“Had enough? Obviously, the Mobsters Are Governing America bunch haven’t.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Things continue to look bleak for our country as Orange Caligula’s physical and mental conditions become more obvious. The Anti-Weaponization Fund looks more shady than ever. The continued coverage of its impact on our budget and rule of law gets more shocking with each elucidation. None of Trump’s songs and dances has gotten the voters’ attention as much as our difficult economy. It is evident with each grocery store and gas station visit and bill to pay that something is very wrong. The worst, massive insider-trading crimes appear to be going on within Trump’s circle.
Forbeshas this headline this morning. “Trump’s Tax Immunity Could Save Him More Than $600 Million. The president secures a get-out-of-jail-free card for tax improprieties, just as he’s hauling in record amounts of cash.” Dan Alexander has the analysis and the story.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed a document Tuesday giving Donald Trump, his two eldest sons and his company broad immunity for potential tax disputes with the federal government. It’s the clearest way that the president is personally benefitting from his settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, which he sued days after taking office for failing to prevent the release of his personal tax returns.
The settlement lands at a convenient moment. Donald Trump earned an estimated $1.4 billion from crypto and licensing ventures in 2025, as he turned his first year back in the White House into the most lucrative year of his life. If the president received an extension for his 2025 return, his preparers may be sorting through exactly how to present this year’s welter of income right now. Trump has never hidden the animating principle. When Hillary Clinton accused him of paying no taxes in the 2016 debates, he replied: “That makes me smart.” Also much richer. If Trump is able to conjure up theories to avoid taxes for his 2025 income, he could save more than a half-billion dollars, according to Forbes estimates.
The conflict-of-interest underpinning all of this is so obvious that even Trump has acknowledged it. “I’m the one that makes the decision, right?” he mused in the Oval Office in October. “You know, that decision would have to go across my desk. And it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.” Trump first suggested he would send whatever judgement he received to charity, before settling on a more creative approach. The government would not pay Trump. Instead, Trump would get a pass enabling him to pay less to the government. The move harkens the old cliché—a penny saved is a penny earned—with the same result: more money in Trump’s pocket.
Asked about all this, the White House referred questions to the Trump Organization. The president’s business did not dispute the estimates but opted to issue a lengthy statement attacking the IRS that said, in part, “This settlement seeks to provide meaningful accountability for the IRS’s prolonged and systemic failure to safeguard sensitive taxpayer data.”
Like the settlement itself, Trump’s massive earnings are a product of the presidency. Heading into the 2024 election, Trump announced a new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, which sold tokens to anyone interested in buying. The tokens offered no financial interest in World Liberty, which helps explain why so few people noticed initially. But after Trump won the election, sales exploded. The economics of the deal were tailored to funnel vast sums of cash to the Trump family. After the first $15 million of sales, 75% of the proceeds went to the Trump family—with 70% of that flowing to the president-elect. More than $50 million went into this machine by the end of 2024, before ramping up in the new year.
Tokens were not the only thing Trump was selling. As Forbes first reported, he also struck a secret deal to offload a chunk of equity in World Liberty Financial in January 2025. The Wall Street Journallater identified the purchaser of that stake, an entity backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, which promised $500 million in the deal. The agreement reportedly excluded the proceeds from token sales, which appeared to be World Liberty’s principal business at the time. World Liberty went on to launch a stablecoin that another entity connected to Sheikh Tahnoon propped up with a multibillion-dollar investment. Trump walked away from the sale with an estimated $375 million in pre-tax earnings. That windfall would theoretically trigger a roughly $140 million federal tax bill.
Every sucker that voted for this man needs a good thwap upside their head. This Reuters Exclusive is shocking. “Trump official tried to ban voting machines used by half of US states.” The lede is shared by Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay, and Alexandra Alper.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s election-security czar last year sought to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare their components national-security risks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
White House adviser Kurt Olsen, a lawyer Trump has tasked with proving widely debunked election-rigging conspiracy theories, pushed the plan to target Dominion Voting Systems machines. The idea emerged, the sources said, as Olsen and other officials brainstormed about how the federal government could take control over elections from U.S. states, an idea publicly aired by Trump.
Olsen wanted a national system of hand-counted paper ballots, the sources said, a frequent Trump demand some election-security experts say would be less accurate and potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that almost all cities and states use.
The plan to exclude the machines, reported here first, got far enough that in September, Commerce Department officials began exploring what grounds could be invoked to execute it, three additional sources said. It eventually collapsed, however, because Olsen and other administration staffers working with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move, two of the sources said.
This headline is from theNew York Times. “Audit Immunity for Trump Family Puts I.R.S. in a Bind
Federal law prohibits the Internal Revenue Service from halting an audit at the direction of the president or his aides.” Andrew Duehren reports the story.
President Trump’s return to office has been an unforgiving crucible for the hidebound Internal Revenue Service. He and his aides have decimated its ranks, fired and replaced its leaders and made repeated attempts to enlist the agency in his quest for political retribution.
Now, as part of an arrangement drawn up this week by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, the I.R.S. faces its most profound legal and ethical test yet: a demand to drop any audits of Mr. Trump, his family members or their “affiliates.”
Tax lawyers and former I.R.S. officials said such expansive protection would cut to the core of the agency’s mission to collect taxes in a disinterested, nonpartisan way — and could potentially run afoul of the laws governing how it does so.
“It’s just completely contrary to the notion that you’re supposed to comply with the law and the I.R.S. is there to make sure you do that,” said George Yin, a tax law professor and former chief of staff at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “The idea that you can get a free pass from the I.R.S. or anyone can get a free pass from the I.R.S. is just completely ridiculous.”
Immunity from I.R.S. scrutiny for Mr. Trump and his family was part of a broad agreement made by the Justice Department to resolve a lawsuit he filed against the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns. Beyond the audit provision, the Justice Department committed to creating a $1.8 billion fund to pay victims of “weaponization,” a proposal that has been rebuked by both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
While the Justice Department has said Mr. Trump himself will not be paid out of that fund, an end to any and all audits based on tax returns previously filed could be quite lucrative for the Trumps. The New York Times reported in 2024 that an adverse ruling in an I.R.S. audit could cost Mr. Trump more than $100 million, though it is unclear if that examination is still underway.
The nine-page outline creating the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund was agreed to and signed on Monday by Frank Bisignano, who leads the I.R.S. as its chief executive officer. The one-page addendum calling for the I.R.S. to drop any audits of Mr. Trump and his family members was released the next day and signed by only Mr. Blanche.
That has raised the question of how, and if, the leader of the Justice Department can control decisions made at the I.R.S., which falls under the Treasury Department.
“There’s a genuine question as to whether the attorney general can do this,” said Daniel Hemel, a tax law professor at New York University. “I can’t think of precedent where the attorney general signs a piece of paper that ends audits for a large number of people.”
This guest essay in the New York Times by Representative Jamie Raskin is a must-read. Raskin provides us with a blueprint to stop this particular grift. “There’s a Way to Stop Trump’s I.R.S. Slush Fund.”
These days it takes a spectacular burst of corruption to get the attention of our scandal-weary nation, but President Trump and his administration have managed, once again, to transfix Americans by establishing a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund in the Department of Justice that will undoubtedly be used to line the pockets of Mr. Trump’s partisans and foot soldiers — with your tax dollars.
The creation of this fund is a stupefying feat of self-dealing — part of a “settlement agreement” between the Department of the Treasury, which Mr. Trump controls, and the plaintiffs — Mr. Trump, two of his sons and their family business — who sued the I.R.S. for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns. It will very likely result in an undeserved windfall to a legion of Jan. 6 rioters who have already unjustly received pardons from Mr. Trump.
Every part of this farce is an affront to the Constitution. It usurps both the exclusive power of Congress to legislate programs and spend money and the power of the courts to decide specific cases and controversies.
It is, quite simply, a scam.
Only Congress has the power to appropriate federal dollars. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states that “no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” But Mr. Trump and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seem to think they can conjure this giant slush fund into being without congressional approval.
Further, Article III, Section 1 states that the “judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Yet the settlement took Mr. Trump’s case out of the hands of the courts. And it calls for oversight by a five-member board, appointed by Mr. Blanche and whose members Mr. Trump can dismiss on a whim. Even if this fund were legitimate, that kind of setup wouldn’t be for Mr. Blanche to decide. Congress has never established a court, tribunal or board to hear pleas from people who believe they are victims of government “weaponization,” much less a fund almost certainly meant to reward supporters and allies of the president who feel they were wronged simply because their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were prosecuted.
No matter what you think about the events of Jan. 6, hundreds of rioters indisputably broke the law that day when they stormed the Capitol trying to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election and the peaceful transfer of power.
