I didn’t think there would be much to write about today after Dakinikat’s post last night, but there actually are a whole lot of things happening–far more than I can cover here. With Trump, it’s always maximum chaos every day of the week. Here are some of the stories that captured my interest this morning.
The effects of Trump’s tariffs
We’ve seen the last of the ships without massive tariffs arriving in U.S. ports, and now we’re seeing the results of Trump’s insane policies.
On Friday morning, West Coast port officials told CNN about a startling sight: Not a single cargo vessel had left China with goods for the two major West Coast ports in the past 12 hours. That hasn’t happened since the pandemic.
Six days ago, 41 vessels were scheduled to depart China for the San Pedro Bay Complex, which encompasses both the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach in California. On Friday, it was zero.
President Donald Trump’s trade war imposed massive tariffs on most Chinese imports last month. That’s led to fewer ships at sea carrying less cargo to America’s ports. For many businesses, it is now too expensive to do business with China, one of America’s most important trading partners.
Officials are concerned not just about the lack of vessels leaving China, but the speed at which that number dropped.
“That’s cause for alarm,” said Mario Cordero, the CEO of the Port of Long Beach. “We are now seeing numbers in excess of what we witnessed in the pandemic” for cancellations and fewer vessel arrivals.
The busiest ports in the country are experiencing steep declines in cargo. The Port of Long Beach is seeing a 35-40% drop compared to normal cargo volume. The Port of Los Angeles had a 31% drop in volume this week, and the Port of New York and Jersey says it’s also bracing for a slowdown. On Wednesday, the Port of Seattle said it had zero container ships in the port, another anomaly that hasn’t happened since the pandemic….
“If things don’t change quickly, I’m talking about the uncertainty that we’re seeing, then we may be seeing empty products on the shelves. This is now going to be felt by the consumer in the coming 30 days,” said Cordero….
That doesn’t sound good to me, but Trump thinks it’s great.
As logistics professionals sound the alarms on emptying U.S. ports as a result of steep tariffs, President Donald Trump said those major import slowdowns are actually a boon.
Following Trump’s introduction of sweeping tariffs, shipping volumes have fallen considerably, according to data from container-tracking software company Vizion. In the period between the five weeks before and five weeks after Trump introduced and implemented his tariff plan, virtually all major U.S. ports saw a decline in the number of container books. The Port of Portland in Oregon saw a 50% drop in exports, and the Port of Los Angeles, the U.S.’s largest outpost, had 17% lower exports. From the week ending April 28, Vizion reported a 43% week-over-week decrease in containers.
By Yayoi Kusama
Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka warned last month of a “precipitous drop” in shipping volumes, saying American retailers will have fully stocked shelves for only about another six weeks.
Trump not only acknowledged the shipping slowdown in a Thursday press briefing announcing a trade deal with the UK; he seemed heartened by it.
“We’re seeing as a result that ports here in the U.S., the traffic has really slowed and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” a reporter said in the press briefing.
“That means we lose less money,” Trump said. “When you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
He really is the stupidest president in the 250-year history of this country. He thinks it’s a good that longshore workers, truck drivers, and workers at package delivery companies like UPS and Amazon are going lose their jobs? That store shelves will be empty? That small businesses will quickly go bankrupt? He’s a fucking moron.
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania release an analysis of the economic effects of the Trump’s tariffs. Here’s the introductory summary:
Summary: Many trade models fail to capture the full harm of tariffs. PWBM projects Trump’s tariffs (April 8, 2025) will reduce long-run GDP by about 6% and wages by 5%. A middle-income household faces a $22K lifetime loss. These losses are twice as large as a revenue-equivalent corporate tax increase from 21% to 36%, an otherwise highly distorting tax.
Key Points
Revenue Impact: President Trump’s tariff plan (as of April 8, 2025) is projected to raise significant revenue—over $5.2 trillion over 10 years on a conventional basis (with micro-elastic responses) and $4.5 trillion on a dynamic basis (with economic effects). This revenue could be used to reduce federal debt, thereby encouraging private investment.
Comparison with a Corporate Tax Increase: Tariffs are estimated to raise about the same amount of revenue as increasing the corporate income tax from 21 to 36 percent, in the absence of these recent tariffs. While raising the corporate tax rate is generally seen as highly economically distorting, tariffs would reduce GDP and wages by more than twice as much. All future households are worse off. The estimated economic declines are likely lower bounds, with actual declines potentially even larger.
Broader Economic Impact: Many existing trade and macroeconomic models fail to capture the full harm caused by tariffs. Larger tariffs reduce the openness of the economy, including international capital flows. This is especially costly under the nation’s current baseline debt path, which is increasing faster than GDP, that is generally excluded from trade models or treated as neutral (Ricardian). U.S. households would need to purchase more bonds, requiring bond prices to fall (yields increase), domestic capital investment prices to fall (the marginal product of capital increases), or both. Even conservatively assuming only domestic capital investment prices fall, the reduction in economic activity is more than twice as large as a tax increase on capital returns that raises the same amount of revenue.
I’m sure Trump hasn’t seen this report and wouldn’t understand it if he did.
Xi Jinping has been preparing for this moment for years.
In April 2020, long before President Trump launched a trade war that would shake the global economy, China’s top leader held a meeting with senior Communist Party officials and laid out his vision for turning the tables on the United States in a confrontation.
Tensions between his government and the first Trump administration had been simmering over an earlier round of tariffs and technology restrictions. Things got worse after the emergence of Covid, which ground global trade to a halt and exposed how much the United States, and the rest of the world, needed China for everything from surgical masks to pain medicines.
