The news continues to be deeply disturbing as we find out how much the damage done by Doge and bumbling Trump Cabinet members has impacted the basic services provided by the Federal Government. We also continue to find how deeply criminal the mindset is in the administration. It’s hard not to notice the many agencies that have been corrupted by Project 2025 and Yam Tit’s fascist wet dreams. Also, get ready for Good Trouble on July 17th.
Andrew Goudsward, writing for Reuters, has this astounding story about the number of lawyers leaving the DOJ. “Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit.”
The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.
Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration.
Critics have accused the Trump administration of flouting the law in its aggressive use of executive power, including by retaliating against perceived enemies and dismantling agencies created by Congress.
The Trump administration has broadly defended its actions as within the legal bounds of presidential power and has won several early victories at the Supreme Court. A White House spokesperson told Reuters that Trump’s actions were legal, and declined to comment on the departures.
“Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.
The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures.
Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.
All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and avoid retaliation.
A Justice Department spokesperson said lawyers in the unit are fighting an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” against Trump’s agenda.
“The Department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the Supreme Court and will continue to defend the President’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said. The Justice Department did not comment on the departures of career lawyers or morale in the section.
Some turnover in the Federal Programs Branch is common between presidential administrations, but the seven sources described the number of people quitting as highly unusual.
Reuters was unable to find comparative figures for previous administrations. However, two former attorneys in the unit and two others familiar with its work said the scale of departures is far greater than during Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s administration.
I can’t get over what’s going on with the Epstein Case. It sounds like the chickens are coming home to roost. Lady Justice knows the victims need closure and peace. As an activist against the abuse of women and children since I was 17 years old, I can only say we still haven’t caught up with what would be proper Justice. However, if this is what ultimately splits the MAGA coalition into pieces, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings or sensibilities at all. If the heat hasn’t driven me to take multiple baths, this story has added to it. You know if Yam Tits is obsessively using his Truth Social Platform, that he certainly knows there’s damning evidence of it. The AG has his back, and it’s a disgusting place for a woman.
This is from The Hill. “Carlson: Bondi ‘made up a bunch of ludicrous’ Epstein files claims.” Yes, that is Carlson, as in Tucker Carlson. I guess all those years of inner hate and outer support have caught up with him.
Political commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson blamed Attorney General Pam Bondi in a new interview for the intense scrutiny the Trump administration has faced over its handling of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In the NBC News interview published Monday, Carlson said he doesn’t believe the Department of Justice (DOJ) has “much relevant information about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes” that would satisfy those who have long called for the release of “Epstein files.”
“Rather than just admit that, Pam Bondi made a bunch of ludicrous claims on cable news shows that she couldn’t back up, and this current outrage is the result,” Carlson told the outlet.
Bondi has faced intense backlash after acknowledging last week there was no client list connected to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of minors and no evidence to suggest he didn’t die by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
President Trump has repeatedly defended Bondi and urged his supporters to move on from the Epstein case, but pressure has continued to mount among the president’s base to fire the former Florida attorney general.
Bondi said in a Fox News interview in February that an Epstein client list was on her desk to be reviewed and alleged that the DOJ had obtained hours of video related to the case. The White House in March invited 15 far-right influencers to an event, where they received white binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1,” but the display drew immediate backlash because the documents provided were already publicly available.
Bondi later claimed in another TV interview that she was duped into thinking she had all the files related to the government’s Epstein investigations and was seeking additional documents after hearing from an alleged “whistleblower.”
Bondi said last week that she was initially referring to documents related to the Epstein case — not a specific “client list,” and the footage she had mentioned was child sex abuse material that would not be released to the public. She said there was nothing else to be released from the case.
Boy, if only someone would have told Epstein everything was fake and a creation of Obama and the CIA and deep state, he wouldn’t have had to take his own life or have it taken by imaginary people
NBC News published this analysis of the Carlson interview! (Look, Mom! We’re a tabloid now!) The analysis is by Allan Smith. “Tucker Carlson leads MAGA’s worried warriors in questioning Trump. The former Fox News host and “America First” leader spoke with NBC News as MAGA influencers rebel over amnesty, Iran and the Epstein files.” Look who is trying to resurrect his career!
For years, many on the right — including some people who are now in the Trump administration — have called for the release of all government documents related to Epstein. Epstein died in custody in 2019, and a medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. He was facing sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo saying the Justice Department’s review turned up no “client list” of powerful men alleged to have participated in Epstein’s schemes, enraging the MAGA base, who are calling on her to be fired. Trump’s defense of Bondi and his attempts to tell his supporters to move on from the issue have done little to quell the furor.
On Saturday, Trump wrote “LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!” on Truth Social, adding the United States should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
In his NBC News interview, Carlson said he now believes the Justice Department actually doesn’t have “much relevant information about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes.”
“Rather than just admit that, Pam Bondi made a bunch of ludicrous claims on cable news shows that she couldn’t back up, and this current outrage is the result,” he said.
A Republican Senate aide thinks Carlson is actually having a bit of a “revival” as he carves out distinct space on the right.
“He’s more of a dissident figure now,” this person said. “For whatever else you’re going to say, Tucker is just kind of saying what he thinks.”
Back in the day!
Good luck rescuing that career, Tuckums! I’m not sure getting further in the pig trough with the big hogs is going to help, but then, I’m not a MAGA whisperer. Adam Gabbatt has more on this at The Guardian. “Trump encounters rare uproar from ardent rightwing allies over Jeffrey Epstein. White House claim it didn’t have list of Epstein’s alleged clients and that he wasn’t murdered has caused tumult even within administration.” Mudville is not a happy place.
Donald Trump managed something unusual last week. In his administration’s claim that it did not have a list of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged clients, and that the convicted sex offender was not murdered, it succeeded in upsetting the rightwing influencers and commentators – and reportedly even Trump’s deputy FBI director – people who typically champion his every move.
“This stinks. This just reeks,” was the verdict of Jesse Watters, the primetime Fox News host.
He added: “The feds spent decades investigating Epstein and have had total access to his property for years, they still cannot give us a straight answer? This is not anything new; the government has been keeping us in the dark for generations.”
Watters was careful not to criticize the Trump administration directly, blaming “the feds” as he described Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, as “great Americans”.
There was also tumult within the Trump administration. Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director and former rightwing podcast host, spent years pushing Epstein conspiracy theories, and was reportedly very upset with Bondi over how the Epstein files were handled.
“Bongino is out-of-control furious,” a source close to Bongino told NBC News. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.” Axios reported that Bongino didn’t show up to work on Friday, and the row prompted Trump himself to step in.
Asked by reporters on Sunday if Bongino would remain in his position, Trump said: “Oh I think so … I spoke to him today. Dan Bongino, very good guy. I’ve known him a long time. I’ve done his show many, many times. He sounded terrific, actually.”
But within the rightwing, Epstein-curious sphere, others had continued to wade in.
“Pam Blondi [sic] is covering up child sex crimes that took place under HER WATCH when she was Attorney General of Florida,” wrote Laura Loomer, the 32-year-old conspiracy theorist whose influence over Trump has come under scrutiny.
Loomer accused Bondi of failing to pursue legal action against Epstein, despite lawsuits being filed against him in the Florida.
“She is afraid of that being discussed and brought to light. She needs to be fired. She has tainted the investigation,” Loomer concluded.
Let’s see. He’s losing Fox, Loomer, Patel, and Bongino. This might be fun to watch after all. Although I still think I’ll need a lot of baths.
“NO ONE IS BUYING THIS!! Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed.’ This is over the top sickening,” Alex Jones, the rightwing commentator and conspiracy theorist, wrote on social media.
The lackluster release also left others, outside of the far right, dissatisfied. Andrew Schulz, the host of the Flagrant podcast, who interviewed Trump in October and said he voted for him, included the Epstein saga as part of his reason for feeling let down by the president.
“When you feel like the status quo will do nothing and change nothing, you have way more of a longer leash for the outsiders’ ideas than you do the status quo’s ideas,” Schulz said, talking about Trump’s appeal.
“And I think that was the idea with Trump, it was like: ‘Maybe he will stop these wars.’ No. ‘Maybe we will see what’s up with this Epstein shit.’ No.”
Trump, who once enjoyed a friendship with Epstein, said in the run-up to last year’s election that he would declassify files related to Epstein, although he added: “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phoney stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phoney stuff in that whole world.”
At a cabinet meeting this week, however, Trump expressed surprise that people were “still talking” about Epstein, suggesting that the president was, for once, out of touch with his Maga base. “This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said, describing Epstein as a “creep”.
That failed to quell the anger, however, prompting Trump to write a lengthy Truth Social post over the weekend, pleading for calm from his supporters.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”
He added: “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
The replies to Trump’s post, however, suggested his appeal had not worked.
