed by Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s cameo in another part of the book also provided fodder for Democrats and other critics of the president.
An entry in Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, contributed by the Florida real estate developer Joel Pashcow.
The entry, included in a bound volume in 2003, was made by Joel Pashcow, the former chairman of a real estate company in New York and a member of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. It shows a photograph of Mr. Pashcow at the resort with Mr. Epstein, another man and a woman whose face is redacted. Mr. Pashcow is holding an oversize check that appears to have been doctored, with a seemingly phony “DJ TRUMP” signature.
A handwritten note under the photo, which was taken in the 1990s, joked that Mr. Epstein showed “early talents with money + women,” and had sold a “fully depreciated” woman to Mr. Trump for $22,500.
The woman, whose name is also redacted in the files released by the House Oversight Committee, was a European socialite then in her 20s, according to two people familiar with the original photo. She had briefly dated both Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump around that time, according to court transcripts and a person close to Mr. Epstein. The birthday book entry appears to be a reference to the competition between the two men for the woman’s affections.
The nature of the woman’s relationship with Mr. Epstein is murky. The New York Times is not naming her because she may have been one of his victims.
A lawyer for the woman said she knew Mr. Epstein in “a professional capacity” when she was a student but severed ties with him in 1997. She did not know anything about the letter or its “derogatory content,” the lawyer added.
A bit more information:
Mr. Pashcow appears to have contributed several consecutive pages to the book. On the page before the mock check is a vulgar cartoon depicting Mr. Epstein’s grooming of young girls: On one side, marked 1983, Mr. Epstein is handing out balloons to a group of girls; on the other, labeled 2003, he is receiving a naked massage from four topless young women. “What a great country!” it reads at the bottom.
The photograph with the giant check offers fresh insight on the social circles shared by Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein. It is no secret that the two were friendly in the 1990s and early 2000s, before Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes in 2008.
A visual analysis by The Times found that the photo was taken at Mar-a-Lago after the resort opened as a club in 1996 and was landscaped with palm trees and other features.
Use the gift link to read more details if you so desire.
NATO Shoots Down Russian Drones in Poland
CNN: NATO shoots down Russian drones in Polish airspace, accusing Moscow of being ‘absolutely reckless.’
NATO fighter jets shot down multiple Russian drones that violated Polish airspace during an attack on neighboring Ukraine early on Wednesday, as the military alliance denounced Moscow for “absolutely dangerous” behavior that ratcheted up tensions to a new level.
The operation marked the first time that shots were fired by NATO since the start of the war in Ukraine. Polish and Dutch jets intercepted the drones, with assistance from Italian, German and NATO’s multinational forces, officials said.
People watch as a house is damaged after a drone or similar object struck a residential building according to local authorities, following violations of Polish airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Addressing the Polish parliament, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that while there was no reason to say that Poland was in a state of war, it was closer to a conflict than any time since World War II. He said the country was facing an “enemy that does not hide its hostile intentions.”
Tusk also announced that Poland has invoked Article 4 of NATO, meaning the alliance’s main political decision-making body will now meet to discuss the situation and its next steps.
Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement that it had carried out a strike against Ukraine overnight. It said that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range that of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).
The Russian foreign ministry then said that these “specific facts completely debunk the myths repeatedly spread by Poland in order to escalate the Ukrainian crisis further.”
NATO chief Mark Rutte said, however, that the violation of Poland’s airspace was not an “isolated incident.”
Jenny Gross at The New York Times: Poland Has Invoked NATO’s Article 4. What Comes Next?
Poland invoked Article 4 of NATO’s treaty on Wednesday after the alliance’s fighter jets shot down Russian drones that entered its airspace in the early hours of the morning. Russian drones have crossed into Poland before, including twice last week, but this was the first time that Russian drones had been shot down over the territory of a NATO country.
“What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident,” said Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general. “We will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defenses continually at the ready.”
Here’s what to know about NATO’s Article 4….