As regrettable as it is that most of the rioters were pardoned, there’s no denying that as president, Mr. Trump has that power. But the same Constitution giving him that power also says that “neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Jan. 6 was indeed an insurrection, and pardon or no pardon, no one can legally be compensated for taking part in it.
As James Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, a cardinal precept of our legal system is that “no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” Here, Mr. Trump’s administration “settled” a case that he brought, effectively making him the judge in his own case. He not only concocted the fund, but his Justice Department threw in a sweetener: shielding him and his sons from audits of any tax returns they have already filed.
The $1.776 billion figure is obviously meant to invoke the year of our founding. But go back and read the Declaration of Independence, which includes a long list of accusations directed at George III. Among them is the charge that the British king “has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”
Read more. I’ve gifted the link. #FARTUS thinks he’s above the law and also thinks the U.S. Treasury and Laws are his to toy with. NBC News reports that there are many takers for the Fund, even though it’s not open for business yet. “Trump’s $1.8B fund isn’t officially open yet. That hasn’t stopped applications. No commissioners have been chosen, a requirement before claims can be processed, an administration official told NBC News. The Justice Department says millions are eligible.”
Applications are already rolling into the Justice Department from hopefuls aiming for some of the nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, even though the process can’t officially begin until commissioners are chosen to decide how the money is doled out.
The fund was announced this week, part of an unprecedented settlement between President Donald Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization and the government he oversees over the leak of his tax returns. He agreed to drop legal claims in exchange for creating the fund.
It’s not clear yet how people are expected to formally apply. The pool of possible applicants is substantial, according to a Justice Department overview that was sent to GOP Senate offices Thursday.
“Literally tens of millions of Americans were subjected to improper and unlawful government targeting, including extensive government censorship and aggressive lawfare,” according to the overview.
Justice Department officials said the five commissioners will be chosen in the coming weeks — the appointments must be made within 30 days from when the settlement was signed Monday. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will make the decisions, though Congress members will get input on one of them. The president can fire the commissioners at will.
The department is working under a deadline, in part because the money pool — if it isn’t blocked by Congress or courts — would have to be distributed by the end of Trump’s term in 2028. Legal challenges have already begun, and disbursements could be tied up in the courts until well after the deadline, or it could be declared unlawful.
Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized the fund. Opponents have labeled it a massive “slush fund” for Trump’s allies. Its existence has alarmed some legal experts, in part because there will be very little public oversight over how it is managed.
Among the crooks waiting for compensation are Michael Cohen, Enrique Tarrio, Brandon Fellows, Michael Caputo, and Mike Lindell. The Lindell link goes to an MSNBC article with this headline. “Who’s applying for the $1.8 billion slush fund? In today’s edition of The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe: Trump’s revenge tour, Stephen Colbert’s last show, and more.” George Santos is in that list too.
“I’ve been pushing for this. I think I was weaponized against. I think I’m a good example of that.”
— Proud Boys founder Enrique Tarrio, sentenced to 22 years for Jan. 6 before being pardoned by Trump less than two years later, now seeking $2 million to $3 million from the Justice Department’s new $1.7 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund
Looks like quite the Motely Crew.
People are still shocked by the Supreme Court Decision that basically guts Voting Rights. This is from Talking Points Memoand is reported by Josh Kovensky and Khaya Himmelman. “Their Loved Ones Died for the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s Ruling Is a New Injustice.”
Dennis Dahmer was 12 years old in January 1966 when Klansmen stormed his family home and set it on fire, murdering his father, Vernon. He still remembers the shootout; he remembers watching his father die from smoke inhalation. The trauma lingers to this day, 60 years later.
Vernon Dahmer had been a fixture in the African American community near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He ran a successful local grocery, and, after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, obtained the right to register voters and collect poll taxes, which were still in effect, at his store. Members of the local White Citizens’ Council started to appear at the family farm, warning his father to stop, Dahmer told TPM, but that didn’t deter him. He recorded a radio announcement in January 1966 offering to cover the cost of poll taxes for African Americans who couldn’t afford to pay. The KKK attacked the next day.
“He would always say to us, ‘do something, dammit,’” Dahmer recalled. “‘Don’t just stand there.’”
With all that in mind, Dennis Dahmer decided late last year to listen in to oral arguments in Callais v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court case that would ultimately gut the remnants of the Voting Rights Act. The law had provided a framework for protecting minority votes in the South for decades.
“It was apparent to me that they had already made up their mind — talking about the MAGA ones for sure,” he said. “They were just laying the groundwork to justify what they were going to do.”
The Callaisdecision last month threatens to bring the state of Black congressional representation in the South back to the 1960s. State legislatures across the Old Confederacy are gerrymandering away political maps that allowed Black communities a voice in local, state and federal politics, and provided a means for them to elect politicians of their choosing. The rapid democratic backsliding has prompted demonstrations at Selma, the site of key actions during the Civil Rights Movement, and disbelief among Democrats at the consequences.
But for Dahmer and other survivors of people who were maimed or murdered during the Civil Rights movement, it’s deeply personal. For these families, the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais represents a return to the 1960s that isn’t abstract, but very real. They remember learning that their relatives died, they remember death threats against them and other loved ones in the aftermath, they remember how the fear and bloodshed prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to decide that the time had come to send a Voting Rights Act to Congress. In many of these cases, justice was limited, late, or non-existent: the perpetrators were acquitted, died before they were convicted, or were only held accountable after spending decades free.
Now comes a new form of injustice: the one lasting change to American democracy that their relatives’ deaths brought about has been undone.
You definitely should read this one and all the stories it tells. There are definitely more untold stories, too. This New York Timesstory by Nikole Hannah-Jones is spot-on. “The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes.”
For students of history, what Tennessee did on May 7 felt like a premonition. One hundred and fifty years ago, when this nation’s first experiment with interracial democracy began to collapse, Tennessee — a former slave state and the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan — was the first domino to drop. In 1870, the Tennessee legislature rewrote the State Constitution to disenfranchise Black men. As the historian Manisha Sinha writes in “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic,” Tennessee “provided a template to other Southern states” for how to “overthrow Reconstruction.”Within three decades, Black representation, in Congress and in local and state offices across the former Confederacy, would be wiped out.
It was not just Tennessee that echoed history, but the Supreme Court as well. The case that felled the Voting Rights Act was Louisiana v. Callais. Louisiana is the state where in 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, another superlatively conservative Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to license segregation, setting off a race across the South to strip Black people of the franchise and codify their second-class citizenship.
The day after the Callais ruling, Gov. Jeff Landry took the unprecedented action of suspending the state’s U.S. House primary — in which tens of thousands of voters had already cast ballots — so legislators could redraw the election maps. Though one in three Louisiana residents is Black, Republicans intend to jettison at least one of two Black-majority districts. “Well, the failed narrative is actually that people in Louisiana are racist,” Landry insisted, “that basically we won’t elect Black people. I mean, I disagree with that.” In fact, since the Plessy era, Louisiana has sent only four Black people to Congress, and a Black candidate has never won in a white district there.
Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Florida quickly moved ahead with their own redistricting plans. And the governor of Mississippi — which has just a single Black U.S. representative despite having the nation’s highest percentage of Black residents, at 38 percent — announced his intent to do the same.
Voting and civil rights experts warn that America now sits at a familiar precipice. The Voting Rights Act helped transform the South: In 1965, the region had not a single Black representative in the U.S. Congress; today, it has 31. Now, Black representation may once again disappear in the South, where more than half of Black Americans live. This could lead to the largest decimation of Black political power since the fall of Reconstruction. And just like then, what is at stake is no less than American democracy itself.
This is another must-read article. I feel like we’re living through the darkest days in American history that haven’t quite rivaled the Civil War in terms of loss of life, but certainly rival the Civil War in changing how we live as free people in a democracy.
So, I’ve managed to write a very long post today, but every day with Orange Caligula and his crew of racists, sexist, backward-looking assholes just brings more shit into view and reality. Please hang in there.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Today is the second full day of Trump 2.0, and the whirlwind of activity is already exhausting. Trump is trying to reverse everything Joe Biden accomplished over the past 4 years. He has issued hundreds of pardons to the January 6 rioters and other criminals. He is beginning to enact the policies laid out in “Project 2025.” And he has begun his campaign of revenge and retribution against anyone he perceives as criticizing him or opposing his wishes. I can’t possibly touch on everything that has happened, so I’ll just share commentary on two stories that I think are important: Trump’s pardons of the January 6 criminals and Elon Musk’s public performance of the Nazi salute.