“My wanting pedophiles to be punished for their crimes doesn’t make me less of a patriot, but more,” one user wrote. “I don’t understand the reason for your current attitude and frankly I’m beyond the point of caring. I do care about justice, wether [sic] you approve or not.”
Adam Wren and Dasha Burns of Politicohave this headline. “Playbook: Trump’s Epstein headache isn’t going away.” Guess I’ll need to stock up on my soap supply.
HERE TO STAY: At what should be the height of his political powers — having racked up signature wins in enacting his sprawling GOP megabill, bending U.S. allies to his will on defense spending, launching a successful and limited attack on Iran with no meaningful reprisals on U.S. forces — President Donald Trump is instead facing a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion over his administration’s handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
First in Playbook: This morning, we have three threads of new reporting suggesting that this isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
1) A special counsel?: In an interview last night with Playbook, MAGA influencer and far-right activist Laura Loomer said “there should be a special counsel appointed to do an independent investigation of the handling of the Epstein files so that people can feel like this issue is being investigated, and perhaps take it out of [AG Pam Bondi’s] hands, because I don’t think that she has been transparent or done a good job handling this issue.”
2) MAGA allies press for presser: Playbook has also learned that at least one key figure in the extended MAGA universe, an ally supportive of the Trump DOJ’s handling of the Epstein case, has pitched senior White House officials on the idea of Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche doing an all-questions-addressed news conference in an attempt to exhaust the press and put the story to bed.
3) Dems sense an opening: Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), who is introducing legislation today that calls for the release of the Epstein files, shows Playbook how he’ll tie the “corruption and cronyism” of the handling of the Epstein case into a broader critique of Trump’s priorities. “I think he’s trying to protect some billionaire friend of his,” Veasey tells Playbook. “That’s what he lives for more than anything else in the world: protecting billionaires. Look at what he did with the so-called ‘big, beautiful bill.’”
WHAT MAKES THIS TIME DIFFERENT?: To a degree we have truly not seen over the past decade of Trump as a national political figure, his movement seems genuinely fractured. The Epstein case is fundamentally different from past divisions inside MAGA because it undercuts Trump’s self-styled brand as a speaker of uncomfortable truths, a slayer of sacred cows and a tribune of the people. This isn’t just a policy or ideological disagreement like, say, the MAGA unease over the Iran strikes; this cuts to the heart of his very political identity.
This is a problem partly of Trump’s own making. For years, many on the MAGA right alleged a massive governmental cover-up aimed at protecting Epstein, the convicted child sex offender and wealthy financier who circulated among the highest echelons of the rich and powerful. Trump and his allies were happy to amplify those whispers to their own political benefit.
These weren’t just allegations coming from anonymous cranks on the internet. JD Vance spoke publicly about an Epstein “client list” being kept secret by the government. Kash Pateldid the same. DittoDan Bongino. Earlier this year, asked about “releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” Bondi told Fox News “it’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
Now? It’s a huge credibility problem. Vance, Patel, Bongino and Bondi — among others — effectively have to either acknowledge that they were not just wrong about the government covering up for Epstein, but actually making stuff up, or they come off like they’re part of a cover-up themselves.
To wit: In a new interview this morning, Tucker Carlson told NBC’s Allan Smith he now believes DOJ doesn’t actually have “much relevant information about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes.” And therein lies a problem: “Rather than just admit that, Pam Bondi made a bunch of ludicrous claims on cable news shows that she couldn’t back up, and this current outrage is the result,” Carlson says.
WHAT’S TRUMP TO DO? The president has limited and conflicting options.
More on this at the link. Heather Cox Richardson brings a historian’s perspective to her SubStack this morning.
For the first time ever, Trump got ratioed on his own platform, meaning that there were more comments on his post than likes or shares, showing disapproval of his message. According to Jordan King of Newsweek, by 10:45 this morning (Eastern Time) it had more than 36,000 replies but only 11,000 reposts and 32,000 likes.
Trump sounds panicked, not only over the Epstein issue itself, but also because he cannot control the narrative his followers are embracing. After stoking the fire of his followers’ anger against what they seemed to see as powerful men getting away with crimes against children, he is now being burned by it. His reflex is to return to his greatest hits, accusing Democrats of writing the Epstein files and then, as he always, always, always does, snapping back to the Russia scandal and calling it a hoax.
Over the weekend, attendees at a conference held by the right-wing Turning Point USA booed the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case. MAGA influencers kept up the drumbeat; Matt Walsh called the administration’s about-face on releasing information “obvious bullsh*t.” Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported that even the Fox News Channel warned this morning that “[t]here has to be some explanation” and that questions about the way the administration is handling the Epstein files were “very valid.”
Musk, who controls the X social media platform preferred by the right wing, is amplifying the story. After Trump’s Saturday post, Musk wrote to his 222 million followers: “Seriously. He said ‘Epstein’ half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein. Just release the files as promised.”
Trump appears to be planning to regain control of the narrative by persecuting his political opponents.
But it is not clear that will silence MAGA voters who backed Trump in part because they thought he would lead the fight against an elite group of pedophiles controlling the country. As Trump’s policies on the economy, immigration, tax cuts, firing of government employees, and gutting of disaster relief have soured Americans on his administration, loyalists stayed behind him. Now he has turned against their chief cause, giving them an off-ramp from a presidency that seems increasingly off the rails.
Mike Flynn, who served as Trump’s first national security advisor until forced to resign for lying about his contact with Russian operatives, posted on social media: “[President Trump] please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR is not going away. If the administration doesn’t address the massive number of unanswered questions about Epstein, especially the ABUSE OF CHILDREN BY ELITES (it is very clear that abuse occurred), then moving forward on so many other monumental challenges our nation is facing becomes much harder.”
Flynn concluded: “We cannot allow pedophiles to get away. I don’t personally care who they are or what elite or powerful position they hold. They must be exposed and held accountable!!!”
(🚨) MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: Trump Adviser Mike Davis Just Admitted That DOJ Is Withholding “Claims” About Crimes By Epstein Clients and Associates—Keep in Mind Trump Is An Epstein Associate—Because Trump and His Team Feel They’re Based on “Hearsay”Ruh roh.
President Donald Trump faces a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion amid fallout over his administration’s handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
And some of his closest allies are cautioning the situation for the president will get worse before it gets better — even as it threatens to derail his megabill victory lap and continues to divide parts of his administration and, more broadly, his supporters.
Trump has tried twice in as many days to tamp down his base’s anger, posting to Truth Social Saturday that he didn’t “like what’s happening” among his own supporters. He also threw his support behind Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has taken the brunt of much of the right’s ire over the Epstein files. Several news organizations have also reported that Bondi clashed with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino over the files.
After disembarking Air Force One Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, Trump faced a question about Bongino, who skipped work Friday. Trump insisted that he’s “a very good guy. … He sounded terrific, actually. No, I think he’s in good shape.”
Mike Davis, the MAGA legal brawler and occasional Oval Office visitor, has taken up defending Trump’s DOJ, said in an interview that “the Trump Justice Department wanted to be fully transparent, but can’t.” He added: “This is a case of no good deed going unpunished.”
Davis argues DOJ can’t release more, including that there is grand jury material involved, court records under seal, child pornography involved, the need to protect victims of “heinous crimes,” and “unsubstantiated, bogus claims, like we saw during the Kavanaugh proceedings, where you had double and even triple hearsay.”
A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment.
You may want to read Greg Sargent’s latest at The New Republic. “The Young GOPer Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Dark Future of MAGA. Sunshine State Attorney General James Uthmeier is the real brains behind this notorious migrant detention camp in the Everglades. The more barbarities that emerge, the brighter his star will no doubt shine.”
The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.
“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”
Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”
Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Any migrant who dares escape just might get devoured alive by an animal—one animal eating another. Dehumanization is so thrilling!
The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Heraldreports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.
But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.
I’ll let this Washington Monthly article by Jonathan Alter end this increasingly depressing news dump today. “America Is Now a Police State, The Medicaid cuts are terrible; the ICE expansions are even worse.”
If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if you have $75 billion over four years in new funding for ICE, you—Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Tom Homan—will use it to fund a huge domestic army to round up four million people in the next three years, put them in “detention centers” and deport them.
If these cruel men planned to go after criminals, as they claimed, they would have needed only a fraction of the money that Republican lawmakers just gave them. And ending the genuine shortfall in the Department of Homeland Security budget doesn’t require this kind of dough.
So with virtually unlimited funds, they’ll make up for lost time. We’re already witnessing swarms of masked agents grabbing people off the street. Within weeks, it’ll get a lot worse. The grandma who has been here for 30 years paying taxes; the Dreamer college student who has been thoroughly American since he was a toddler; the small business owner who gets a traffic ticket—3,000 of them a day will be ripped from their families, sent to a prison and shipped to a country where they don’t know anyone.
