This is from the AP. “Suspect in arson at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence being treated at hospital, police say.”
A man who authorities said scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion where he set a fire is in police custody at a hospital after an unrelated medical event, state police said Monday.
Cody Balmer, 38, told police he had planned to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he found him, according to court documents. He was being treated at the hospital, which police said was “not connected to this incident or his arrest.”
Balmer’s mother told The Associated Press on Monday that she had tried in recent days to get him assistance for mental health issues, but “nobody would help.” She said her son had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The AP was not able to verify that information.
“He wasn’t taking his medicine, and that’s all I want to say,” Christie Balmer said, speaking at the family home in Harrisburg.
The fire left significant damage and forced Shapiro, his family and guests to evacuate the building early Sunday. Balmer, who was arrested later in the day, faces charges including attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.
Balmer had walked an hour from his home to the governor’s residence, and during a police interview, “Balmer admitted to harboring hatred towards Governor Shapiro,” according to a police affidavit, but it didn’t explain why.
Shapiro said he, his wife, their four children, two dogs and extended family had celebrated the Jewish holiday of Passover at the residence Saturday and were awakened by state troopers pounding on their doors about 2 a.m. Sunday. They fled and firefighters extinguished the fire, officials said. No one was injured.
At a Sunday evening news conference in front of the badly damaged south wing of the governor’s residence, Pennsylvania State Police Col. Christopher Paris identified the man in custody as Balmer.
A judge has revealed the terrifying epidemic of unexpected pizza deliveries to US judges’ homes across the country amid their war with Trump as he battles his executive orders through court.
US District Court Judge Esther Salas labeled the deliveries an ‘intimidation tactic’ on Friday after a slew of judges faced Trump’s wrath after they blocked his executive orders.
‘I found out about it on Tuesday night, and we had already known about hundreds of pizzas that had been going out to judges all over this country,’ she told MSNBC.
Salas said the deliveries were meant as a threat.
‘The point is, someone wants that judge, someone wants those judges to know, “I know where you live,”‘ she said.
Not only were the pizzas being delivered to the judges’ homes, but also to the homes of their children, Salas added.
‘So now, “We know where you live and we know where your children live,”‘ she continued.
Is this the country you thought you lived in? Is this what you learned that our country was about as you sat through history and civics courses and read books in your English classes that represented various periods our country experienced. It is no wonder that one of the past Presidents that Trump most admires is Andrew Jackson, the author of the Trail of Tears and Indian Removal Act. He also defied the Supreme Court. Many indigenous natives died on the Trail to the Indian Territories in Oklahoma, which was later turned over to white immigrants for settling. Jackson also owned slaves.
Now, for our latest Constitutional Battles. This is from Johnathan V. Last writing at The Bulwark. He actually offers up 3 examples that will rule the week’s news.
If you were Chris Krebs, would you flee the country?
Your answer before last week would probably be “no.” Your answer after last week is probably “maybe.” Your answer after the coming week might be “absolutely.”
Let’s break it down to understand what just happened and what is coming in the next 48 hours. Because the next two days may determine whether or not America crosses more critical red lines into open authoritarianism.
Last Wednesday, the president signed a memorandum instructing both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate Chris Krebs. You’ll remember that during Trump’s first term, Krebs headed the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—and was fired two weeks after the 2020 election for publicly rebutting Trump’s lies about the integrity of the election. Trump’s memorandum flips truth upside down, accusing Krebs of having “falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen,” and it not only orders an investigation into Krebs himself but it also commands that the entire cybersecurity company he now works for be stripped of any security clearances it has.
On Thursday, in an unsigned, unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ordered that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant whom Homeland Security mistakenly (by its own admission) arrested and extradited to a gulag in El Salvador.
On Saturday the government responded to the SCOTUS decision by stonewalling the district court judge and then claiming that it could not “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia because he is now detained by a sovereign nation on which the United States could not possibly exert any influence.
Also on Saturday, Nayib Bukele, the authoritarian ruler of that sovereign nation, arrived in the United States.