First, in one fell swoop, Trump has destroyed the hard work of hundreds of prosecutors, judges, investigators, and members of the public who worked tirelessly to track down the criminals who attacked and trashed the Capitol and threatened the lives of legislators, law enforcement officers, and Trump’s own Vice President on January 6, 2021. We were assured by VP J.D. Vance, and multiple Republican politicians that Trump would only free non-violent offenders from that day, but it was all a lie. He released them all back into society where they can do whatever they want–no paroles, no supervision of any kind. In my opinion, Trump sees these criminals as his defenders. They can now organize and act as his private army.
In one of the first acts of his second administration, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly all of the January 6 criminals and new details reveal the spur-of-the-moment decision to release 1,500 people charged.
“Trump just said: ‘F*** it: Release ‘em all,’” an adviser familiar with the discussions told the Axios.
On the campaign trail, Trump flirted with pardoning who he describes as the “J6 hostages,” and on Monday decided to issue pardons to most of the people charged in connection to the riot and effort to overturn the 2020 election. That ended their prison sentence and allowed those convicted to walk out of prison.
In one of the first acts of his second administration, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly all of the January 6 criminals and new details reveal the spur-of-the-moment decision to release 1,500 people charged.
“Trump just said: ‘F*** it: Release ‘em all,’” an adviser familiar with the discussions told the Axios.
On the campaign trail, Trump flirted with pardoning who he describes as the “J6 hostages,” and on Monday decided to issue pardons to most of the people charged in connection to the riot and effort to overturn the 2020 election. That ended their prison sentence and allowed those convicted to walk out of prison.
Trump’s pardons were made in defiance of JD Vance’s advice that convicts who committed violence during the Capitol attack shouldn’t be granted clemency. He told Fox News last week: “If you committed violence that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
The president’s move also came as a surprise to some Republicans, who have said they don’t agree with his move.
“Well, I think I agree with the vice president,” Sen. Mitch McConnell told Semafor. “No one should excuse violence. And particularly violence against police officers.”
But Trump not only excuses violence that he perceives as supportive of him; he also celebrates it. Again and again, he has said that the January 5 attack was a “day of love.”
Donald Trump spent the four years after the January 6 insurrection attempting to rewrite the violence and chaos he inspired as his supporters stormed the US Capitol.
On the first day of his second term as president, he took the rewriting to its final step by issuing pardons and reducing sentences for those involved in the insurrection, including the leaders of far-right militias and those who battled with police that day.
If the criminal charges were meant to deter future acts of political violence, the pardons of more than 1,500 people do the opposite, experts said.
“This is going beyond rewriting what January 6 was,” said Robert Pape, the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago who has studied January 6 defendants. “This is about legitimating future January 6ths.”
A procession of Proud Boys marched in Washington on Monday, carrying a banner that congratulated Trump on his victory, a visible representation of the welcome the far right is receiving from the new administration, and their former national chairperson, Enrique Tarrio, received a full pardon. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia group, had his sentence commuted.
“This will have powerful future consequences for normalizing political violence, because many of those he has granted clemency to are an ongoing threat for political violence in the future,” Pape said.
Even those who didn’t themselves participate in violence on January 6 may have played a part in violence. Pape’s research shows that nearly 500 people convicted of low-level non-violent misdemeanors were “knowing and willing participants in the violent aspects of the Capitol siege, and that without the participation of this vast group, the siege would likely have never happened or been quickly ended by the police”….
Trump also directed the justice department to drop the charges in ongoing cases, ending the years of work by the department to find and prosecute the Capitol rioters. Trump named Ed Martin, a conservative lawyer who was involved in the Stop the Steal movement and supported January 6 causes the interim US attorney for Washington DC, putting him in charge of the January 6 prosecutions, NBC News reported.
This also undercuts Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, who said she planned to evaluate these releases case by case. A bit more from The Guardian:
Perhaps the most visible face of the rioters, Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon shaman”, wrote on Twitter/X that he had just received the news from his lawyer that he was pardoned. “NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!
Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman
Several of those who have publicly discussed their cases have books scheduled to be released about their involvement on January 6 or intend to do speaking engagements about it. Others have started organizations to support those who were involved in the January 6 attack.
Those involved and their supporters were also looking for ways to seek retribution for what they believed was a system rigged against them for their political views.
They could bring civil lawsuits against the government seeking redress or reparations for the charges or time spent in prison, using the language in Trump’s pardon as proof they were overcharged. The pardons call the charges a “grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years”.
I hope your blood is boiling after Donald Trump’s pardon of approximately 1,500 terrorists who attacked our Capitol on Jan. 6. And yes, Trump’s own hand-picked FBI Director testified before Congress that Jan. 6 was an “act of domestic terrorism.” So those people Trump has now pardoned—which includes those in the video below you can see brutally attacking police officers—are terrorists. This is akin to Bin Laden pardoning those involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Overall, the pardons covered more than 600 rioters who had been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers at the Capitol. Approximately, 175 of these Trump allies used deadly or dangerous weapons in the attack–including toxic sprays, baseball bats, two-by-fours, crutches, hockey sticks and broken wooden table legs.
Those Trump pardoned include people like Julian Khater, who pled guilty to “assaulting law enforcement officers with pepper spray,” including Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the following day. And Ronald Colton McAbee, a former sheriff’s deputy who was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for assaulting police officers. As DOJ detailed, McAbee held down a police officer who had been “knocked to the ground, kicked, and stripped of his baton by other rioters” enabling the crowd to viciously beat him. As a result, “the officer sustained physical injuries, including a head laceration, concussion, elbow injury, bruising, and bodily abrasions.”
Daniel Joseph “DJ” Rodriguez who used a stun gun on Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and was sentenced to 12.5 years for his bevy of crimes. And David Dempsey who prosecutors called “one of the most violent” Jan. 6 attackers—who assaulted and injured numerous police officers by spraying then with pepper spray and hitting them with various items including a metal crutch, chairs and a long wooden pole. He pled guilty and was sentenced to two decades in prison.
Then there are the leaders of the militant groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who had been convicted of “Seditious Conspiracy”—which is almost as serious as Treason. As DOJ noted, the Oath Keepers leaders “plotted to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power” and then came to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 “with paramilitary gear and supplies including firearms, tactical vests with plates, helmets, and radio equipment.” Yet Trump freed them from prison despite their sentences of nearly 20 years.
These are violent and dangerous people—including many with military experience and tactical planning skills–who Trump pardoned and released from jail. Why? Trump—like any other aspiring dictators—wants to make a public showing that if you commit crimes and violence on his behalf, he will have your back.
However, there is also an even more sinister reason for Trump’s pardons of the most violent attackers. Trump wants to incentivize others in MAGA to do the same in the future—with the implicit promise being “I will pardon you like I did the Jan. 6 terrorists.”
That is not just my view. That what authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained to me last year when I interviewed her about Trump’s praise of the Jan. 6 attackers and vow to pardon them. She first shared that Trump—like other fascist leaders—is trying “to change the perception of violence. To get people to see that violence is not negative.” Trump is thereby conditioning his supporters to believe that. “Violence is sometimes morally necessary and even righteous, and even patriotic.”
As to Trump’s promise of pardons, Ben-Ghiat explained, “All authoritarians use pardons because why do you want people sitting in jail–the worst people in the world–who are for you the best people and could serve your goals?”
We’ll find out if it worked for Trump when and if people publicly protest his decisions and actions.
President Donald Trump defended his decision to free all of roughly 1,600 Jan. 6 riot defendants on Tuesday as the leaders of two extremist groups who played outsize roles in the Capitol attack walked out of federal prisons after serving a fraction of their sentences for seditious conspiracy. Trump called the conspirators’ sentences “ridiculous and excessive,” saying he pardoned “people that were treated unbelievably poorly.”
But counterterrorism experts say the pardons could further embolden fringe groups and hamper the Justice Department’s fight against political violence.
Former Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was headed home to Miami from a Louisiana prison and expected to address the media Tuesday at the airport, his lawyer said, freed from the longest sentence in the riot — 22 years — for mobilizing his right-wing group as an “army” to keep Trump in power as Congress met to confirm the 2020 election.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years, was released shortly after midnight in Cumberland, Maryland, his lawyer said, and emerged later Tuesday outside the D.C. jail to await release of those held on Jan. 6 charges. Rhodes was found guilty of urging Trump to use paramilitary groups to hold the White House and bringing armed followers to Washington ready for “civil war.”
Extremism researchers raised concerns over the message their freedom sends to armed militia-style groups or others with violent anti-government views. If those convicted of plotting such violence against the government walked free with support from the nation’s commander in chief,would others be energized to take up more action?