Count on it. The iron law of government budgeting is use-it-or-lose-it. Only bureaucratic fools have money left over at the end of the fiscal year. ICE will spend billions on meeting Chief Homan’s arbitrary and inhumane quotas—the same kind of arrest quotas that drive police states all over the world, as Ronan Farrow hasexplained.
And the thousands of new Border Patrol agents? They already bring to mind those old ads about the Maytag Repairman—waiting in vain for something to happen. With border crossings plummeting, it’s only a matter of time before they’re shifted north for an even heavier presence in blue urban America.
Before long, many of us won’t even notice the roundups, just as white Californians in 1942 didn’t pay much heed when their Japanese-American neighbors were whisked away to detention camps in the desert.
That was an inexcusable act, but the conditions in those camps, while spare and dehumanizing, were not as bad as in the “Alligator Alcatraz” that Trump is gloating over. These will be jails—not camps—built to be as close to the abusive Salvadoran model as the president can make them. And the scale of his migrant gulag is much larger. All told, about 120,000 Japanese were interned. The capacity of the new detention centers is planned to be roughly 120,000 per day.
With most detainees only weeks or months from deportation, that means millions of new migrants cycling through. Many will have done nothing worse than Trump’s German immigrant grandparents (and my Jewish grandmother) did a century ago, namely, overstaying their visas. Of course, if they happen to be employed at a golf course or hotel (exempted by Trump for obvious personal reasons), they wouldn’t be in jail in the first place. Here’s where we’re headed: If migrants work on farms or in slaughterhouses (lots of both in red states), or a kitchen (hospitality), they’re OK or maybe even headed for amnesty, as Trump—to the dismay of MAGA—hinted last week. But if they cut grass, clean houses, or work in other occupations unprotected by the Dear Leader, off to jail you go.
Where are the children being held?🚨 Children, handcuffed and chained, being moved out of the LA Federal Building.July 10 – ICE & CBP raided two Glass House Farms sites in Camarillo and Carpinteria. Up to 319 undocumented workers arrested. At least 10 migrant kids were found. The youngest was 14.
I should have no words, but I do, and all of them are surrounded by expletives. There are actions on July 17th in the spirit of Good Trouble and the late Congressman John Lewis. Do what you can to lift your voice against this reign of terror. If I can’t find an action or get there, I wear my No Kings T-shirt wherever I go, and I get attention on the St Claude Bus like you wouldn’t believe. I have signs in my front yard. I talk to people. I show up where I can. Keep on walking. Keep on talking, marching to Freedomland.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and ACTION list today?
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Today’s Republican Decision-makers seem hell-bent on killing people. Considering so many of them are hyper-Christian, I find this very strange. I’ve found instances of this in basically all three branches of government today. Steven Miller’s high deportment numbers sending everyday people to death zone countries can only be described as some kind of eugenics experience in trying to increase the percentage of wipipo in the country. The Big Bad Budget-Busting Bill, making its way to law in Congress, will definitely kill people. Then, there’s this SCOTUS ruling that almost made it past me. Imagine handing a lot more power to life-or-death situations to RFK, Jr? Well, that’s exactly what SCOTUS did with the drunk on the Court making the decision.
Aren’t these the same people who scream at women trying to get Health Care over fertilized eggs? This is from USA Today, as reported 2 days ago by Adrianna Rodriguez. “What the Supreme Court Obamacare decision means for RFK Jr.” As if I wasn’t worried enough about ICE killing people and sending them to death zones and the Big Budget-Busting bill removing Medicaid from the neediest people and children. I still haven’t figured out how a 90-year-old in dementia care is going to manage to find a job to access private insurance, but that’s just Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts coming back to haunt us.
The justices reversed a lower court’s ruling that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which under the 2010 law has a major role in choosing what services will be covered, is composed of members who were not validly appointed.
“The Task Force members are removable at will by the Secretary of HHS, and their recommendations are reviewable by the Secretary before they take effect,” he wrote. “So Task Force members are supervised and directed by the Secretary, who in turn answers to the President preserving the chain of command.”
Chain of Command? Are we bombing Iran again? I’m going to have to call Sister Helen PreJean CSJ for another one-on-one conversation about what life means again. Conway, Kavanaugh, and Kennedy need another set of Sunday School lessons. So that article is good for basic information, like, evidently, a certain type of Christians feel they can murder people if they just claim a method that’s in line with whatever their cult made up as a religious exception. Handing people over to RFK Jr. just seems beyond cruel. Mark Joseph Stern has this analysis in Slate. Again, it’s from 2 days ago. “The Supreme Court Just Handed RFK Jr. a New, Extraordinarily Frightening Power.” It’s just another example of SCOTUS and its idea of concentrated power in the Executive branch.
The Supreme Court upheld a key plank of Obamacare against a constitutional attack on Friday by a 6–3 vote. But in the process, the majority wound up handing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. significantly more authority over American health care than Congress ever intended. Kennedy, the current secretary of health and human services, now has unquestioned power to hire and fire members of a key panel that mandates insurance coverage for preventive treatments, and to block its decisions about what insurers must cover. To save the panel, the court destroyed its independence.
Friday’s case Kennedy v. Braidwood Management involved a challenge to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or PSTF. Congress designed this body to consist of medical experts who use their independent judgment to determine which preventive services provide a substantial benefit to patients. A provision of the Affordable Care Act made their decisions binding on insurers, meaning top-rated services must be covered at no cost to patients. Today, the PSTF has determined that more than 40 treatments qualify for mandatory coverage, including many cancer screenings, heart medication, and HIV prevention drugs.
The Supreme Court upheld a key plank of Obamacare against a constitutional attack on Friday by a 6–3 vote. But in the process, the majority wound up handing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. significantly more authority over American health care than Congress ever intended. Kennedy, the current secretary of health and human services, now has unquestioned power to hire and fire members of a key panel that mandates insurance coverage for preventive treatments, and to block its decisions about what insurers must cover. To save the panel, the court destroyed its independence.
Friday’s case Kennedy v. Braidwood Management involved a challenge to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or PSTF. Congress designed this body to consist of medical experts who use their independent judgment to determine which preventive services provide a substantial benefit to patients. A provision of the Affordable Care Act made their decisions binding on insurers, meaning top-rated services must be covered at no cost to patients. Today, the PSTF has determined that more than 40 treatments qualify for mandatory coverage, including many cancer screenings, heart medication, and HIV prevention drugs
The problem with the PSTF is that its structure and operations are likely unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s current precedents. And indeed, in a 2020 decision, the court hinted that this kind of scheme is unconstitutional. There are two main issues: First, it is not entirely clear from the law who is supposed to appoint its members and who, if anyone, has authority to fire them. Second, the ACA states explicitly that the panel “shall be independent and, to the extent practicable, not subject to political pressure.” Congress seems to have intended it to operate as an independent body with open-ended power to regulate the multibillion-dollar insurance market, subject to little or no political oversight. That setup clashes with the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of executive authority. Specifically, it would make the PSTF’s members “principal officers” who must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And because its officers are not currently appointed this way, Supreme Court precedent would render its decisions invalid and voluntary.
This is extremely important as HIV Denialism is just one in a long list of RFK Jr’s hobgoblins. Read about Justice Thomas’ complaints about the Beer Guy’s logic at the link. It actually is worth the read. As for the Big Budget-Busting Bill, it’s speeding along to passage today. This is from the Washington Postand Jeff Stein. “Senate GOP tax bill includes largest cut to U.S. safety net in decades. The legislation would enact historic, possibly unprecedented, reductions in Medicaid and food stamps spending.” What I can’t figure out is why they’re not concerned that the people who benefit the most live in Red States, concentrated in rural areas of the country, and are primarily white. Isn’t that their voter base? No wonder Bezos could afford to buy Venice for a day, and his wife could afford all those ugly clothes and that awful plastic-surgery ruined face. We live in a land of monsters.
The Senate Republican tax bill speeding to passage includes the biggest reduction of funding for the federal safety net since at least the 1990s, targeting more than $1 trillion in social spending.
Although the legislation is still estimated to cost more than $3 trillion over the next decade, the Senate GOP tax bill partially pays for its large price tag by slashing spending on Medicaid and food stamps, which congressional Republicans maintain are rife with fraud.
The tax bill centers on making permanent large tax cuts for individual taxpayers, extending the cuts that Republicans first enacted under President Donald Trump’s first term. The bill includes an increase to the standard deduction claimed by most taxpayers, rate reductions for most U.S. households, and a partial version of Trump’s plan to end taxes on tipped wages, among many other provisions.
