Finally Friday Reads: Escaping Today and 20 years Ago
Posted: August 29, 2025 Filed under: "presidential immunity", #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, 2025 What Fresh Hell?, American Fascists, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Constitutional Crises, kakistocracy | Tags: #FARTUS Mafia State, 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, CDC massive firings, Occuping US Cities, Orange Caligula, Pocket Recission, RFK Jr Weirdo, Unconstitutional Trump Moves, Yam Tits 8 Comments
“How dare they!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m moving quite slowly today. I thought I had mentally prepared myself for the 20th Katrinaversary. Emotions have check-mated all that. I’m glad for the 4-day weekend because I need more solitude than usual. I evacuated with Miles, my cat, and my labs, Honey and Karma, to join the Grad students who were staying in a Lake Charles Motel. I had told them to evacuate even though my original plan was to stay. I grabbed the craziest things before heading out in the mighty mustang. The last thing I did was try to cover my grandmother’s Steinway parlor grand with an orange tarp. It took me all day, in mostly stopped traffic, to get to Lake Charles. I slept on a futon on the floor with two grad students. I drove to Dallas, where they could catch a plane and a bus to safety. I headed to Omaha, where my oldest daughter had just started Med School, and my youngest was finishing up high school. I really wanted to avoid talking about it today. But it is what it is.
My late friend Jane took me in, and I spent a lot of time glued to CNN reports. All I heard was the devastation in the Ninth Ward. They did not figure out that there were upper and lower 9. I finally saw my house on Google’s satellite. It was there, roof and all. When I got home and realized that buying a house on the “sliver by the river” was the best decision I ever made. I had minor wind damage and some damage caused by the neighbor’s roof hitting my house. When I was finally able to see the real damage up close, I developed survivor’s guilt as well as PTSD. I relive that annually. I’ve made my short trips to the Gulf Coast since then. Every time I drove to the lower 9 to show friends and family the devastation up and beyond Thanksgiving, they were still pulling bodies from buildings. Never forget the incompetence that let this happen and killed so many.
I never thought I’d see an administration as incompetent as Dubya Bush. But here we are. Let’s review today’s disaster. I planned to start with RFK Jr., but then Yam Tits did something astoundingly awful today. This is from Politico. “White House declares $4.9B in foreign aid unilaterally canceled in end-run around Congress’ funding power. The administration is setting up clash with Capitol Hill over its use of the “pocket rescission.”
President Donald Trump threw a grenade Friday into September government funding negotiations on Capitol Hill, declaring the unilateral power to cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid by using a so-called pocket rescission.
Escalating the administration’s assault on Congress’ funding prerogatives, the White House budget office announced Friday morning that Trump has canceled $4.9 billion through the gambit that Congress’ top watchdog and many lawmakers argue is an illegal end-run around their “power of the purse.”
The move to unilaterally nix money previously approved by Congress raises tensions on Capitol Hill as lawmakers face an Oct. 1 deadline to avoid a government shutdown, pitting Republicans at the White House against GOP lawmakers and increasing pressure on Democrats to force a funding lapse unless Trump stands down.
Democrats and Republicans alike have warned that a pocket rescissions request would hamper cross-party talks to avert a shutdown at the end of September, while fulfilling White House budget director Russ Vought’s wish that the process of funding the government be “less bipartisan” to accommodate a raft of conservative priorities.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hinted Friday that Democrats could refuse to offer the votes to get a government funding bill through the chamber before funding lapses late next month if congressional Republicans don’t push back against Trump’s latest funding move.
“Republicans don’t have to be a rubber stamp for this carnage,” Schumer said, adding that “if Republicans are insistent on going it alone, Democrats won’t be party to their destruction.”
Yet three congressional Republicans, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they expect Vought to send additional requests to revoke funding between now and the end of the current fiscal year, which would only inflame tensions.
“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” the Senate’s top Republican appropriator, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, said in a quick and clear rebuke of the Trump administration’s gambit.
But the Trump administration is embracing the strategy boldly and without apology, while also signaling it intends to stare down any legal challenges that may come its way as a result: “Congress can choose to vote to rescind or continue the funds — it doesn’t matter,” an official from the White House budget office said in a statement. “This approach is rare but not unprecedented.”
I’m seriously waiting for the Democratic Congress Leadership to respond to this. Talking Points Memo has that angle on this story. “Democrats Predict Shutdown After Trump Tries to Snatch Congress’ Most Important Power.” We’ll see. This is reported by Kate Riga.
Congressional Democrats point to skyrocketing odds of a government shutdown Friday after President Trump announced that he’ll unilaterally take back money Congress had already appropriated for foreign aid, according to multiple outlets.
“As the country stares down next month’s government funding deadline on September 30th, it is clear neither President Trump nor Congressional Republicans have any plan to avoid a painful and entirely unnecessary shutdown,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement.
The move forces members of Congress to confront a question that has lingered over the legislative branch all year: What is the point of the two parties negotiating a federal budget if the executive branch insists it has the power to unilaterally determine what funds get spent? In this case, the administration seeks to make use of a loophole it claims it has discovered to refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress.
The unprecedented gambit goes even further than what unfolded in July, when the White House sought to cancel money Congress had already approved. Then, at least, lawmakers voted on the rescission, which required only 50 votes and passed with only Republican support. This time, Trump isn’t bothering to get congressional Republicans’ sign-off. This new so-called pocket rescission totals $4.9 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the Senate’s head appropriator, said in a Friday statement. She pointed to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finding that pocket rescissions are illegal under the Impoundment Control Act, as well as Congress’ power of the purse. The GAO, an independent watchdog agency within the legislative branch, has repeatedly stated that pocket rescissions are illegal.
“Republicans should not accept Russ Vought’s brazen attempt to usurp their own power. No president has a line item veto — and certainly not a retroactive line item veto,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the head Democratic appropriator, said in a statement, calling it an “absurd, illegal ploy” to “steal” lawmakers’ congressional power.
Vought, the director of the OMB, has led the charge on pocket rescissions, telegraphing for months his intention to request the rescission once the clock wound down on the fiscal year. Under the administration’s untested theory of the case, the timing loophole lets the President zero out any already allocated funds he chooses.
“I refuse to label Vought’s gambit a ‘pocket rescission’ because it gives his unlawful attempt to steal the promises Congress enacted an air of legitimacy it does not deserve,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the head Democratic appropriator in the House, said in a Friday statement.
Experts are dubious that even this ultra-conservative Supreme Court will sign off on such a brazen defiance of the separation of powers, with one telling TPM he doubts the gambit will get “a single vote” from the justices.
The move also strips the minority of what little power it usually has to demand concessions in exchange for votes during the appropriations process.
Now, we may switch to the conspiracy theorist who runs Health and Human Services, and specifically the CDC. RFK Jr. is in a race with Yam Tits to win the crown for the most insane person in this regime. This analysis is from Don Monyihan’s Substack, Can We Still Govern? “RFK Jr. is bad for your health. Public servants are trying to warn us that state capacity is being undermined. The Centers for Disease Control shitshow is a microcosm of the mismanagement of the Trump era. It also demonstrated some extraordinary courage among principled public servants, who were willing to lose their jobs to draw attention to damage being done to public health.”
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vax crank. He should never have been confirmed to any sort of public health position. He lied to the Senate about how he would manage vaccines if confirmed, and most Republican Senators, including physician Dr. Bill Cassidy, chose to believe him and ignore his record.
While much of RFK Jr.’s work at HHS is meaningless photo-ops with food providers promising to remove food dyes here, or add beef tallow there, he has invested real effort in exactly the place his record suggested: targeting vaccines. He has fired all members of the CDC vaccine advisory committee, baselessly accusing them of conflicts-of-interest, and replacing them with fellow vaccine skeptics.
To be clear, this goes beyond Covid vaccines: childhood vaccines to stop the spread of preventable diseases are now in the crosshairs, even after Kennedy assured Senator Cassidy that they would not be touched. Kennedy has defunded research on mRNA vaccines, ensuring that the world will less ready for the next pandemic. He is encouraging states to weaken vaccine requirements.
On Monday, RFK Jr. told the CDC Director, Susan Monarez, in place for just over a month, to accept two conditions if she wanted to keep her job.
First, he wanted her public support for his policies to limit access to vaccines. Monarez is an infectious disease scientist who has served in government for a long time. In effect, RFK Jr. was asking that she lend her personal credibility as a scientist, and the credibility of CDC, to his anti-vax policies. She demurred, saying she needed to talk to senior staff at CDC.
Second, Kennedy ordered her to fire those staff. Since they are career civil servants, it would be illegal to fire them without cause, although this has become the norm now in the Trump administration. For example, career officials at FBI were fired for refusing to fire their fellow civil servants without cause.
Monarez refused both requests.
To be clear, RFK Jr. can implement these vaccine policies without the blessing of Monarez. What he wants is for public health officials to lie to the public. What he wants is to purge medical doctors and infectious disease researchers with decades of public health experience if they don’t go along with his woo-woo medical theories.
Elizabeth Cooney has this analysis at STAT. “Crisis within CDC is spilling into real world, experts say. From food safety to vaccine availability, loss of trust and talent threaten health: ‘We are in much worse shape’”
The implosion of leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention threatens the agency, its mission, and the trust people place in public health, medical experts told STAT Thursday, a day after Director Susan Monarez refused to dismiss top scientists only to be ousted herself.
The crisis in the agency, which has been battered by personnel and policy changes ordered by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is spilling into real-world harms, the experts said. They are seeing uncertainty from the public about vaccine recommendations and availability, in light of new Covid-19 vaccine policies announced by Kennedy, as well as deeper concerns about emergency preparedness for the inevitable next challenge to the nation’s health.
“I’m worried that CDC will not be there with the full capacity that’s necessary to help us with the next big threat,” Georges Benjamin, a physician and executive director of the American Public Health Association, told STAT. “But I’m also worried about the current threats that we have today.”
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that a statement from Monarez’s lawyers “made it clear she was not aligned with the president’s mission to make American health again,” so Kennedy asked for her resignation.
“The president and Secretary Kennedy are committed to restoring trust and transparency and credibility to the CDC by ensuring their leadership and their decisions are more public-facing, more accountable, strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect, and respond to future threats,” Leavitt said.
Budget cuts ordered by President Trump have steadily hammered at jobs and programs, in some cases erasing entire sectors of the agency’s public health activity. That list includes air quality as well as individual diseases like HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis. There has been an erosion of the study of gun violence.