Cat catching mouse, by Koson Ohara
Faced with Washington’s concerns about the trade imbalance, China could have opened its economy to more foreign companies, as it had pledged to do decades ago. It could have bought more American airplanes, crude oil and soybeans, as its officials had promised Mr. Trump during trade talks. It could have stopped subsidizing factories and state-owned companies that made steel and solar panels so cheaply that many American manufacturers went out of business.
Instead, Mr. Xi chose an aggressive course of action.
Chinese leaders must “tighten international production chains’ dependence on our country, forming a powerful capacity to counter and deter foreign parties from artificially disrupting supplies” to China, Mr. Xi said in his speech to the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission in 2020.
Put simply: China should dominate supplies of things the world needs, to make its adversaries think twice about using tariffs or trying to cut China off.
A bit more:
Mr. Xi has ramped up exports and deepened China’s position as the world’s leading base for manufacturing, in part by directing the state-controlled commercial banking system to lend an extra $2 trillion to industrial borrowers over the past four years, according to data from China’s central bank. He has also introduced new weapons of economic warfare to the country’s arsenal: export controls, antimonopoly laws and blacklists for hitting back at American companies.
So when the current Trump administration slapped huge tariffs on Chinese goods, China was able to go on the offensive. Besides retaliating with its own taxes, it imposed export restrictions on a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, the global supply of which China had cornered. Such minerals are essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles.
In the United States, the looming threat of empty store shelves and higher consumer prices is putting pressure on the Trump administration. The prices of some critical minerals have tripled since China unveiled its curbs, according to Argus Media, a London commodities research firm.
“It’s about flipping the leverage so that the world is reliant on China, and China is reliant on no one. It is a reversal of what Xi has been so irritated about, which is that China was so dependent on the West,” said Kirsten Asdal, a former intelligence adviser at the U.S. Department of Defense who now heads a China-focused consultancy firm, Asdal Advisory.
Trump’s attitude toward natural disasters
We’re approaching hurricane season, and it looks like states are going to be on their own when such disasters hit. Here’s the latest on Trump’s plans for FEMA.
The acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been fired one day after he broke with fellow members of the administration when he told lawmakers he does not support dismantling the agency, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to CNN.
Cameron Hamilton, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, was escorted out of FEMA’s headquarters on Thursday, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
“It’s at the discretion of (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem) to have the personnel she prefers,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN, confirming that DHS official David Richardson will take over for Hamilton effective immediately. McLaughlin declined to explain why Hamilton was removed from the post.
The move comes one day after Hamilton defended FEMA during testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee.
Woman and Cat, by Ukiyo-e Kuniyoshi
“As the senior advisor to the President on disasters and emergency management, and to the Secretary of Homeland Security, I do not believe it is in the best interest the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton told the committee Wednesday. “Having said that, I am not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination as consequential as that should be made. That is a conversation that should be had between the President of the United States and this governing body.”
For months, both Trump and Noem, whose Department of Homeland Security oversees FEMA, have called for the agency to be “eliminated.” On Tuesday, Noem reaffirmed that stance when she took questions from the same House committee.
“President Trump has been very clear since the beginning that he believes that FEMA and its response in many, many circumstances has failed the American people, and that FEMA, as it exists today, should be eliminated in empowering states to respond to disasters with federal government support.” Noem told the committee.
The new head of the federal agency tasked with responding to disasters across the country warned staff in a meeting Friday not to try to impede upcoming changes, saying that “I will run right over you” while also suggesting policy changes that would push more responsibilities to the states.
David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa, was named acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday just after Cameron Hamilton, who’d been leading the agency, also in an acting role, was fired.
Richardson has been the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. He does not appear to have any experience in managing natural disasters, but in an early morning call with the entire agency staff he said that the agency would stick to its mission and said he’d be the one interpreting any guidance from President Donald Trump.
Prefacing his comments with the words “Now this is the tough part,” Richardson said during the call with staffers across the thousands-strong agency that he understands people can be nervous during times of change. But he had a warning for those who might not like the changes — a group he estimated to be about 20% of any organization.
“Don’t get in my way if you’re those 20% of the people,” he said. “I know all the tricks.”
“Obfuscation. Delay. Undermining. If you’re one of those 20% of the people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not because I will run right over you,” he said. “I will achieve the president’s intent. I am as bent on achieving the president’s intent as I was on making sure that I did my duty when I took my Marines to Iraq.”
He sounds nice. On his plans for the future:
In a preview of what might be coming in terms of changes in policy, Richardson also said there would be more “cost-sharing with the states.”
“We’re going to find out how to do things better, and we’re going find out how to push things down to the states that should be done at the state level. Also going to find out how we can do more cost sharing with the states,” he said.
This issue — how much states, as opposed to the federal government, should pay for disaster recovery — has been a growing concern, especially at a time of an increasing number of natural disasters that often require Congress to repeatedly replenish the federal fund that pays for recovery.
But states often argue that they are already paying for most disaster recoveries on their own and are only going to the federal government for those events truly outside of their ability to respond.
Read more at the AP link.
Trump’s latest Surgeon General appointment
Supposedly, Trump appointed a woman who is not a doctor at the behest of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but allies of Kennedy argue that she’s not radical enough.
The backlash to President Donald Trump’s new surgeon general nominee, an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has exposed divisions in the nascent “Make America Healthy Again” movement as it gains political power.
By Katzuaki Horitomo Kitamura
Casey Means, the nominee, has been a central figure in the movement and key Kennedy ally. She promotes diet as a root cause of illness and chronic disease, echoing Kennedy’s focus on nutrition.