On Sunday, the government stonewalled the district court judge yet again—filing an update saying it had “no updates”—and in a separate filing challenged the Supreme Court’s order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, and added that the details of the deal with Bukele to imprison deportees from the United States are “classified.”
On Monday, Bukele will meet with his patron, Donald Trump.
So, why can’t Bukele just bring Abrego Garcia with him on whatever plane and hand him over to Donald Trump? Is this another dark shadow performance of how Trump bullies everyone, including innocent people and other dictators? This is the historical perspective by Heather Cox Richardson.
In her opinion, filed April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “[a]lthough the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the ‘custodian,’ and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”
The administration had already appealed her April 4 order to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision on Thursday, April 10, requiring the Trump administration “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” but asking the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” that release, noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. on April 11 explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.
But the administration evidently does not intend to comply. On April 11, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and ignored her order to provide information about what the government was doing to bring him back. Saturday, it said Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT. Today, it said it had no new information about him, but said that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for the immigration judge’s order not to send him to El Salvador “because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”
There is still no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.
Today, administration lawyers used the Supreme Court’s warning that the court must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs” to lay out a chilling argument. They ignored the Supreme Court’s agreement that the government must get Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, as well as the court’s requirement that the administration explain what it’s doing to make that happen.
Instead, the lawyers argued that because Abrego Garcia is now outside the country, any attempt to get him back would intrude on the president’s power to conduct foreign affairs. Similarly, they argue that the president cannot be ordered to do anything but remove domestic obstacles from Abrego Garcia’s return. Because Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is currently in the U.S. for a visit with Trump, they suggest they will not share any more updates about Abrego Garcia and the court should not ask for them because it would intrude on “sensitive” foreign policy issues.
Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.
All people in the United States are entitled to due process, but Trump and his officers have tried to convince Americans that noncitizens are not. They have also pushed the idea that those they are offshoring are criminals, but a Bloomberg investigation showed that of the 238 men sent to CECOT in the first group, only five of them had been charged with or convicted of felony assault or gun violations. Three had been charged with misdemeanors like petty theft. Two were charged with human smuggling. In any case, in the U.S., criminals are entitled to due process.
There is also this about my hope he comes on the plane, however. This is from the Washington Post. It’s hot off the web. “Salvadoran president says he won’t return wrongly deported man to U.S.”
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Monday that he did not plan to return to Kilmar Abrego García to the United States. “How can I return him to the United States?” Bukele asked Monday during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. “I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it.” The comments come a day after the Justice Department told a federal judge that it isn’t required to bring home a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Since Bukele struck a deal with Trump’s administration, he has accepted more than 200 Venezuelans deported from the U.S. in recent months and housed them in his country’s draconian mega-prison. Later Monday, Trump is scheduled to welcome the Ohio State football team to the White House to celebrate its 2025 national championship.
Come on, Ohio State! Remember Kent State? Be Better! Another not-a-shocker from the Washington Post’s John Hudson. “No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism, State Dept. office found. An internal memo, prepared days before Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE agents, raises doubts about the Trump administration’s claims that she supports Hamas.”
Days before masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk to deport her, the State Department determined that the Trump administration had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization, as the government has alleged.
The finding,contained in a March memo that was described to The Washington Post, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Ozturk’s visa under an authority empowering the top U.S. diplomat to safeguard the foreign policy interests of the United States.
The memo,written by an office within the State Department, raises doubts about the public accusations made by the Trump administration as it has sought to justify Ozturk’s deportation. The Department of Homeland Security has said Ozturk engaged in activities “in support of Hamas,” a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, but neither that agency nor U.S. prosecutors have provided evidence for that claim.
What has Trump done to Little Marco?
Steve Vladick, a law professor at George Town, has this to say about the idea of using the US Military for obvious Domestic Policies. I have this nightmare that all these professors I want to meet will wind up bunking with me and BB in some form of Trump Gulag. Maybe we get a Guantanamo visit. “Five Questions About Domestic Use of the Military. The federal government’s authorities to use the military for domestic law enforcement are old, broad, and vague. They may soon become far more relevant than they’ve been for quite a long time.” Trump was stopped by his Generals last time. Now it’s between us, the Constitution, and a drunk rapist who used to shill conspiracy theories on the weekend at Fox News.