“Those groups of course are going to see the return of battle-hardened leaders, who in addition to having a kind of real-life legitimacy due to having actually fought the government, will also have a strong sense of victimhood and martyrdom, which will further radicalize and fuel recruitment platforms,” said Jacob Ware, a Council on Foreign Relations research fellow. “This move is going to make combating terrorism far more difficult, not just over the next four years as groups feel like they have an ally in the White House, but beyond that as well.”
Ware called the pardons “a pretty catastrophic moment for domestic counterterrorism.”
The Proud Boys and especially the Oath Keepers “have been relatively dormant for several years now,” hit very hard and deterred by the seditious conspiracy cases, he said.
“In the past when individuals were acquitted of this crime, recognized as among the most serious in a democracy, it incontrovertibly breathed new life into far-right violent extremism in the United States,” said Bruce Hoffman, a veteran counterterrorism and homeland security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 1988 a jury in Fort Smith, Arkansas, acquitted 14 white supremacists of seditious conspiracy, revitalizing an anti-government militia movement that spurred the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City five years later, Hoffman said.
I guess we’ll find out soon enough if these predictions are accurate.
I’m sure you’ve seen the Nazi salute that Elon Musk performed during a speech at Trump’s inaugural “parade.” Personally, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the salute was genuine and intended to shock, but some observers are trying to minimize it.
“I just want to say thank you for making it happen,” the owner of SpaceX, X and Tesla, the richest person on earth and a major Trump donor and adviser, told Trump supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington.
Musk then slapped his right hand into his chest, fingers splayed, before shooting out his right arm on an upwards diagonal, fingers together and palm facing down.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which campaigns against antisemitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down”.
As the crowd roared, Musk turned and saluted again, his arm and hand slightly lower.
“My heart goes out to you,” Musk said, striking himself on the chest again. “It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured. Thanks to you. We’re gonna have safe cities, finally safe cities. Secure borders, sensible spending. Basic stuff. And we’re gonna take ‘Doge’ to Mars.” [….]
Social media users expressed shock at Musk’s gesture. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”
Musk did not immediately comment, though he did repost footage of his remarks that included the second salute and endorsed memes seeking to turn footage of his salutes into jokes.
One X user wrote: “Can we please retire the calling people a Nazi thing?”
Musk wrote: “Yeah exactly” and added a “yawning” emoji.
Nonetheless, Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, described Musk delivering “a Roman salute, a fascist salute most commonly associated with Nazi Germany”.
The ADL, meanwhile, says that in Germany between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi salute “was often accompanied by chanting or shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ or ‘Sieg Heil.’ Since world war two, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have continued to use the salute, making it the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world.”
There were angry reactions across Europe to Elon Musk’s apparent use of a salute banned for its Nazi links in Germany, where some condemned it as malicious provocation or an outreach of solidarity to far-right groups.
Michel Friedman, a prominent German-French publicist and former deputy chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described Musk’s actions – at an event after Donald Trump’s swearing in as US president – as a disgrace and said Musk had shown that a “dangerous point for the entire free world” had been reached.
Friedman, who descends from a family of Polish Jews, hardly any of whom survived the Holocaust, told the daily Tagesspiegel he had been shocked when watching the inauguration live on television, adding that as far as he was concerned Musk had unambiguously performed the Nazi “Heil Hitler” salute, despite attempts to downplay it.
“I thought to myself, the breaking of taboos is reaching a point that is dangerous for the entire free world. The brutalisation, the dehumanisation, Auschwitz, all of that is Hitler. A mass murderer, a warmonger, a person for whom people were nothing more than numbers – fair game, not worth mentioning,” Friedman said.
Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Jewish community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, described the gesture as “highly disconcerting”. But she said it was not as significant as Musk’s recent attempts to meddle in German politics, where he has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland ahead of next month’s federal election.
“Far more worrying are Elon Musk’s political positions, his offensive interference in the German parliamentary election campaign and his support for a party whose anti-democratic aims should be under no illusions,” she said in a statement.
Right-wing extremists are celebrating Elon Musk’s straight-arm gesture during a speech Monday, although his intention wasn’t totally clear and some hate watchdogs are saying not to read too much into it….
Many social media users noticed that the gesture looked like a Nazi salute. Musk has only fanned the flames of suspicion by not explicitly denying those claims in a dozen posts since, though he did make light of the criticism and lashed out at people making that interpretation.
“The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” Musk posted on X several hours after he left the stage.
Critics and fans alike of the Tesla CEO and world’s richest man were quick to react to the gesture.
“The White Flame will rise again,” a chapter of the white nationalist group White Lives Matter posted on Telegram.
“Maybe woke really is dead,” white nationalist Keith Woods posted on X.
“Did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler …” right-wing commentator Evan Kilgore posted on X. “We are so back.”
Some expert commentary:
Kurt Braddock, a professor of communication at American University who studies extremism, radicalization and terrorism, said the gesture was a fascist salute and “people shouldn’t doubt what they saw.”
“I know what I saw, I know what the response to it was among elements of the extreme right including neo-Nazis, Braddock said. “And none of it is a laughing matter.”
1934: German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) giving the Nazi salute from his car whilst at the Nazi Party Congress. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Efraim Zuroff, the retired head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office and formerly the organization’s top Nazi hunter, said he also saw it as Nazi salute, and that it happened at U.S. presidential inauguration celebration made it especially shocking to see.
“It’s totally improper, and it raises all sorts of questions regarding his motivations, or his ignorance,” he said in a telephone interview from Israel. “This is America, the leader of the free world, the people who sacrificed 200,000 soldiers who died to defend Europe. He has to explain himself.”
In Europe where the fascist salute is associated with the hate, death and destruction of World War II, Musk’s arm gesture elicited outrage.
An Italian communist youth organization on Tuesday hung an effigy of Musk upside down in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto, where Mussolini’s body was hung upside down after he was executed during the final days of World War II. The organization, Cambiare Rotta (Change Course), noted in a Facebook post that a photo of the effigy had been removed by the social media company.
“We are correctly a little afraid, because that image is scary,’’ author Filippo Ceccarelli told Italian La7 private television.
Known as the Roman salute in Italy, the straight-arm greeting officially adopted in 1925 by the dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime is banned in Italy though it is rarely prosecuted.
Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term on Monday before the world’s richest people. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg were among those seated closest to Trump as he demonized the most vulnerable members of our society, rewrote the history of his criminal prosecutions, and pledged to roll back Joe Biden’s efforts to address climate change.
They smiled. They laughed. They thumbs-upped. They loved it.
By the end of Inauguration Day, Trump had signed an executive order attempting to abolish “birthright citizenship,” cut off all asylum claims at the southern border, signed an order prohibiting federal recognition of transgender Americans, once again ended America’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and issued pardons to 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, including the seditionist leader of the Proud Boys.
Not so long ago, some of the ultra-wealthy and big corporations would feign disgust with Trump. They paid lip service to social justice movements and pledged to make paltry efforts to reduce their climate impact. That’s all over now. America’s oligarchs are done pretending — there is too much money to be made and power to be amassed together. They’ll get to keep their Trump tax cuts, and can expect to receive more. The government investigations of their businesses and regulatory scrutiny will end. All they have to do is act like — or freely admit — they support Trump and his policies. Pay up, show respect, get paid, and whatever else you want.
In the days leading up to Trump’s second inauguration, pockets of deep-blue Washington were transformed into a mecca of MAGA glitz and boozy, Trumpified access-peddling. In downtown D.C., Trump’s Sunday and Monday afternoon pageantries were quickly followed with rows of richly dressed MAGA fans and ticket-holders standing out in the cold, waiting to get into the evening’s selections of this exclusive party, sponsored by that corporate colossus, all to toast the dawn of yet another four years of reality-TV-style authoritarian decay.
Just a few short years ago, corporate America was so mad about the Jan. 6 insurrection, when Trump whipped up his supporters and they attacked the U.S. Capitol to try to block Joe Biden from becoming president. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it was “appalled by the violence at the Capitol,” and Zuckerberg, its CEO, declared on Jan. 7, 2021 that the company would block Trump from posting after its platform was used “to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
Zuckerberg’s concerns about the health of our democracy appear to have subsided. On Jan. 7 this year, he announced Facebook would end its fact-checking program. He also went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about how the “corporate world is pretty culturally neutered” and society has become “emasculated.” Meta, like many big corporations, made a large donation ($1 million) to Trump’s inaugural committee….
Due to cold weather, Trump’s coronation was moved inside, into the Capitol building his supporters ransacked four years ago. Holding the ceremony in the small Capitol rotunda gave it an exclusive, cozy feel and kept out the riff-raff: No commoners could watch Trump’s swearing-in live in-person — not even Republican governors, who were relegated to an overflow room. Only the elite of the elite and the best Trump supporters. Musk. Zuckerberg. Bezos. Google CEO Sundar Pichai sat with them. Apple CEO Tim Cook was there. Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush were seated in front of UFC’s Dana White. Rogan, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, and Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk were there, too….