Trump praised Means as someone who holds “impeccable MAHA credentials,” but influential people in Kennedy’s orbit countered that she is insufficiently devoted to opposing vaccines, criticizing Means within hours of the announcement and describing her as unqualified.
In posts on X, the primary social media platform for the anti-vaccine movement, some vocal allies of Kennedy’s said the selection shows he lacks influence in the Trump administration.
“The new Surgeon General has never called for the COVID shots to be pulled off the market. That’s why she was picked,” Mary Talley Bowden, founder of the anti-coronavirus vaccine group Americans for Health Freedom, posted on X. “Kennedy is powerless.”
Good grief! This is worse than I ever imagined.
The conflict over the nominee for a lower-profile federal office reflects broader tensions over who wields influence in developing administration health policy and how far Kennedy must go to satisfy the demands of his MAHA movement. The surgeon general’s main role is as the nation’s family doctor, using a bully pulpit to dispense advice on smoking, loneliness, gun violence, alcohol and other health matters. It is a powerful platform, one that can help shape Americans’ views on important medical questions.
“This is really the first big fracture,” said Tara C. Smith, professor of epidemiology at Kent State University College of Public Health, who monitors anti-vaccine activists.“The surgeon general is the one who is usually out there and the face of the administration.”
As Means came under online assault, Kennedy posted twice on X in her defense on Thursday, calling her a “juggernaut against the ossified medical conventions.” He said the attacks were driven by “entrenched interests” and “industry-funded social media gurus,” though much of the criticism came from his own supporters.
“The goal of MAHA is to reform the largest and most powerful industry in the United States,” Kennedy said in a lengthy afternoon post, referring to the movement he developed during his unsuccessful presidential campaign. “I have little doubt that these companies and their conflicted media outlets will continue to pay bloggers and other social media influencers to weaponize innuendo to slander and vilify Casey, the same way they try to defame me and President Donald Trump.
The insane people have truly taken over our government.
President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security on Friday to increase the deportation force of the United States by 20,000 officers, a move that would lead to an enormous expansion of immigration enforcement if realized.
Japanese Girl with Cat, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
In a provision tucked into a presidential proclamation focused on pushing undocumented immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, Mr. Trump called on the Department of Homeland Security to soon begin “deputizing and contracting with state and local law enforcement officers, former federal officers, officers and personnel within other federal agencies, and other individuals.”
It was unclear how such an effort would be funded, one of several major logistical hurdles to such a large operation. There are now around 6,000 officers focused on deportation efforts at Immigration and Custom Enforcement.
Mr. Trump has pushed to deputize state and local law enforcement officers for immigration enforcement before, and Department of Homeland Security officials have already signed a series of agreements with local law enforcement in the months since took office. Late last month, local law enforcement officials in Florida assisted ICE in an operation that led to the arrest of more than 1,100 migrants across the state.
The Trump administration has spent the past few months attempting to make good on the president’s promise of mass deportations by conducting sweeping raids in major cities, arresting international students and allowing officers more freedom where they make arrests, like in courthouses. But it has still struggled to reach the pace that would be necessary for Mr. Trump’s expansive deportation goals.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has turned to pushing for migrants to leave the country on their own accord, a concept known as “self-deportation.” Earlier this week, department officials said they would pay migrants $1,000 and the cost of their travel if they left the country voluntarily and used a government app to do so.
In his proclamation Friday, Mr. Trump repeated that call, labeling it “project homecoming.”
A fundamental promise by America’s founders — that no one should be punished by the state without a fair hearing — is under threat, a growing chorus of federal judges say.
That concept of “due process under law,” borrowed from the Magna Carta and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is most clearly imperiled for the immigrants President Donald Trump intends to summarily deport, they say, but U.S. citizens should be wary, too.
Little girl with umbrella and cat, by Ukiyo-E
Across the country, judges appointed by presidents of both parties — including Trump himself — are escalating warnings about what they see as an erosion of due process caused by the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. What started with a focus on people Trump has deemed “terrorists” and “gang members” — despite their fierce denials — could easily expand to other groups, including Americans, these judges warn.
“When the courts say due process is important, we’re not unhinged, we’re not radicals,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Washington, D.C.-based appointee of President Joe Biden, said at a recent hearing. “We are literally trying to enforce a process embodied in probably the most significant document with respect to peoples’ rights against tyrannical government oppression. That’s what we’re doing here. Okay?”
It’s a fight that judges are increasingly casting as existential, rooted in the 5th Amendment’s guarantee that “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The word “person,” courts have noted, makes no distinction between citizens or noncitizens. The Supreme Court has long held that this fundamental promise extends to immigrants in deportation proceedings. In a 1993 opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia called that principle “well-established.” [….]
“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” wondered J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Wilkinson described an “incipient crisis” but also an opportunity to rally around the rule of law.
That’s all I have for today. What stories are you following?
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“Blockbuster Trade Announcement.” John Buss @repeat 1968
Good Evening, Sky Dancers!
I was late getting this post started today. I’ve had two doctor’s appointments the last two days, and I’m just exhausted. I guess I have one more test to go next week, and they’re leaving me alone until September. The good news is that I finally got to pick up my new glasses, so I can see clearly now! There is so much news today surrounding habeas corpus and free speech that I can’t believe what I’m seeing live on TV. I’m going to start with this headline from PBS. “WATCH: Stephen Miller says Trump administration is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus.”
Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said the administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.
Watch Miller’s remarks in the video player above.
“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” he told reporters. “So it’s an option that we’re actively looking at.”
Miller added that “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
Habeas corpus refers to people’s right to challenge their detention in court.