In other news, we have some more craziness by the Orange Caligula. First, from the New York Times, this piece on the continuation of Trump’s resurrection of traitors of the Lost Cause. Greg Jaffee reports this. “Pentagon Is Reinstalling Portrait of Confederate General at West Point Library. The Pentagon is putting back up a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee at the military academy, as the Trump administration seeks to restore honors for American figures who fought to preserve slavery.” Trump still continues to argue that slavery wasn’t that bad.
The Pentagon is restoring a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee, which includes a slave guiding the Confederate general’s horse in the background, to the West Point library three years after a congressionally mandated commission ordered it removed, officials said.
The 20-foot-tall painting, which hung at the United States Military Academy for 70 years, was taken down in response to a 2020 law that stripped the names of Confederate leaders from military bases.
That legislation also created a commission to come up with new base names. In 2022, the commission ordered West Point to take down all displays that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.” A few weeks later, the portrait of General Lee with his slave in the background was placed in storage.
It was not clear how West Point could return General Lee’s portrait to the library without violating the law, which emerged from the protests that followed George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers in 2020.
This is from the AP. “Trump ends ex-Vice President Harris’ Secret Service protection early after Biden had extended it.”
President Donald Trump has revoked former Vice President Kamala Harris’ Secret Service protection that otherwise would have ended next summer, senior Trump administration officials said Friday.
Former vice presidents typically get federal government protection for six months after leaving office, while ex-presidents do so for life. But then-President Joe Biden quietly signed a directive, at Harris’ request, that had extended protection for her beyond the traditional six months, according to another person familiar with the matter. The people insisted on anonymity to discuss a matter not made public.
Trump, a Republican, defeated Harris, a Democrat, in the presidential election last year.
His move to drop Harris’ Secret Service protection comes as the former vice president, who became the Democratic nominee last summer after a chaotic series of events that led to Biden dropping out of the contest, is about to embark on a book tour for her memoir, titled “107 Days.” The tour has 15 stops, including visits abroad to London and Toronto. The book, which refers to the historically short length of her presidential campaign, will be released Sept. 23, and the tour begins the following day.
CBS News reports this headline. “Joni Ernst won’t seek reelection to Senate in 2026, sources say.”
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has told confidantes she plans to reveal next week that she won’t seek reelection in 2026, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.Ernst’s announcement is scheduled for Thursday, the sources said. Ernst, 55, has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015.
Spokespeople for Ernst did not reply to requests for comment.
Some Iowa Democrats have already jumped into the race, including state Sen. Zach Wahls, state Rep. Josh Turek, and Des Moines School Board chairwoman Jackie Norris.
Ernst has been evasive about whether she would run for a third term in 2026, but in public remarks earlier this month, predicted continued GOP control of Iowa.
This is from Zoe Schiffer writing at WIRED. “The White House Apparently Ordered Federal Workers to Roll Out Grok ‘ASAP’. A partnership between xAI and the US government fell apart earlier this summer. Then the White House apparently got involved, per documents obtained by WIRED.” You may remember this AI disaster went on full metal NAZI meltdown a few months ago.
The White House appears to have instructed leaders at the General Services Administration (GSA) to add xAI’s Grok chatbot to a list of approved vendors “ASAP,” according to an email sent by agency leadership earlier this week, which WIRED obtained.
“Team: Grok/xAI needs to go back on the schedule ASAP per the WH,” states the email, sent by Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service. “Can someone get with Carahsoft on this immediately and please confirm?” Carahsoft is a major government contractor that resells technology from third-party firms.
“Should be all of their products we had previously (3 & 4),” the email continued, seemingly referring to Grok 3 and Grok 4. The subject line of the email was “xAI add Grok-4.”
Sources say Carahsoft’s contract was modified to include xAI earlier this week. Grok 3 and Grok 4 both currently appear on GSA Advantage (an online marketplace for government agencies to buy products and services) as of Friday morning. Now, following some internal reviews, any government agency can roll Grok out to federal workers.
The White House and GSA did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
The email comes after a planned partnership with xAI fell apart earlier this summer following Grok’s widespread praise for Hitler and the spouting of other antisemitic beliefs on X, WIRED previously reported.
One last one as Yam Tits moves to take over more big American Cities beyond L.A. and the District. This is from Reuters and written by Tom Hals. ”
As President Donald Trump began his push to send the National Guard and Marines to U.S. cities, military leaders privately questioned whether the troops had received proper training and warned of the “far-reaching social, political and operational” risks of aiding law enforcement, according to a Reuters review of military records disclosed in court.
U.S. Army officials planning an operation in MacArthur Park during the June deployment in Los Angeles determined that using troops to protect agents carrying out Trump’s immigration crackdown posed an “extremely high” risk to civilians, troops and the military’s reputation, according to an internal document.
Officials warned that the operation could attract protests and spiral into a riot with potential for “miscommunication and fratricide” as well as accidental harm to civilians, including children, the operation planning document said.
The trove of internal military reports and messages, disclosed during a trial to resolve a lawsuit by California Governor Gavin Newsom, offers a rare inside look at concerns from commanders after Trump broke a long-standing tradition against using the military in support of domestic law enforcement over the objections of local officials.
Since deploying 4,000 National Guard and 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration arrests, Republican Trump has sent National Guard troops to Washington and is considering expanding the military presence in other Democratic-run cities.
To mitigate the risks of the Los Angeles deployment, military lawyers drafted rules for using force and de-escalation that troops could access on their phones and that warned of the high stakes of the deployment.
The very nature of domestic operations — American military forces operating in U.S. communities — has such significant implications that the mistakes of a few soldiers can have far-reaching social, political, and operational effects,” according to an undated document titled “Los Angeles Civil Unrest SRUF.” The acronym means Standing Rules for the Use of Force.
Louis Caldera, Army Secretary to Democratic former President Bill Clinton, said in an interview that deploying the military domestically threatens to put soldiers and civilians at risk, undermines recruitment and erodes public support.
Trump has broken a lot of norms,” said Caldera. “His predecessors would not use the military in this way.”
I hope you have a great Labor Day Weekend. I plan to stay away from the news and throw myself into movies, books, and games which reflect a reality different from the horrible one we find ourselves in now. Hang tough! The resistance is growing.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: Are we really even the United States Anymore?
Posted: August 25, 2025 Filed under: "presidential immunity", #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked, Agency Purges, American Fascists, cartoons, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Climate change, Crime, kakistocracy, Trump Krewe Crime and Punishment, tRump threat to society | Tags: 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Deportation and Concentration Camp Madness, FEMA, John Buss @repeat1968, Kilmer Albrego Garcia, Piedmont Grannies, Trump defies Court Orders, Trump Edicts, Trump Maoist 4 Comments
“Time seems to be running out.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I have to admit that watching TV News is about as bad as I remember it when I was a kid, and watching body counts in Vietnam and little children my age being fire-hosed somewhere down south with a name that I’ve forgotten now. Between that and listening to my family history, I suppose it was inevitable that I would grow up with a strong sense of justice.
Watergate was a difficult time, but I always felt that the Supreme Court and Congress would properly deal with it. I was thrilled by the local desegregation efforts forced by the courts. It didn’t impact my school district, but it impacted me the few years I taught high school for the city public schools prior to finishing my master’s with an eye towards my doctorate. I headed to Oklahoma to fight for the passage of the ERA when I was pregnant with my oldest. I’ve never stopped fighting. Positive change was slow as a turtle, but it came, even though many things, but the ERA still rattles around out there waiting for the light of day. I have and will never quit the fight for true social justice.
I don’t know about you, but I dread what will show up in the news the next morning. Cruelty and ignorance are the flavors of the day. It was only a matter of time before we saw a headline like this one from Newsweek. “Donald Trump Issues Order Defying Supreme Court Precedent.”
A new executive order signed by President Donald Trump Monday bans the burning of the American Flag, in direct opposition to a precedent set by the Supreme Court in the Texas v. Johnson case in 1989 deeming the action an act of “symbolic speech”
Trump recognized while signing the order that the action was protected by the court but said that burning the flag was an open door to violence.
“They burn the American flag,” he said, adding “They call it freedom of speech.”
“When you burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You can do other things. You can burn this piece of paper, you can and it’s but when you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before,” the Trump said.
The executive order would create a penalty of one year in jail, Trump said during the press conference in the Oval Office.
Evidently, burning the Constitution is acceptable. I can’t wait to see what the creepy, Christofascists that are the Republican Supreme Court Jurists have to say about that. I’m sure the Alitos and Thomases already have something disgusting in mind. Also, there is the sad news that Trump’s racism, xenophobia, ignorance, and cruelty have created an obsession with torturing Kilmar Ábrego Garcia and his family, once again. This is from The Guardian. It’s reported by Dharna Noor. “Kilmar Ábrego García detained after reporting to US immigration agents. Maryland man, back in the US after being wrongly deported to El Salvador, is threatened with deportation to Uganda.”
Kilmar Ábrego García – who has been thrust into the middle of an acrimonious deportation saga by the second Trump administration – has been detained after reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Baltimore on Monday, just three days after his release from criminal custody in Tennessee.
“The only reason he was taken into detention was to punish him,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney representing Ábrego, told a crowd of supporters outside a Baltimore ICE field office on Monday. “To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”
The attorney also said his client filed a new lawsuit on Monday morning challenging his potential deportation to Uganda and his current confinement.
Ábrego faces deportation to Uganda after recently declining an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.
“The fact that they are holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty for a crime is such clear evidence that they are weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
The lawsuit Ábrego filed early on Monday asks for an order “that he is not allowed to be removed from the United States unless and until he has had full due process”, said Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“The main issue, aside from the actual conditions in that country is – is that country actually going to let him stay there?” the attorney said. “They can offer to send him to Madrid, Spain, and unless Madrid, Spain, is going to let him remain in that country, essentially what it is – is a very inconvenient layover on the way to El Salvador, which is the one country that it has already determined that he cannot be sent to.”
The Costa Rican government has agreed to offer Ábrego refugee status if he is sent there, court filings from Saturday show. A judge in 2019 ruled that Ábrego cannot be deported to El Salvador.
Before walking into his appointment at the Baltimore Ice field office, Ábrego addressed a crowd of faith leaders, activists, and his family and legal team organized by the immigrant rights non-profit Casa de Maryland.
“My name is Kilmar Ábrego García, and I want you to remember this – remember that I am free and I was able to be reunited with my family,” he said through a translator, NBC News reported. “This was a miracle … I want to thank each and every one of you who marched, lift your voices, never stop praying and continue to fight in my name.”