But it offsets these expensive tax cuts in part through what several experts said may prove to be the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history. While last-minute changes to the bill text make precise estimates impossible, the legislation appears on track to cut Medicaid by about 18 percent and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly 20 percent, according to estimates based on projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Previously, the biggest recent cut to food stamps was a roughly 14 percent cut approved by Congress during President Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s, according to Bobby Kogan, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank. (Food stamp benefits also sharply increased, and then fell, after the expiration of COVID benefits.) The biggest prior cut to Medicaid was during President Ronald Reagan’s term in the 1980s, when Congress and the White House approved a roughly 5 percent reduction to the federal health insurance program that primarily benefits low-income households during his first two years in office, Kogan said.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate tax bill will lead to roughly 12 million fewer people receiving Medicaid and more than 2 million fewer people receiving food stamps.
ThisNew York Timesarticle gets down to the nitty gritty if you’re interested (gifted). “A List of Nearly Everything in the Senate G.O.P. Bill, and How Much It Would Cost or Save.” I bet the bills for Presidential golfing and loafing around Mar-a-Lago are bigger than any money saved by kicking small children off their daily meals.
The tax and domestic policy bill nearing a vote by Senate Republicans includes hundreds of provisions, including extended and expanded tax cuts and significant cuts to Medicaid, food benefits and other programs. It would add more than $3 trillion to the national debt. To become law, it still needs to pass the Senate — where an extended “vote-a-rama” on amendments and rulings by the Senate’s parliamentarian could bring last-minute changes. Then it must gain a second passage through the House and be signed by the president to become law.
Below is a table that lists how nearly every provision would affect the federal budget over 10 years, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in an analysis published Sunday. The budget office measured the legislation as it usually does, taking into account the cost of extending expiring tax cuts. This is a different approach than the one embraced by the Senate’s leaders. The C.B.O. evaluation does not include a handful of policy provisions that do not have direct effects on the federal deficit.
This is from Jennifer Ruben writing at The Contrarian. “The worst bill in modern history. Democrats must make it a career-ender for Republicans.” I can’t imagine Boudreaux and Thibodeaux getting up in their houseboat on the Atchafalaya Basin, not realizing they’ve just been had. But I may be wrong. I’m frankly suggesting that Senator Cassiday lose his license to practice medicine based on how much harm this does.
Senate Republicans over the weekend decided to move forward on the big, ugly bill to rip healthcare coverage from 17 million people, deprive millions of food assistance, and use that money to pay (only partially!) for gigantic tax cuts for the super-rich. Their version is far worse than the House’s handiwork; Senate Republicans want to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid. Apparently, they concluded the House’s $700 billion cut did not throw a sufficient number of people off their healthcare coverage. An estimated 17 million (including those priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges) would lose healthcare coverage
Even those who mouthed concerns about the draconian cuts, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) fell into line, voting to move the bill forward. They are daring voters not to hold them accountable for their monstrous hypocrisy.
Lawmakers are not in the dark. Their constituents, rural hospitals, state and local officials, the Congressional Budget Office, conservativethink tanks, the Wall Street Journal, and their Democratic colleagues have explained the bill’s horrid consequences. Republicans might parrot MAGA talking points, but when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) distributes materials to fellow Republicans highlighting the devastation the bill will cause, only the truly deluded can imagine this is anything but horrid policy. (The Hill quoted a source familiar with the scene at Tuesday’s Senate Republican lunch: “Thom Tillis got up and he had a chart on what the Senate’s provider tax structure will cost different states, including his. His will lose almost $40 billion. He walked through that and said, ‘this will be devastating to my state.’”)
Senate Republicans have been hammered from all sides. On the right, the Committee for a Responsible budget found it would add $3.5-4.2 trillion to the debt and move the Medicare and Social Security trust funds a year closer to insolvency. Meanwhile, Republican senators with Democratic governors (e.g., Josh Stein in North Carolina, Laura Kelly in Kansas, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and Janet Mills in Maine) got slammed daily on the consequences of Medicaid, SNAP, and other cuts back home.
Aside from the disastrous policy objections, Republicans should not delude themselves about the political quicksand they stepped in. The reverse-Robin-Hood scheme is deeply unpopular in every recent public poll. A Fox News poll shows only 38% support it, while 59% oppose it. (Among independents, it is a stunning 22-73%.) Quinnipiac’s poll is even worse for MAGA (27-53%; among independents 20-57%.) KFF (35-64%; only 27% of independents support); Pew (49-29%) and The Washington Post and Ipsos (23-42%) are miserable as well.
Perhaps the scariest poll for Republicans was one from Maine showing Collins sure has reason for “concern”: Her favorability is a miserable 14% with disapproval at 57%. Mills, the strongest potential 2026 challenger, has a 51-41% favorability rating. Come to think of it, maybe Collins should forget “concern” and zoom ahead to full-blown panic.
Phillip Bump has these thoughts at the Washington Post. “This is what ICE is doing with the tax dollars you already provide it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stands to see a sharp increase in its funding under the Republican budget bill.” My understanding is that they have a bigger budget now than the Marines. Miller sure wants to deport him some POC.
But there is another group of people who would also benefit enormously from the bill: staff and officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency which stands to see tens of billions more in funding. An analysis of an earlier version of the bill indicated that “mass deportation would account for almost a quarter of the bill’s total price tag.” So it’s worth stepping back and considering what ICE is doing with the by-contrast modest (but still substantial) funding it currently gets.
We should start by acknowledging that ICE’s hyperactive targeting of immigrants in the U.S. since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January doesn’t exactly reflect current funding levels. Earlier this month, it was reported that ICE was already $1 billion over budget for the fiscal year, driven by the new administration’s focus on deploying the agency to arrest and deport as many immigrants as possible.
What that’s meant, in practice, is a surge in arrests and detentions of immigrants who have not been convicted or even accused of any crime. The number of criminals and accused criminals who have been arrested by ICE and remain detained by ICE is up 128 percent over a year ago. But the number of immigrants with no criminal record arrested and detained by ICE is up more than 1,400 percent — there are more than 15 times as many now as there were then.
In past years, it was generally Customs and Border Protection that arrested more noncriminals, since it was stopping and detaining people seeking to enter the U.S. without authorization. In mid-June 2024, for example, there were 30 times as many noncriminals in ICE detention who’d been arrested by CBP vs. ICE. Now, thanks in part to declining attempts to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the ratio is almost 1 to 1.
The grifting in this administration is astounding. This is from ProPublica. “Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations.” This was investigated by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski.
In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.
In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.
Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.
Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I am silently screaming now. None of this is what should be happening in the United States of America.
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Here comes the summer sun! We’ve got an extreme heat warning all day. This is getting to be our normal summer these days. The most interesting thing of the day is something I have always associated with the active volcano ring of fire in the Pacific Ocean. This was a new thing for me.
This is a weather phenomenon as explained by Accuweather. “‘Ring of fire’ thunderstorms to erupt on building heat dome in central, eastern US Rounds of thunderstorms will form a “ring of fire” around a massive dome of building heat in the central and eastern United States into next week.” Well, that sounds pretty hellish.
As a major heat wave builds and takes center stage in the weather from late this week to next week, groups of severe thunderstorms will erupt on the edge of the dome of hot air, AccuWeather meteorologists advise.
The storms will take on a “ring of fire” effect, erupting first over parts of the northern Plains and Midwest, followed by portions of the Northeast and finally the Southwest and central Plains.
The intense high pressure and sinking air within a heat dome make it difficult for thunderstorms to form in large numbers. However, thunderstorms tend to erupt on the edges of the heat dome, as the high pressure area is weakest in these areas, allowing columns of air to rise and form towering clouds and gusty downpours.
Everyone from Kansas City east to the Atlantic will be impacted. It’s huge! Yes, Boston is included! It goes as far south as Asheville and will go way up into Canada. Be prepared to stay home! Europe is getting directly involved in pushing both Iran and Israel to the negotiation table. This is from Reuters. “Iran says no nuclear talks under fire, UN atomic watchdog urges maximum restraint.” It’s reported by Parisa Hafezi, Crispian Balmer, and Jana Choukeir.
Iran said on Friday it would not discuss the future of its nuclear programme while under attack by Israel, as Europe tried to coax Tehran back into negotiations and the United States considers whether to get involved in the conflict.
A week into its campaign, Israel said it had struck dozens of military targets overnight, including missile production sites, a research body it said was involved in nuclear weapons development in Tehran and military facilities in western and central Iran. The Israel Defense Forces later said they had also struck surface-to-air missile batteries in southwestern Iran as part of efforts to achieve air superiority over the country.
At least five people were injured when Israel hit a five-storey building in Tehran housing a bakery and a hairdresser’s, Fars news agency reported.
Iran fired missiles at Beersheba in southern Israel early on Friday and Israeli media said initial reports pointed to missile impacts in Tel Aviv, the Negev and Haifa after further attacks hours later.
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog warned against attacks on nuclear facilities and called for maximum restraint.