But one of the problems when so much is going on is that we may neglect other stories that are also important, but not as immediate. And so I wanted to use today’s “Long Read” to tackle a topic that may soon become a very big deal—the President’s power to use the military for domestic civilian law enforcement. One of President Trump’s January 20 executive orders directed various officials to report back about the propriety of using the Insurrection Act (about which more in a moment) at and along the border. That report is due April 20, i.e., this coming Sunday. And last Friday, President Trump signed an ominous memorandum authorizing the military to take control of a wide swath of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border (the “Roosevelt Reservation”)—a move that seems designed to allow the military to arrest non-citizens trying to enter the country unlawfully on the ground that they’re trespassing on military property.
For obvious reasons, the President’s power to use the military for domestic law enforcement is a big deal—and has, historically, been a matter of substantial controversy. Indeed, there are lots of good reasons why we have come to reflexively oppose domestic use of the military except when it is absolutely necessary. But there is meaningful daylight between using the military for domestic law enforcement and using the military in ways that are anti-democratic. And as little as this administration can or should be trusted to hew to the historical line, it’s worth at least articulating what that line is in advance of what may well be the first domestic deployment of regular armed forces since 1992.
…
About a hundred 21 years ago, I wrote my student note in law school on the “Militia Acts”—a series of statutes enacted by early Congresses, and then amended in 1861 and 1871, to delegate to the President domestic emergency authority that the Constitution had given to Congress—“[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” These statutes, which have unhelpfully become known as the “Insurrection Act” (unhelpful because the authority isn’t limited to suppressing insurrections), are one of the President’s most important—and most controversial—domestic emergency powers. And it’s possible President Trump may soon seek to use the Insurrection Act in some immigration-related capacity; indeed, as noted above, one of the January 20 executive orders calls for a report on potential invocations of the statute by next Sunday.
Although the details of any invocation will matter, I thought it would be useful to tee up even a potential invocation of the Insurrection Act with a brief explainer of where the statutes come from, what they do and don’t authorize, and why, historically, domestic use of the military has been so controversial. To make a long story short, any invocation of the Insurrection Act under our current circumstances would be a dangerous move from the Trump administration, but contra some hot takes on the internet, it would not be tantamount to a declaration of martial law.
Read more about this act and also the deportation to El Salvador atrocity at the link. Here’s another Hot Take from Wiredwhich is moving up in the Journalism World with its reporting. “HHS Systems Are in Danger of Collapsing, Workers Say. The purging of IT and cybersecurity staff at the Department of Health and Human Services could threaten the systems used by the agency’s staff and the safety of critical health data.”
Much of the IT and cybersecurity infrastructure underpinning the US health system is in danger of a possible collapse following a purge of IT staff and leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), four current and former agency workers tell WIRED. This could put vast troves of public health data, including the sensitive health records of hundreds of millions of Americans, clinical trial data, and more, at risk of exposure.
As a result of a reduction in force, or RIF, in the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), the sources say, staff who oversee and renew contracts for critical enterprise services are no longer there. The same staff oversaw hundreds of contractors, some of whom play a crucial role in keeping systems and data safe from cyberattacks. And a void of leadership means that efforts to draw attention to what the sources believe to be a looming catastrophe have allegedly been ignored.
Thousands of researchers, scientists, and doctors lost their jobs earlier this month at HHS agencies critical to ensuring America’s health, such as the Centers for Disease Control and and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Hundreds of administrative staff were also subjected to a reduction in force. Many of these staffers were responsible for helping ensure that the mass of highly personal and sensitive information these agencies collect is kept secure.
Employees who were subject to the RIF, as well as some who remain at the agency, tell WIRED that without intervention, they believe the systems they managed could go dark, potentially putting the entire health care system at risk.