After Ábrego entered the building, faith leaders and activists rallied to demand Ábrego’s freedom, chanting “Sí, se puede” (roughly “yes, we can”) and “we are Kilmar” as well as singing the hymn We Shall Not Be Moved with an activist choir.
“Laws have to be rooted in love, because love does not harm us,” a senior priest at Maryland’s St Matthew Episcopal church identified as Padre Vidal said through a translator.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is Set for Deportation After ICE Arrests Him.”
Indeed, nearly all of the reforms surrounding Due Process and access to the legal system seem destined to be attacked by Orange Caligula. This is from Reuters. It is definitely created to hinder the poor and people of color. “Trump signs orders aimed at ending cashless bail policies.”
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that seeks to end cashless bail by threatening to revoke federal funding for jurisdictions that use it, part of a White House effort to push crime fighting to the top of the national agenda.
Trump signed a separate order that instructs police in Washington, D.C. to charge suspects with federal crimes and hold them in federal custody to avoid cashless bail, according to a fact sheet seen by Reuters.
“Cashless bail, we’re ending it. But we’re starting by ending it in D.C. and that we have the right to do through federalization,” Trump said during a signing ceremony in the White House.
Trump has seized control of the police force in Washington and is allowing National Guard troops to carry weapons while on patrol in the city. He is also threatening to expand the U.S. military presence to Democratically-controlled cities like Baltimore and Chicago.
Critics have slammed the administration’s actions as unnecessary overreach.
The focus on crime is seen as a preview of how Trump and his fellow Republicans plan to use the issue as they seek to retain control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections next year.
Yes, I’m not fond of Joe Scarborough, but I am glad that he focused on the topic of violent crime and the really dangerous places. New Orleans has not seen this low level of shooting and violent crime in some time. This is true of most cities, including the ones where National Guard, like ours, are being sent to Blue Cities to hype a false narrative and scare people into not leaving their houses to do things like vote. The only exception in New Orleans is domestic violence. The rest are lower than the small rural towns of Louisiana, where gun violence is rampant. New Orleans shootings are comparable to what happened in the 1960s. The same cannot be said of Mike Johnson’s part of Louisiana. “Joe Scarborough Hammers ‘Red States’ as ‘Most Violent’: ‘Send’ National Guard to ‘Mike Johnson’s District’.” This is from Mediaite.
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough hammered “red states” as the “most violent” in his takedown of President Donald Trump’s suggestion on Friday he may send National Guard troops to Chicago and New York City, as he has in Washington, D.C., as part of a crackdown on crime.
The tirade came on Monday morning’s show just days after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson openly pushed back on the president’s deployment threat, adding he was exploring legal options to block any such move.
As the Morning Joe crew reflected on Trump’s idea, Scarborough unloaded on the decision, defending New York City in particular as “one of the safest large cities” while comparing murder statistics there and in Chicago to “much higher” per capita figures for cities located in “red states.”
You know, the thing about this is, of course, we’ve talked about Washington, D.C., it’s the nation’s capital, a federal government, Congress could get involved, work with the president, and, together, as we’ve been talking about for a long time, figure out how to partner with the city. And that hasn’t happened. And now we’re talking about Chicago. We’re talking about New York City. Neither one of those cities are in the top ten for most violent cities in America.
Rounding on the numbers, the host then took aim at House Speaker Mike Johnson’s own district:
And if you want to look per capita, they need to do no more than look to Mike Johnson’s home state, the Speaker of the House, and look at violence per capita. You have a much higher chance of dying in Monroe, Louisiana, than you do Chicago, Illinois. A much higher chance of dying in Shreveport, Louisiana, than you do in Monroe. A much higher chance of dying in New Orleans, Louisiana, than you do in New York City.
I mean, New York, that’s fabulously crazy. New York City continues to rank as one of the safest large cities in America. And I don’t know that there’s a close second.
So, there are all of these cities and towns in red state America. You could look at Little Rock, Arkansas, you could look at Monroe, Louisiana, you could look at Shreveport, Louisiana. You could look at New Orleans, Louisiana. You could look at Memphis, Tennessee. You could look at one Nashville, Tennessee. You can look at one red state after another – Bessemer, Alabama – and you will see violent crime rates much, much, much higher per capita than Chicago, Illinois, San Francisco.
Throwing up a tweet of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s criticism of the move, Scarborough read it aloud and continued:
The chance of having violent acts committed upon you in Mike Johnson’s Louisiana, in red state Louisiana, red state that Donald Trump carried and every Republican has carried since Bill Clinton, the chances of being murdered in Louisiana 400 times higher than in California.
Let me say that again. Let me underline that again: You have a 400% higher chance of being murdered in red state Louisiana, Mike Johnson’s home state, than you do on the left coast in Gavin Newsom’s California.
There is no emergency. There is no logic to Chicago, to San Francisco, if you’re looking at the numbers, if you’re looking at data, I don’t even think this Supreme Court can turn a blind eye to this. They just can’t because data is data. Numbers are numbers, and the numbers are clear. And the numbers don’t justify – no emergency!
The host began calling on Trump to send the troops “to red states where they need them” and listed out all the cities he’d flagged statistics for:
Send those troops to Shreveport, Louisiana. Send them to Mike Johnson’s district. Send them to Little Rock, Arkansas. Send them to Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. Send them to red states where they need them.
We have a huge Environmental Accident in Tangipoha Parish requiring evacuation and shutting down rivers, high violent crime in rural districts, and a looming Hurricane Season. Our National Guard will be worn out with all that marching around to deal with the state’s crises that are real.
We’ve finally got the EPA in charge. I was actually thinking they were probably weakened to the point of uselessness. It’s also in a very red parish that needs help. But I suppose our Guard is getting to know these cities so they can block their inner city voting locations later. We have a governor with a need to appease Yam Tits and a bunch of Swampbillies that love him. He’s already expanding his control over the District and labelling it a place with a “crime emergency.”
The White House continues its plot to erase American History. Of course, his entire administration is filled with ignoramuses. “JD Vance flunks the basics on World War II as the White House targets history museums. If anyone would benefit from some quality time at a history museum, it’s White House officials. Take Vance’s line on the end of World War II, for example.” This is from MSNBC.
Donald Trump’s offensive against the Smithsonian reached a dramatic new level last week, with a presidential declaration that the institution and its museums are “OUT OF CONTROL.” To help bolster his point, the president added that Smithsonian history museums focus on “how bad Slavery was.”
The White House confirmed soon after that, as part of Trump’s broader efforts, administration officials want to target other museums, too. “He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there,” a spokesperson told NBC News.
While the presidential campaign to control what Americans know and learn about history is clearly reflective of his authoritarian agenda, there’s also a degree of irony to the developments — because if anyone would benefit from some quality time at a history museum, it’s Trump and his team.
The president, for example, has talked about American forces having “manned the air” and taking over “the airports” during the Revolutionary War — despite the fact that airplanes didn’t exist at the time. He later said, “If you look at the end of the Civil War, the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. You take the end day, was it 1869? Or whatever.”
His vice president isn’t much better. HuffPost noted:
Vice President JD Vance fumbled some very textbook facts of world history while talking foreign policy on Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press.’ During the interview, the Yale Law School alum defended President Donald Trump’s decision to entertain Russia’s terms for a peace deal with Ukraine by claiming all wars end in compromise.
NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked the Ohio Republican an important question, “If Russia is allowed to keep any of the territory that it illegally seized, what message does that send to China? Does it give China a green light to invade Taiwan? Does it give Russia a green light to invade other European countries, which is what your European allies are concerned about?”
Instead of answering the question directly, Vance took issue with the premise.
“Kristen, this is how wars ultimately get settled,” he said. “If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.”
No. If one actually goes back and assesses every major conflict in human history, they mostly ended with one force either conquering or repelling a rival force.
Meanwhile, a follow-up on the argument that Trump’s a Marxist and Maoist. Proper Industrial Policy is helping the industry thrive, not shaking it down for money and gifts!
We’re coming on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (Katrinaversary). This is my statement on it.
Whenever I think of all this, it still brings me to tears. I was lucky to drive out of there with my 2 labs and my munchkin cat. I sat on my friend’s sofa in Omaha, stunned, speechless, helplessly watching the suffering and death, with perpetual tears. What recovery we were granted was imperfect and incomplete. We will never forget. I was glad to come back home, but the sadness of knowing so many were lost just never leaves me.
With all the people we lost, who suffered, whose homes and businesses were gone, I offer up this news from the good people of FEMA. This is from the Washington Post. As if George W Bush didn’t kill a lot of us with Heckuva Job Brownie, and all those deadly Middle East quagmire wars, Trump’s management is upping the likely death count. “FEMA staff warn that Trump officials’ actions risk a Katrina-level disaster. About 180 FEMA employees, many of them anonymous, signed a letter to Congress arguing that the agency leadership has hindered the ability to effectively manage emergencies.” This is reported by Briana Sacks.
More than 180 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees sent a letter Monday to members of Congress and other officials, arguing that the agency’s direction and current leaders’ inexperience harms the agency’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.
The letter, on which more than three dozen employees signed their full names, says that since January, staffers have been operating under leaders — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson and former leader Cameron Hamilton — who lack the legal qualifications and authority to manage FEMA’s operations. This has eroded and hindered the agency’s ability to effectively manage emergencies and other operations, including national security work, the letter says.
After Hurricane Katrina became one of the worst disasters in the nation’s history, in part because of failures of local, state, and federal governments, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act to give FEMA more power and responsibility. That hurricane made landfall in southeast Louisiana in August 2005, leading to at least 1,800 deaths and $100 billion in damage. The resulting legislation allowed FEMA to better prepare communities for and help them recover from disasters.
But the letter warns that the Trump administration is sending the agency and country back to a pre-Katrina era, by not having a Senate-confirmed and qualified emergency manger at the helm; by slashing mitigation, disaster recovery, training and community programs; and by thwarting officials’ ability to make decisions because of a restrictive new expense policy.
The letter demands that federal lawmakers defend FEMA from the Homeland Security Department interference, protect the agency’s employees from “politically motivated firings,” conduct more oversight, and ultimately take FEMA out of DHS and establish it as an independent Cabinet-level agency in the executive branch.
“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the employees wrote, adding that they are sounding the alarm “so that we can continue to lawfully uphold our individual oaths of office and serve our country as our mission dictates.”
If you want to know what Retired General Russell Honore, our Katrina Hero, has to say about all this, please follow him on his Facebook. He’s outspoken and frequently gives interviews. Here are his thoughts on NPR. “A retired general recalls Hurricane Katrina’s chaos and lessons still unlearned.”
