Wednesday Reads: Iran Dominates the News; Epstein Still Breaks Through

Posted: March 11, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Yesterday I tried to watch a press conference on Trump’s Iran conflict by Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine, but it was unwatchable. Hegseth waved his arms around and yelled over-the-top threats, and Caine sort of tried to sound reasonable; but none of it made sense. No one in the Trump administration has a clue why we’re in this “war.” I really do think it’s another distraction from the Epstein files.

So this morning I enjoyed reading this description by John Ganz at Unpopular Front: Command-Shift-War. War as Cliché.

This war is notable not for its use of Artificial Intelligence, but for the fact that it is the first war that feels like it’s been launched by A.I: It’s all been done on a level less than thought. Trump’s remarks, Hegseth’s speeches; they all sound like autocompletes or snippets of half-remembered things. When Trump bellows, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” he knows not what it means; he just heard it somewhere, probably on TV.

The barrage of clichés from Hegseth’s mouth is astonishing—“Flying over their capital. Death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be….” Then General Caine (what a name) joins in the fusillade: “Profound sadness and gratitude….wounded warriors…standing shoulder to shoulder…making steady progress…clear-eyed…quiet professionals…call balls and strikes.” Clear-eyed, quiet professionals are making steady progress calling balls and strikes on our wounded warriors, to whom we feel eternal gratitude. We may run out of interceptors, but we are well-stocked with hackneyed phrases. And the munitions may be “precision guided,” but the language is necessarily vague. Too bad they can’t bore the enemy to death.

Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine try to make sense of the Iran war.

Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine try to make sense of the Iran war.

The images, too, are familiar and shopworn for anyone who can remember as far back as the First Persian Gulf War. The grainy footage of “precision strikes” (another cliché) on “key targets.” The night sky of a Middle Eastern metropolis illuminated with fire and smoke—we’ve all seen Shock and Awe (2002), dir. George W. Bush and Michael Bay—Tomahawks streaking into the sky. The jets screaming off the decks of carriers; The video edits using “the Macarena” or “Fortunate Son,” meant to recall Forrest Gump, itself already a pastiche of Vietnam movies. I’m sure something is reassuring about it all to a Fox viewer approaching senescence. But also for the young who have processed everything through video games. They’ve seen this movie before. (That’s another one, in case you didn’t notice.) It’s a kind of medley of America’s wars; the themes come and go: oil crisis…Iran…Kuwait…boots on the ground…Patriot missiles…Scuds. Even the sinking of an apparently unarmed Iranian warship by a submarine was a callback: Hegseth reminded us it was the first time a US sub had sunk an enemy vessel with a torpedo since WWII. It had no strategic or tactical purpose; it was just meant to generate an image: a ship going down viewed through the crosshairs of a periscope. Something out of Run Silent Run Deep, watched on a Sunday afternoon. Or the Victory at Sea doc,not for nothing, a movie that Trump obsesses over. Of course, “unrestricted submarine warfare” and abandoning survivors at sea recalls a coldhearted U-Boat skipper more than Clark Gable, but no matter.

In the past, propaganda served the purposes of war; now war serves the purposes of propaganda. But the blood remains real.

A.I. will supposedly give us fully automated wars in the future, but it’s here, right now. There’s a blind automatism to this war; It’s a war without thought or deliberation, public or private. It’s war as autocomplete. Of course, we were gonna “do” Iran. It was just what was next. Another barrage of clichés: “American blood on their hands…theocratic lunatics…the mullahs…We’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years.” The last one is particularly Orwellian: We’ve always been at war with West Asia.

Read more at the Substack link above.

Here’s the latest news and opinion about Trump’s “war.”

The Pentagon tried to hide the number of U.S. injuries in the war until Reuters did an independent investigation. Now they say there are 140 wounded.

Reuters: Exclusive: As many as 150 US troops wounded so far in Iran war, sources say.

As many as 150 U.S. troops have been wounded in the 10-day-old ​war with Iran, two people familiar with the matter told ‌Reuters on Tuesday.

The casualty figure has not been previously reported. Prior to Reuters’ publication of the figure, the Pentagon had only disclosed eight U.S. personnel seriously injured.