“Pretty soon, within the next couple of weeks, everything regarding IT and cyber at the department will start to operationally reach a point of no return,” one source, who was part of a team that managed these systems at HHS for a decade before being part of the RIF, alleges to WIRED.
Like many across the agency, administrative staff found out they were part of the RIF on April 1 in an email sent at 5 am Eastern, though a number of employees only realized they had been let go when their badges no longer worked when trying to access HHS buildings.
Five former prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol are urging the disciplinary office governing lawyers in Washington, DC, to open an investigation into President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to be the district’s top prosecutor.
The filing is the latest turn in the nomination of Ed Martin to be US attorney for DC and comes as Senate Democrats have pledged to delay any confirmation vote.
Martin, who has been serving in the post on an interim basis since Trump returned to the White House, is a divisive pick for the job. After stepping into the position, he used his new powers to dismiss January 6 Capitol riot cases, fire prosecutors who were involved in the investigations, go after his and Trump’s political adversaries, and launch internal reviews in an attempt to find misconduct within the office.
In a letter filed Sunday with the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the former prosecutors outlined those controversial actions, as well as others, saying that Martin violated several professional rules.
“He has used his brief time in office to demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of a federal prosecutor, announcing investigations against his political opponents, aiding defendants he previously represented, and communicating improperly with those he did not,” the group wrote.
“These actions are not worthy of the Department of Justice, undermine the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law, and violate Mr. Martin’s professional obligations,” the letter reads.
Martin’s office declined CNN’s request for comment on the letter.
Okay, so I’m bumping 3800 words now. I also want to return to my hot Macha Tea and floofy cuddly furbabies. I think we all need a group hug now.
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“The quote he will be remembered for.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
President’s Day is an underlooked holiday in this century’s USA. The amalgamation of Washington and Lincoln’s Birthday with all the others has water downed the usual class lessons and celebrations. We now have a Republican Congress Critter trying to make Flag Day and Trump’s Birthday Federal Holidays. Jingoism has always been confused with being a patriot at some point in history. Now, we’ve gone past that to a coup to create oligarchs to form an aristocracy and create a Monarch out of a dotard. It’s especially bad today as we see a President trying to rule like a king and transfer all the Treasury of the United States to the very wealthy.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) wants President Donald Trump’s birthday to be a federal holiday. On Friday, the New York congresswoman introduced in a news release what she called “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act,” which would “permanently codify” June 14 as a federal holiday called “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day,” according to the release.
About two years into the Reagan Regime and two years into grad school as I started my serious study of economics, I realized we were turning our backs on the 20th century. My vote for him is the one I seriously regretted. Although, I did not vote for him in the Republican Primary because he never struck me as intelligent enough to do the job. I’ve discovered that today’s Republican donors only want someone who can get out votes and throw red meat. That serves their real goals for cashing in. Historian Heather Cox Richardson pointed out the Republican’s embrace of Racism and 19th-century thinking yesterday in her Substack’s “Letters from an American.” It started decades of stereotyping everyone and a return to the Gilded Age that led to the Trump Coup. He’s calling it the Golden Age, but seriously, it’s the Gilded Age on Viagra. It’s the rebirth of his plan for American Carnage.
After World War II, the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—agreed that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. But not everyone was on board. Some big businessmen hated regulations and the taxes necessary for social welfare programs and infrastructure, and racists and religious traditionalists who opposed women’s rights wanted to tear that “liberal consensus” apart.
They had no luck convincing voters to abandon the government that was overseeing unprecedented prosperity until the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision permitted them to turn back to an old American trope. That ruling, which declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional, enabled opponents of the liberal consensus to resurrect the post–Civil War argument of former Confederates that a government protecting Black rights was simply redistributing wealth from hardworking white taxpayers to undeserving Black Americans.
That argument began to take hold, and in 1980, Republican president Ronald Reagan rode it to the White House with the story of the “welfare queen,” identified as a Cadillac-driving, unemployed moocher from Chicago’s South Side (to signal that the woman was Black). “She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands,” Reagan claimed. “And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names.” The woman was real, but not typical—she was a dangerous criminal rather than a representative welfare recipient—but the story illustrated perfectly the idea that government involvement in the economy bled individual enterprise and handed tax dollars to undeserving Black Americans.