“It broke my heart when I saw a lady with a toddler and a shopping basket pushing the baby in the water,” Honoré said in an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin. “The water was up to the baby’s chest and she was trying to get into the Superdome to save [the] baby and herself. And I said, ‘We’ve got to get these people out of here.'”
The Superdome was a last refuge for many. And as supplies ran low, it became a symbol of misery.
Before Katrina hit, forecasters warned of catastrophe if people failed to evacuate. But New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did not issue a mandatory order until Aug. 28, 2005.
Roughly 20% of the local population stayed behind, most of them being poor and elderly. “They want to stay because they know where the medicine is and many of them lived alone,”Honoré said. In some cases, the system failed them. “The city did send people to pick them up, but at that time, you couldn’t take an animal in an ambulance. And the elderly people said, ‘I’m not leaving if I can’t take my dog with me.'”
Since Hurricane Katrina, federal law has changed to include shelter for pets.
I would also like to remind you that, as we speak, the folks who helped us most to recover are the fearless and hard-working men who came here to work. They still work here, and we depend on them. My friend Anne Renee shared this with me. It’s from NOLA.COM. “They came to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina. Under Trump, ICE is trying to deport them. Advocates have identified numerous Katrina workers detained by ICE under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.”
“The cousins fled Guatemala’s rural highlands, seeking stability in the United States. They found it in a city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Arriving in New Orleans after the storm, Abner Uriel Gomez Velasquez and Ever Eliseo Velasquez Fuentes found jobs in the booming industry Spanish speakers came to call “reconstrucción” — the back-breaking work of ripping mold-infested flooring, sodden drywall and fried appliances from flooded homes, and then, eventually, rebuilding them.
“Many left,” said Giovanni Lopez, a U.S. citizen and 40-year New Orleanian, born in Guatemala, who attends church with one of the men at St. Anthony of Padua in Mid-City, a hub for local Hispanic families. “They were here. They entered those homes first.”
New Orleans remains their home nearly two decades later.
Now, both men are confined to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in north Louisiana, caught in President Donald Trump’s immigration dragnet.
Federal agents arrested the men, who have no criminal records, while they worked a construction job together near Lafayette on June 12 with two other St. Anthony parishioners, church leaders said. They are awaiting deportation at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, accused of entering the country illegally on their way to New Orleans after Katrina.
As the city girds for the landmark storm’s 20th anniversary this month, the arrests have highlighted immigrants’ foundational roles in rebuilding.
Demand for workers so outstripped supply after the storm that the Bush administration suspended rules requiring employers to verify workers’ immigration status. A 2006 survey of construction workers in the city found half were Hispanic, and half of those were here illegally. And New Orleans’ Latino population grew by 71%, to 103,000 residents, between 2000 and 2013, according to Census data.
A precise number of Katrina construction laborers who remain in New Orleans is difficult to tally. But under Trump, whose administration has often detained immigrants accused of no other wrongdoing, lawyers and advocates have identified numerous Katrina workers apprehended by ICE. They include a man deported to El Salvador following a May worksite raid at a marquee New Orleans anti-flooding project.
The White House’s immigration strategy has driven up deportations. Yet it has not been applied evenly: outcry from community members and Republican lawmakers has led some detainees to be released, while others remain in jail or face deportation. Supporters of Gomez Velasquez and Velasquez Fuentes have petitioned for a measure of that relief, citing their contributions to New Orleans in letters to their congressmen.
Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to multiple inquiries about Gomez Velasquez and Velasquez Fuentes’ cases.
The Trump administration has vigorously defended its agenda.
After the May New Orleans raid, an ICE spokesperson said the agency’s worksite enforcement aims to “deter employers who hire unauthorized workers,” and to “promote self-compliance in the business community.” The raids, they said, “protect employment opportunities for the nation’s workforce.”
A New Orleans story
The cousins each crossed the U.S. border with Mexico on their way north from homes in Guatemala’s verdant but impoverished San Marcos province. They entered “without inspection,” said Sue Weishar, a St. Anthony’s volunteer. Velasquez Fuentes came to New Orleans in 2006, and Gomez Velasquez followed in 2008.
They continued their construction careers — both became skilled caulkers — after the rebuild ended. They married. Gomez Velasquez met his wife Olivia in 2008 at a streetcar stop; Velasquez Fuentes met his wife Susana in 2016 in Metairie. They had children, all U.S. citizens.
And they deepened their faith. Gomez Velasquez leads a prayer group at St. Anthony, his home church. Velasquez Fuentes’ 16-year-old stepson was confirmed there.
Both men were unable to secure residency status because they did not qualify for many visa programs, such as those for relatives of adult citizens, people of certain professions and crime victims, church leaders said. They have not been accused of any other offenses.
“Our church recognizes that a country has the right to regulate its borders,” the Rev. Augustine J. DeArmond, St. Anthony’s pastor, wrote to the judge handling Gomez Velasquez’s case. “Our responsibility is also to act with justice and mercy.
On a recent Monday, about two dozen parishioners lined the church’s pews to pen letters calling for the men’s release. They asked the men’s families to describe how their detentions have upended their lives.
“I’ve never been separated from him for so long,” Axle, Gomez Velasquez’s 12-year-old son, said of his father as he fought back tears. “I miss him taking me to church and soccer. I want him to come home.”
I definitely have overdone it here. You may see so much American Spirit in so many. You may also assure yourself that we have the worst regime and the worst people ever in charge of it. Here are a few songs by us old, wrinkly hippies still protesting.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: Felon leaves jurisdiction
Posted: July 25, 2025 Filed under: #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, Alligator Alcatraz, Breaking News, kakistocracy, Trump is the new Saddam | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, FARTUS, Gislaine Maxwell, Jerome Powell, Scotland, South Park Sermon on the Mount 3 Comments
“There you have it, MAGA. Stinky has set the record straight. Move on from Epstein.” John Buss, @repeat1969
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This week’s adventures in Bad Presidenting contained some whoppers. First, a misfired gotcha at Fed Chair Jerome Powell over supposed overspending on construction work on buildings included costs of a building that was finished five years ago. I wonder which accounting genius was responsible for that. This is from CNBC. “Trump spars with Powell over renovation costs during Fed visit, but backs off firing threats.” This entire thing continues to tweak my economist mind. If the citizenry is complaining about inflation, why would you push a policy that would make it worse? Since Trump bulldozes historic buildings rather than handles restoring historic buildings in historic districts where materials used are either part of the restoration or replaced by materials that aren’t asbestos, he seemed destined to look stupid. Here’s Fortune‘s take. “Here’s how the Fed’s renovation budget ballooned to $2.5 billion.” The reporting is by Lily May Lazarus. Remember, the Fed cannot use shortcuts like not paying undocumented workers, or just destroying the historical edifice like Trump did with Fifth Avenue Landmark, the Bonwit Teller building. My house is in a historic district, and you have to have permission to change the edifice. In the French Quarter, you can’t even pick your own paint color, let alone mess with the building’s facade.
The Federal Reserve’s long-planned renovation of its Washington, D.C. headquarters has turned into a $2.5 billion political flashpoint. Initially estimated at $1.9 billion in 2021, the cost of overhauling the Fed’s historic Marriner S. Eccles Building and its adjacent Federal Reserve East Building has jumped by over 30%, drawing fire from President Donald Trump and his allies, and raising questions about fiscal oversight at the nation’s central bank.
The project, which began planning in 2017 and broke ground in 2022, aims to bring the aging buildings into compliance with modern safety and accessibility codes and add office space while preserving their historic architecture. But that effort has come with growing pains and costs.
Renovating the Fed was never going to be an easy task. In fact, Fed Chair Jerome Powell admitted the renovations would likely stoke controversy. “No one in office wants to do a major renovation of a historic building during their term in office,” he said in June. But Powell sees the project as necessary.
According to the Fed’s information page on the project, neither the Eccles Building nor the East Building has ever been fully renovated, despite having been built nearly a century ago, with some major mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems dating back to their construction and containing lead and asbestos.
The original budget underestimated several now-familiar forces: pandemic-era inflation, soaring construction costs, and unexpected infrastructure challenges. Prices for structural steel and other materials spiked in 2021 and 2022 as supply chains tightened and demand for large-scale projects rebounded. Labor shortages in the construction industry, namely mechanical, plumbing, and electrical trades, further drove up costs. These price inflationary factors were noted in the Fed board’s 2025 budget.
On-site, several environmental factors have also added to the renovation’s cost. Workers uncovered asbestos and several water-table issues resulting from the swampy DC soil. These complications added complexity and price costs, to excavation and foundation work—especially since strict D.C. building regulations cap building heights—forcing deeper builds underground. The difficult excavation work even earned the company working on the Fed’s foundation and underground aspects a 2025 award for “excellence in the face of adversity” from the Washington Building Congress.
And the best Trump could down was stick in the costs of a building finished five years ago to inflate the final costs. He was easily finished off by the Central Banker, who deals with far more sophisticated math than that. The visit was likely a distraction from the ongoing Epstein situation, from which he cannot extricate himself. That didn’t go as planned, as the release of a new South Park episode ate up the airwaves at the end of the week. I managed to find a place where I could watch it outside the graph of Paramount, which just got its wish to sell itself to Sky Dance. (No relationship to us and an insult of a name to dakinis on all planes of existence. “Sermon on the ’Mount” (South Park Season 27 Episode 1) is the funniest satire I’ve seen in years.
So, it couldn’t be better timing, but a terrible waste of funds to go bother Scotland, whose people hate Trump more than the Canadians. This is from the. New York Times. “Trump Flies to Scotland, Leaving Chaos Swirling in Washington. The five-day visit will be a mix of personal business and golf with some diplomacy thrown in.” What a brilliant waste of time. Plus, isn’t this all supposed to be in a government trust that he’s not supposed to involve himself in?
President Trump headed to Scotland on Friday for a five-day visit, hoping to leave behind the chaos of Washington and the persistent questions over the handling of the Epstein files for what will be a mix of personal business and diplomacy.
Mr. Trump will celebrate the opening of a new 18-hole course — the MacLeod Course — at Trump International Golf Links outside of Aberdeen, named after his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born in Scotland. He also plans to play rounds at the Trump Turnberry course, which Mr. Trump bought in 2014, on the other side of Scotland.
The president has some business on the agenda, as well. He plans to meet with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who has spent months nurturing his relationship with the American president.
Mr. Trump’s reception in Scotland may be rocky.
The Scots are generally not fans of Mr. Trump, and protests are already planned. A group called “Stop Trump Scotland” said it is organizing a “festival of resistance” against Mr. Trump during the trip and has called on John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, to decline to meet with him.