In a statement after ​Reuters published its report, the Pentagon estimated the figure to be approximately ​140 wounded and said the vast majority of them were ⁠minor.

“Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 140 U.S. service members ​have been wounded over 10 days of sustained attacks,” said chief Pentagon ​spokesperson Sean Parnell.

He said 108 of the wounded service members had already returned to duty.

Parnell said the eight seriously wounded service members were receiving the highest level of medical ​care.

Reuters could not determine the types of injuries and whether they include traumatic brain ​injuries, which are common after exposure to blasts.

Iran has launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. military bases ‌since ⁠the start of the conflict on Feb. 28. It has also struck diplomatic missions in Arab Gulf states as well as hotels and airports and damaged oil infrastructure.

The New York Times: At Least 3 Ships Are Struck In and Around a Key Gulf Oil Passage.

At least three ships were hit on Wednesday in and around the vital oil route of the Strait of Hormuz, according to a British maritime monitoring group, as the Middle East war chokes off one of the key conduits for the global oil trade.

An image released by the Royal Thai Navy shows a tanker near the Strait of Hormuz that was attacked on Wednesday. Iran claimed responsibility. Credit…Royal Thai Navy, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Iran appeared to claim responsibility for at least one of the attacks. Alireza Tangsiri, the naval commander in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, named one of the ships that was struck, the Mayuree Naree, in a post on social media, saying they had “ignored the warnings” from Iran, and “ended up getting caught.”

He added: “Any vessel that intends to pass must obtain permission from Iran.”

The incidents came after the U.S. military said it struck 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz — though it remained unclear whether any Iranian mines had actually been deployed there.

There were three separate reports, according to United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a British monitoring agency. Iran fired at targets across the Middle East on Wednesday, but did not explicitly claim responsibility for the strikes on the ships.

Three strikes on ships in a single morning appeared to represent an unusual uptick: The U.K.M.T.O. said it had received reports of 13 attacks in total since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began on Feb. 28.

One cargo vessel was struck “by an unknown projectile” north of Oman in the Straits of Hormuz, resulting in a fire onboard, the agency said. The Oman News Agency said the country’s Maritime Security Center received a report indicating that the Mayuree Naree, a commercial vessel flying the flag of Thailand, was hit off the Omani coast.

Mark Mazzetti, Tyler Pager, and Edward Wong at The New York Times: How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War.

On Feb. 18, as President Trump weighed whether to launch military attacks on Iran, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in energy markets.

Even during the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran last June, Mr. Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. “Oil prices blipped up and then went back down,” he said. Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

The extent of that miscalculation was laid bare in recent days, as Iran threatened to fire at commercial oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which all ships must pass on their way out of the Persian Gulf. In response to the Iranian threats, commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Gulf, oil prices have spiked, and the Trump administration has scrambled to find ways to tamp down an economic crisis that has triggered higher gasoline prices for Americans.

The episode is emblematic of how much Mr. Trump and his advisers misjudged how Iran would respond to a conflict that the government in Tehran sees as an existential threat. Iran has responded far more aggressively than it did during last June’s 12-day war, firing barrages of missiles and drones at U.S. military bases, cities in Arab nations across the Middle East, and on Israeli population centers.

U.S. officials have had to adjust plans on the fly, from hastily ordering the evacuation of embassies to developing policy proposals to reduce gas prices.

The Daily Beast: Senator Torches Trump’s ‘Incoherent’ War Plans After Secret Briefing.

President Trump’s closed-door meeting about his long-term plan in Iran and overall justification for the war has been blasted as “incoherent” by a senator who attended.

Chris Murphy, a Democrat representing Connecticut, unloaded on the White House in a troubling X thread after the secret briefing on “Operation Epic Fury.”

Sen. Chris Murphy warned about the lack of a plan in a worrying X thread.

He said there doesn’t seem to be a clear goal apart from “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.”

“I obviously can’t disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are,” he said.

Several of the White House’s stated reasons for the war didn’t even come up, Murphy said, with not a single mention of plans to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. “This is, uh…surprising…since Trump says over and over this is a key goal,” he said.