You may ask yourself, Where is my beautiful country in these peace-seeking negotiations? Well, the answer is we’re trapped in the Trump Two Week Twist. You really have to watch this clip from Jen Psaki’s show last night. The explanation and the incredible number of times he’s used the Two Week Twist is surreal. It’s laughable even though it turns the United States of America into a feckless and shammy place run by a feckless and shammy nepobaby. The New York Times heading is trying to make Yam Tits look thoughtful. Why do they keep carrying his water? Or perhaps, better put, why is he carrying his colostomy bag? This is the headline. “Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options. While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.” Here are the feckless reporters who executed the Trump Two-Week Twist: David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager. Sanger covers Iran’s nuclear programs. Pager is from the merry band of White House Reporters who don’t do their job. That’s a gift link if you want to read all about it.
President Trump’s sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work.
But it also opens a host of new military and covert options.
Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran’s two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran.
Look, it’s the Trump Two Week Twist! It’s a ploy, boys! It’s his fallback version of Homer Simpson’s d’oh.
Yam Tits is also using his basic staged reality show strategic moves as he tries to drag the minds of his knuckle dragging MAGA voters off his past promises of no new endless wars. This was likely predictable, too. ABC Newsreports that “Trump calls for special prosecutor for 2020 election, after again claiming fraud with no evidence.” We don’t need no stiking evidence! We’re the Reality Show Administration! Bondi will likely go along with it.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Friday morning to again make unverified claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. He called for a special prosecutor.
“The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING,” Trump claimed without giving more details. “A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America!”
There has been no evidence that the 2020 election was filled with fraud following numerous investigations, audits and other reviews over the last four and a half years.
An Associated Press investigation found fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud in six battleground states during the 2020 presidential election — a number far too little to have make any different in the outcome of that election.
Meanwhile, we now have to report the news about ongoing attempts at political assassinations. In sad news, MSNBC reports that “Minnesota lawmaker shot 9 times at his home in ‘targeted’ attack is in a critical condition. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are continuing their recovery, according to a statement from the couple.”
The Minnesota lawmaker who survived an attack by a gunman on his doorstep is still in a critical condition and has revealed details of the terrifying moment he and his wife were shot multiple times.
Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, released a statement Thursday, obtained by NBC affiliate KARE of Minneapolis, outlining the events in the early hours of June 14.
The Hoffmans continue their recovery in the hospital — Sen. Hoffman is in a critical but stable condition, while his wife is in a stable condition, the statement said.
We also have a new possible attempt in Ohio as reported by CNN. “Man arrested after Ohio GOP congressman says he was run off the road and threatened.” We’re not sure atm if this was politically motivated or what, but it’s being investigated.
A man in Ohio has been arrested and charged after allegedly threatening Rep. Max Miller during an incident in which the Republican US congressman says he was driven off the road, according to documents provided to CNN.
Feras S. Hamdan, 36, was arrested after Miller filed and signed a complaint with police for aggravated menacing, as well as requested a protective order against him, according to the Rocky River Police Department in Ohio.
Hamdan, accompanied by legal counsel, voluntarily turned himself in and is awaiting a court appearance, according to police.
CNN is attempting to reach Hamdan’s attorney.
Miller on Thursday called the Rocky River Police Department via 911 to report that an individual on the highway was threatening him and his family.
“I’m on the freeway. I have somebody who has cut me off, who is flipping me off, who is showing me a Palestinian flag and is yelling to kill me,” Miller said, according to a recording of the call obtained by CNN.
He told the 911 operator at one point: “I’m a little shaken at the moment because I got death threats.”
Miller called police on his way to work and read the license plate of the alleged perpetrator. At one point, he held out his phone for the 911 dispatcher to hear the honking and yelling, though the sounds were largely unintelligible. His call was transferred to a different police department based on the location of the incident.
Well, have to wait to learn more about this one. Meanwhile, the big bad budget-busting bill is hung up in the Senate. This is from The Hill. “Trump’s megabill hits more trouble as Senate conservatives demand changes.”
The Senate version of legislation to enact President Trump’s agenda is hitting new turbulence as conservatives led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are demanding deeper spending cuts to address the nation’s $2.2 trillion annual deficit.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has focused this week on addressing the concerns of Senate GOP colleagues such as Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who raised alarms about cuts to federal Medicaid spending.
But Thune has to worry about his right flank as Johnson and his allies are threatening to hold up the bill unless GOP leaders agree to deeper cuts to federal Medicaid spending and a faster rollback of the renewable energy tax credits enacted under former President Biden.
Johnson, Lee and Scott are threatening to vote as a bloc against the bill next week unless it undergoes significant changes.
Thune plans to bring the bill to the floor Wednesday or Thursday next week, but he may not have enough votes to proceed on the legislation, Republican senators say.
Additionally, the Senate Parlimentarian has deleted some of the bill. This is reported in Politico. “Parliamentarian nixes key pieces of Tim Scott’s megabill proposal. Senate Banking Republicans will be forced to go back to the drawing board on the core components of their proposal for the GOP’s “big beautiful bill.”
The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday that several key provisions in Banking Chair Tim Scott’s proposed contribution to the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” violate the upper chamber’s rules for the budget reconciliation process, according to Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley’s office.
Scott’s proposals to zero out funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, slash some Federal Reserve employees’ pay, cut Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are all ineligible to be included in a simple-majority budget reconciliation bill.
The ruling from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is a major blow to Scott and Banking Committee Republicans, who will be forced to go back to the drawing board on the core pieces of their proposal for the GOP megabill. The panel is required to find $1 billion in cuts over the next 10 years under a budget resolution adopted by both chambers of Congress — a narrow fraction of the overall bill.
Scott said in a statement that he remains “committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars.”
Only measures that are aimed at changing spending or revenues are allowed under the strict rules governing the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process. MacDonough is responsible for determining which proposals comply with the body’s rules. Banking Committee staffers from both parties met with the parliamentarian’s office earlier this week to discuss Scott’s plan.
Here’s a sad headline from the New York Times. I’ve gifted this one too, so you may read the entire thing. “Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.A panel rejected a lower court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.”
A federal appeals court on Thursday cleared the way for President Trump to keep using the National Guard to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles, declaring that a judge in San Francisco erred last week when he ordered Mr. Trump to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
In a unanimous, 38-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the conditions in Los Angeles were sufficient for Mr. Trump to decide that he needed to take federal control of California’s National Guard and deploy it to ensure that federal immigration laws would be enforced.
A lower-court judge had concluded that the protests were not severe enough for Mr. Trump to use a rarely-triggered law to federalize the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections. But the panel, which included two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., disagreed with the lower court.
Mr. Trump praised the decision, saying in a Truth Social post late Thursday that it supported his argument for using the National Guard “all over the United States” if local law enforcement can’t “get the job done.”
Mr. Newsom, in a response on Thursday, focused on how the appeals court had rejected the Trump administration’s argument that a president’s decision to federalize the National Guard could not be reviewed by a judge.
“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”
This bill is on a long path. Be sure to stay on top of it. I’m pretty sure a lot of the reality show attractions are still to keep us out of the loop. Also, do not forget the importance of this Supreme Court decision, which basically says state Religionists have more control over your children and your body than you do. This is from Chris Geidner writing on his blog Law Dork. “Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? On the far right’s campaign to create uncertainty over gender-affirming medical care for minors — and the powerful institutions that helped along the way.” We’re living under a situation where there are safe states under attack from the Trump administration, and states are trying to get their kids out of living under the same kinds of craziness of States’ Rights we fought a long time to get rid of. It’s nuts!
The response to Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee’s law barring transgender minors from obtaining gender-affirming medical care has been muted at best.
In its U.S. v. Skrmetti ruling, the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees shaved off the edges — if not more central parts — of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in order to uphold laws that bar an exceptionally small number of teens from receiving a type of medical care that only one group of teens need.
Addressing this formal attack on transgender people by the government — de jure discrimination, one might even call it — is, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor made clear in her dissent on Wednesday, the work that the Equal Protection Clause is supposed to do.
One would expect more outrage.
But Wednesday was the result of a long-term campaign that ultimately succeeded. As same-sex couples succeeded in obtaining marriage equality in 2015, the far-right organizations who had used their opposition to those couples’ marriage rights to fund their work needed a new cause.
The far right moved on to attacking transgender people. The animosity from the right — and others — toward trans people wasn’t new, but as the marriage outcome became clear, the shift of focus began.
They went after trans people’s use of bathrooms. North Carolina’s 2016 “bathroom bill“ backfired. Gov. Pat McCrory lost re-election, and the swing state has been led by Democratic governors since. But, bathrooms have always been targets for moral panic, so the issue eventually returned.
Starting in Idaho in 2020, they went after trans people’s participation in sports. That got some traction, particularly as the campaign moved on.
Then, starting in Arkansas the next year, they went after trans kids’ medical care.
They were just going to keep going until they got something that pushed them into the spotlight.
Even when lawmakers started passing bans on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, however, judges of all stripes started blocking them as likely unconstitutional.
This was not, Trump appointees even agreed, a close question.