“The people of Scotland don’t want to roll out a welcome mat for Donald Trump, whose government is accelerating the spread of climate breakdown and fascism around the world,” the protest group said in a statement.
A survey in February by the research firm Ipsos found that 71 percent of those polled in Scotland had an unfavorable opinion of him, versus 57 percent of the broader British public.
The authorities said they were prepared for the demonstrations.
It’s all enough to make me do a Highland Fling in the middle of this wretched heat and humidity. I’ll just settle by singing Scotland the Brave. However, all the fun may be here as we look forward to the midterm elections. This is from AXIOS. “Scoop: DNC targets vulnerable House Republicans with Epstein ads.” The thing that still worries me the most is that the poor women who were the child victims of Epstein have to see all this.
The Democratic National Committee will target MAGA voters with ads about Jeffrey Epstein in a dozen GOP-held House districts at the start of the August recess, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Democrats, after suffering debilitating losses in 2024, have found their mojo in pushing for the release of the Epstein files.
- Democrats are pitting squeamish Republicans eager to move on from Epstein against MAGA voters who want validation of theories around the late financier’s sex trafficking operation, its clientele and his 2019 death, ruled a suicide.
Driving the news: The ads will run before videos on right-wing YouTube and Meta channels like those of Fox News, Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro – target-rich audiences for the voters fixated on Epstein.
- “Call your representative. Demand they release the Epstein files,” says the ad, while hitting House Republicans for going on August recess without having cast a floor vote to release more Epstein details.
- One video ad features Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) deeming Epstein a “serious issue.” Another includes video of President Trump with Epstein. It’s long been known that Trump knew Epstein, and the president has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to his operation.
The ad will run for five days, starting Friday, in the districts of 11 Republicans the DNC says are vulnerable in the 2026 midterms:
- Reps. Tom Barrett (Mich.) Gabe Evans (Colo.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Ashley Hinson (Iowa), Young Kim (Calif.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Zach Nunn (Iowa), Andy Ogles (Tenn.), Chip Roy (Texas), Bryan Steil (Wisc.) and Derrick Van Orden (Wisc.).
- It’s also running in Rep. Virginia Foxx’s (N.C.) district. Foxx is not viewed as particularly vulnerable, but she chairs the powerful Rules Committee, which determines what legislation receives votes on the House floor.
What they’re saying: The DNC is seeking to reach up to a million Americans with the five-figure ad campaign.
It’s times like these when I’m glad my new TV is going on its third year in the box it came in. ProPublica has uncovered an American Scrooge. “His Former Company Got Caught Employing Undocumented Workers. Now He’s Profiting Off an Immigrant Detention Camp. Disaster Management Group is one contractor behind the nation’s largest detention camp, to be built at Fort Bliss. It’s run by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty to a scheme to hire and conceal undocumented workers. ” Isn’t this what America is all about these days?
On Monday, the Department of Defense announced that it had awarded a massive new contract to build the nation’s largest migrant detention camp on the Fort Bliss military base, a facility that will play a key role in the Trump administration’s deportation plans.
Unmentioned was that one of the subcontractors slated to work on the project, Disaster Management Group, is owned by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty in 2019 to a scheme to hire undocumented workers and conceal them from immigration authorities. Albers is a big-time Republican donor who has spent time at Mar-a-Lago.
Two people with direct knowledge of the award and two familiar with the company told ProPublica that Disaster Management Group would help build the new facility, receiving a substantial chunk of the more than $1.2 billion the government has allocated for the project.
“The idea that you could use illegal labor and then sell services to ICE, the irony is thick,” said Scott Shuchart, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Donald Trump’s first term and later under President Joe Biden, referring to the immigration case involving TentLogix, the company Albers once co-owned.
In response to questions from ProPublica, a spokesperson for Disaster Management said that Albers and Disaster Management had been dropped from the DHS’ investigation of TentLogix and exonerated. Upon learning of illegal actions by TentLogix’s co-founder, the spokesperson said, “Mr. Albers parted ways as a minority and non-operating owner of TentLogix.”
The spokesperson didn’t directly answer questions about Disaster Management’s role in the detention camp at Fort Bliss, saying only that the company “is proud to support projects of national importance for nearly 20 years.”
The White House didn’t answer questions about Disaster Management or Albers, referring ProPublica to the DOD and DHS, neither of which provided comment.
The new migrant detention camp near El Paso, Texas, is expected to hold up to 5,000 people. The prime contractor is Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics, and people with direct knowledge of the work at Fort Bliss told ProPublica that Amentum, a major engineering and technology services contractor, will be another subcontractor.
Neither Acquisition Logistics nor Amentum replied to questions from ProPublica about the project.
Disaster Management specializes in building temporary structures. Since 2020, it’s won over $500 million in government contracting work, mostly to construct lodgings for a U.S. program to resettle Afghan refugees.
We’re getting details about the last Trump exchange of prisoners, and it’s about par for the course for Trump to have a murderer sent back to us. This is from the New York Times. “Convicted Murderer Released by Trump From Venezuelan Prison Is Free in U.S. At least some American officials knew that Dahud Hanid Ortiz had been convicted of a triple murder when he was put on the plane to the United States.” Well, isn’t that special?
He killed three people in Spain and fled to Venezuela, where he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, court documents show. Then last week, the Trump administration negotiated his release as part of a large prisoner swap, and he arrived on American soil.
Now, the convict, Dahud Hanid Ortiz, 54, a U.S. Army veteran, is free in the United States, according to two people with knowledge of the case. One said he was in Orlando, Fla.
When the Americans put Mr. Hanid Ortiz on a plane on Friday back to the United States, at least some people in the Trump administration knew of his criminal past, according to a third person.
Mr. Hanid Ortiz was among 10 Americans and U.S. legal permanent residents extracted by the United States from detention in Venezuela on Friday. In exchange, the United States agreed to allow the release of 252 Venezuelan men it had sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
The Trump administration claimed all the men were members of the Tren de Aragua gang and had to be removed to protect the security of Americans.
Trump’s homegrown murderers and rapists get deals. This brings me to Gislaine Maxwell, who is suddenly getting a lot of visitors looking for something or another. This is from NBC News. It’s just breaking and is reported by Chloe Atkins and Dareh Gregorian. “DOJ’s Maxwell questioning done for the day, her attorney says.” Do you suppose it was a merry meet?
Maxwell attorney David Oscar Markus said the deputy attorney general has finished his questioning of Maxwell for the day.
“We started this morning right around 9 o’clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we’re finished after all day, yesterday and today, Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question,” Markus said.
“They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything,” Markus said.
It was unclear whether Blanche intends to question her further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case.
“We don’t know how it’s going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she’s ever been given to answer questions about what happened and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr. Epstein, and she’s the person who’s answering those questions,” he said.
Prosecutors and the judge who oversaw her 2021 trial have said that Maxwell had made multiple false statements under oath and failed to take responsibility for her actions. She’s serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted of sex trafficking minors.
“People have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong,” Markus said.
Asked if she’d got any offer of clemency from the government, the lawyer said no offer had been made.
What exactly has happened to our country in the last few months? I don’t recall any of this stuff being something that would be normalized by even Richard Nixon. I know it could’ve been different.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
This is artist Amy Sherald’s take on the Statue of Liberty. You may remember she did the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama. She quit a big show over the possible censorship of this painting. It’s a Trans Woman.
Finally Friday Reads: Chicks coming Home to Roost
Posted: July 18, 2025 Filed under: #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, 2025 What Fresh Hell?, Abusive Relationships, child sexual abuse, impeach trump, kakistocracy | Tags: #TrumpCult, Epstein Files, Trump adjudicated Rapist, Trump coup attempts, Trump hebephile, Trump in girl's dressing room 5 Comments
“Come on, he picked it up at Walgreens.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Sex Trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may be dead and gone, but the damage he and his buddies have done to the lives of teenage girls will never be undone. I can only imagine their suffering as the news cycle reminds them of a life they try daily to forget and move beyond. This is the reason everyone should honestly put them first in the search for justice for those men who joined Epstein in stealing their youth. More stories of the exploitation of these girls are reaching front pages.
Today, in People Magazine, we learn that an “Ex-Casino Boss Claims Trump and ‘Best Friend’ Jeffrey Epstein Were Once Caught Bringing Underage Girls to Casino Floor. A former executive at Trump’s Atlantic City casino told CNN that the duo brought three girls to the gambling floor who were not yet 21. The White House is calling his story “fabricated.” I’m enjoying the turning of the screw as many of the MAGA faithful burn their red hats in effigy. I just hope that support is available as the victims of their abhorrent crimes relive spiritual murder.
A former employee of Donald Trump claimed in a new interview that the president and Jeffrey Epstein were once caught bringing girls into Trump’s casino who were not old enough to gamble. The White House denies the allegations.
Jack O’Donnell, who oversaw the Atlantic City Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino for four years in the 1980s, spoke with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday, July 16, about the president’s friendship with the late billionaire, who later became a convicted sex offender.
“In my mind, [Epstein] was his best friend, you know, [throughout] the time I was there for four years,” O’Donnell said in the interview, noting that the pair “frequently” came to Trump’s casino together.
One alleged instance stood out to the former casino boss. He claimed that one night in the late 1980s, Trump and Epstein visited Trump Plaza with three women and brought them onto the casino floor despite them being under 21.
O’Donnell said he found out about the incident the following day, when state casino commission inspectors were waiting for him in his office. An inspector, it seems, had identified one of the girls with Trump and Epstein as “the No. 3-ranked tennis player in the world.”
“This [inspector] happened to be a tennis fan and he said, ‘Jack, I know she’s 19 years old,’ ” O’Donnell said. “They had determined that the women that they brought down were underage to be in the casino.”
In the state of New Jersey, it is illegal for anyone under 21 to gamble on a casino floor. Despite the law, O’Donnell claims the commission gave Trump a “break” for the incident, but told him to warn the future president about the potential consequences.
“I had to call them and say, ‘They’re giving you a break this time, but if this happens again, the fine is going to be substantial and it’s going to be on your head,’ ” he claimed.
O’Donnell also claimed to have told Trump that continuing to hang out with Epstein and underage women was “not gonna look good.”
“I did tell him in that conversation, ‘I don’t think you should be hanging out with this guy, just so you know, and you certainly shouldn’t be doing that in Atlantic City,’ ” he said.
When asked on Thursday about O’Donnell’s CNN interview, the White House passionately denied his claims.