The Trump administration also now claims that regime change is not the goal of the operation, despite the president initially framing it that way for the public.

Murphy suggested that if the goal is not to ensure a transition of power, the U.S. will just face more issues further down the line. He said: “So, they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime – probably a MORE anti-American hardline regime – will still be in charge.”

He said there didn’t seem to be a clear goal apart from “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.”

“But the question that stumped them: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production? They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war,” he said.

Barak Ravid at Axios: Trump tells Axios there’s “practically nothing left” to target in Iran.

President Trump told Axios in a brief phone interview Wednesday that the war with Iran will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target.”

“Little this and that… Any time I want it to end, it will end,” Trump said during the five-minute call.

Why it matters: Even as Trump publicly signals his operation has largely accomplished its objectives, U.S. and Israeli officials say there has been no internal directive on when fighting might stop.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday the war will continue “without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign.”Israeli and

U.S. officials say they are preparing for at least two more weeks of strikes in Iran.

It sounds like Israel is actually going to decide when the war ends.

On Tuesday, the U.S. received intelligence that suggested Iran has started laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for oil supply.

Officials say it’s unclear how many mines Iran has deployed, but the assessment is that the number is very small.

Trump confirmed to Axios that U.S. strikes on Tuesday destroyed 16 mine-laying boats and disrupted Iranian plans….

What he’s [Trump] saying: “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period,” Trump told Axios.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

One more on Iran from Judd Legum at Popular Information: UPDATE: Trump says Kushner helped convince him to go to war with Iran. The disclosure highlights Kushner’s massive financial conflicts.

At a press conference on Monday evening, President Trump said his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was one of a handful of top advisers who convinced him to launch major combat operations in Iran. The disclosure raises additional questions about the role of Kushner, who is being paid tens of millions of dollars annually by Middle Eastern governments that were reportedly lobbying Trump to attack Iran.

Jared Kushner is acknowledged during the State of the Union on February 24, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee,Getty Images)

“The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return… based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco is so involved, I thought they were going to attack us,” Trump said, referring to Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Kushner, who has no formal title.

“Within a week, [Iran was] going to attack us, 100 percent. They were ready,” Trump said at a different event Monday. “They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought, and they were going to attack us.”

Witkoff and Kushner were dispatched by Trump to Geneva to participate in mediation with their Iranian counterparts, in what was described as a last-ditch effort to avoid war. Kushner’s participation violated his pledge not to be involved in foreign policy in a second Trump administration. Instead, Kushner had said he was focused on running his private equity fund, Affinity Partners, which has raised billions of dollars from foreign governments.

Kushner’s largest investor is the Saudi Arabian government, which provided Kushner with $2 billion in funding in 2021. Each year, Saudi Arabia pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, $25 million, as a “management fee.” Meaning he has received in excess of $100 million from the Saudi government over the last few years.

And Witkoff is a Russian asset. I will never forgive the idiots who voted for Trump because they just didn’t want a Black woman to be president.

Trump’s fear of the Epstein files is behind this idiotic war. No one will ever convince me otherwise. Here’s the latest on the Epstein story.

NBC News: Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch searched by state investigators.

State investigators in New Mexico on Monday searched a 7,600-acre property that once belonged to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The search came after documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act showed no record of federal investigators ever searching the property, known as Zorro Ranch, despite a number of years-old civil suits that accused Epstein of sexually assaulting girls there — allegations over which he was never charged.

“This search is part of the criminal investigation announced by the New Mexico Department of Justice on February 19th into allegations of illegal activity at Epstein’s ranch prior to Epstein’s 2019 death,” the state agency said in a statement.

“The New Mexico Department of Justice appreciates the cooperation of the current property owners in granting access for the search and extends its thanks to the ranch staff for their professionalism,” the statement said, and will “continue to keep the public appropriately informed, support the survivors, and follow the facts wherever they lead.”

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, ordered the search. His office announced its probe into Epstein last month, days after state lawmakers passed legislation to begin their own investigation into Epstein’s activities in the state.