“At bottom, sex-based classifications are not just present in [Indiana]’s prohibitions; they’re determinative,” U.S. District Judge Patrick Hanlon, a Trump appointee, wrote in blocking Indiana’s law back in June 2023.
As another Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, wrote later that month in blocking Tennessee’s ban, “Though the Court would not hesitate to be an outlier if it found such an outcome to be required, the Court finds it noteworthy that its resolution of the present Motion brings it into the ranks of courts that have (unanimously) come to the same conclusion when considering very similar laws.“
Read more at the link.
Anyway, we’ve made it through another year, oops season, oops week with Yam Tit’s ongoing decline and falls. I can’t imagine going through any more of this, but it will get worse here, I’m sure. The idiot who’s now our Governor has already volunteered to help federal troops and ICE. State Law enforcement will definitely be there aiding and abetting. I’m hoping we can do better here in New Orleans, but who knows? This is what he signed last month, as reported by the Shreveport Times.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order, Operation GEAUX, directing state law enforcement to assist federal immigration operations.
Landry emphasized the program’s focus on deporting individuals in the country illegally who engage in criminal activity.
The initiative includes enhanced screening, identification, and a public awareness campaign.
The only crimes related to immigration we’ve had are business owners grabbing immigrants’ passports and papers while not giving them back, and essentially enslaving them. I’m not sure the state would file charges even if this happened again.
Have a very restful and good weekend. Stay Cool!
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First, they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
“Spoken like a true felon.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The snow is beginning to melt here in chilly New Orleans. The last bit I have to tackle is on the kitchen stairs. It’s been a trying week from many standpoints. I’m not sure when I first read the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller, which is reprinted at this link at the Holocaust Memorial. I imagine it was sometime in my early teens, but that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is the headlines today that are horrifying and familiar to anyone familiar with the movies, the documentaries, and the stories from relatives of Germany before and during World War 2. No wonder the MAGAs are trying to ban The Diary of a Yong Girl by Anne Frank. Children and families are being snatched by ICE now.
So far, I have heard two over-the-top stories about the zealotry with which ICE, and soon, the military and other Federal Law Agencies are going after people. I read yesterday about Indigenous people getting scooped up in raids as well. We knew this would happen. This is from Newsweek. “US Citizens Are Being Told To Carry Birth Certificates Amid ICE Raids.”
One such warning came from the Navajo Nation President, Buu Nygren, in Arizona, following reports that some residents had been approached by officials.
Nygren’s post on Facebook Wednesday came a day before ICE carried out a raid in Newark, New Jersey, in which a U.S. veteran was reportedly detained by officials, along with some American citizens.
According to the tribal leader in Arizona, there had been “several concerns and unconfirmed reports” that immigration officials had detained Diné people in urban areas.
“My office is looking into this matter and will provide updates as they come,” he said in the post. “I am working actively with our state leaders and law enforcement to protect our Diné people.”
Creeley, at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, predicts that many state legislatures, local officials and university trustees are going to enlist, either out of enthusiasm or expediency, in the crusade to bring the academic left to heel. “I think you’ll see professors investigated and terminated. I think you’re going to see students punished, and I think you’re going to see a pre-emptive action on those fronts,” he said.
Just look at what’s happened at Harvard this week. On Tuesday it announced that, as part of a lawsuit settlement, it would adopt a definition of antisemitism that includes some harsh criticisms of Israel and Zionism, such as holding Israel to a “double standard” and likening its policies to Nazism. Though Harvard claims that it still adheres to the First Amendment, under this definition a student or professor who accuses Israel of genocidal action in Gaza — as the Israeli American Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov has — might be subject to disciplinary action.
In a further act of capitulation, the Harvard Medical School canceled a lecture and panel on wartime health care that was to feature patients from Gaza because of objections that it was one-sided, The Harvard Crimson reported.
“I think that Harvard likely read the room, so to speak, from a political perspective, and decided to cut their losses,” said Creeley. In this period of capitulation, it probably won’t be the last school to fall in line.
Sara Dorn has written this for Forbes Magazine. “Deportations Have Started, White House Says: Everything To Know About Trump’s Plan. The “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history is underway as hundreds of “illegal immigrant criminals” were arrested Thursday and flown out of the U.S., the White House said, as the federal government, U.S. cities, and Mexico brace for a string of executive orders targeting illegal immigration to take effect.”
The White House said deportation flights began Friday, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 538 arrests and lodged 373 detainees on Thursday, in addition to hundreds of “illegal immigrant criminals” who were flown out of the U.S. on military aircraft.
ICE made 308 arrests Tuesday, Trump’s first full day in office, Border Czar Tom Homan told Fox News, similar to figures under the Biden administration, which made 282 daily arrests on average in September, the last month for which data is available.
The administration says removals will pick up quickly, though: ICE and Border Patrol agents have been ordered to deport people who cross the border without authorization immediately and conduct “expedited removals” for people found within the interior of the United States, CBSreports, while major raids are expected in various cities.
Trump on Monday signed a string of executive orders targeting immigration: The military was ordered to the border, migrants can no longer make advance appointments with border officials and they must wait in Mexico while their asylum cases play out.
Trump also suspended the parole program for migrants from four countries and is attempting to restrict birthright citizenship for children of undocumented and non-permanent immigrants, though a judge on Thursday blocked the policy while legal challenges to the order work their way through the courts.
While Trump has said the deportations would begin “very quickly,” the operations will likely require Congress to approve additional funding, as ICE already faces a budget shortfall to maintain existing deportation levels in the current spending plan that expires on March 14, according to NBC.
There are also logistical hurdles like a limited number of beds to hold people in pre-deportation and planes to use for deportation flights, though Trump ordered the military to assist with aircraft and detention space—and removals are only possible if countries are willing to accept deportees, posing a challenge, especially for people from U.S. adversaries like Venezuela.
“To be fair… there were a lot of flies on the stage.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social
In The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait writes, “There Is No Resistance. The response to the January 6 pardons shows that the president faces no effective constraints from within his party.” Very few will stand up to him.
To see how far the lines of normal have moved since President Donald Trump freed the January 6ers, briefly return to the closing days of the 2024 presidential campaign. At the time, a hot issue was whether Trump harbored fascist tendencies, as some of his former aides alleged. The very notion struck most conservatives, including some who have criticized him from time to time, as ludicrous. “Trump says crude and unworthy things and behaved abysmally after the 2020 election,” National Review’s editor-in-chief, Rich Lowry, conceded, “but the idea that he bears any meaningful resemblance to these cracked movements is a stupid smear.”
Looking to dismiss the case, Lowry then reached for the wildest example of fascist behavior he could think of: “Obviously, Trump isn’t deploying a paramilitary wing of the GOP to clash with his enemies on the streets.”
I think the one thing we can say about the days since he took the reins is that he’s definitely a fascist, and what he is doing is fascist. The lies and propaganda are over the top. I am tired of being gaslighted about Elon Musk’s Seig Heil. If you haven’t seen the films of NAZI German and the Seig Heil that starts from the heart, you know what it is. Holding your hand up in a wave is totally different.
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk against accusations of making a Nazi salute. Netanyahu took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his support for Musk, stating, “Elon Musk is being falsely smeared. Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.” He added, “He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state. I thank him for this.”
The controversy began on January 20, during the inauguration of US President Donald Trump. Musk made a gesture that many social media users likened to the “sieg heil” used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Musk responded to the allegations by calling them baseless and stating that the gesture was taken out of context. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” Musk posted on X.
A House Republican on Thursday introduced a proposed change to the Constitution that would allow President Trump to seek a third term in office.
Why it matters: The amendment has virtually no chance of becoming ratified but it is a marker of the depths of fealty the new president enjoys within the House GOP.
Republican House members have rushed to introduce bills that would codify Trump’s vision for expanding the U.S. borders by acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal, for instance.
The measure is an extreme long-shot: It would need a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress and be ratified by 38 states to be added to the Constitution.
Driving the news: Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said Thursday he is introducing a two-page joint resolution to amend the 22nd Amendment, which sets the current two-term limit for presidents.
Ogles’ amendment would allow any president to serve a third term if their first two terms were non-consecutive.
The text of the amendment would still prohibit a third term if the first two were consecutive — prohibiting former Presidents Bush, Obama and Clinton from running again — or a third full term for anyone who has served more than two years of someone else’s term.
What they’re saying: “It is imperative that we provide President Trump with every resource necessary to correct the disastrous course set by the Biden administration,” Ogles said in a statement.
“He is dedicated to restoring the republic and saving our country, and we, as legislators and as states, must do everything in our power to support him.”
Ogles is a member of the Trump-aligned House Freedom Caucus who introduced legislation to allow him to negotiate a purchase of Greenland.
The world must think the entire country has gone nuts to let these freaks back into office. This is from King’s College London. “What Trump’s second presidential term could mean for the world. With Donald Trump now sworn in as the 47th US President, academics from King’s have been sharing insights into the implications of his presidency for the USA and the rest of the world.”