This, of course, is completely false, but that never matters to any of the Psychopaths surrounding #FARTUS. Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, writes this at his Substack One First. “148. Suspending Habeas Corpus. In response to adverse rulings in numerous immigration cases, Stephen Miller is raising the specter of suspending habeas. His argument is factually and legally nuts, but it’s worth explaining *why.*”
“I was going to wait until Monday’s regular issue to note the sad news out of the Supreme Court on Friday (that retired Justice David Souter passed away Thursday at the age of 85). But then Stephen Miller went on television Friday afternoon and made some of the most remarkable (and remarkably scary) comments about federal courts that I think we’ve ever heard from a senior White House official. Reacting to a series of high-profile losses in immigration cases this week, Miller raised the specter of President Trump suspending habeas corpus:
Well, the Constitution is clear. And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So … that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So Congress actually passed what’s called jurisdiction stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.
I know there’s a lot going on, and that Miller says lots of incendiary (and blatantly false) stuff. But this strikes me as raising the temperature to a whole new level—and thus meriting a brief explanation of all of the ways in which this statement is both (1) wrong; and (2) profoundly dangerous. Specifically, it seems worth making five basic points:
First, the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which is in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 is meant to limit the circumstances in which habeas can be foreclosed (Article I, Section 9 includes limits on Congress’s powers)—thereby ensuring that judicial review of detentions are otherwise available. (Note that it’s in the original Constitution—adopted before even the Bill of Rights.) I spent a good chunk of the first half of my career writing about habeas and its history, but the short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop. To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.
Second, Miller is being slippery about the actual text of the Constitution (notwithstanding his claim that it is “clear”). The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough. Releasing someone like Rümeysa Öztürk from immigration detention poses no threat to public safety—all the more so when the release is predicated on a judicial determination that Ozturk … poses no threat to public safety.
Third, even if the textual triggers for suspending habeas corpus were satisfied, Miller also doesn’t deign to mention that the near-universal consensus is that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. I’ve written before about the Merryman case at the outset of the Civil War, which provides perhaps the strongest possible counterexample: that the President might be able to claim a unilateral suspension power if Congress is out of session (as it was from the outset of the Civil War in 1861 until July 4). Whatever the merits of that argument, it clearly has no applicability at this moment.
Fourth, Miller is wrong, as a matter of fact,about the relationship between Article III courts (our usual federal courts) and immigration cases. It’s true that the Immigration and Nationality Act (especially as amended in 1996 and 2005) includes a series of “jurisdiction-stripping” provisions. But most of those provisions simply channel judicial review in immigration cases into immigration courts (which are part of the executive branch) in the first instance, with appeals to Article III courts. And as the district courts (and Second Circuit) have explained in cases like Khalil and Öztürk, even those provisions don’t categorically preclude any review by Article III courts prior to those appeals.
There’s more at the link. Here’s the bottom line from NBC Newsand Dan Mangam. “Top White House adviser Stephen Miller says ‘we’re actively looking at’ suspending due process for migrants. The “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller told reporters outside the White House.” How on earth they keep insisting that immigration is an invasion is beyond me.
Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller told reporters Friday that the administration is “looking at” ways to end due process protections for unauthorized immigrants who are in the country.
“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller said in the White House driveway.
“A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on whether he was referring to a specific group of people who’ve entered the country illegally, or all the people who have. It also did not comment on what he meant by the courts doing “the right thing.”
In his remarks, Miller maintained that the courts don’t have jurisdiction in immigration cases. “The courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch; the courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well too. So all of that will inform the choices the president ultimately makes,” he said.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced frustration about constitutional due process protections slowing down his efforts at mass deportations.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said in an interview with Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Welker pointed out the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and that the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights, but Trump complained that those protections take too much time.
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said, adding that some of the people the administration wants to deport are “murderers” and “drug dealers.”
Welker then asked if he needs to uphold the Constitution.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
A clause in the Constitution says due process protections can be suspended during an invasion: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Trump claimed the U.S. was being invaded back in March, when he invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to send alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a prison in El Salvador.
What really held me up in writing this by the time I got home was watching ICE thugs rough up an 80-year-old congresswoman and arrest the Mayor of Newark. This is from the AP, which is the news organization that refuses to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which was named 500 years ago. #FARTUS reminds me of some prehuman creature picked up by explorers in some version of the Land Time Forgot. Kristen Noem is the enforcer in just about any movie about a fascist dystopian you’ve ever seen. It’s ICE ICE BABY. “New Jersey mayor arrested at ICE detention center where he was protesting, prosecutor says.” Which century and country do we live in these days?
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday at a federal immigration detention center where he has been protesting its opening this week, a federal prosecutor said.
Alina Habba, interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on the social platform X that Baraka committed trespass and ignored warnings from Homeland Security personnel to leave Delaney Hall, a detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group.
Habba said Baraka had “chosen to disregard the law” and added that he was taken into custody.
Baraka, a Democrat who is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, has embraced the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration.
He has aggressively pushed back against the construction and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues.
Linda Baraka, the mayor’s wife, accused the federal government of targeting her husband.
“They didn’t arrest anyone else. They didn’t ask anyone else to leave. They wanted to make an example out of the mayor,” she said, adding that she had not been allowed to see him.
A crowd gathered to protest outside the building where Baraka was being held, with many chanting, “Let the mayor go!”
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, in attempting to enter the facility.
Here’s Insider NJ with a more truthful angle. “Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, Menendez, Exercise Oversight Authority in Visit to ICE Detention Facility.” I watched the entire event live on MSNBC today. Again, it’s why I was even later than I originally had planned to be today. I was watching and listening to the representatives demand that the masked ICE thugs take their hands off them.