The Legislature’s $2.5 million investigation, which has subpoena power, aims to close gaps in state law that may have allowed Epstein to operate in New Mexico with impunity. The committee is expected to release interim findings in July and a final report by the end of the year.

The bill’s co-sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Andrea Romero, said when the legislation passed last month that Epstein “was basically doing anything he wanted in this state without any accountability whatsoever.”

From Epstein expert Julie K. Brown at The Epstein files: Dead bodies and a long missing 300-year-old church bell: What will they find on Zorro Ranch?

The reach of the mysteries involving Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico now span several centuries — as new documents reveal that the FBI’s Albuquerque office was investigating whether Epstein had a stolen historical artifact that dates back hundreds of years stored on his sprawling NM property.

Zorro Ranch

The artifact was a “death bell” that was once housed at the San Jose de Gracia Mission Church in Las Trampas, a village in Northern New Mexico between Sante Fe and Taos. The church was built in 1760 and is considered one of the best examples of Spanish Colonial architecture in the Southwest U.S. It is also a National Historic Landmark.

The lore about the missing church bell only adds to the questions about why the Justice Department never searched Epstein’s ranch back in 2019 — when at least two victims alleged they were sexually assaulted there, and another tipster claimed that two girls’ bodies are possibly buried there….

The “Death bell,” as it came to be called, was smaller than the other bell. During the church’s restoration in the 1930s, the bell was stolen.

In November 2019, Timothy Lopez told the FBI in Albuquerque, New Mexico that he recalled seeing Epstein’s ranch featured in a local real estate magazine in 2014 or 2015. In the photos accompanying the article, he said he noticed a room filed with Spanish Colonial art — and noticed a bell he thought might be the Death bell that had been stolen more than 80 years earlier.

The 7,400-ace property, which Epstein called “Zorro Ranch,” was purchased by Epstein from former New Mexico Governor Bruce King in 1993. The disgraced financier built a hilltop mansion with a private runway on the property, which was sold after Epstein’s death to the family of former Texas state Sen. Don Huffines, who won the Republican primary for Texas state comptroller last week.

After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI search Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, but did not immediately search Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean until after his August 2019 death. They never searched his New Mexico compound, despite having evidence of crimes that occurred there, including the tip about the stolen church bell….

the documents about the sexual assaults that were reported to have occurred on the property led to public outcry in recent weeks. That that led to New Mexico authorities finally on Monday beginning a long overdue search of the property. Of course, by now, any evidence of any sex crimes committed there has likely disappeared just like the long-vanished death bell.

The FBI claimed they abandoned the investigation of Zorro Ranch because they lacked enough evidence to get a search warrant. It will be interesting to see what New Mexico authorities find.

Two more significant stories:

The Washington Post (gift link): Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job.

The Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog is investigating a complaint that alleges a former U.S. DOGE Service employee claimed he had access to two highly sensitive agency databases and planned to share the information with his private employer — a claim that, if true, would constitute an unprecedented breach of security protocols at an agency that serves more than 70 million Americans.

The agency’s inspector general is investigating the disclosure and has alerted members of Congress of its existence, according to a letter by the acting inspector general to top members of four congressional committees reviewed by The Washington Post and two people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations. The inspector general’s office has also shared the disclosure with the Government Accountability Office, which has been conducting its own audit of DOGE’s access to data, according to one of the people. The Post has reviewed the complaint and spoken with the whistleblower, who issued the complaint anonymously for fear of retaliation.

According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the Social Security Administration last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information, and had at least one on a thumb drive. The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names. The complaint does not include specific dates of when he is said to have told colleagues this information, but at least one of the alleged events unfolded around early January, according to the complaint. While working at DOGE, the engineer had approved access to Social Security data.

According to the complaint, he allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.]” The engineer told colleagues that once he had removed personal details from the data, he wanted to upload it into the company’s systems. He told another colleague, who refused to help him upload the data because of legal concerns, that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal, according to the complaint.

The complaint does not allege that the engineer was successful in uploading the data to the company’s system.

The Post is not naming the former DOGE member or company because it has not independently confirmed the accusations in the complaint.

Use the gift link to read more.