Article 4 allows a member state to start a formal discussion among the alliance about threats to its security. While invoking Article 4 does not commit NATO to any military action, it is a required step toward a NATO decision to invoke Article 5. (An invocation of Article 5 is often assumed to have military implications, but the NATO treaty says only that its members will “assist” the party that has been attacked. This can also mean economic or political action.)
Article 4 states that the alliance’s members “will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”
Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked eight times. Before Wednesday, the last was on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now what?
The joint NATO response early Wednesday showed how quickly the war in Ukraine could escalate into a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Mr. Rutte said that the alliance’s air defenses were activated to ensure Poland’s protection. The response included fighter jets and air-defense systems from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, he said.
“The security situation of our airspace has been stabilized, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have returned to standard operational activities,” the Polish military said on social media.
So, we’ll see what happens.
Israeli Strike Inside Qatar
CNN: Israel targets Hamas leadership in Qatar strike.
• Israel carried out an unprecedented attack against Hamas leadership in the capital of Qatar, which has been a key mediator in Gaza ceasefire talks — putting hostage negotiations at risk.
• Hamas said the strike killed five members but failed to assassinate the negotiating delegation. A Qatari security official also died in the strike.
• US President Donald Trump expressed displeasure about the attack. “I’m not thrilled about the whole situation. It’s not a good situation,” he said, adding he would issue a full statement on Wednesday. Qatar’s prime minister was visibly angry as he described the strike as “state terrorism.”
This is a developing story.
The Independent: Qatar says it has a right to respond to Israeli attack that killed six in Doha: Latest.
Qatar said it has the right to respond to Israel’s strike in Doha that targeted Hamas political leaders, which it decried as a “blatant attack”.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, described Tuesday’s attack as “state terrorism” that targeted the security and stability of the region.
Aftermath of Israeli strike inside Qatar.
“Qatar… reserves the right to respond to this blatant attack,” he told a late night press conference.
“We believe that today we have reached a pivotal moment. There must be a response from the entire region to such barbaric actions.”
US president Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” about Israel’s airstrike that killed six people, saying it advances neither Israel nor America’s goals.
Trump called the strike on Hamas’s political wing “unfortunate” and said he had directed US envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar but it was too late to stop the strike.
Hamas said five of its lower-ranking members and a Qatari security official were killed in the airstrike, but that all its leaders survived the attack.
ICE Commentary
Garrett Graff at Doomsday Scenario: ICE is Eating the Soul of America.
A big change happened yesterday, when the Supreme Court said it was okay for ICE and the Border Patrol to racially profile individuals walking freely on America’s streets. If you’re brown, speak Spanish, and work in a blue-collar job, you officially belong to a different class of citizen and according to Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s okay to racially profile you.
We have never in US history seen a federal law enforcement agency operate the way ICE has operated this summer — it marks the arrival of a new style of domestic policing, more in line with the infamous “brown shirts” of authoritarian regimes the world over than any regular policing tradition in the nation’s interior. Yes, we’ve seen similar abuses of civil liberties and due process stem from corrupt and racist state police and country sheriffs in the Jim Crow south, and plenty of local police departments even today suffer from localized corruption scandals, but never we seen what is happening with ICE right now take place the whole country over.
All of the nation’s law enforcement are blending together into an “ICE auxiliary.” — Garrett Graff
The day-to-day behavior and aggression of ICE is corrupting the soul of America. I encourage you to watch this video of federal agents policing the start of an elementary school in DC — there not to secure the school and children, but specifically to intimidate and punish schoolgoers. Tell me that isn’t the picture of authoritarianism? You know how you’re going to be the bad guy in the eyes of history? If school children and mothers have to push their way through your armed, masked gang while you’re carrying assault weapons in order to attend school. I can’t help but think how the Trump administration has turned the proud tradition of the US Marshals at the University of Mississippi or the 82nd Airborne at Little Rock Central High on its head. Similarly, this video of a masked officer detaining a father outside immigration court in New York City — the masked officers are indistinguishable from Wild West bank robbers.