Today, following an inspection of the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez, Jr., Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman released the following statement:
“At around 1pm today, my colleagues Rep. Lamonica McIver and Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr. and I arrived at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark to exercise our oversight authority as Members of Congress.
“Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not “storm” the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.
“Reopening Delaney Hall won’t make us safer and it won’t create an immigration system that is fair and secure for all families.
“Private Prison companies like GEO Group create a perverse incentive to increase incarceration to increase corporate profits. It’s no accident that GEO Group was the first corporation to max out donations to Trump’s Super PAC, to the tune of $500,000 dollars. And they’re being rewarded with huge contracts to imprison immigrants like we’re seeing here at Delaney.
“New Jerseyans don’t want more private prisons just to increase shareholder income at the expense of taxpayers. They want a fair and secure immigration system that reflects our values and respects our Constitution.”
Meanwhile, judges continue to free students arrested by ICE under the weird ass interpretations of Habeas Corpus put forth by Miller. “She was arrested for an op-ed. Now a judge has ordered her freed. Her detention “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” a federal judge said.” This is from VOX’s Andrew Prokop.
A Trump administration spokesperson anonymously claimed in March that “DHS and ICE investigations found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” But to this day they have conspicuously failed to produce any evidence of that — including, when Öztürk filed suit, before a judge.
What did the judge say? Judge William Sessions III ordered Öztürk released “immediately.” Ruling from the bench, he sounded appalled by the Trump administration’s conduct, which he said “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens.”
He said Öztürk had made “very substantial claims of First Amendment and due process violations,” and that, furthermore, the government had offered “no evidence” about their motivation for detaining her other than the op-ed
Is this case over, then? No. Öztürk was ordered released from detention. But the question of whether the US government can legally revoke her visa remains unresolved. While Sessions sounds very likely to rule in her favor, it’s unclear if conservatives on the Supreme Court will do the same, should the case reach them. Still, this case has been an embarrassment to the Trump administration, and perhaps there’s a faint glimmer of hope they’ll decide to just drop it. Too optimistic? Probably.
As the Trump administration battles to use awartime law to speed deportationsof alleged gang members, it has moved dozens of detained Venezuelans to the one court district in the nation where a federal judge for now has declined to stand in its way.
U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee sitting in the Northern District of Texas, refusedlast month to pause removals under the Alien Enemies Act of detainees who the government says are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang — even as judges in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and other parts of Texas have done so.
The administration views Hendrix’s district as a “favorable venue,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Tim Macdonald alleged at a recent court hearing in Denver. He and other immigrant advocates say the rush of relocations to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, has forced targeted Venezuelans to contest their removals in a court they see as ideologically aligned with the president.
“What the government was doing,” Macdonald said in the hearing, “was finding Venezuelan men, rounding them up and shipping them to the Northern District of Texas.”
The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about how many Venezuelan migrants are housed at Bluebonnet. It also would not say how many had been moved there from other facilities in recent weeks or why those transfers were made.
For now, the Supreme Court has indefinitely paused all Alien Enemies Act deportations in Hendrix’s district as it weighs whether migrants there are being given adequate opportunity to challenge their designations as “alien enemies.” The administration does not appear to have deported any migrants under the law from anywhere in the country since it first sent more than 130 Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March.
I want to end with Senator Murphy reading the riot act to Cos-Playing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It’s really worth watching.
ABC News also had this write-up on the Senate Committee’s visit with her. “Democrats slam DHS secretary as Noem says Abrego Garcia ‘not coming back’ to US. Noem was in front of the Senate testifying on the 2026 DHS budget.”
“Senate Democrats sparred with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s spending.
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia, asked if the Trump administration would comply with the Supreme Court’s decision that the U.S. government must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Noem replied that the government is following the law but didn’t say yes or no.
“What I would tell you is that we are following court order,” Noem shot back. “Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming.”
Van Hollen said he isn’t “vouching for the man” but rather due process.
“I suggest that rather than make these statements here, that you and the Trump administration make them in court under oath,” he added.
Van Hollen then accused Noem of a political speech, and Noem said she would suggest Van Hollen is an “advocate” for victims of illegal crime.
Last month, after Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
No one in this administration appears to be ready to comply with court orders to return Albrego Garcia. I wonder if Chief Justice Roberts has already offered up his balls to #FARTUS. We haven’t heard a peep from him since the court sent out the ultimatum to return Garcia.
So, there is so much here to cover that I’m hoping BB can pick up where I leave off. All of this is illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American. It’s about time someone defangs them all.
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I’m trying not to let myself fall into despair over what’s happening in our country and the world, but it isn’t easy. I try to distract myself by reading novels and by watching shows on Netflix and Max. But inevitably I open my phone or turn on cable news and get hit with awful news about what new insane thing Trump is doing or saying.
This morning, as I look around at stories in the news, I find myself sinking into sadness over what we have already lost from our democracy and what more losses could be coming. It’s all so tragic. I honestly despise the people who voted for Trump.
There’s one person who never fails to lift my spirits, if only temporarily: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. Recently, he has had a great time making fun of Trump’s seeming obsession with American girls’ dolls and how they need to make do with just 2 or 3 or 4 instead of 35 because of his tariffs.
Last night Lawrence made an interesting point about Trump’s cognitive decline. He pointed out that Trump saying “I don’t know,” when asked if people in the U.S. have a right to due process and when asked if he has a duty to defend the Constitution is something new for him. Normally, Trump never admits to not knowing something. He would rather bumble around talking complete nonsense than admit to not knowing.