Kristi Noem in one of her cosplay costumes

The Daily Beast: Insiders Reveal ICE Barbie Is Leaving DHS With a Major Problem.

Kristi Noem is apparently leaving the Department of Homeland Security with dozens of unsigned contracts on her desk—including payments owed to a facility holding migrant children.

The backlog is the fallout from a policy Noem, 54, imposed that required every DHS contract worth $100,000 or more—which covers nearly all of the agency’s agreements—to receive her personal sign-off before taking effect. The rule proved so disruptive that some vendors began billing the department in chunks of $99,999 each just to get paid.

“There’s a mountain of backed-up contracts and invoices on her desk that the new guy will just have to deal with,” a source familiar with the situation at DHS told Axios.

“From everything that I’ve heard, it’s still a giant s–t show up there,” a source familiar with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) delays told the outlet, referring to DHS leadership.

“The ramifications of her tenure are going to be felt for years and years and years and years,” the source added. “We’re not really going to know exactly how bad it is until we have a major hurricane that unfortunately impacts someplace in the United States.”

The disruption, Axios says, is already reaching real facilities. At the family detention center in Dilley, Texas—the only long-term immigration facility in the country holding migrants’ children—government payments lapsed in early March, with roughly 700 people detained there as of mid-February.

That’s it for me today. As you can tell, the Iran situation is freezing out other stories.

Take care, everyone.

Mostly Monday Reads: A Rogue Supreme Court

Posted: September 8, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, Broligarchy, kakistocracy, Polycrisis | Tags: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

“This is what some people voted for…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I’m quite late. The intense heat and humidity have left New Orleans for the moment. I woke up at 9:30. It was 76°F. I immediately rolled over and went back to sleep. I’m just glad I didn’t get a glance at the headlines then. The chaos of what used to be our institutional protectors of the Constitution worsens. This Reuters headline is like a slap in the face of all democracy-loving people. It’s a good thing I subscribed to them last month because wow! This needs to be shared. “US Supreme Court backs Trump on aggressive immigration raids.” They’re inching closer to the Inquisition with each majority opinion. Andrew Cheung has the lede.

Donald Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration on Monday, letting federal agents proceed with raids in Southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language.

The court granted a Justice Department request to put on hold a federal judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally, by relying on race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent, among other factors.

The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision, directing pointed criticism at its conservative majority.
The administration “has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion.

“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor added.
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong found on July 11 that the Trump administration’s actions likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge’s order applied to her court’s jurisdiction, covering much of Southern California.

The Supreme Court’s order was brief and issued without any explanation, a common way it handles emergency matters, but one that has generated confusion in lower courts and criticism from some of the justices themselves. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Concurring with the decision on Monday, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be a “‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”

Kavanaugh added: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”

In a written filing, the Justice Department defended targeting people using a “reasonably broad profile” in a region where, according to the administration, about 10% of residents are in the country illegally

The administration’s request marked its latest trip to the Supreme Court seeking to proceed with policies that lower courts have impeded after casting doubt on their legality. The Supreme Court has backed Trump in most of these cases.

This part of the decision is rather stunning.

In other cases, the Supreme Court has allowed Trump to deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering a chance to show harms they may face and to revoke temporary legal status previously granted by the government on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

So much for the Rule of Law and Due Process. This also violates international treaties and law. We are a nation led by a War Criminal.

The New York Times (article shared) also has an excellent analysis of the situation written by Adam Liptak.”Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops.  A federal judge had ordered agents not to make indiscriminate stops relying on factors like a person’s ethnicity or that they speak Spanish.” This is white christian nationalism on full display.

The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order prohibiting government agents from making indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area that challengers called “blatant racial profiling.”

The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons. It is not the last word in the case, which is pending before a federal appeals court and may again reach the justices.

The court’s three liberal members dissented.

In the near term, it allows what critics say are roving patrols of masked agents routinely violating the Fourth Amendment and what supporters say is a vigorous but lawful effort to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

The lower courts had placed significant restrictions on President Trump’s efforts to ramp up immigrant arrests to achieve his pledge of mass deportations. Aggressive enforcement operations in Los Angeles — including encounters captured on video that appeared to be roundups of random Hispanic people by armed agents — have become a flashpoint, setting off protests and clashes in the area.