Republicans expanded that trope to denigrate all “liberals” of both parties, who supported an active government, claiming they were all wasting government monies. Deregulation and tax cuts meant that between 1981, when Reagan took office, and 2021, when Democratic president Joe Biden did, about $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. But rather than convincing Republican voters to return to a robust system of business regulation and restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations, that transfer of wealth seemed to make them hate the government even more, as they apparently were convinced it benefited only nonwhite Americans and women.
That hatred has led to a skewed idea of the actions and the size of the federal government. For example, Americans think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid because they think it spends about 25% of the federal budget on such aid while they say it should only spend about 10%. In fact, it spends only about 1% on foreign aid. Similarly, while right-wing leaders insist that the government is bloated, in fact, as Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution noted last month, the U.S. population has grown by about 68% in the last 50 years while the size of the federal government’s workforce has actually shrunk.
When I read this, I always repeat the mantra, Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man. I knew a bunch of them in situ when I was in high school, where they peaked. Most barely made it through yet expected to be welcomed into top-paying jobs because, well, they were taught they could fumble through anything and still be put at the head of the line. They were told girls would throw themselves at them. What a suprise when they found out the was a lot of competition that exceeded their skills. They’re basically threatened by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Now it’s a rallying cry that basically shows you who the sexist, the racist, and the GLBTQ bigots are. The worst of them came from families with money who could buy them into just about anything. We’re being ruled today by yesterday’s Trust Fund Babies. There are still a lot of Uncle Toms in the news, too.
The Trump administration has pressured Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, a champion of the US president who is facing criminal charges in Bucharest.
Andrew and his brother Tristan Tate, who are dual US and UK nationals, have become a cause célèbre in rightwing social media after having been arrested in Romania in 2022 and charged with human trafficking, sexual misconduct and money laundering, as well as starting an organised crime group. They have denied wrongdoing.
The Tates’ case was first brought up by US officials in a phone call with the Romanian government last week and then followed up by Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell when he met the Romanian foreign minister at the Munich Security Conference, according to three people familiar with the matter.
A fourth person said a request was made to return the brothers’ passports and allow them to travel while they wait for court proceedings to conclude. Romanian foreign minister Emil Hurezeanu declined to comment on his exchange with Grenell. His spokesperson said Hurezeanu initiated the meeting and that they had “known each other for a long time” as they had both served as ambassadors in Berlin during the first Trump presidency.
The spokesperson did not comment on their specific discussions but said: “Romanian courts are independent and operate based on the law, there is due process.”
Grenell said he had “no substantive conversation” with Hurezeanu, whom he denied knowing. He “saw me in the hallway” in Munich and “asked for a meeting”, but there was no other follow-up encounter, Grenell said. “I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets,” he added.
This month Grenell wrote on X that Romania was the “latest example” of how funds disbursed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had been “weaponised against people and politicians who weren’t woke”. The Trump administration has slashed USAID payments and attempted to fire many of its staff.
The Tate brothers have millions of online followers in the “manosphere” — online platforms targeted at young men that promote male superiority and reject feminism — which played a role in Trump’s re-election. Tucker Carlson, a Trump ally and former Fox anchor, has carried out sympathetic interviews with both brothers, calling on viewers to “make up their own mind” about them.
Tristan Tate boasted on X in November about the brothers’ role in the US election, claiming that “millions of young men in Europe and the USA have a healthy rightwing approach to politics that they would NOT have if Andrew Tate had never appeared on their phone screens”.
The UK is also seeking the brothers’ extradition after police in Bedfordshire obtained an arrest warrant as part of an investigation into allegations of rape and human trafficking. A Romanian court ruled last year that they can be extradited once there is a final decision in their case in Romania.
“Every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the Golden Age of America.”