“Jack O’Donnell is a stone cold loser who is a liar and fraud,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told PEOPLE in a statement. “This is completely fabricated story from his warped imagination as he suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his pea-sized brain.”
The repetitive use of the same old explanations has certainly become insufficient. Trump is the forever victim. We knew of his proclivities a long time ago. He even bought a teen beauty pageant to gain access to the dressing room of the contestants. But her emails. This is the PolitiFact take on the case from back in the day.
As waves of allegations of Donald Trump’s inappropriate behavior toward females swept over the presidential campaign, reaction from around the country was swift.
During an Oct. 12, 2016, meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., commented on one of the latest revelations, saying:
“I was just reading on the way over here this morning on how Trump would walk into the (Miss) Teen USA dressing room, all these 15- and 16-year-olds completely naked, just walk right in on them. Man, is that the image we want of the president of the United States? It’s just disturbing to think that he could get away with all this stuff.”
So, did Trump “walk right in on” naked 15- and 16-year-old contestants in their dressing room?
The implication is that the alleged incident, back when the Republican nominee owned the pageant, wasn’t a mistake.
We’re not going to rate this on our Truth-O-Meter, since some of the key sources are anonymous. But we’ll lay out what we do know about the allegation.
The nightmare of every woman, mother, and grandmother is that their young girl will fall under the power structure set up by these men to hide their proclivities. Hebephiles are omnipresent in places that give them access to prepubescent children. There is not a day that goes by where we learn some minister or priest is abusing an adolescent or young child. One of the most amazing things I’ve seen is this year’s book and appearances written by E Jean. Carroll. Just a week ago, a Judge ruled on Trump’s latest court attempt to overturn the verdict in her case. You would have to be deliberately blind to not see Yam Tits as a sexual predator. This is from The Hill.
The mandate reaffirms the 90-day clock for Trump to appeal the case to the Supreme Court after the court last month rejected Trump’s bid to overturn the verdict.
A three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict late last year, keeping intact Carroll’s $5 million judgment over claims Trump sexually abused her at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s. He denies her allegations.
Thursday’s mandate was issued after the full 2nd Circuit last month rejected Trump’s bid to overturn the three-judge panel’s ruling.
“Thursday, July 10th, 2025 So long, Old Man! The United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, bids thee farewell,” Carroll wrote in a social media post celebrating the mandate.
A White House spokesperson described Carroll’s case as “liberal lawfare” in a statement sent to CNBC.
You have to wonder about Paramount’s decision to end the successful run of Steven Colbert’s show. Colbert was undoubtedly the best Trump detractor on TV. The timing is definitely suspicious, and Yam Tits immediately celebrated the news on his propaganda social media site, Truth Social. This is from the Washington Post.
“The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026at the conclusion of its current broadcast season, CBS announced Thursday in a statement. It called the cancellation “purely a financial decision.”
“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network said, describing it as an “agonizing decision.” Colbert took over as host, executive producer and writer of the show in 2015.
Colbert told the audience at a Thursday taping that he found out about the cancellation the previous night. “I share your feelings,” he said, when the crowd booed after his announcement.
He said it was the end of “The Late Show,” not just his stint at its helm. “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away,” Colbert said. He added that he was “extraordinarily, deeply grateful to the 200 people who work here.”
CBS staffers were caught off guard by the announcement. “We are flabbergasted,” said one staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
The announcement came days after Colbert spoke out against the decision earlier this month by Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump during last year’s presidential campaign.
We may never know for certain what role that lawsuit and the settlement played in that decision, but I have my suspicions. So does Senator Elizabeth Warren.
CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.
President Trump said Friday morning that he was thrilled by the news that CBS is canceling the decade-running “Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social. “His talent was even less than his ratings.”
Meanwhile, the Republican attack on children continues with a new trick to pull back funding for NPTV and NPR. Rural communities receive vital weather warnings from the stations, as it is the only provider of that information in the many middle-of-nowhere places in this country. It’s truly fitting that PBS News writes its own obituary. The Senate caved shortly after. “House gives final approval to Trump’s $9 billion cut to public broadcasting and foreign aid.”
The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the CPB represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.
The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.
The corporation distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.
Democrats were unsuccessful in restoring the funding in the Senate.
Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the stations are “not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”
As the Senate debated the bill Tuesday, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some money administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.
But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save.”
You may recall that early in this blog’s history, I was commuting about an hour to a university across the lake. NPR was my companion on the long commute. I can attest that there was a good part of the drive where my cellphone did not work, and that the only radio station I could get in the swamps along I-55 was NPR. I’d start with the local in New Orleans, and everything would drop until I got the NPR station from Baton Rouge. I can only imagine what the hinterlands are like up North in places like Montana and Wyoming. We’re definitely in the fascist country of Trumpistan now. Lisa Murkowski complained about the funds cut to NPR and voted against it. This is from UPI. “Coming PBS, NPR cuts already hurting many stations.”
The public stations already have received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to get them through September. Once that money runs out, more than 100 PBS and NPR stations are at risk of closing. The cuts will hit especially hard in rural areas.
For example, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit off the coast of Alaska on Wednesday. Public media helped broadcast a tsunami alert, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
“Their response to today’s earthquake is a perfect example of the incredible public service these stations provide,” Murkowski said Wednesday on X. “They deliver local news, weather updates, and, yes, emergency alerts that save human lives.”
Murkowski was one of two Republican senators who voted against the bill.
The effects of the cutting off of funding could be even wider-reaching than expected, observers said.
“Failing stations will create a cascade effect in this highly connected and interdependent system, impacting content producers and leading to the potential collapse of additional distressed stations in other areas of the country,” Tim Isgitt, CEO of advisory firm Public Media Company, told The New York Times.
An analysis by non-profit Public Media Company identified 78 public radio organizations and 37 TV organizations that will likely close. They rely on funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for about 30% of their budgets.
“I think unfortunately this is cutting off their constituents’ noses to spite NPR’s face,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said Wednesday on CNN. “It doesn’t help anyone to take this funding away.”
PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement that the cuts “will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas.”
Here’s some interesting analysis of the week’s events from TPM. “Nearly All The Trump II Depredations Run Through DOJ.”
The Trump Justice Department continues to be ground zero of his second term. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the impact of a White House-run DOJ dwarfs most other Trump II depredations precisely because it allows space for them continue unchecked. A totally compromised DOJ eliminates accountability for breaking the law in the criminal sense and for the mass lawlessness in non-criminal contexts.
I offer that as an introduction to the series of news items below that either directly involve malfeasance under Attorney General Pam Bondi or are a byproduct of DOJ bad acts. As the Jeffrey Epstein matter threatens to consume the Trump White House, remember that it, too, is an outgrowth of trying to abuse and misuse the powers of the Justice Department. It just happened to backfire.
Fired DOJ prosecutor Maurene Comey sent this note to her former colleagues in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.
Comey’s firing by Main Justice blindsided acting U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, who was reduced to “just a paper-pusher,” in the words of one observer.
Trump is starting a new initiative to put more political appointees into federal jobs. This is from GovExec.com. “Trump creates ‘Schedule G’ to add more political appointees to agencies’ top ranks. The new, non-career employees will serve in policy-making roles and add “horsepower” to carrying out the administration’s agenda, White House says.” Why aren’t folks screaming Communism at this attempt to stack the federal government with idiots? It sure sounds like a command and control model of government, ala the Soviet Union, to me.
President Trump created another new category of federal employee on Thursday evening, issuing an executive order to expand the number of political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation and will serve in policy-making or policy-advocating roles.
While presidents can already tap an uncapped number of appointees to serve in Schedule C positions, Trump noted those individuals serve in more narrow confidential or policy-determining roles. The new positions will therefore fill a gap that currently exists in federal appointments, the White House said.
The order is the latest in Trump’s effort to establish a tighter grip on the executive branch and its actions. He has already created Schedule Policy/Career, formerly known as Schedule F, which is similarly defined to Schedule G but reserved for career civil servants. Agencies are in the process of determining who qualifies for conversion to Schedule Policy/Career and those employees will become easier to fire for any reason.
“President Trump believes creating non-career Schedule G positions will enhance government efficiency and accountability and improve services provided to taxpayers by increasing the horsepower for agency implementation of administration policy,” the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying the order.
Appointments to Schedule G positions are expected to lapse at the end of a presidential administration. The roles are particularly aimed at the Veterans Affairs Department and will go to applicants who prove to be suitable supporters of the president’s agenda. Agencies cannot take into consideration an applicant’s political affiliation.
“Schedule G employees will be hired to help faithfully implement the President’s policy agenda,” the White House said.
It boasted that Schedule G’s creation is just the latest effort to deliver “on his promise to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our government from Washington corruption.”
Trump tasked the Office of Personnel Management with establishing regulations to implement Schedule G. In April, OPM issued guidance that encouraged agencies to consider offering the maximum salary of $195,200 to attract Schedule C employees. It is not immediately clear if that pay cap will apply to Schedule G appointees. OPM’s guidance also removed career human resources staff from the process of vetting Schedule C appointees, onboarding them and setting their pay.
Don Moynihan, a professor at University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said the executive order was the president’s latest effort to strip career experts of influence within federal agencies.
The order “opens space at top ranks of government for Trump loyalists as policymakers, with no limit on hires,” Moynihan said, adding it “continues [a] pattern of politicization.”
This frightening analysis from David R. Lurie–writing at Public Notice--is not going to let your meals settle gently today. “The emerging coup. Lawless authoritarian regimes don’t give up power willingly.”
Six months into the second Trump administration, two things are becoming clear: First, the president remains a nearly entirely non-strategic actor, motivated only by an abiding desire to accumulate ever greater power, adulation, and wealth. And second, he’s fundamentally changing the nature of the United States in ways that threaten to bring an end to the nation’s 249 year old status as the world’s leading democracy.
Despite Trump’s consistently haphazard “governance” style, it’s becoming easy to foresee how his regime could effectively void our democracy. The now fully MAGA-fied GOP is increasingly likely to lose the next presidential electionafter incurring bracing losses in the midterms and other intervening state races. And as the nation learned before and following the 2020 election, Trumpists are more than willing to use force and other extra-legal actions to attempt to cling to power.
For Trump and his cronies, the prospect of losing power — or even sharing it with Democrats in the event control of the House shifts in 2026 — could prove to be catastrophic because of their reasonable fear of being held accountable for criminality that dwarfs Trump’s first term. And unlike January 2021 — when the Big Lie scheme failed — Trump and his cohorts will have new tools to carry out a coup, including a massive federal police force with a proven willingness to engage in systemic illegality.