Civil rights groups and several individuals filed suit, accusing the administration of unconstitutional sweeps in which thousands of people had been arrested. They described the encounters in the suit as “indiscriminate immigration operations” that had swept up thousands of day laborers, carwash workers, farmworkers, caregivers and others.

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force,” the complaint said, “and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.

One plaintiff, Jason Brian Gavidia, a U.S. citizen born in East Los Angeles, was stopped by a masked agent while he was working on his car outside a tow yard. The encounter was captured on video.

The agent asked whether Mr. Gavidia was American, and he said he was.

The agent then asked what hospital Mr. Gavidia had been born in, and he said he did not know. According to the lawsuit, the agent and a colleague proceeded to slam Mr. Gavidia against a metal gate, twist his arm and seize his phone.

“Fearing for his life, Gavidia offered to show the agents his ID,” the lawsuit said. “The agents took the ID, and about 20 minutes later, returned Gavidia’s phone and set him free. They never returned his ID.”

This is nothing but siding with grandiose racial profiling. The ACLU of Southern California has this to say on the subject. “U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay in L.A. Raids Case. Decision lifts temporary order barring DHS from unlawful stop practices .”

Today, the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request for a stay (or pause) of a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting federal agencies–including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)–from continuing their unlawful actions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties.

The court judgment reverses the judgement from two lower courts in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem that bars immigration agents from stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion and from relying solely on four factors – alone or in combination – including apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in a particular location like a bus stop, car wash, or agricultural site; or the type of work a person does.

Today’s unexplained order from the Supreme Court does not halt further proceedings in the case. On September 24, the federal district court will hear arguments on whether to issue a preliminary injunction based on additional evidence of the government’s unlawful tactics.

In response, the following statements were issued:

“When ICE grabbed me, they never showed a warrant or explained why. I was treated like I didn’t matter–locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay? That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge,” said Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, named plaintiff in the case. “I joined this case because what happened to me is happening to others everyday just for being brown, speaking Spanish, or standing on a corner looking for work. The system failed us today, but I’m not staying silent. We’ll keep fighting because our lives are important.”

“This decision is a devastating setback for our plaintiffs and communities who, for months, have been subjected to immigration stops because of the color of their skin, occupation, or the language they speak,” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “In running to the Supreme Court to request this stay, the government made clear that its enforcement operation in Southern California is driven by race. We will continue fighting the administration’s racist deportation scheme to ensure every person living in Southern California—regardless of race or status—is safe.”

“Today’s decision gives license to the Trump administration to resume racially discriminatory raids across Los Angeles, detaining people without evidence or due process simply because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the work they do,” said Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel. Our community has come together to confront this injustice with courage and determination, uncovering the truth and showing the nation these raids were never about public safety but about targeting immigrants and sowing fear. This fight is not over. We will continue pressing our case in court until every person in our communities can live free from fear, with their rights and dignity fully protected.

“The Supreme Court’s decision deals a devastating blow to communities reeling from the government’s racially discriminatory raids. Through the stroke of a pen, through its emergency shadow docket, the court has written off decades of Fourth Amendment law. But we always knew this was going to be a long fight, and we are already preparing for what comes next,” said Annie Lai, director of the Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic at the UC Irvine School of Law. “Our clients have faced the government with incredible bravery and will continue to do so. We will be right there alongside them.”

“Today’s SCOTUS ruling puts farm workers — and every Californian who looks or sounds like they might be an immigrant — in greater danger,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “This does not impact immigrants in a vacuum, it will affect all of us. We will continue to seek a preliminary injunction in this case, and we will keep fighting for farm workers and all immigrant communities across the USA.”

“The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of racial profiling. A dark shadow has been cast over this country’s Constitution and its future,” said Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network (LAWCN). “This is a dangerous precedent for immigrant rights and civil liberties. The decision legitimizes the unconstitutional practice of targeting individuals based on their race, language, or neighborhood. It turns back the clock on decades of legal progress and reinforces a system where some communities are seen as suspect by default.”