Yet, just one day later, as deadly storms and catastrophic flooding ravaged Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states, he remained silent on the disaster on Truth Social, instead flooding his social media platform with 14 separate posts about his trip to the Daytona 500.
Videos, event clips, and even a screenshot of a tweet from the racetrack dominated his feed—while families in Kentucky and other states faced devastation, loss, and uncertainty. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called the devastation, “one of the most serious weather events we’ve dealt with in at least a decade.”
A mother and her 7 year old child were among 8 people in Kentucky who died due to the storm.
Trump’s trip to Daytona was a spectacle of taxpayer-funded extravagance. The cost of moving a sitting president, including Air Force One, Secret Service, and logistical support, runs into the millions.
Yup, it’s a return to the Gilded Age. Right down to child labor and life-threatening workplaces. This is from Popular Information. “In botched DEI purge, OSHA trashes workplace safety guidelines.” Hell, we don’t need no stinking immigrants! We got 8 year olds!
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has ordered the digital and physical destruction of 18 publications on workplace safety practices, according to an internal February 7 email obtained by Popular Information. The email says the publications have been removed from the OSHA website and tells staff that any physical copies should be “disposed of or recycled.”
The purge appears to be part of the Trump administration’s effort to terminate any activities associated with “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” or DEIA. The email advises OSHA staff that “[i]f you have wallet cards that include language, or can be interpreted, on DEIA or gender ideology, please dispose of them as well.”
Popular Information has obtained archived versions of most of the deleted publications. Almost all of them are not associated with DEIA topics but appear to have been targeted because they include a DEIA-related keyword used in a completely different context.
For example, one of the purged publications is “OSHA Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders During Treatment and Transport of Victims of Hazardous Substance Releases.” Popular Information was able to obtain an archived version of the publication through the Internet Archive. The 104-page document — a collaboration between dozens of government agencies and NGOs — was published in 2009 to detail the steps “employers need to take to protect their EMS responders from becoming additional victims while on the front line of medical response.” DEIA issues are not discussed.
On page 94 of the publication, however, the words “diversity” and “diverse” are used in a context that has nothing to do with race or gender. The publication notes there is a “diversity of state-specific certification, training, and regulatory requirements” for “EMS agencies” and “diverse conditions under which EMS responders could work.” Similarly, on page 96, the publication notes, “EMS responders are a diverse group” and “risks vary with their primary and secondary roles.”
“Guidelines for Nursing Homes: Ergonomics for the Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders,” is a 44-page publication released in 2009. It provides “recommendations for nursing home employers to help reduce the number and severity of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in their facilities.” It has nothing to do with DEIA. On page 10, however, it notes that “development of MSDs may be related to genetic causes, gender, age, and other factors.” The single use of the word “gender” appears to have flagged the publication for deletion and destruction.
Another purged publication, “Small Entity Compliance Guide for the Respiratory Protection Standard,” contains the sentence, “[t]he new computer software reflects the concept of government leadership through collaboration with diverse technical organizations.” It has nothing to do with DEIA.
It’s pretty clear that our European allies are worried about our commitment to NATO and the idea that no country should invade a sovereign country. This is breaking news from the AP. You know the AP, the news agency that’s banned from FARTUS pressers? I’m absolutely certain we are now more apt to get Terrorist attacks between knowing we’re not on good times with the Allies that went to war last time and with the FBI and CIA kneecapped. “European leaders gather for emergency talks, fearing that Trump has abandoned age-old allies.” I thought these things were solid Republican values? FARTUS sides with the bad guys.
European leaders gathered in Paris Monday for emergency talks on how to react to the U.S. diplomatic blitz on Ukraine, which has thrown a once-solid alliance into turmoil and left the Europeans questioning the reliability of their key transatlantic partner.
Shortly before the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump, but Macron’s office would not disclose details about the 20-minute discussion.
Leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and the European Union arrived at the Elysee Palace for talks on Europe’s security quandary. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is also attending.
Last week, top U.S. officials from the Trump administration made their first visit to Europe, leaving the impression that Washington was ready to embrace the Kremlin while it cold-shouldered many of its age-old European allies.