There are four things that have really struck me about ICE’s operations over the last month, all of them worrisome about the trajectory of that agency and the presence and role of federal law enforcement in American life. (Separately, I’m going to write about the warning signs already visible in ICE’s dramatic hiring surge.) Taken together, they paint a picture of an already rogue agency that feels it operates outside of the Constitution and owes nothing to the Americans it’s supposed to serve.
(NOTE from BB: You’ll need to go to the link to read the entire explication under the four headings)
1) Everything is now ICE.
The most worrisome aspect of the quick militarization and turbo-charging of ICE is how American law enforcement across the board — and much of the government beyond — is being subsumed by ICE’s mission and lowering themselves, from hiring to behavior to tactics, down to ICE’s standards.
We have different federal law enforcement agencies for a reason — and moreover, as citizens, we as a country need and want federal law enforcement. The FBI, DEA, ATF, Secret Service, and the US Marshals all have their own lanes, authorities, and responsibilities, but right now we’ve watching the Trump administration turn all of federal law enforcement across both the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security into an faceless quasi-ICE auxiliary, blending all these agencies and agent into some amorphous anonymous blob of masked, brown tactical-vest-wearing federal law enforcement. I wrote recently about how this precisely is what authoritarian regime looks like — armed, masked, anonymous agents of the state jumping from unmarked vehicles and whisking people away….
2) Collapse of Moral Legitimacy.
I wrote earlier in the summer about how in a democracy policing requires moral legitimacy and the permission of the policed. That’s been one of the hallmarks of policing ever since Sir Robert Peel built the first modern police force in London’s Metropolitan Police. One of his core principles of policing was: “To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.”
The DC police department was literally created originally in Peel’s image, which is why it too is known awkwardly as the “Metropolitan Police.” Now, in a historical irony, it is ground zero for the erosion of the moral legitimacy of federal law enforcement writ large….
3) Operating without due regard for civil liberties and due process.
In my essay at the end of August about how America has tipped in fascism, I wrote, “America has become a country where armed officers of the state shout ‘papers please’ on the street at men and women heading home from work, where masked men wrestle to the ground and abduct people without due process into unmarked vehicles, disappearing them into an opaque system where their family members beg for information.”
Few of the videos that have surfaced since have indicated otherwise; normal ICE procedures barrel right past normal due process and civil liberties; here, after wrestling someone to the ground, officers lose interest the moment he makes clear he’s a US citizen. Here masked officers start pushing a man before he can even provide proof of citizenship. Is this what America has come to?
4) Avoiding transparency and accountability.
Add up all of the above and you have a portrait of a rogue agency, which is what leads me to my final dangerous warning sign: This agency clearly knows that it can do no wrong in the eyes of the White House and administration — there is no level of violence, brutality, or abuse of civil liberties that would get any of these agents or officers in trouble with their bosses. Earlier this summer, I wrote about how ICE is acting as if it will never face accountability again. We’ve seen ICE flaunt federal law that requires congressional oversight — and, instead, it has tried to arrest and charge federal lawmakers, a bright line if there ever was one.
At every turn, though, the agency is going out of its way to make it harder to hold officers accountable. ICE officers don’t routinely wear name tags or easily visible badge numbers (in this video, check out how you have to zoom in on his badge on his belt to even begin to identify his badge number.) Moreover, though, despite the fact that we’re weeks and months into this national ICE takeover, the agency has made no effort to make its masked officers on the streets identifiable to either the public — or even to itself.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic (gift link): The Government Wants to See Your Papers.
You there. Stop what you’re doing. Take off that tool belt and hard hat—let’s see some ID. Why? Because we don’t think you’re a citizen. Now show us your papers.
This kind of behavior by government officials is now legal in the United States.