Lawrence argues that Trump is a pathetic husk of his former self, exhausted and befuddled by his responsibilities. Not that any of this is going to drive Trump from office, but it’s an interesting thought. The danger, of course is that other people like Elon Musk and Stephen Miller could be in control of the presidency.
Lawrence also discussed Trump’s embarrassing appearance yesterday in the Oval Office with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“The Canadian prime minister both humbled and humiliated Donald Trump at the same time without Donald Trump having the slightest idea it was happening,” he said on Tuesday night.
Later in the segment, O’Donnell slammed Trump’s “utterly demented attempt” to turn Canada into a state. Carney, he noted, responded by saying “absolutely no to Donald Trump to his face.”
But Trump, he said, barely noticed.
“Donald Trump had no fight in him today when the very polite Canadian beside him talked rings around Donald Trump like a ring master in a circus with a trained animal, threw in some magic words that sounded flattering enough to Donald Trump so that Donald Trump actually ― and you’ll see this ― ends up nodding and agreeing with the man who is humiliating him and defeating him right there in the room on TV,” O’Donnell said. “No president has ever lost more in one conversation in the Oval Office than Donald Trump lost in these 90 seconds.”
O’Donnell rolled the footage of the meeting, where Carney told him Canada would never be for sale and would not be a U.S. state.
So, on to today’s news.
India and Pakistan–both nuclear powers–appear to be on the verge of war.
India launched military strikes on targets in Pakistan, both countries said on Wednesday and Pakistan claimed it had shot down five Indian Air Force jets, in an escalationthat has pushed the two nations to the brink of wider conflict.
India’s missile strikes early Wednesday morning targeted “terrorist infrastructure” across nine sites in Pakistan’s densely populated Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, it said. They came in response to a massacreby militantsof tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago, that New Delhi blamed on its neighbor.
India Pakistan map
Pakistan said at least 26 people were killed in Wednesday’s strikes – including women and a three-year-old girl – and 46 wounded. The country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif describedthe strikes as “an act of war” and Islamabad has vowed to retaliate.
From early Wednesday the two sides have exchanged shelling across their border, with locals on both sides telling CNN they weretakingshelter. A CNN journalist in Pakistan-administered Kashmir heard multiple loud explosions.
“A shell landed at a house close to the mosque in which two people were injured. Shells also hit other houses in our area and we fled from our area to a safer place,” said Shakeel Butt, a resident of Muzaffarabad, in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. A senior Indian defense source said at least eight people had been killed on the Indian side of the border.
Pakistani military sources later said they shot down five Indian Air Force jets and one drone in “self-defense,” claiming three Rafale jets – sophisticated multi-role fighters made in France – were among those downed as well as a MiG-29 and an SU-30 fighter.
A local resident and government official told CNN that an unidentified fighter aircraft had crashed on a school building in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Tensions between India and Pakistan intensified Wednesday after India’s military launched strikes against the neighboring country in response to a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, heightening fears of war between the nuclear-armed rivals….
The strikes have set the region on edge and shattered the fragile ceasefire that has largelyheld since 2021, with analysts warning of escalation in the decades-long conflict that has riven the South Asian subcontinent over the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir, parts of which are controlled by India and Pakistan, though the area is claimed in full by both countries.
Wednesday’s aerial assault is on a far bigger scale than in 2019, when India struck a single, remote Pakistani site in response to a suicide bombing that killed more than 40 Indian soldiersin Kashmir….
The sharp rise in tensions follows a deadly April 22 attack on tourists near the town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Gunmen armed with rifles killed 25 Indians and one Nepalese citizen. More than a dozen others were injured. The attack was the deadliest against civilians since the 2008 Mumbai attacks by the Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba that killed 166 people.
Indian-administered Kashmir is a heavily militarized zone. An armed insurgency — either seeking independence or favoring accession to Pakistan — has continued against Indian rule for more than three decades.
India has long accused Pakistan of fomenting separatist violence in Kashmir. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Wednesday that India had found evidence linking themilitants in the Pahalgam attack to Pakistan.
The Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status in August 2019 and instituted a crackdown, including imposing the world’s longest internet shutdown in a democracy. Promising development and investment, New Delhi had touted a return to relative peace, citing the surge of tourists to the region, a narrative upended by the deadly attack last month.
Read more at the WaPo.
Joe Biden gave his first major interview since he left the White House.
Former US President Joe Biden has given his first in-depth interview since he left the White House in January, speaking to the BBC about his legacy, foreign policy and his view of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days.
He said that he had few regrets, but he offered grave warnings about global affairs as Europe marks 80 years since the end of World War Two on the continent….
The former president also reflected on his decision to drop out of the 2024 election race – but he had less to say about any mistakes he and the Democrats may have made along the way….
On leaving the 2024 presidential race:
Democratic strategists have lamented that the last-minute handover left their campaign flat-footed, ultimately aiding Trump’s path to the White House, even as Democrats held a financial advantage in the 2024 race.
Biden boasted of being “so successful on our agenda” – a reference to the major legislation enacted in his first two years in office on the environment, infrastructure and social spending, as well as the better-than-expected Democratic performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
“It was hard to say now I’m going to stop,” he said. “Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away.”
Ultimately, quitting was “the right decision”, he said, but it was “just a difficult decision”.
On Trump and Ukraine:
Biden described the Trump administration’s suggestion that Ukraine give up territory as part of a peace deal with Russia as “modern-day appeasement” – a reference to European allies that allowed Adolf Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia in the 1930s in an ill-fated attempt to prevent a continent-wide conflict.
Joe Biden at BBC interview
“I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin….
Though Biden’s repeated assertion that Russian tanks would be rolling through central Europe if America and its allies didn’t support Ukraine is impossible to prove, he views the threat posed by Putin as serious and worthy of the comparison.