Despite belligerent warnings for months ahead of Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president, leaders hoped somehow that Trump would stand shoulder to shoulder with Europe in opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the continent would finally start to beef up its defenses and become less reliant on American firepower.
But a flurry of speeches by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week questioned both Europe’s security commitments and its fundamental democratic principles. Macron said their stinging rebukes and threats of non-cooperation in the face of military danger felt like a shock to the system.
The tipping point came when Trump decided to upend years of U.S. policy by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Then, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia on Saturday all but ruled out the inclusion of other Europeans in any Ukraine peace talks.
Alexander Vindman has this to say about our intelligence capability in the age of FARTUS and Putin’s Girl Tulsi. “The Dark Age of American Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard and the End of Intelligence Sharing.”
Tulsi Gabbard represents a major challenge to the basic functions of American government and the long-term safety of the American people. Tulsi’s sympathies for the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and ideological alignment with Russian media networks like RT suggest that her tenure as DNI will be characterized by an adversarial relationship to the rest of the intelligence community. The best-case scenario for the United States is that Tulsi Gabbard’s willingness to accept the narratives peddled by adversaries of America at face value is the result of poor judgement. The worst-case scenario is that Tulsi Gabbard is operating in bad-faith and actively seeking to limit American intelligence capabilities. Regardless of whichever scenario is closer to reality, the United States will face major changes in how its allies will approach the process of intelligence sharing.
We can expect that our allies will limit the amount of intelligence they share with their American counterparts and that the US will be increasingly compartmentalized within multilateral formats like Five Eyes, AUKUS, and NATO. We can also assume that the work of intel agencies involved in clandestine support efforts (such as the CIA’s support for the Ukrainian military and drone programs) will face major scrutiny and limitations in their operations. Depending on the actions taken by Gabbard and her willingness to advance the administration’s interest in supporting European far-right political actors, our allies may begin to subject American operatives to counter-intelligence measures.
Intelligence sharing allows the United States to counter threats posed by terrorists and adversarial states. With Gabbard as the head of the DNI, Americans will be facing a more dangerous world with fewer friends and less tools. While some intelligence functions may be partially insulated from Gabbard’s direct control, we can expect that her presence will lead to a considerable shift in how our allies approach cooperation with the American intelligence community for the foreseeable future.
Last month SpaceX carried out a test launch of its in-development Starship rocket. Liftoff was achieved, but as the company later announced, “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.” In other words, it exploded.
It would be wrong to think of this explosion as a disaster; new products often experience failures during testing. That is, after all, why we test them. Still, the euphemistic language reeks of unwillingness to take responsibility and admit that things didn’t go as planned. But then again, what would you expect from a company owned by Elon Musk?
And here’s the thing: If a rocket blows up, you can build a new rocket and try again. “Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government?
This isn’t a hypothetical question: Musk, with backing from Donald Trump, is blowing up significant parts of the U.S. government as you read this. And we can already see the shape of multiple potential disasters.
The Muskenjugend — the mostly very young people Musk has hired to work at the Department of Government Efficiency, which isn’t actually a government department in any legal sense but which Trump has effectively given huge and probably unconstitutional power to remake federal agencies — generally seem to share three characteristics.
First, they all seem to be extreme right-wing ideologues: whenever journalists investigate the social media trail of one of Musk’s operatives, what they find is horrifying. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had in the recent past advocated racism and eugenics.
Second, they don’t know anything about the government agencies they’re supposedly going to make more efficient. That’s understandable. The federal government has around 2 million workers, many — I would say the vast majority — performing important public services, in a huge variety of fields. You can’t parachute into a government agency and expect to know in a matter of days which if any programs and employees are dispensable.
But the third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut.
So last week, when the Trump administration began laying off large numbers of probationary workers, the only real questions were how quickly it would become clear that essential government functions were being compromised and just how scary the damage would be.
And the answers were that the damage became obvious almost immediately, and some of it looks very scary indeed.