Masked ICE agents in Los Angeles
Yesterday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court allowed ICE officials to conduct roving patrols and use racial profiling to stop and detain people for no other reason than their skin color, the language they’re speaking, suspicions about their national origin—or, really, if immigration officials just feel like it.
But wait, you might object. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Did the Court explain why that protection apparently no longer applies to you if you’re a day laborer or running a fruit stand? Good luck with that: This Court’s majority doesn’t explain itself to anyone. It merely lets stand or overturns the decisions of lower courts—lately, almost always in favor of expanding the power of, and corroding any checks on, President Donald Trump.
Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo is a case from Los Angeles about whether ICE can stop people because of a suspicion of their being in the United States illegally, based solely, as SCOTUSblog summarized it, on any combination of four factors: a person’s “‘apparent race or ethnicity,’ speaking in Spanish or accented English, being present at a location where undocumented immigrants ‘are known to gather’ (such as pickup spots for day laborers), and working at specific jobs, such as landscaping or construction.”
A California district-court judge had earlier enjoined ICE from making such stops, perhaps appalled by this example:
Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in East Los Angeles and identifies as Latino. On the afternoon of June 12, he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of a tow yard in Montebello, California, where he saw agents carrying handguns and military-style rifles. One agent ordered him to “Stop right there” while another “ran towards [him].” The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American—and they repeatedly ignored his answer: “I am an American.” The agents asked Gavidia what hospital he was born in—and he explained that he did not know which hospital. “The agents forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” An agent asked again, “What hospital were you born in?” Gavidia again explained that he did not know which hospital and said “East L.A.” He then told the agents he could show them his Real ID. The agents took Gavidia’s ID and his phone and kept his phone for 20 minutes. They never returned his ID.
In overturning the lower court’s decision, five of the Court’s six right-wing justices—there is no other reasonable way to describe them at this point—took advantage of their right to remain silent, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh gamely tried to speak up in a concurrence. If his goal was to be reassuring, he did not help matters: Such stops are usually “brief,” he explained. Again, I am not a scholar of the Constitution, but I had no idea that I could be deprived of my rights under the Fourth (or any other) Amendment as long as my getting roughed up takes only a few moments out of my busy day.
Use the gift link to read the rest.
Trump Dines in DC
The Independent: Trump labeled ‘Hitler of our time’ as hecklers crash his DC dinner plans.
President Donald Trump stepped out for dinner in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday only to find himself immediately confronted by protesters calling him “the Hitler of our time,” forcing him and his entourage of cabinet officials to stand awkwardly listening to their taunts before they could sit down to eat.
Activists took advantage of Trump’s rare public outing to to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, a short walk from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to heckle and berate the president with cries of “Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
“You are not welcome here!” one woman can be seen telling him in a video shared on social media. “Yes he is,” another diner countered.
Trump initially looked unfazed by the provocation but then gestured to his security team and said impatiently: “Come on. Let’s go. Get them out of here.”
The activist in question was escorted out of the dining area but continued to yell, despite some boos: “He’s terrorizing communities all over the world! From Puerto Rico… to Palestine to Venezuela! He’s not welcome to D.C.! He’s not welcome to Palestine! Palestine is not for sale!”
Only after she had been removed could Trump and his guests take their places at their table.
Joining the president for dinner were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other senior White House officials.
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
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Posted: September 6, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | 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 |
Good 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 Matthew Cole at The New York Times (gift link): 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?
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Posted: September 3, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | 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 |
Good 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.
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….
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.
Lethal force against a civilian vessel in international waters is a war crime if not in self-defense. If not in self-defense, only non-lethal actions, such as warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed."Not yielding to pursuers" or "suspected of carrying drugs" doesn't carry a death sentence.
— Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) 2025-09-02T21:20:18.090Z
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?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: August 30, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | 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 |
Good 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:
This is the third book in the Space Cat series, and the illustrations are great, IMHO.
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!
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