I am ashamed of my country. As David Bowie puts it, “I’m afraid of Americans.”  This decision jeopardizes the economy, the legal system, and our humanity. The Supreme Racists on the Court have gone mad with power, enabling Yam Tit’s Reign of Terror with abandon. Ari Berman, writing for Mother Jones, has this headline today. “Project 2026: Trump’s Plan to Rig the Next Election, From nationalizing voter suppression to flooding the streets with federal agents, the president and his allies are using all the tricks in the authoritarian playbook to tilt the midterms in their favor.”

On an April episode of the popular Politics War Room podcast, the veteran journalist Al Hunt posed an increasingly common question from listeners to Democratic strategist James Carville. “Is Trump looking to spark enough protest to justify declaring martial law in 2026, thus suspending the election?” Hunt asked.

“You’re so correct to be concerned about this,” Carville responded. “It’s getting worse by the day. It is not going to stop getting worse. And I would be—we ought to be—on high, high alert.”

Such chatter is widespread these days among Trump’s opponents—and with good reason. Trump is the most openly authoritarian president in US history and has already incited an insurrection in an attempt to remain in office.

The good news, according to experts, is that Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally cancel the midterms. The states, with oversight from Congress, run their elections. Voting will go forward whether Trump likes it or not.

But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the rapidly escalating threats to America’s election system. Given Trump’s extreme assertions of executive power, the autocratic nature of his second term, and the stacking of his administration with hardline loyalists, many of the outlandish schemes he considered to stay in power in 2020—such as using the military to seize voting machines in battleground states—don’t seem as far-fetched today. And his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in response to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, which was followed by a similar federal takeover of Washington, DC, has heightened fears about how far Trump will go to keep his party in control of Washington. “The California events really rattled a lot of people,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.

The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks. The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order. “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.”

But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the rapidly escalating threats to America’s election system. Given Trump’s extreme assertions of executive power, the autocratic nature of his second term, and the stacking of his administration with hardline loyalists, many of the outlandish schemes he considered to stay in power in 2020—such as using the military to seize voting machines in battleground states—don’t seem as far-fetched today. And his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in response to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, which was followed by a similar federal takeover of Washington, DC, has heightened fears about how far Trump will go to keep his party in control of Washington. “The California events really rattled a lot of people,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.

The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks. The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order. “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.”

What kind of President Declares war on an American City?

The article then lists 10 ways that Trump will interfere with the midterms and voting. Voter Suppression Tactics are at the top of the list, but the others are equally as devious. If you’re going to read just one thing today, please give the list a thorough read. It’s coming to a voting place near everyone.

ProPublica continues to be an enormously useful source of real journalism with real investigations. This is a must-read for those who will be or are dependent on Social Security. “The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security.” Eli Hager has the lede. I’m just going to use their “highlights” since the story is a narrative of everything that went on. It also has some interesting insight into Leland Dudek and his management of the process and gaffs.

Reporting Highlights

  • Missed Opportunity: Some Social Security officials said they welcomed DOGE — the agency needs a technological overhaul — only to see DOGE ignore them and prioritize quick (often empty) wins.

  • Internal Revolt: Leland Dudek, the agency’s then acting chief, helped DOGE at first, then tried to resist when he saw what it was doing, Dudek said in 15 hours of candid interviews.

  • DOGE Lives On: Multiple former DOGErs have taken permanent roles at the Social Security Administration, and Senate-confirmed Commissioner Frank Bisignano has embraced its approach.

Trump has started to move on to a “crime” agenda. As usual, it’s racist, full of lies and bias, and is designed to push buttons on the MAGA Cult. This is from AXIOS and is written by Marc Caputo. “Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message.”

MAGA influencers are drawing repeated attention to violent attacks to elevate the issue of urban crime — and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases.

  • Shocking video of the fatal Aug. 22 knife attack on 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail car in Charlotte, North Carolina, dominated weekend conversation on Trump-friendly social media.

The big picture: The rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including on Charlotte’s light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases.