Musk — who leads Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter) — came out as a MAGA fanatic this summer and leaned in, spending $153 million to boost Trump’s presidential campaign via his Super PAC. He amplified Trump’s campaign against migrants and undocumented immigrants, running ads decrying the “HISTORIC BORDER INVASION” and “illegal immigrants getting handouts.” [….]
Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chairman, has his own space business, Blue Origin, and Amazon provides cloud services to the government. The world’s second-richest man started cozying up to Trump not long before the election, when he killed The Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Bezos, who’s owned the paper since 2013, wrote in a Post op-ed that “no quid pro quo of any kind” was to blame for his decision. After Trump won, Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. The company, which is spending $40 million to license a documentary and a limited series about First Lady Melania Trump, recently deleted its public commitments to protecting the rights of Black and LGBTQ+ people from its website. The Post’s editorial board separately endorsed most of Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees….
Zuckerberg, the third-richest man in the world, was seen as a Trump enemy — specifically because he funded election infrastructure during the 2020 contest, after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump literally threatened to jail him for life. Following Trump’s win, Zuckerberg flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to suck up to the incoming commander in chief. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Meta announced it is ending its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and changedits policies to allow users to attack LGBTQ+ people as “mentally ill,” women as “crazy,” and Mexican immigrants as “trash.”
If corporate America used to toss liberals some cultural wins here and there, instead of improving anyone’s material conditions, the ultra-wealthy are done bothering with that charade now.
There is no reason for America’s oligarchs to hide anymore, no penalty to pay. What matters, financially-speaking, is getting close to Trump.
We are turning into post Soviet Russia. I wonder if it is going to be possible to fight this? We can only hope.
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Every day I wonder why any American would support Donald Trump. His first term as “president” was a disaster. Among other horrors, he mismanaged the Covid-19 pandemic and allowed hundreds of thousands of our citizens to die unnecessarily. He alienated our allies and sucked up to Vladimir Putin and other dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi jinping, and Turkey’s Tayip Erdogan. He frequently demonstrated his lack of respect for members of our military who risk their lives to protect their country. And of course he brazenly committed numerous crimes as “president.” How can anyone vote for this man for any public office?
Yesterday Trump once again demonstrated his contempt for U.S. military members who sacrificed their lives in service to their country.
Two members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official at Arlington National Cemetery, where the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony, NPR has learned.
A source with knowledge of the incident said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent U.S. casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members would be authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60.
When the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering Section 60, campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside, according to the source.
Trump participated in an event to mark the third anniversary of a deadly attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan as U.S. forces withdrew from the country; 13 U.S. service members were killed in the attack. The Trump campaign has blamed President Biden and Vice President Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, for the chaotic withdrawal.
In a statement to NPR, Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s spokesman, strongly rejected the notion of a physical altercation, adding: “We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung said in the statement.
A “mental health issue?” Why on earth was Trump participating in this event? He doesn’t hold any federal office. Apparently some relatives of fallen soldiers invited him.
Officials at Arlington national cemetery have filed a report over the behavior of members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff who reportedly shoved and verbally abused an employee during a “crass” photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.
The officials confirmed that a confrontation took place at the Virginia cemetery on Monday after the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US servicemen and -women killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.
In a statement, Arlington acknowledged one of its representatives became involved in the altercation with two Trump staffers, telling them that only cemetery representatives were allowed to take video and photographs in Section 60, an area where recent US casualties mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried….
The staffers “verbally abused and pushed the official aside” as the person attempted to prevent them accompanying Trump into the section, according to NPR, which first published the allegation on Tuesday night.
Following the wreath-laying, photographs from his visit showed Trump grinning and flashing a thumbs-up sign as he stood at the graves of several of the fallen military members, imagery that drew swift rebuke.
“The hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery are the final resting place of our American heroes. Trump defiled Arlington National Cemetery by doing a crass campaign stunt over the grave of a dead hero. And his campaign staff acted like bullies,” the Democratic California congressman Ted Lieu posted to X.
Trump couldn’t care less about the men and women buried in Arlington Cemetery.
In other news from yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment of Trump in the January 6 case in the DC Circuit. As Andrew Weissmann pointed out last night on MSNBC, Trump has now been criminally indicted by 5 grand juries.
Special counsel Jack Smith Tuesday announced that a grand jury had reindicted former President Donald Trump on four charges related to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt to honor the direction given by the U.S. Supreme Court in its July ruling holding that Trump was immune from criminal prosecution for “official acts.”
“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment,” Smith wrote in a separate filing to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is handling the case. “The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings.”
Trump’s first public reaction to the new indictment was to repost a message on Truth Social by Mike Davis, a former Senate lawyer who supports him, that ends with: “Bottom Line: There’s no chance this case goes to trial before the election. Trump wins. Jack Smith fired. Case closed.”
About an hour later, Trump personally responded with a five-post screed on his social media platform in which he called Smith “deranged” and claimed, without any evidence, that the prosecution was being directed by President Joe Biden’s White House. He also repeated his lie that Democrats had cheated to win the 2020 election.
He ended with: “PERSECUTION OF A POLITICAL OPPONENT!”
More on the indictment:
The “superseding” indictment, as it is known, charges Trump with the same four counts as in the original indictment that was filed a year ago: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to deprive millions of Americans of their right to have their votes counted.
It follows the same narrative structure, laying out how Trump spent months after losing his 2020 reelection bid laying the groundwork for the violent assault on the Capitol by his mob of followers.
“Despite having lost, the defendant ― who was also the incumbent president ― was determined to remain in power,” Smith wrote. “So, for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election [that] he had actually won. These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false.”
But Smith’s new indictment does not reference Trump’s efforts to enlist federal government employees in the executive branch — who all technically report to him. For instance, the original indictment had mentioned a Department of Justice official whom Trump considered making his attorney general because of his willingness to tell state officials that voter fraud had occurred. The new indictment does not include the official as a co-conspirator, but does still include the other five individuals who were not in government.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump had immunity from prosecution for “official” acts, and specifically cited the ability to hire and fire executive branch employees to carry out his wishes.
The revised indictment, now at 36 pages compared to the 45-page original, still centers on Trump’s scheme to have allies in key states won by Biden create fake Electoral College slates and send them to the Senate. The plan was for then-Vice President Mike Pence to use the fake Trump slates instead of the legitimate slates for Democrat Joe Biden and declare Trump the winner.
Special counsel Jack Smith defiantly re-injected the question of Donald Trump’s bid to steal the 2020 election into the intensifying end game of this year’s White House race.
By trying to rescue his case after his initial indictment was gutted by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, Smith signaled that he is determined to bring the former president to justice — even though there will be no trial before Election Day.
“I think this is basically Jack Smith saying, ‘I still got this’” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a CNN legal and national security commentator, said after the special counsel on Tuesday filed a modified indictment endorsed by a new grand jury.
His move underscored the huge personal investment Trump has in winning the presidency in November: He not only would return to the nation’s top office, but would also gain the authority to halt this and another federal case against him and head off any sentences that could include jail time if he is convicted.
“This is a very big year, it is a very important election,” former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori told CNN’s Alex Marquardt on Tuesday. “This case is at stake in the election, because if Trump wins, it is going away. If Trump loses to Harris, this case is going to proceed to some sort of conclusion.”
The conservative majority’s ruling earlier this summer that Trump could be covered by immunity from criminal prosecution for some of his actions as president represented one of the most consequential moments in Supreme Court history and has massive implications for the US system of government. Many mainstream scholars blasted the decision as contrary to the spirit of the country’s founders in that it appeared to hand significant unchecked powers to the presidency.
The decision also sent shockwaves through an already tumultuous presidential race, since it appeared to offer an ex-president who already believed he was all powerful the chance to pursue strongman rule if he wins November’s election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris criticized the decision in her convention speech last week: “Consider, the power he will have … Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States.”
Smith’s move also creates other profound political, legal, and constitutional overtones at a critical national moment, 10 weeks from an election that could profoundly reshape the country and that may again test its institutions to the limit.
In this Xitter thread, I went through everything that had been added or removed from the superseding indictment against Trump, based on this redline. The changes include the following:
Removal of everything having to do with Jeffrey Clark
Removal of everything describing government officials telling Trump he was nuts (such as Bill Barr explaining that he had lost Michigan in Kent County, not Wayne, where he was complaining)
Removal of things (including Tweets and Trump’s failure to do anything as the Capitol was attacked) that took place in the Oval Office
Addition of language clarifying that all the remaining co-conspirators (Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and — probably — Boris Epshteyn) were private lawyers, not government lawyers
Tweaked descriptions of Trump and Mike Pence to emphasize they were candidates who happened to be the incumbent
New language about the treatment of the electoral certificates
The logic of Blassingame is why Jack Smith included these paragraphs describing that Trump and Pence were acting as candidates.