Trump’s brownshirts
From its outset, Trump 2.0 has been grounded on systemic illegality and unilateral executive actions, a course of (mis)conduct the administration has succeeded in pursuing because of pliant GOP majorities in Congress the Supreme Court. It’s all but certain that the administration’s authoritarian conduct will grow in scope and intensity over the succeeding months, in no small part because the GOP reconciliation bill will hand over a staggering $170 billion to the Department of Homeland Security.
The bill includes nearly $30 billion in new “enforcement” funds. DHS boasts that it is already the largest federal law enforcement agency, with over 80,000 officers spread across nine organizations. But DHS says it plans to use the new funding to quickly hire 10,000 more more ICE thugs. And in recent months, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has systematically dismantled DHS’s oversight offices, thereby paving the way for a lot of corner cutting.
My daily mantras these days are ‘We are so fucked’ and ‘Why doesn’t he just die?’ I have to pull myself back to my normal meditation routines. At least it hasn’t impacted my exercise schedules, where I actually am encouraged to focus on my abdomen.
So, this is “all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.” Funny, how my kindergarten cartoon hero seems more necessary given we have Orange Bluto for FARTUS.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: UnLawful and DisOrder Episode ∞
Posted: July 14, 2025 Filed under: Constitutional Crises, Corruption and Criminal Insanity, Department of Homeland Security, Disappearing Immigrants, Discrimination against women, Epstein Files, FARTUS, Fascist Florida, FBI, GOP Crimes Against Humanity, immigration, Incontinentia Buttocks Cabinet picks, kakistocracy | Tags: Assault on democracy, Congressman John Lewis, ICE Raids and children, Jeffrey Epstein files, MAGA Epstein Quest, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) 10 Comments
“True Story.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The news continues to be deeply disturbing as we find out how much the damage done by Doge and bumbling Trump Cabinet members has impacted the basic services provided by the Federal Government. We also continue to find how deeply criminal the mindset is in the administration. It’s hard not to notice the many agencies that have been corrupted by Project 2025 and Yam Tit’s fascist wet dreams. Also, get ready for Good Trouble on July 17th.
Andrew Goudsward, writing for Reuters, has this astounding story about the number of lawyers leaving the DOJ. “Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit.”
The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.
Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration.
Critics have accused the Trump administration of flouting the law in its aggressive use of executive power, including by retaliating against perceived enemies and dismantling agencies created by Congress.
The Trump administration has broadly defended its actions as within the legal bounds of presidential power and has won several early victories at the Supreme Court. A White House spokesperson told Reuters that Trump’s actions were legal, and declined to comment on the departures.“Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.
The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures.
Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.
All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and avoid retaliation.A Justice Department spokesperson said lawyers in the unit are fighting an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” against Trump’s agenda.
“The Department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the Supreme Court and will continue to defend the President’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said. The Justice Department did not comment on the departures of career lawyers or morale in the section.
Some turnover in the Federal Programs Branch is common between presidential administrations, but the seven sources described the number of people quitting as highly unusual.
Reuters was unable to find comparative figures for previous administrations. However, two former attorneys in the unit and two others familiar with its work said the scale of departures is far greater than during Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s administration.
I can’t get over what’s going on with the Epstein Case. It sounds like the chickens are coming home to roost. Lady Justice knows the victims need closure and peace. As an activist against the abuse of women and children since I was 17 years old, I can only say we still haven’t caught up with what would be proper Justice. However, if this is what ultimately splits the MAGA coalition into pieces, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings or sensibilities at all. If the heat hasn’t driven me to take multiple baths, this story has added to it. You know if Yam Tits is obsessively using his Truth Social Platform, that he certainly knows there’s damning evidence of it. The AG has his back, and it’s a disgusting place for a woman.
This is from The Hill. “Carlson: Bondi ‘made up a bunch of ludicrous’ Epstein files claims.” Yes, that is Carlson, as in Tucker Carlson. I guess all those years of inner hate and outer support have caught up with him.
Political commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson blamed Attorney General Pam Bondi in a new interview for the intense scrutiny the Trump administration has faced over its handling of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In the NBC News interview published Monday, Carlson said he doesn’t believe the Department of Justice (DOJ) has “much relevant information about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes” that would satisfy those who have long called for the release of “Epstein files.”
“Rather than just admit that, Pam Bondi made a bunch of ludicrous claims on cable news shows that she couldn’t back up, and this current outrage is the result,” Carlson told the outlet.
Bondi has faced intense backlash after acknowledging last week there was no client list connected to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of minors and no evidence to suggest he didn’t die by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
President Trump has repeatedly defended Bondi and urged his supporters to move on from the Epstein case, but pressure has continued to mount among the president’s base to fire the former Florida attorney general.
Bondi said in a Fox News interview in February that an Epstein client list was on her desk to be reviewed and alleged that the DOJ had obtained hours of video related to the case. The White House in March invited 15 far-right influencers to an event, where they received white binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1,” but the display drew immediate backlash because the documents provided were already publicly available.
Bondi later claimed in another TV interview that she was duped into thinking she had all the files related to the government’s Epstein investigations and was seeking additional documents after hearing from an alleged “whistleblower.”
Bondi said last week that she was initially referring to documents related to the Epstein case — not a specific “client list,” and the footage she had mentioned was child sex abuse material that would not be released to the public. She said there was nothing else to be released from the case.
NBC News published this analysis of the Carlson interview! (Look, Mom! We’re a tabloid now!) The analysis is by Allan Smith. “Tucker Carlson leads MAGA’s worried warriors in questioning Trump. The former Fox News host and “America First” leader spoke with NBC News as MAGA influencers rebel over amnesty, Iran and the Epstein files.” Look who is trying to resurrect his career!
No other issue has tested the MAGA base’s commitment to Trump like the Epstein files.
For years, many on the right — including some people who are now in the Trump administration — have called for the release of all government documents related to Epstein. Epstein died in custody in 2019, and a medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. He was facing sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo saying the Justice Department’s review turned up no “client list” of powerful men alleged to have participated in Epstein’s schemes, enraging the MAGA base, who are calling on her to be fired. Trump’s defense of Bondi and his attempts to tell his supporters to move on from the issue have done little to quell the furor.
On Saturday, Trump wrote “LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!” on Truth Social, adding the United States should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
In his NBC News interview, Carlson said he now believes the Justice Department actually doesn’t have “much relevant information about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes.”
“Rather than just admit that, Pam Bondi made a bunch of ludicrous claims on cable news shows that she couldn’t back up, and this current outrage is the result,” he said.
A Republican Senate aide thinks Carlson is actually having a bit of a “revival” as he carves out distinct space on the right.
“He’s more of a dissident figure now,” this person said. “For whatever else you’re going to say, Tucker is just kind of saying what he thinks.”
Back in the day!
Good luck rescuing that career, Tuckums! I’m not sure getting further in the pig trough with the big hogs is going to help, but then, I’m not a MAGA whisperer. Adam Gabbatt has more on this at The Guardian. “Trump encounters rare uproar from ardent rightwing allies over Jeffrey Epstein. White House claim it didn’t have list of Epstein’s alleged clients and that he wasn’t murdered has caused tumult even within administration.” Mudville is not a happy place.
Donald Trump managed something unusual last week. In his administration’s claim that it did not have a list of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged clients, and that the convicted sex offender was not murdered, it succeeded in upsetting the rightwing influencers and commentators – and reportedly even Trump’s deputy FBI director – people who typically champion his every move.
“This stinks. This just reeks,” was the verdict of Jesse Watters, the primetime Fox News host.
He added: “The feds spent decades investigating Epstein and have had total access to his property for years, they still cannot give us a straight answer? This is not anything new; the government has been keeping us in the dark for generations.”
Watters was careful not to criticize the Trump administration directly, blaming “the feds” as he described Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, as “great Americans”.
There was also tumult within the Trump administration. Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director and former rightwing podcast host, spent years pushing Epstein conspiracy theories, and was reportedly very upset with Bondi over how the Epstein files were handled.
“Bongino is out-of-control furious,” a source close to Bongino told NBC News. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.” Axios reported that Bongino didn’t show up to work on Friday, and the row prompted Trump himself to step in.
Asked by reporters on Sunday if Bongino would remain in his position, Trump said: “Oh I think so … I spoke to him today. Dan Bongino, very good guy. I’ve known him a long time. I’ve done his show many, many times. He sounded terrific, actually.”
But within the rightwing, Epstein-curious sphere, others had continued to wade in.
“Pam Blondi [sic] is covering up child sex crimes that took place under HER WATCH when she was Attorney General of Florida,” wrote Laura Loomer, the 32-year-old conspiracy theorist whose influence over Trump has come under scrutiny.
Loomer accused Bondi of failing to pursue legal action against Epstein, despite lawsuits being filed against him in the Florida.
“She is afraid of that being discussed and brought to light. She needs to be fired. She has tainted the investigation,” Loomer concluded.
Let’s see. He’s losing Fox, Loomer, Patel, and Bongino. This might be fun to watch after all. Although I still think I’ll need a lot of baths.
“NO ONE IS BUYING THIS!! Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed.’ This is over the top sickening,” Alex Jones, the rightwing commentator and conspiracy theorist, wrote on social media.
The lackluster release also left others, outside of the far right, dissatisfied. Andrew Schulz, the host of the Flagrant podcast, who interviewed Trump in October and said he voted for him, included the Epstein saga as part of his reason for feeling let down by the president.
“When you feel like the status quo will do nothing and change nothing, you have way more of a longer leash for the outsiders’ ideas than you do the status quo’s ideas,” Schulz said, talking about Trump’s appeal.
“And I think that was the idea with Trump, it was like: ‘Maybe he will stop these wars.’ No. ‘Maybe we will see what’s up with this Epstein shit.’ No.”
Trump, who once enjoyed a friendship with Epstein, said in the run-up to last year’s election that he would declassify files related to Epstein, although he added: “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phoney stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phoney stuff in that whole world.”
At a cabinet meeting this week, however, Trump expressed surprise that people were “still talking” about Epstein, suggesting that the president was, for once, out of touch with his Maga base. “This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said, describing Epstein as a “creep”.
That failed to quell the anger, however, prompting Trump to write a lengthy Truth Social post over the weekend, pleading for calm from his supporters.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”
He added: “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
The replies to Trump’s post, however, suggested his appeal had not worked.
“My wanting pedophiles to be punished for their crimes doesn’t make me less of a patriot, but more,” one user wrote. “I don’t understand the reason for your current attitude and frankly I’m beyond the point of caring. I do care about justice, wether [sic] you approve or not.”