A word about language: the term “probationary workers” can sound as if we’re talking about problem cases, people who’ve had poor performance reviews or something. But all it means is employees who were hired relatively recently, usually within the past year, and as a result have weaker job protection than their more senior colleagues.
So what would be your worst nightmare about large, hastily announced job cuts? Maybe firing the people responsible for keeping our nuclear weapons secure? Sure enough, on Thursday night, according to CNN’s reporting, Trump officials fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, apparently unaware that this agency oversees America’s nukes. (Maybe the name should have been a giveaway?)
The next day, realizing the enormity of the error, the agency tried to reinstate those workers — but was having trouble getting in touch, because the terminated workers had already been locked out of their government email accounts.
Trump officials also summarily fired 3400 workers at the National Forest Service, which plays a critical role in fighting forest fires. The administration said that no firefighters were laid off, but right now — before fire season begins — is when the service should be trying to prevent fires by, among other things, clearing vegetation that can feed those fires. That work has now been hobbled, in some cases brought to a complete halt. (Remember when Trump blamed California for devastating fires, claiming that the state hadn’t raked enough leaves?)
Large layoffs have struck at the Department of Health and Human Services, including, according to CBS, half the officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, sometimes called the “disease detectives,” who play a crucial role in identifying public health threats. There have been layoffs at the FDA, which monitors the safety of food additives and medical devices.
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.
Pitting Americans against each other should not be a political strategy. It gets people killed. No one knows this better than Judge Esther Salas, whose son was murdered and husband badly injured by a crazed Trumper. This is from the Daily Mail. 
Is this the country you thought you lived in? Is this what you learned that our country was about as you sat through history and civics courses and read books in your English classes that represented various periods our country experienced. It is no wonder that one of the past Presidents that Trump most admires is 
So, why can’t Bukele just bring Abrego Garcia with him on whatever plane and hand him over to Donald Trump? Is this another dark shadow performance of how Trump bullies everyone, including innocent people and other dictators? 
There is also this about my hope he comes on the plane, however. This is from the
Come on, Ohio State! Remember Kent State? Be Better! Another not-a-shocker from 
Steve Vladick, a law professor at George Town, h
Read more about this act and also the deportation to El Salvador atrocity at the link. Here’s another Hot Take from 
Had enough of Trump’s appointments yet? Try this one. This is from CNN. 
When I read this, I always repeat the mantra, Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man. I knew a bunch of them in situ when I was in high school, where they peaked. Most barely made it through yet expected to be welcomed into top-paying jobs because, well, they were taught they could fumble through anything and still be put at the head of the line. They were told girls would throw themselves at them. What a suprise when they found out the was a lot of competition that exceeded their skills. They’re basically threatened by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Now it’s a rallying cry that basically shows you who the sexist, the racist, and the GLBTQ bigots are. The worst of them came from families with money who could buy them into just about anything. We’re being ruled today by yesterday’s Trust Fund Babies. There are still a lot of Uncle Toms in the news, too.
These are just perfect examples of “the many fine people on both sides.” Covering up rapes and sexual assault is a major activity for Trumplandia. FARTUS himself is a participant in these illegal and immoral activities. No Republican seems to care, though. 
Yup, it’s a return to the Gilded Age. Right down to child labor and life-threatening workplaces. 
It’s pretty clear that our European allies are worried about our commitment to NATO and the idea that no country should invade a sovereign country. This is breaking news from the AP. You know the AP, the news agency that’s banned from FARTUS pressers? I’m absolutely certain we are now more apt to get Terrorist attacks between knowing we’re not on good times with the Allies that went to war last time and with the FBI and CIA kneecapped. “European leaders gather for emergency talks, fearing that Trump has abandoned age-old allies.” I thought these things were solid Republican values? FARTUS sides with the bad guys.
Alexander Vindman has this to say about our intelligence capability in the age of FARTUS and Putin’s Girl Tulsi. “The Dark Age of American Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard and the End of Intelligence Sharing.”
I’m going to end with Paul Krugman, who has a lot more freedom in his Substack than he did with NYT. 
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