Donald Trump’s latest term as US President is set to transform American politics, according to Dr Georgios Samaras, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the International School for Government.
He said Trump’s influential circle, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, and the drive to safeguard free speech has placed Facebook, Instagram, and X in near-complete control of cultural narratives. He said some of these involve “hateful rhetoric, authoritarian themes and misinformation which is increasingly going unchecked.”
…
Professor Andrew Blick appeared on LBC with Andrew Marr, who suggested Trump is behaving like “an old-fashioned European monarch”.
In response, Professor Blick said the US constitution was designed with in-built checks and balances, such as a separate election of the President to Congress, two chambers in the Congress and the Supreme Court. However he said the problem with this was that Trump, or those close to him, seemed to have a hold of all these things.
Comparing the US to the UK, he said there are weaker protections within Britain’s constitutional system which means if someone has strong majority in the House of Commons there are less limitations on what they can do.
He added that the UK has already “seen the Musk effect before the Trump presidency even started” with the owner of X shaping the agenda of British politics, such as the government announcing reviews following a series of posts by Musk. “Without his intervention would that have happened?” he asked.
Professor Blick suggested Keir Starmer and his team will be worried about upsetting Trump and what the consequences might be, although he said the obvious differences between the two political leaders could prove to be Starmer’s “superpower”.
The people of the UK are clearly not amused. I still remember, as a kid watching Hitler Documentaries at school, how the German people fell for this nonsense. Now I know that being stupid, lazy, racist, and wanting to blame everyone else is an easy out. It just takes one nutter with that snake oil to make these kinds of people fall in line. And as the poem implies, it takes the rest of us to be complacent. It also takes legacy media and a corporate culture that values revenues and power over the people they sell stuff to.
Just watch out for yourselves! I can’t see this being reversed very quickly. The only thing the courts have slowed down is the obvious attack on the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. However, we also know that the Supreme Court has been corrupted. This is from CNN, as reported by Joan Biskupic, CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst. “How the modern Supreme Court might view the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship.” Many court decisions are explored in this article, and I suggest you review them. It includes Dred Scott and Wong Kim Ark. These quotes from Justice Roberts from his confirmation hearings scare me. Will we actually revisit Dred Scott?
Chief Justice Roberts received no questions about the Wong Kim Ark case during his 2005 Senate confirmation hearings. But Dred Scott was raised, and Roberts responded by calling it, “perhaps the most egregious examples of judicial activism in our history … in which the Court went far beyond what was necessary to decide the case.”
“And really, I think historians would say that the Supreme Court tried to put itself in the position of resolving the dispute about the extension of slavery, and resolving it in a particular way that it thought was best for the Nation,” he added. “And we saw what disastrous consequences flowed from that.”
Since then, Roberts has also alluded to Dred Scott in terms of his own legacy.
“You wonder if you’re going to be John Marshall or you’re going to be Roger Taney,” he said in 2010, contrasting the great 19th century chief justice with the chief justice who wrote Dred Scott.
“The answer is, of course, you are certainly not going to be John Marshall,” Roberts said. “But you want to avoid the danger of being Roger Taney.”
We are so fucked.
The final thing that scares the shit out of me is what the pardons of jailed domestic terrorists that threatened abortion clinics will do to further radicalize the movement again. This is from the BBC. “Trump pardons anti-abortion activists ahead of rally.” It’s reported by Robert Greenall.
US President Donald Trump has pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists, including some convicted of blockading a reproductive health clinic and intimidating staff and patients.
The pardons were part of a round of executive orders signed by Trump on Thursday, one of several in the first week of his presidency.
Trump described the convictions as “ridiculous”, but abortion rights campaigners said the move was evidence of his opposition to abortion access.
The orders came a day before anti-abortion protesters were due to come to Washington DC for the annual March for Life, which the president is due to address by videolink.
He’s the only US President who has attended the rally in person.
So, today’s big thing will be the Pete Hegseth Vote in the Senate. This is from The Guardian. “Senate to vote on Pete Hegseth confirmation for secretary of defense. Former Fox News host accused of sexual assault, financial mismanagement and excessive alcohol use appears to have enough Republican votes.”
The Senate will vote on Friday night on the nomination of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s controversial pick for US secretary of defense, but mounting concerns over Hegseth’s personal history and inexperience have raised doubts about his chances of confirmation.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host and army veteran, cleared a key procedural hurdle on Thursday, after 51 Republican senators voted to advance his nomination toward a final vote. But two Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined their Democratic colleagues in voting against advancing Hegseth’s nomination because of their skepticism about his qualifications.
“After thorough evaluation, I must conclude that I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for secretary of defense,” Murkowski said in a statement on Thursday. “I commend Pete Hegseth’s service to our nation, including leading troops in combat and advocating for our veterans. However, these accomplishments do not alleviate my significant concerns regarding his nomination.”
Hegseth can only afford to lose the votes of three Senate Republicans, assuming every Democratic senator opposes his nomination, so it appears he is still on track for confirmation. Two Republican senators who had been viewed as potential no votes, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both supported advancing Hegseth’s nomination on Thursday.
In a floor speech delivered on Friday, the Senate majority leader, Republican John Thune, praised Hegseth’s qualifications and predicted he would steer the Pentagon in a new, forward-thinking direction.
“A veteran of the army national guard who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr Hegseth will bring a warrior’s perspective to the role of defense secretary and will provide much-needed fresh air at the Pentagon,” Thune said.
And yet, Hegseth continues to be dogged by questions about allegations of sexual assault, excessive alcohol use and financial mismanagement of two non-profits that he led. On Thursday, news broke that Hegseth paid $50,000 in a settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.
Did I mention we are so fucked? Vive la résistance
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The convergence of all these crises creates a situation where we need to work globally more than ever. So, the country, usually seen as the leader on the global stage, has a voting populace that just sent a clown car. Tom Nichols has this analysis written in The Atlantic. “Trump Voters Got What They Wanted. Those who expect Donald Trump will hurt others, and not them, are likely to be unpleasantly surprised.” The pathology of Trump voters is clearly stated in the clip below from The Bulwark Podcast. “The American people made their choice, and the fight to preserve the global democratic coalition against the global authoritarian movement continues. But maybe letting those voters see unadulterated Trumpism in the White House, without the baby bumpers—at least for a little while—is how we save America. Plus, the price of eggs v fascism, and Trump is going to inherit a great economy and claim responsibility for it.”
What do we do now that the lemmings are plunging over the cliff while chanting, “We really owned the libs”?
I think we can sum it up with a simple quote by George Carlin. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
So, given that we’re firmly in a state of Polycrisis, what can be made of Trump’s ill-suited cabinet choices? For one, we know they’re there to throw out every specialist in each Federal Department to cripple that department and to lessen the number of folks that carry out the mandates (i.e., laws) established by Congress over the years over a few centuries. Are we really going to be stuck with Patel of the Crazy Eyes and crazier thoughts? RFK jr, who is responsible for killing children in Samoa with his bizarre, unschooled thoughts on vaccines? Will he really yank all the passports of his so-called enemies, and how long will that list eventually be? The entire west wing will be filled with sociopaths, narcissists, and conspiracy nuts at this rate.
So here’s Pete again. Is Trump still trying to inflict him on our military? You know, the ones that President-Reject Incontinentia Buttocks called ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’? Here are some thoughts by writer Cathy Young. “In Pete Hegseth’s Totalitarian Vision, Opponents of Christian Nationalism Are Commies and Political Enemies. Trump’s defense pick will help him pave the way to an authoritarian America.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is in trouble. While initial reactions to his nomination focused on the absurdity of this former Fox News anchor being elevated to second in command of the military, the main obstacles to Hegseth’s confirmation remain his various problems with women: a sexual assault allegation from 2017, disparaging comments about women in the military, and a newly surfaced 2018 email from his mother berating him for habitual mistreatment of the opposite sex.
But even more alarmingly: Hegseth is an ideological extremist who views political opponents as “the enemy” and political differences as war by another name. Worse, he’s a Christian nationalist of the stridently militaristic kind, which raises disturbing questions about his potential willingness to misuse the U.S. military for political purposes. This is not a characterization pieced together from the odd soundbite or two—Hegseth himself tells us who he is in his books. The image of Hegseth that emerges from The War on Warriors (2024), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and American Crusade (2020), is of a militant Christian extremist who is obsessed with the Crusades and whose highest aspiration is redesigning the U.S. military into his ideological mold.
The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.
Amanda Marcotte also writes about his love affair with White Christian Nationalism, a truly perverse twist on the New Testament, at Salon.
The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.