Adam Wren and Dasha Burns of Politico have this headline. “Playbook: Trump’s Epstein headache isn’t going away.” Guess I’ll need to stock up on my soap supply.
HERE TO STAY: At what should be the height of his political powers — having racked up signature wins in enacting his sprawling GOP megabill, bending U.S. allies to his will on defense spending, launching a successful and limited attack on Iran with no meaningful reprisals on U.S. forces — President Donald Trump is instead facing a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion over his administration’s handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
First in Playbook: This morning, we have three threads of new reporting suggesting that this isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
1) A special counsel?: In an interview last night with Playbook, MAGA influencer and far-right activist Laura Loomer said “there should be a special counsel appointed to do an independent investigation of the handling of the Epstein files so that people can feel like this issue is being investigated, and perhaps take it out of [AG Pam Bondi’s] hands, because I don’t think that she has been transparent or done a good job handling this issue.”
2) MAGA allies press for presser: Playbook has also learned that at least one key figure in the extended MAGA universe, an ally supportive of the Trump DOJ’s handling of the Epstein case, has pitched senior White House officials on the idea of Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche doing an all-questions-addressed news conference in an attempt to exhaust the press and put the story to bed.
3) Dems sense an opening: Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), who is introducing legislation today that calls for the release of the Epstein files, shows Playbook how he’ll tie the “corruption and cronyism” of the handling of the Epstein case into a broader critique of Trump’s priorities. “I think he’s trying to protect some billionaire friend of his,” Veasey tells Playbook. “That’s what he lives for more than anything else in the world: protecting billionaires. Look at what he did with the so-called ‘big, beautiful bill.’”
WHAT MAKES THIS TIME DIFFERENT?: To a degree we have truly not seen over the past decade of Trump as a national political figure, his movement seems genuinely fractured. The Epstein case is fundamentally different from past divisions inside MAGA because it undercuts Trump’s self-styled brand as a speaker of uncomfortable truths, a slayer of sacred cows and a tribune of the people. This isn’t just a policy or ideological disagreement like, say, the MAGA unease over the Iran strikes; this cuts to the heart of his very political identity.
This is a problem partly of Trump’s own making. For years, many on the MAGA right alleged a massive governmental cover-up aimed at protecting Epstein, the convicted child sex offender and wealthy financier who circulated among the highest echelons of the rich and powerful. Trump and his allies were happy to amplify those whispers to their own political benefit.
These weren’t just allegations coming from anonymous cranks on the internet. JD Vance spoke publicly about an Epstein “client list” being kept secret by the government. Kash Patel did the same. Ditto Dan Bongino. Earlier this year, asked about “releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” Bondi told Fox News “it’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
Now? It’s a huge credibility problem. Vance, Patel, Bongino and Bondi — among others — effectively have to either acknowledge that they were not just wrong about the government covering up for Epstein, but actually making stuff up, or they come off like they’re part of a cover-up themselves.
To wit: In a new interview this morning, Tucker Carlson told NBC’s Allan Smith he now believes DOJ doesn’t actually have “much relevant information about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes.” And therein lies a problem: “Rather than just admit that, Pam Bondi made a bunch of ludicrous claims on cable news shows that she couldn’t back up, and this current outrage is the result,” Carlson says.
WHAT’S TRUMP TO DO? The president has limited and conflicting options.
More on this at the link. Heather Cox Richardson brings a historian’s perspective to her SubStack this morning.
For the first time ever, Trump got ratioed on his own platform, meaning that there were more comments on his post than likes or shares, showing disapproval of his message. According to Jordan King of Newsweek, by 10:45 this morning (Eastern Time) it had more than 36,000 replies but only 11,000 reposts and 32,000 likes.
Trump sounds panicked, not only over the Epstein issue itself, but also because he cannot control the narrative his followers are embracing. After stoking the fire of his followers’ anger against what they seemed to see as powerful men getting away with crimes against children, he is now being burned by it. His reflex is to return to his greatest hits, accusing Democrats of writing the Epstein files and then, as he always, always, always does, snapping back to the Russia scandal and calling it a hoax.
Over the weekend, attendees at a conference held by the right-wing Turning Point USA booed the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case. MAGA influencers kept up the drumbeat; Matt Walsh called the administration’s about-face on releasing information “obvious bullsh*t.” Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported that even the Fox News Channel warned this morning that “[t]here has to be some explanation” and that questions about the way the administration is handling the Epstein files were “very valid.”
Musk, who controls the X social media platform preferred by the right wing, is amplifying the story. After Trump’s Saturday post, Musk wrote to his 222 million followers: “Seriously. He said ‘Epstein’ half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein. Just release the files as promised.”
Trump appears to be planning to regain control of the narrative by persecuting his political opponents.
But it is not clear that will silence MAGA voters who backed Trump in part because they thought he would lead the fight against an elite group of pedophiles controlling the country. As Trump’s policies on the economy, immigration, tax cuts, firing of government employees, and gutting of disaster relief have soured Americans on his administration, loyalists stayed behind him. Now he has turned against their chief cause, giving them an off-ramp from a presidency that seems increasingly off the rails.
Mike Flynn, who served as Trump’s first national security advisor until forced to resign for lying about his contact with Russian operatives, posted on social media: “[President Trump] please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR is not going away. If the administration doesn’t address the massive number of unanswered questions about Epstein, especially the ABUSE OF CHILDREN BY ELITES (it is very clear that abuse occurred), then moving forward on so many other monumental challenges our nation is facing becomes much harder.”
Flynn concluded: “We cannot allow pedophiles to get away. I don’t personally care who they are or what elite or powerful position they hold. They must be exposed and held accountable!!!”
Adam Wren breaks this news at Politico.
President Donald Trump faces a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion amid fallout over his administration’s handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
And some of his closest allies are cautioning the situation for the president will get worse before it gets better — even as it threatens to derail his megabill victory lap and continues to divide parts of his administration and, more broadly, his supporters.
Trump has tried twice in as many days to tamp down his base’s anger, posting to Truth Social Saturday that he didn’t “like what’s happening” among his own supporters. He also threw his support behind Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has taken the brunt of much of the right’s ire over the Epstein files. Several news organizations have also reported that Bondi clashed with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino over the files.
After disembarking Air Force One Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, Trump faced a question about Bongino, who skipped work Friday. Trump insisted that he’s “a very good guy. … He sounded terrific, actually. No, I think he’s in good shape.”
Mike Davis, the MAGA legal brawler and occasional Oval Office visitor, has taken up defending Trump’s DOJ, said in an interview that “the Trump Justice Department wanted to be fully transparent, but can’t.” He added: “This is a case of no good deed going unpunished.”
Davis argues DOJ can’t release more, including that there is grand jury material involved, court records under seal, child pornography involved, the need to protect victims of “heinous crimes,” and “unsubstantiated, bogus claims, like we saw during the Kavanaugh proceedings, where you had double and even triple hearsay.”
A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment.
You may want to read Greg Sargent’s latest at The New Republic. “The Young GOPer Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Dark Future of MAGA. Sunshine State Attorney General James Uthmeier is the real brains behind this notorious migrant detention camp in the Everglades. The more barbarities that emerge, the brighter his star will no doubt shine.”
The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.
“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”
Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”
Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Any migrant who dares escape just might get devoured alive by an animal—one animal eating another. Dehumanization is so thrilling!
The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Herald reports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.
But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.
I’ll let this Washington Monthly article by Jonathan Alter end this increasingly depressing news dump today. “America Is Now a Police State, The Medicaid cuts are terrible; the ICE expansions are even worse.”
If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if you have $75 billion over four years in new funding for ICE, you—Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Tom Homan—will use it to fund a huge domestic army to round up four million people in the next three years, put them in “detention centers” and deport them.
If these cruel men planned to go after criminals, as they claimed, they would have needed only a fraction of the money that Republican lawmakers just gave them. And ending the genuine shortfall in the Department of Homeland Security budget doesn’t require this kind of dough.
So with virtually unlimited funds, they’ll make up for lost time. We’re already witnessing swarms of masked agents grabbing people off the street. Within weeks, it’ll get a lot worse. The grandma who has been here for 30 years paying taxes; the Dreamer college student who has been thoroughly American since he was a toddler; the small business owner who gets a traffic ticket—3,000 of them a day will be ripped from their families, sent to a prison and shipped to a country where they don’t know anyone.
Count on it. The iron law of government budgeting is use-it-or-lose-it. Only bureaucratic fools have money left over at the end of the fiscal year. ICE will spend billions on meeting Chief Homan’s arbitrary and inhumane quotas—the same kind of arrest quotas that drive police states all over the world, as Ronan Farrow has explained.
And the thousands of new Border Patrol agents? They already bring to mind those old ads about the Maytag Repairman—waiting in vain for something to happen. With border crossings plummeting, it’s only a matter of time before they’re shifted north for an even heavier presence in blue urban America.
Before long, many of us won’t even notice the roundups, just as white Californians in 1942 didn’t pay much heed when their Japanese-American neighbors were whisked away to detention camps in the desert.
That was an inexcusable act, but the conditions in those camps, while spare and dehumanizing, were not as bad as in the “Alligator Alcatraz” that Trump is gloating over. These will be jails—not camps—built to be as close to the abusive Salvadoran model as the president can make them. And the scale of his migrant gulag is much larger. All told, about 120,000 Japanese were interned. The capacity of the new detention centers is planned to be roughly 120,000 per day.
With most detainees only weeks or months from deportation, that means millions of new migrants cycling through. Many will have done nothing worse than Trump’s German immigrant grandparents (and my Jewish grandmother) did a century ago, namely, overstaying their visas. Of course, if they happen to be employed at a golf course or hotel (exempted by Trump for obvious personal reasons), they wouldn’t be in jail in the first place. Here’s where we’re headed: If migrants work on farms or in slaughterhouses (lots of both in red states), or a kitchen (hospitality), they’re OK or maybe even headed for amnesty, as Trump—to the dismay of MAGA—hinted last week. But if they cut grass, clean houses, or work in other occupations unprotected by the Dear Leader, off to jail you go.
I should have no words, but I do, and all of them are surrounded by expletives. There are actions on July 17th in the spirit of Good Trouble and the late Congressman John Lewis. Do what you can to lift your voice against this reign of terror. If I can’t find an action or get there, I wear my No Kings T-shirt wherever I go, and I get attention on the St Claude Bus like you wouldn’t believe. I have signs in my front yard. I talk to people. I show up where I can. Keep on walking. Keep on talking, marching to Freedomland.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and ACTION list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlolatina
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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