Biden also said that if the US allowed a peace deal that favoured Russia, Putin’s neighbours would be under economic, military and political pressure to accommodate Moscow’s will in other ways. In his view, the promise of American support to European allies becomes less believable and less of a deterrent.
Until this week, President Biden himself (former presidents keep their titles after they leave office) has largely observed the convention that former presidents do not criticise their successors at the start of their time in office. But from the moment we shake hands it is clear that he is determined to have his say too.
In a dark blue suit, the former president arrives smiling and relaxed but with the determined air of a man on a mission. It’s his first interview since leaving the White House, and he seems most angry about Donald Trump’s treatment of America’s allies – in particular Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky….
“I found it beneath America, the way that took place,” he says of the explosive Oval Office row between Trump and Zelensky in February. “And the way we talk about now that, ‘it’s the Gulf of America’, ‘maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama’, ‘maybe we need to acquire Greenland, ‘maybe Canada should be a [51st state].’ What the hell’s going on here?
“What President ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity – not about confiscation.”
The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, according to two people familiar with the effort.
Several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a “collection emphasis message” to intelligence-agency heads last week. They were directed to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island.
The classified message asked agencies, whose tools include surveillance satellites, communications intercepts and spies on the ground, to identify people in Greenland and Denmark who support U.S. objectives for the island.
The directive is one of the first concrete steps Trump’s administration has taken toward fulfilling the president’s often-stated desire to acquire Greenland.
A collection-emphasis message helps set intelligence-agency priorities, directing resources and attention to high-interest targets. The Greenland order, which went to agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, underscores the administration’s apparent commitment to seeking control of the self-governing island. It forms part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member and a decadeslong ally.
James Hewitt, a National Security Council spokesman, said the White House doesn’t comment on intelligence matters, but added: “The president has been very clear that the U.S. is concerned about the security of Greenland and the Arctic.”
In a statement, Gabbard said: “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information. They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”
More at the WSJ. I got past the paywall by clicking the link on Memeorandum.
A Navy fighter jet failed to land on an aircraft carrier and plummeted into the Red Sea on Tuesday, marking the fourth major mishap involving the vessel and the third loss of a fighter jet deployed with it since the warship left home last year.
The F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet, worth about $67 million, went overboard after an unsuccessful attempt to slow it down upon landing on the USS Harry S. Truman, the Navy said in a statement. Both aviators aboard the jet safely ejected and were rescued at sea by helicopter with minor injuries, and no one aboard the warship’s flight deck was harmed, the service said.
Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet
The latest incident, reported earlier by CNN, followed the loss of another jet, an F/A-18E, in an accident aboard the Truman last week in which the aircraft tumbled overboard after sailors aboard lost control of it while towing it in the ship’s hangar bay. A third fighter jet from the Truman was shot down accidentally over the Red Sea in December by another Navy warship, the USS Gettysburg, in an incident that triggered concerns about communication among warships and fighter jets in the region.
The Truman also was involved in a collision in the Mediterranean Sea in February, prompting the service to fire its commanding officer, Navy Capt. Dave Snowden. He was replaced by Navy Capt. Christopher Hill, who had just completed the deployment of another carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
While the incidents have not killed any service members, they have raised questions about the strain placed on the aircraft carrier’s crew and its ability to carry out a grueling deployment in which troops have clashed for months with Houthi militants in Yemen, who have repeatedly launched drone and missile attacks against vessels in the region. The mishaps have the attention of senior U.S. military leaders, a defense official familiar with the discussion said Tuesday night, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has twice extended the aircraft carrier’s deployment since it left its home in Virginia last September, most recently last week, to ensure that the Navy had two aircraft carriers on hand to battle the Houthis. Since March, the carrier has been on the front lines of a full-scale assault that President Donald Trump ordered against the Yemen-based militant group in response to its attacks on commercial and military vessels dating to late 2023.
Pete Hegseth isn’t the only cabinet member who doesn’t seem to care about protecting the nation’s secrets.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, used the same easily cracked password for different online accounts over a period of years, according to leaked records reviewed by WIRED. Following her participation in a Signal group chat in which sensitive details of a military operation were unwittingly shared with a journalist, the revelation raises further questions about the security practices of the US spy chief.
WIRED reviewed Gabbard’s passwords using databases of material leaked online created by the open-source intelligence firms District 4 Labs and Constella Intelligence. Gabbard served in Congress from 2013 to 2021, during which time she sat on the Armed Services Committee, its Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, and the Foreign Affairs Committee, giving her access to sensitive information. Material from breaches shows that during a portion of this period, she used the same password across multiple email addresses and online accounts, in contravention of well-established best practices for online security. (There is no indication that she used the password on government accounts.)
Tulsi Gabbard
Two collections of breached records published in 2017 (but breached at some previous unknown date), known as “combolists,” reveal a password that was used for an email account associated with her personal website; that same password, according to a combolist published in 2019, was used with her Gmail account. That same password was used, according to records dating to 2012, for Dropbox and LinkedIn accounts associated with the email address tied to her personal website. According to records dating to 2018 breaches, she also used it on a MyFitnessPal account associated with a me.com email address and an account at HauteLook, a now-defunct ecommerce site then owned by Nordstrom.
Records of these breaches have been available online for years and are accessible in commercial databases.