In addition to treating a broadly defined “Left” as the enemy, American Crusade also heaps scorn on ostensibly patriotic but overly complacent “fifty-fifty Americans.” The term comes from Theodore Roosevelt, who is quoted in the epigraph to the first part of the book: “There is not room in the country for any fifty-fifty American, nor can there be but one loyalty—to the Stars and Stripes.” The quote appears to be a garbled amalgam of several passages in Roosevelt’s speeches and writings, all of them from a very specific context: divided loyalties among some German-Americans during World War I. Hegseth’s “fifty-fifty American,” by contrast, refers to a well-meaning non-combatant in the culture war: a “squish” who disapproves of the perceived excesses of the progressive left but shrugs them off in the hope that “common sense will prevail,” or who doesn’t want to be “overly political,” or who thinks his or her local public school is great. For all his talk of reverence for America’s founding ideals, Hegseth’s version of Americanism sounds at times more like proto-totalitarian French Jacobinism, whose ideologues asserted that not only “traitors” but the “indifferent” and the “passive” must be punished.
After reading these analyses and their supporting citations, you can only be left with the idea that this man will have no problem turning the military on Americans out of step with his bizarre beliefs. I focus on this because Incontinentia Buttocks’ most recent picks have to do with ICE and his planned massive deportations and establishment of Concentration Camps. This is from Politico‘s Myah Ward. “Trump names ICE chief and makes another round of immigration announcements. The president-elect is planning an ambitious immigration agenda during his first 100 days.”
Trump said he was nominating Rodney Scott as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Scott served for almost three decades in the Border Patrol, and as the chief of the agency during the last year of the Trump administration and beginning of the Biden administration. He helped implement Trump’s Remain in Mexico Policy, Title 42 and Safe Third Country agreements.
Trump also announced he was tapping Caleb Vitello, who’s currently the assistant director of the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to serve as acting director of ICE.
And the president-elect picked Tony Salisbury, who serves as the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, to serve as the deputy homeland security adviser on the White House Homeland Security Council. Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents more than 17,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff, was also announced as Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Chile.
Immigration was Trump’s top priority on the campaign trail, and in his first 100 days he plans to begin the process of deporting hundreds of thousands of people and to roll back President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Outside allies expect the administration’s immigration policy, similar to Trump’s first term, to be run out of the White House by incoming Border Czar Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.
Billionaire Elon Musk poured more than $20 million into a mysterious super PAC at the end of the 2024 campaign, part of more than $250 million he spent overall to boost President-elect Donald Trump, new campaign finance reports show.
Musk financed RBG PAC, according to the report the group filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission. The super PAC, which did not disclose its donors before the election, launched ads contending that Trump did not support a federal abortion ban.
All of the money the group pulled in — $20.5 million — came from a single donation from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust in Austin, Texas. RBG PAC spent almost all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages, according to the campaign finance report, which covered Oct. 17 through Nov. 25.
Robert Reich believes that Trump might just bring on a Civil War. That’s a frightening thought that was discussed during his first term. But that was before he figured out how to blow things up. “How Trump could bring on a second civil war. “With his plans to use the military to root out undocumented immigrants and to use the Justice Department and FBI to punish his political enemies.”
Trump may force a second civil war on America with his plan to use the military to round up at least 11 million undocumented people inside the United States — even if it means breaking up families — send them to detention camps, and then deport them.
As well as his plan to target his political enemies for prosecution — including Democrats, journalists, and other critics.
What happens when we, especially those of us in blue states and cities, resist these authoritarian moves — as we must, as we have a moral duty to?
What happens when we try to protect hardworking members of our communities who have been our neighbors and friends for years, from Trump’s federal troops?
What happens when we refuse to allow Trump’s lackeys to wreak revenge on his political enemies who live within our states and communities?
Will our resistance give Trump an excuse to use force against us?
This is not far-fetched. We need to answer these questions for ourselves. We should prepare.
Trump has said he’ll use the Insurrection Act — which grants a president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”
He’s also said he’ll use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to end sanctuary cities. Such cities now limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump told Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that “we can do things in terms of moving people out.”
Those are all very good questions. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are trying to get some changes made to the Insurrection Act right now. The Brennan Centerhas this analysis. “The Insurrection Act: A Presidential Power That Threatens Democracy. Congress must reform the outdated law, which is ripe for abuse.”
When former President Trump says he would conduct mass deportations of millions of people if elected again, some of his advisers talk about deploying the states’ National Guard to help carry out the task, even in states that oppose this extreme immigration policy.
But would he have the legal authority to do that? The answer is yes, it is legally possible under the Insurrection Act, an outdated law that is in urgent need of reform to prevent abuses of power and adapt to modern times.
The Insurrection Act is among the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president, who can use it to deploy the U.S. armed forces and the militia to suppress insurrections, quell civil unrest or domestic violence, and enforce the law when it is being obstructed.
There are few constraints to this presidential power — neither Congress nor the courts play a role in deciding what constitutes an obstruction or rebellion — and the law does not limit what actions military forces may take once deployed.
The law, which was last amended in the 1870s, has been rarely invoked. But it has been both used and misused in the past. Past uses include enforcing civil rights laws, helping companies break strikes, and suppressing so-called “race riots.”
Currently, there are calls for President Biden to invoke it to gain control of the Texas National Guard and order it to stand down in the city of Eagle Pass, where National Guard soldiers have occupied a park along the southern border to militarize the border and deny federal border protection agents access.
And let’s not forget Trump’s supporters urged him to use it to impede the transition of power after the 2020 presidential election.
Although there is no question that Biden could turn to the Insurrection Act to respond to a deliberate obstruction that prevents the federal government from performing immigration duties, he should refrain from doing so and instead seek to assert federal authority through the courts. The act should be a tool of last resort, and any power of this magnitude requires robust checks and balances that it currently lacks.
That’s why the Brennan Center has proposed comprehensive reforms that would narrow the criteria for deployment, specify what actions are and are not authorized when the act is invoked, and give Congress and the courts approval and review authority to serve as checks against abuse or overreach.
The current changes asked for by Warren and Blumenthal are outlined here by the Washington Insider. “Democratic Senators Urge Biden to Restrict Military Deployment, Citing Concerns Over Trump’s Plans.” Stacy M. Brown reports the details.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have called on President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to issue a directive limiting the use of military personnel for domestic purposes, warning against potential misuse by President-elect Donald Trump after he takes office on Jan. 20.
The senators stressed the importance of clear guidelines to prevent the military from being deployed against American citizens without explicit constitutional or congressional authorization.
The request is rooted in the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using federal troops in domestic law enforcement unless authorized by the Constitution or Congress.
While the Insurrection Act provides a narrow exception in cases of insurrection, rebellion, or extreme unrest, Warren and Blumenthal called for further restrictions to prevent abuse.
“Any deployment of federal forces must occur only when state or local authorities are overwhelmed and unable to ensure public safety,” the senators wrote.
They also emphasized the importance of consulting Congress before deploying troops and ensuring service members understand their obligations to reject unlawful orders.
The senators’ letter notes growing concerns over Trump’s rhetoric and past actions.
During his first term, Trump considered invoking the Insurrection Act to respond to Black Lives Matter protests, and some allies urged him to declare martial law after his 2020 election defeat. More recently, Trump has suggested using the military to deport immigrants without permanent legal status and relocating troops from overseas to the southern border.
Trump has picked a deputy for Kristy Noem at Homeland Security. This is reported by South Florida’s Channel 6 News. “Trump picks Miami HSI special agent in charge for deputy homeland security advisor. Anthony Salisbury is currently a Miami Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge.”
In his current role, Anthony W. Salisbury “manages all of HSI’s complex Federal Law Enforcement investigative programs related to National Security and smuggling violations, including counter-proliferation, financial crimes, commercial fraud, human trafficking, human smuggling, narcotics smuggling, transnational,” the former president shared in a post on Truth Social.
He has previously served as the acting deputy executive associate director of HSI in Miami, and supervised the activities of HSI offices throughout the Republic of Mexico as the deputy attaché.
In his post, Trump wrote: “Tony will bring his vast Law Enforcement, counter-narcotics, and counter-cartel experience to the White House where he will serve under Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor.”
Miller is Trump’s pick for deputy chief of policy, longtime adviser and an immigration hard-liner, AP News reports.
The more deeply these picks get embedded and embed The True Believers, the more difficult it will be to find and remove them as needed. Again, I see most of the action needed to stop this lies within the courts and Congress. Fortunately and unfortunately, the House and Senate are quite close even though they will be controlled by Republicans. Are there enough sane people to stand up to these MAGA terrorists? The courts will likely follow the law until we hit SCOTUS. There are obviously embedded MAGA nuts there who continue to rewrite the Constitution and precedent.
We’ve got less than a month to develop a strategy that lets them know that We, the People, are not interested in becoming MAGA-compliant serfs. This won’t be pretty, but I’m not gonna quietly take it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
S0, this is for all of you butt-wipers for Incontinentia Buttocks …
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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