1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was a candidate for President of the United States in 2020. He lost the 2020 presidential election.
[snip]
5. In furtherance of these conspiracies, the Defendant tried–but failed–to enlist the Vice President, who was also the Defendant’s running mate and, by virtue of the Constitution, the President of the Senate, who plays a ceremonial role in the January 6 certification proceeding.
As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not clear that adopting the Blassingame rubric will work for SCOTUS, even though they did nothing to contest this rubric.
That’s because Chief Justice Roberts used Pence’s role as President of the Senate to deem his role in certification an official responsibility, thereby deeming Trump’s pressure of Pence an official act. Smith will need to rebut the presumption of immunity but also argue that using these conversations between Trump and Pence will not chill the President’s authority.
Read the rest at Emptywheel.
Another big story from yesterday: New video came out about Nancy Pelosi’s role on January 6.
Nancy Pelosi spent the duration of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack focused on ensuring Joe Biden would be certified president as soon as possible. Then she turned her attention to Donald Trump.
“I just feel sick about what he did to the Capitol and the country today,” Pelosi said as she slumped, visibly exhausted, in the back of her SUV in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 7. “He’s got to pay a price for that.”
Pelosi’s comment was included in about 50 minutes of unaired footage captured by her daughter, filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, who was at the former speaker’s side at key moments on Jan. 5, 6 and 7 in 2021. POLITICO has reviewed the footage, which HBO turned over this week to the Republican-led House Committee on Administration.
Pelosi’s office on January 6
The panel is conducting an investigation aimed at undermining the findings of the Jan. 6 select committee, which found Trump singularly responsible for the havoc his supporters unleashed on the Capitol, and spotlighting the security failures that exacerbated the violence. The panel has reviewed video from various sources, including security footage and the clips from HBO.
It’s the most detailed glimpse yet of Pelosi’s rushed evacuation from the Capitol, showcasing her deep discomfort at being forced to flee from the rioters — who she feared would see the evacuation as a twisted victory — and her insistence that Congress return to finish certifying the election. It also showed how her focus quickly shifted to impeaching Trump for a second time, an effort that was ultimately successful, as well as preparing to fire Capitol security officials who she believed mismanaged the threats to the building….
As she moved, Pelosi immediately inquired as to whether then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had approved a request for the National Guard. Her chief of staff, Terri McCullough, responded that he had. Moments later, a security official at Pelosi’s side informed her the pro-Trump mob had “already breached the Capitol.”
At first, Pelosi scolded security officials for forcing her evacuation. “I did not appreciate this,” she said. “I do not support this.”
“If they stop the proceedings, they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the presidency of the United States,” she added. Pelosi then lit into Capitol security officials for failing to anticipate the attack.
“How many times did the members ask, ‘Are we prepared? Are we prepared?’ We’re not prepared for the worst,” Pelosi continued. “We’re calling the National Guard, now? It should’ve been here to start out. I just don’t understand it. Why do we empower people this way by not being ready?”
Of course we now know that Trump loyalists prevented the National Guard from being deployed for several hours. There’s much more at the link.
Hours after a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and assaulted dozens of police officers in an attempt to reach members of Congress, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then the House speaker, referred to the then-president as “a domestic enemy.”
The comments came in video shot by documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, Pelosi’s daughter, that HBO recently turned over to Congress. NBC News on Tuesday reviewed more than 30 minutes of video from the roughly 48 hours surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, including video that showed Pelosi being led away from the building by her security detail as she pressed her staff members to get the National Guard to respond to the Capitol.
The newly surfaced remarks go further than the public ones she made on Jan. 7, when she said Trump had “incited an armed insurrection against America” and “instigated” an attack that would “forever stain our nation’s history.”
“We take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she said. “There is a domestic enemy in the White House. And let’s not mince words about this.”
The previously unaired video also shows Pelosi taking responsibility for not pressing law enforcement officials harder about their preparations ahead of the attack.
“Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi asked. “They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepared for more,” she said as she was being escorted away by security on Jan. 6. “It’s stupid that we should be in a situation like this.”
Pelosi would not have had independent authority to summon the National Guard, and the Capitol Police Board is in charge of security for the U.S. Capitol. The head of the Capitol Police resigned shortly after the riot, as did the House sergeant-at-arms, and the video shows Pelosi in discussions with her staff about getting resignations from both officials.
“They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? What is it that is missing here in terms of anticipation?” she added….
The comments also indicate that Pelosi was skeptical about the motivations of the law enforcement community, which is generally conservative-leaning. (A high-ranking FBI official, for example, was warned in the hours after the attack that many within the bureau were “sympathetic” to the Capitol rioters.)
“Shame on us,” Pelosi said as her security unit whisked her off to nearby Fort McNair, where several congressional leaders ended up on the night of Jan. 6 when the facility turned into a command center for those in the order of presidential succession. “Shame on us. I’m suspicious of them and their motivations, tell you the truth.”
That’s three big stories to chew on. What do you think?
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Remember when Fridays were always slow? Well, “Quoth the Raven nevermore.” I may have to resort to listing links. I’d like to start with the New York TimesObituary of Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who honorably served as the first woman on the Supreme Court. “Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93. During a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket — she was the most powerful woman in the country.” Her appointment was probably the only good thing Ronald Reagan did during his 8 years of damaging the U.S. economy, among many other things. She struggled with dementia in her final years.
Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.
That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. “Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,” she wrote in “The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice,” a collection of her essays published in 2003.
When President Ronald Reagan named her to the Supreme Court in 1981 to fulfill a campaign promise to appoint the first female justice, she was a judge on a midlevel appeals court in Arizona, where she had long been active in Republican politics, though she had friends in both parties. Fifty-one years old at the time of her nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. As the court moved to the right during that period, her moderate conservatism made her look in the end like a relative liberal.
“Liberal” was undoubtedly not her self-image, but as the court’s rightward shift accelerated after her retirement — her successor, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was notably more conservative — she lamented publicly that some of her majority opinions were being “dismantled.”
Donald Trump can be held civilly liable for the actions of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an appeals court ruled Friday in a long-awaited decision that could clear the way for lawsuits seeking financial damages from the former president.
The unanimous decision by a federal appeals court in Washington is expected to be appealed and also offers insight into how the court could view Trump’s argument that presidential immunity also protects him from being charged criminally for his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election.
“When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act,” Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote for the three-judge panel. “The Office of the Presidency as an institution is agnostic about who will occupy it next.”
Two U.S. Capitol police officers and about a dozen Democratic lawmakers sued Trump in 2021, saying he potentially instigated violence on Jan. 6 by telling supporters the election was stolen and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” James Blassingame, one of the police plaintiffs, said in a statement. “I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the decision “limited, narrow, and procedural,” adding that “the facts fully show that on January 6 President Trump was acting on behalf of the American people, carrying out his duties as President of the United States.”
How can Steven Cheung say these things with a straight face?
So, 100 Republican Congress critters joined all but one Democratic Senators to expel George Santos from Congress. This is breaking news from NBC News. “House votes to expel indicted Rep. George Santos from Congress. The New York Republican is now just the third lawmaker since the Civil War to be expelled from the House of Representatives.”
The House voted overwhelmingly to expel indicted Rep. George Santos on Friday, pulling the curtain down on a tempestuous term in office that was marred by revelations that he’d fabricated parts of his resume, a scathing House ethics investigation and a 23-count federal indictment charging him with crimes such as wire fraud and money laundering.
The vote was 311-114, with two voting present. Santos had already put his winter jacket on, left the chamber and sped through the speaker’s lobby before the vote total was announced.
“It’s over,” Santos said before heading to his vehicle outside the Capitol.
“They just set a new, dangerous precedent for themselves,” he added, noting that he’s the first House member in modern history to be expelled before a federal conviction.
Santos, R-N.Y., had survived two previous attempts to expel him this year — one in May and the other a month ago.
But he began losing significant support just before Thanksgiving after the bipartisan House Ethics Committee issued a damning 56-page report detailing allegations that he had deceived his donors, filed false campaign statements and used campaign money to fund his lavish lifestyle.
Among the things he spent campaign funds on were rent, luxury designer goods, personal trips to Las Vegas and the Hamptons, cosmetic treatments, including Botox, and a subscription to the adult-content site OnlyFans, the report said.
Earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said his leadership team wouldn’t whip the vote one way or the other, instead allowing members to “vote their conscience.” But moments before the vote, he, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, one by one, announced their opposition to removing the freshman fabulist.
Johnson had previously signaled he would oppose expulsion, saying: “I personally have real reservations about things. I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set.”
Why the hell did these 2 democrats vote against expelling George what's his name? pic.twitter.com/Skbe8nHDsv
— Jessica M. MSN, FNP-C, ACNP, CFNP (@Jessicam6946) December 1, 2023
Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) accused his now-former GOP colleague George Santos of stealing his and his mother’s personal credit card information to make illegal contributions to his campaign — the latest shocking allegation leveled against the indicted ex-New York House member who was expelled from Congress Friday.
“Late yesterday on the floor, I alluded to a personal impact of Rep. Santos’ conduct,” Miller wrote in a letter to colleagues Friday morning. “Earlier this year, I learned that the Santos campaign had charged my personal credit card — and the personal credit card of my mother — for contribution amounts that exceeded FEC limits. Neither my mother nor I approved these charges nor were aware of them. We have spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees in the resulting follow-up.”
The letter also alleges that Miller has seen a list of 400 people whom Santos tried to scam through his campaign. “I believe some other members of this conference might have had the same experience,” he added.
Miller’s note to colleagues follows remarks he made on the House floor Thursday directed at Santos: “You, sir, are a crook,” Miller said to him.
If he only would start saying that about Trump now.
As long as we inkled the dread, Sleazy Steve, here’s a headline about him. This is from Politico. “Steve Scalise reveals what’s really happened since McCarthy’s fall. The House Majority Leader illuminates what happened behind closed doors after Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as well as what to expect next on impeachment; why he will vote against expelling George Santos; and how Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to use immigration to tame hardliners when it comes to the spending showdown with Joe Biden.” This link goes to a 32 miute interview with David Duke without the baggage.
Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.
The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.
Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.
The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
JOHN DICKERSON: You say, Donald Trump, if he is re-elected, it will be the end of the Republic. What do you mean?
REP. LIZ CHENEY: He’s told us what he will do. It’s very easy to see the steps that he will take. … People who say, “Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,” don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted. … One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.
CHENEY: If you look
at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself. He has to have collaborators. And the story of Mike Johnson is a story of, of a collaborator and of someone who knew then – and knows now – that what he’s doing and saying is wrong, but he’s willing to do it in an effort to please Donald Trump. And that’s what makes it dangerous.
DICKERSON: The Speaker of the House is a collaborator to overthrow the last election?
CHENEY: Absolutely.
@repeat1968
She pulls no punches. Just one more and I will let you get on with your day. And, btw, Happy Birthday to BostonBoomer who is still in the hospital but much better! She’s will be going to rehab once she gets out of Covid Isolation.
Of all of the horrors coming out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, among the most horrible are the barbaric murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and kidnappings of women and young girls in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. And yet, deepening this distressing event, there has been a disheartening silence about, or worse, denial of these evils; reticence from the voices here at home in the U.S. who have, in the recent past, embraced other women who needed their support. Israeli and Jewish women find themselves isolated. For the past three decades, women have stood up for other women. When our sisters’ bodies and dignity were targeted and violated, women and allies of all ages and backgrounds organized, supported, and spoke out. Except somehow, not this time.
Since Oct. 7, there has been overwhelming evidence that Israeli women and young girls were not “just” slaughtered, but raped, assaulted, tortured, and kidnapped. This is not overstating things—from our work as prosecutors, lawyers, and feminists, we understand what it takes to build a solid criminal case for sexual assault. Here, there is voluminous evidence, more than what is typically available. While many victims cannot speak for themselves—they are either dead or being held hostage—survivor accounts and videos made by the perpetrators themselves speak for them.
Early on, Hamas circulated a video with the searing image of 19-year-old Naama Levy being dragged by her hair into the back of a truck by a group of men. Her pants were bloody. Slowly, the horror dawned upon us as we watched that she had been the victim of violent sexual assault.
A survivor recounted sexual violence she witnessed while hiding at the Nova rave. She said, “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that. They laughed.”
There is a huge list of these atrocities. Please read the article but it is triggering so tread carefully.
Come with me, and you’ll be in a land of pure imagination.” Gene Wilder’s 1971 Willy Wonka in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The big story today is that Trump actually has appointed a few “Trump” judges, and they’re willing and able to create laws and requests out of thin air. Judge Loose Cannon appears to be a wholly-owned subsidiary. This is not how a democracy works. No one is above the rule of law.
Judge Cannon even stated that Trump’s reputation is on the line. Who thinks he has a stellar reputation? Why is he more important than any other criminal? For example, none of his lawyers argued that any of the sensitive material might have been unclassified by Trump. Trump was interviewed conservative by commentator Hugh Hewitt and said he’d done the deed. This, however, is not the point. Unclassified or not, they don’t belong to him. Plus, the proper procedures and documentation to declassify documents were not done. This is truly an astounding moment in our republic.
From Jurassic World: Dr. Alan Grant: “It’s just the two Raptors, right? You’re sure the third one’s contained?” Dr. Ellie Sattler: “Yes, unless they figure out how to open doors.” Spoiler alert: They do.
On Thursday morning, Donald Trump did a phone interview with the radio host Hugh Hewitt, one of many conservative commentators who started out as harsh critics of Trump only to change their view of him once he came to power. Hewitt asked the former President, who was promoting a campaign rally this weekend for candidates he’s endorsed in Ohio, whether he feared being indicted by the Justice Department for bringing top-secret classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left office and refusing to return them.
Well, Trump responded, there was no reason for them to charge him, except “if they’re just sick and deranged, which is always possible.” When Hewitt helpfully reminded him that he had previously claimed to have verbally ordered all the documents at issue declassified, Trump agreed. “I have the absolute right to declassify,” the former President said. “Absolute.”
Then Hewitt asked the question that, nearly two years after Trump exited the White House, has, perhaps inevitably, come to dominate American politics since he became the first President in American history to refuse to accept his electoral defeat: “Will you run for President anyway, even if you’re indicted?”
Trump’s response left little doubt that the answer is yes, before he proceeded to issue the kind of threat that, had the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021—and all the rest—not happened, might have been dismissed as the idle but reckless bluster for which he has long been famous. “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it,” he said, of an indictment. Trump added, “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.”
Once again, Hewitt tried to play cleanup. “You know that the legacy media will say that you’re attempting to incite violence with that statement,” the host warned the former President. Seemingly unconcerned, Trump blithely repeated the threat. “That’s not inciting,” he insisted. “I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it.”
This remarkable exchange says pretty much everything you need to know about Donald Trump in 2022: he wants to run again for President, and he has little apparent hesitation about calling forth a mob all over again if that’s what it takes. The past, in other words, is prologue. With Trump, it always is.
“That’s Entertainment, Part II” stars Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, 1976
Follow the link to find out more about “Trump, the Sequel”. It ain’t entertainment. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discusses procedure for handling documents with Seth Meyers on “Late Night”. This HuffPo article has a link to the interview and some discussion and is written by Ron Dicker. “Hillary Clinton: Type Of Documents That Trump Had Are Often Handcuffed To An Officer. The former secretary of state detailed the strict protocol for the kind of classified material that Trump may have stashed at home”
Clinton told “Late Night” host Seth Meyers that when she read top-secret material, an officer “would come into my office and would have a handcuff that was attached to a suitcase in order to show me something that was so secret he literally had to have it tied to his hand.”
The officer would watch Clinton read it and sign that she had reviewed it, and then he would take it back, she recalled.
The idea that Trump reportedly squirreled away top-secret information on a foreign government’s nuclear capabilities and the like at a country club prompted Clinton to say: “I don’t care what political party you are. … This is a threat to our national security.”
Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump, harkened back to his supporters’ cries to “lock her up” for using a private email server to conduct government business. Clinton faced accusations that she was trying to conceal wrongdoing. (A State Department investigation of the emails determined in 2019 that “There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information,” The New York Times reported.)
“Unlike those guys, I’m not saying ‘lock him up,’” Clinton said of Trump and his supporters. “I’m saying let’s just find the facts and follow the evidence wherever it goes.”
Peter Falk as Detective Columbo, 1968, “You try to contrive a perfect alibi, and it’s your perfect alibi that’s gonna hang ya.” …
One of the purposes of Biden’s Philadelphia attack on Trump’s faction within the Republican Party was surely to goad Trump. It worked.