Gabbard’s spokesperson downplayed this story, saying the information is a decade old and passwords have been changed many times since then. But check out this info on Gabbard:
The password associated with all of the accounts in question includes the word “shraddha,” which appears to have personal significance to Gabbard: Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that she had been initiated into the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement into which she was reportedly born and which former members have accused of being a cult. Several former adherents told The Journal that they believe Gabbard received the name “Shraddha Dasi” when she was allegedly received into the group. Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, responded to questions from The Journal at the time by posting them on X and accusing the news media of publicizing “Hinduphobic smears and other lies.”
The U.S. DOGE Service is racing to build a single centralized database with vast troves of personal information about millions of U.S. citizens and residents, a campaign that often violates or disregards core privacy and security protections meant to keep such information safe, government workers say.
The team overseen by Elon Musk is collecting data from across the government, sometimes at the urging of low-level aides, according to multiple federal employees and a former DOGE staffer, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The intensifying effort to unify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants and rooting out fraud in government payments. And it follows a March executive order to eliminate “information silos” as DOGE tries to streamline operations and cut spending.
At several agencies, DOGE officials have sought to merge databases that had long been kept separate, federal workers said. For example, longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis told staffers at the Social Security Administration that they would soon start linking various sources of Social Security data for access and analysis, according to a person briefed on the conversations, with a goal of “joining all data across government.” Davis did not respond to a request for comment.
But DOGE has also sometimes removed protections aroundsensitive information — on Social Security numbers, birth dates, employment history, disability records, medical documentation and more. In one instance, a website for a new visa program wasn’t set up behind a protective virtual private network as would be customary, according to a Department of Homeland Security employee and records obtained by The Washington Post.
The administration’s moves ramp up the risk of exposing data to hackers and other adversaries, according to security analysts, and experts worry that any breaches could erode public confidence in government. Civil rights advocates and some federal employees also worry that the data assembled under DOGE could be used against political foes or for targeted decisions about funding or basic government services.
“Separation and segmentation is one of the core principles in sound cybersecurity,” said Charles Henderson of security company Coalfire. “Putting all your eggs in one basket means I don’t need to go hunting for them — I can just steal the basket.”
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may start enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military that had been blocked by lower courts.
The ruling was brief, unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. It will remain in place while challenges to the ban move forward.
The court’s three liberal members — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — noted dissents but provided no reasoning.
Commander Emily Shilling
The case concerns an executive order issued on the first day of President Trump’s second term. It revoked an order from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that had let transgender service members serve openly.
A week later, Mr. Trump issued a second order saying that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle.”
The Defense Department implemented Mr. Trump’s order in February, issuing a new policy requiring transgender troops to be forced out of the military. According to officials there, about 4,200 current service members, or about 0.2 percent of the military, are transgender.
The context:
The Supreme Court’s order came against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s broad attacks on transgender rights. The administration has sought to bar transgender athletes from sports competitions. It has tried to force transgender people to use bathrooms designated for their sex assigned at birth. And it has objected to letting people choose their pronouns.
The justices will soon decide the fate of a Tennessee law that bans transition care for transgender youths, challenged in a case brought by the Biden administration. The Trump administration flipped the government’s position in that case in February, after an executive order directed agencies to take steps to curtail surgeries, hormone therapy and other gender transition care for people under 19 years old.
In the case decided on Tuesday, seven active service members, as well as a person who sought to join and an advocacy group, sued to block the policy, saying, among other things, that it ran afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
One of the plaintiffs, Cmdr. Emily Shilling, who began transitioning in 2021 while serving in the Navy, has been a naval aviator for 19 years, flying more than 60 combat missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Her lawyers said the Navy had spent $20 million on her training.
In March, Judge Benjamin H. Settle of the Federal District Court in Tacoma, Wash., issued a nationwide injunction blocking the ban, using Commander Shilling as an example of the policy’s flaws.
Faced with the highly secretive and complex ritual of choosing a new pope, Catholic cardinals have turned to Hollywood to learn how it could all play out.
As crazy as it might sound, some of the 133 high-ranking clerics set to enter the Sistine Chapel when the conclave starts on Wednesday have looked to the Ralph Fiennes movie ― handily titled just “Conclave” ― for pointers.
“Some have watched it in the cinema,” a cleric involved in the real thing admitted to POLITICO.
The movie, directed by Edward Berger, features English actor Fiennes as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals. As the pope-appointed steward of the conclave, he has to deal with fractious clerics, the emergence of scandalous dossiers targeting papal favorites and the appearance of an unknown candidate from an obscure diocese.
It all might sound painfully relevant. The film is seen as remarkably accurate even by cardinals, said the cleric, making it a helpful research tool, especially at a time when so many of the conclave participants have little experience of Vatican politics and protocol.
A majority of the cardinals who flocked to Rome in the weeks since the death of Pope Francis were appointed by the late pontiff, and have never experienced a conclave. Mirroring the Fiennes film, many also come from small, previously overlooked dioceses across the globe.
This has gotten way too long, so I’d better wrap it up. What’s on your mind today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
This, of course, is completely false, but that never matters to any of the Psychopaths surrounding #FARTUS. Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, writes this at his Substack 
There’s more at the link. Here’s the bottom line from 
What really held me up in writing this by the time I got home was watching ICE thugs rough up an 80-year-old congresswoman and arrest the Mayor of Newark. This is from the AP, which is the news organization that refuses to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which was named 500 years ago. #FARTUS reminds me of some prehuman creature picked up by explorers in some version of the Land Time Forgot. Kristen Noem is the enforcer in just about any movie about a fascist dystopian you’ve ever seen. It’s ICE ICE BABY. 
So if you want the laughable and extremely sad headline today from our GOOBERment, here it is from Homeland Security. 
Films of her release from the Louisiana ICE Detention Center have been shown on all the news stations today. Meanwhile, WAPO reports that 
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