  • The video is easily shared or leaked, and can instantly pollinate across social media — a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.

Driving the news: President Trump, asked about the Charlotte video by a reporter Sunday, said he wanted to find out more about the stabbing before commenting.

  • “I’ll know all about it by tomorrow morning,” Trump said.
  • A Trump adviser told Axios: “This is exactly what he’s talking about, and it’s going to be an issue he’s going to highlight. This is not just about North Carolina. Other campaigns will deal with this.”

Elon Musk repeatedly posted about the Charlotte case this weekend for his 225 million X followers.

  • Also commenting on X: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Trump confidant Charlie Kirk, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
  • North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley — a former chair of the national GOP — invoked the case to accuse his Democratic opponent, Gov. Roy Cooper, of being soft on crime.
  • Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles called it a “heartbreaking attack.”

Zarutska recently arrived in Charlotte from Ukraine to escape the war there, The Charlotte Observer reports.

  • The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, was charged with first-degree murder. His criminal record includes charges of armed robbery, felony larceny, breaking and entering, and shoplifting, according to jail records cited by WBTV.
  • Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather, in an interview with Axios Charlotte last week, didn’t comment directly on the case but acknowledged the limitations and complexities of holding defendants with mental health issues accountable.

What they’re saying: Whatley wrote on X that in June 2020, “Cooper signed a soft-on-crime executive order, and just three months later, Brown was released from prison.”

  • The executive order established a “racial profiling task force” and sought to reduce “systemic” racism. But it didn’t call for the early release of suspects.

Cooper’s campaign accused Whatley of “lying,” and said: “Roy Cooper prosecuted violent criminals and drug dealers, increased the penalties for violence against law enforcement, and kept thousands of criminals off the streets and behind bars.”

  • Whatley spokesperson Danielle Alvarez countered that Brown was released from prison early, just as Cooper was spending more time talking about “fighting racism” and less about keeping “career criminals” like Brown locked up.

Between the lines: Influential conservative social media accounts accused major national news outlets of not covering the racial dynamics of the Charlotte killing — a white victim and a Black suspect — with the same intensity as they did in the case of Daniel Penny.

  • Penny, who is white, choked to death a homeless Black man who was threatening passengers on a subway car in Manhattan in 2023. A jury acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide.

You may read more about this at the link. I will close with this article concerning Yam Tits and the decimation of Science and Universities. It’s a New York Times (shared)  Guest Op-Ed written by Stephanie Greenblatt, a Harvard Humanities Professor. “We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself.”

The Trump administration’s assault on America’s universities by cutting billions of dollars of federal support for scientific and medical research has called up from somewhere deep in my memory the phrase “duck and cover.” These were words drilled into American schoolchildren in the 1950s. We heard them on television, where they accompanied a cartoon about a wise turtle named Bert who withdrew into his shell at any sign of danger. In class, when our teachers gave the order, we were instructed to follow Bert’s example by diving under our desks and covering our necks. These actions were meant to protect us from the nuclear attack that could come, we were told, at any time. Though even in elementary school most of us intuited that there was something futile in these attempts to shield ourselves from destruction, we dutifully went through the motions. How else could we deal with the anxiety caused by the menace?

The anxiety greatly increased in October 1957, when Americans learned of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1. The vivid evidence of the technological superiority in rocketry of our Cold War enemy provoked a remarkably rapid response. In 1958, by a bipartisan vote, Congress passed and President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, one of the most consequential federal interventions in education in the nation’s history. Together with the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, it made America into the world’s undisputed leader in science and technology.

Nearly 70 years later, that leadership is in peril. According to the latest annual Nature Index, which tracks research institutions by their contributions to leading science journals, the single remaining U.S. institution among the top 10 is Harvard, in second place, far behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Trump’s war on science and academia is one of the most-sighted of all his ego-stroking projects. The pride that people like me felt about our Space Program and medical achievements was beyond the moon. As a cancer survivor of a rare cancer that has now become more curable since I had the disease, I just can’t believe this administration has such a fixation on killing people. But there it is.

There’s another Countrywide “No Kings” demonstration on October 18th, if you care to take part.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action lists?