Yesterday, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump addressed a rally supposedly in support of Republican candidates in the state: Mehmet Oz for the Senate; the January 6 apologist Doug Mastriano for governor. This was not Trump’s first 2022 rally speech. He spoke in Arizona in July. But this one was different: so extreme, strident, and ugly—and so obviously provoked by Biden’s speech that this was what led local news: “Donald Trump Blasts Philadelphia, President Biden During Rally for Doug Mastriano, Dr. Oz in Wilkes-Barre.”
Yes, you read that right: Campaigning in Pennsylvania, the ex-president denounced the state’s largest city. “I think Philadelphia was a great choice to make this speech of hatred and anger. [Biden’s] speech was hatred and anger,” Trump declared last night. “Last year, the city set an all-time murder record with 560 homicides, and it’s on track to shatter that record again in 2022. Numbers that nobody’s ever seen other than in some other Democrat-run cities.”
Trump spoke at length about the FBI search of his house for stolen government documents. He lashed out at the FBI, attacking the bureau and the Department of Justice as “vicious monsters.” He complained about the FBI searching his closets for stolen government documents, inadvertently reminding everyone that the FBI had actually found stolen government documents in his closet—and in his bathroom too. Trump called Biden an “enemy of the state.” He abused his party’s leader in the U.S. Senate as someone who “should be ashamed.” He claimed to have won the popular vote in the state of Pennsylvania, which, in fact, he lost by more than 80,000 votes.
The rally format allowed time for only brief remarks by the two candidates actually on the ballot, Oz and Mastriano. Its message was otherwise all Trump, Trump, Trump. A Republican vote is a Trump vote. A Republican vote is a vote to endorse lies about the 2020 presidential election.
It’s tempting to dismiss Mike Lindell as a silly sideshow. The MyPillow CEO has earned a reputation as a clownish figure in Donald Trump’s orbit, pushing strange conspiracy theories and making outlandish claims about the former president’s imminent reinstatement. In general, Lindell is more likely to generate eye-rolling than outrage.
But when it comes to the investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, there are serious questions about Lindell’s efforts that can’t be laughed off.
Indeed, let’s not forget that Trump welcomed the pillow guy into his political fold in the wake of Election Day 2020, and Lindell was seen at the White House after the Jan. 6 attack with a paper with the words “insurrection act” and “martial law if necessary” on it. When the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 subpoenaed Lindell’s records, no one was especially surprised.
As it turns out, congressional investigators aren’t the only ones interested in his perspective. The Associated Press reported overnight that Lindell claimed late yesterday that federal agents seized his cellphone.
Lindell was approached in the drive-thru of a Hardee’s fast-food restaurant in Mankato, Minnesota, by several FBI agents, he said on his podcast, “The Lindell Report.” The agents questioned him about Dominion Voting Systems, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and his connection to Doug Frank, an Ohio educator who claims voting machines have been manipulated, he said. The agents then told Lindell they had a warrant to seize his cellphone and ordered him to turn it over, he said. On a video version of his podcast, Lindell displayed a letter signed by an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado that said prosecutors were conducting an “official criminal investigation of a suspected felony” and noted the use of a federal grand jury.
Given the circumstances, I suppose some caution is in order. Lindell says all sorts of weird things, and as a rule, it’s best not to accept his assertions at face value.
That said, the FBI confirmed that it really did serve Lindell with a search warrant.
You really can’t make this up. But, sometimes, life unfolds like something you’d expect to see on a screen. Like how about a State Governor that rounds up a bunch of refugees in San Antonia, puts them on a chartered plane, stops in Miami to pick up some Fox News videographers, and dumps them, say in Martha’s Vineyard or downtown Chicago at night, or in front of the Vice President’s Home? Is this the new version of Beverly Hillbillies? And so old Ron, well he’s a millionaire, loaded up some migrants, and soon they’re in the air… Well, the saga continues on this one, and happily so for those that landed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boomer wrote yesterday about how the folks in the vineyards stepped up to make these folks feel better after the lies and trafficking.
Sorry, but shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard is brilliant — a political masterstroke, an epic troll, and, above all hilarious.
You can tell because of the reaction on the right: a cascade of LOLS and triggering-the-libs-huzzahs as Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis stick it to the hypocritical Blue State elites. Donald Trump may have come down a golden escalator to denounce Mexican rapists, but these guys are actually putting them on buses and sending them to Chicago.
And, sending a busload of migrants to Vice President’s Kamala Harris’s residence is … I’m sorry, but right-wing Twitter needs to catch its breath, it’s laughing so hard. Delaware — Joe Biden’s home state — is next!
Even the respectable cons at Commentary think it’s a “political coup.” Anti-Trump conservative Matt Lewis has also come around. “Blue states are finally getting a taste of what red border states have to deal with every day.”
In DeSantis’s case, he’s using Florida tax dollars to fly Venezuelan refugees fleeing communism from Texas to Massachusetts (which has a Republican governor). But don’t get hung up on the details, because this is priceless political theater that supremely owns the libs, whose tears are the sweet, sweet aphrodisiac for the base.
The cruelty is, of course, simply a bonus. And the “narrative” is more important than cuckish concerns about… morality.
Let’s stipulate of couple of things. First: there is a real problem at the border, and there’s a legitimate debate over how migrants should be handled and who should share the burden.
Abbott and DeSantis have every right to raise questions about border policies; they can make speeches, hold press conferences, run ads, raise money off anti-immigrant outrage, and even stage political events to highlight their positions.
And there is nothing inherently awful about political stunts, especially in our media-besotted political environment.
But this one is different, because they chose to use people — including vulnerable children — as their pawns and props.
On Friday morning, the dozens of migrants who landed on Martha’s Vineyard this week filed out of the church they’d been sleeping in for two nights to hugs from the local volunteers.
They now had full bags and new cellphones. As they boarded the three white buses that would take them to the ferry, many cried. Eliomar Aguero, 30, put up a peace sign, smiling and thanking the dozens of volunteers waving him on. “Thank you all,” Aguero said in Spanish.
Soon, he and his wife, Maria, would board a ferry. Massachusetts authorities announced Friday that the 50 migrants would be moved from Martha’s Vineyard to a military base in Cape Cod so they can find shelter and chart next steps. The move is voluntary for the migrants, the state said.
Gov. Charlie Baker (R) said the migrants will be offered “shelter and humanitarian supports” in dormitory-style rooms at Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne. State and local officials will also ensure migrants have food, shelter and other services. Baker said he plans to activate up to 125 members of the Massachusetts National Guard to aid in the relief effort.
Hopefully, they will soon say, “There’s no place like home.” If there is anything like karma, justice, or whatever, someone will soon drop a house on Ron Desantis and throw a bucket of water on Greg Abbot.
Well, that’s it for me today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
“Wanna change the world? There’s nothing to it” Willy Wonka
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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.
Every sucker that voted for this man needs a good thwap upside their head. This 
This headline is from the
This guest essay in the 
Read more. I’ve gifted the link. #FARTUS thinks he’s above the law and also thinks the U.S. Treasury and Laws are his to toy with. 
Among the crooks waiting for compensation are Michael Cohen, Enrique Tarrio, Brandon Fellows, Michael Caputo, and 
“This is a very big year, it is a very important election,” former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori told CNN’s Alex Marquardt on Tuesday. “This case is at stake in the election, because if Trump wins, it is going away. If Trump loses to Harris, this case is going to proceed to some sort of conclusion.”
The newly surfaced remarks go further than 
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There’s some terrific news coming out of the courts reviewing Trump’s involvement in the January 6th insurrection riots. 
How can Steven Cheung say these things with a straight face?
Georgie Porgie just sounds like the nicest guy. 
I heard this on MSNBC last night and immediately thought that a lot of Israeli anger should be aimed at BiBi. It sounds just like Dubya ignoring warnings about what turned in 9-11 giving him the opportunity entangle us in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is from the New York Times. 
Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s book is getting lots of attention. She will be interviewed by Rachel Maddow on Monday. Excerpts are popping everywhere. 
You really can’t make this up. But, sometimes, life unfolds like something you’d expect to see on a screen. Like how about a State Governor that rounds up a bunch of refugees in San Antonia, puts them on a chartered plane, stops in Miami to pick up some Fox News videographers, and dumps them, say in Martha’s Vineyard or downtown Chicago at night, or in front of the Vice President’s Home? Is this the new version of Beverly Hillbillies? And so old Ron, well he’s a millionaire, loaded up some migrants, and soon they’re in the air… Well, the saga continues on this one, and happily so for those that landed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boomer wrote yesterday about how the folks in the vineyards stepped up to make these folks feel better after the lies and trafficking.
The Venezuelan immigrants sent by DeSantis are on their way to the Cape today to be handled the way immigrant families should be handled. They will be temporarily housed at Joint Base Cape Cod before being relocated to places where they can apply for asylum and start anew. 
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