Wednesday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual

Posted: August 27, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Everything is awful again this morning. Trump’s coup is advancing rapidly as he increases his control of Washington DC, attempts to take over the Fed, and threatens Chicago and other large cities. He has already politicized the Department of Justice, and now his goons are working to destroy the Social Security Administration and the Department of Defense. He is even speaking openly about wanting to be a dictator.

Here’s the latest:

I’ve been briefed on a shooting at Annunciation Catholic School and will continue to provide updates as we get more information. The BCA and State Patrol are on scene.I’m praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence.

— Governor Tim Walz (@governorwalz.mn.gov) 2025-08-27T14:10:52.098Z

BBC News live updates: Multiple people injured in Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis, police say.

Summary

 — Two people have been killed and up to 20 are injured following a school shooting in Minneapolis, authorities tell CBS, the BBC’s US media partner

 — Minnesota Governor Tim Walz says the attack happened at Annunciation Catholic School – and calls it an “horrific act of violence”

 — There is “no active threat” in the area now and the gunman is dead, authorities say

 — Of the 20 people who are injured, 10 of them are in a critical condition, CBS reports

 — The shooting reportedly happened during a school-wide Catholic mass for students in kindergarten to eighth grade

 — Police are due to give an update on the situation at about 11:30 local time (16:30 BST) – watch live at the top of this page.

Follow live updates at the link.

AP: Shooting occurs at Minneapolis Catholic school and authorities say shooter has been ‘contained.’

A shooting occurred Wednesday morning during the first week of classes at a Minneapolis Catholic school, Minnesota governor’s said. Authorities gave no immediate information on the number of injuries, but Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “horrific.”

The Minneapolis city government said the shooter had been “contained” after the gunfire at Annunciation Catholic School and there was no longer any “active threat” to residents.

https://apnews.com/article/minneapolis-school-shooting-annunciation-0fb27d2c911fe63a9f04791b444f298f#:~:text=Walz%20said%20on,wrote%20on%20X.

A spokesperson for Hennepin Healthcare, which has Minnesota’s largest emergency department, said in a text message that it was actively dealing with an emergency and provided no additional details. A social media post from the company said it was caring for patients from the shooting.

This is a developing story.

Yesterday Trump escalated his efforts to take over control of the Federal Reserve.

Charlie Savage at The New York Times (gift link): Trump Again Escalates Power Grabs in Bid to Fire Fed Member.

President Trump’s bid to fire a member of the Federal Reserve board is a new escalation of his efforts to amass more power over American government and society: Congress generations ago structured the agency, crucial to the health of the economy, to be independent of White House control.

In purporting to fire the board member, Lisa D. Cook, Mr. Trump is setting up another test of how far the Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court will let him go in eroding the checks and balances Congress has long imposed on executive power.

His attempt to fire Ms. Cook presents a new twist. It raises the question of whether he alone can decide whether there is cause to fire an official at an independent agency whose leaders are protected by law from arbitrary removal — or whether courts will be willing and able to intervene if judges believe his justification is a pretext.

But the move to oust Ms. Cook, whom the Senate confirmed for a term that ends in 2038, also fits into a now familiar arc, joining the various ways Mr. Trump has systematically accumulated greater authority.

Trump is drunk with power. Can anyone stop him?

Mr. Trump has stretched the bounds of some legal authorities, like prolifically declaring emergencies to unlock more expansive power, sending troops into the streets of American cities, unilaterally raising import taxes and blocking spending Congress had directed. In this case, he is pushing at the limits of a statute that says Fed board members serve 14-year terms unless removed “for cause” by a president.

Mr. Trump has also openly weaponized government power in ways that post-Watergate norms had forbidden, including directing the Justice Department to investigate perceived foes. In this case, a loyalist he installed atop the Federal Housing Finance Agency has scrutinized mortgage documents associated with various people Mr. Trump does not like, apparently finding a discrepancy in two loan applications Ms. Cook submitted in 2021.

And Mr. Trump has unabashedly violated statutes in which Congress set limits on when various types of officials may be fired, while seeking rulings striking down those laws as unconstitutional constraints on his powers. The restrictions apply to an array of officials, including board members of other independent agencies, inspectors general and civil servants.

But in telling Ms. Cook he was firing her, Mr. Trump invoked a provision Congress wrote into the Federal Reserve Act that says Fed board members may only be removed before their terms are up for cause. He said he had determined that sufficient cause existed to remove her.

That provision does not define what counts as a sufficient reason. In general, such provisions have been understood to mean something like significant misconduct or neglect of office.

Use the gift link to read the rest.

This is a true emergency. Fortunately, Cook plans to fight back by suing Trump.

CNBC: Trump White House pressures Fed Governor Lisa Cook to go on leave as lawsuit looms.

President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said Wednesday that Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook should go on leave from the central bank even as she plans to file a lawsuit challenging her removal by Trump.

“If I were her in her circumstance, I would take leave,” Hassett told reporters outside the White House.

Lisa M. Cook

“I think it’s the honorable thing to do,” he continued, after a reporter asked about whether Cook should be presumed innocent of allegations of mortgage fraud raised by another Trump-appointed official….

Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, is expected to soon file a lawsuit over Trump’s move, her attorney, Abbe Lowell, said Tuesday.

Trump’s “attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis,” Lowell said in a statement.

The Fed said Tuesday that “Cook has indicated through her personal attorney that she will promptly challenge this action in court and seek a judicial decision that would confirm her ability to continue to fulfill her responsibilities as a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.”

The battle over Cook’s removal could end with the Supreme Court issuing a final decision on the matter.

Would the Supreme Court allow Trump to take control of the Federal Reserve? I’m not sure they will challenge Trump over any of his power grabs.

Alexander Willis at Raw Story: ‘Truly frightening’: Expert says new Trump move ‘could end very badly’ for economy.

As President Donald Trump continues to stand behind his decision to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, one former leader at the agency warns that the consequences of the firing, should it ultimately go through, could be catastrophic.

Trump announced on Monday that Cook would be fired “effective immediately,” alleging the Biden-appointee of mortgage fraud, claims that have yet to be litigated in court. Cook immediately rebuked Trump in declaring her intention to continue to serve out the remainder of her 14-year term.

Bill Dudley, a former president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, however, warned that should Cook ultimately be fired, the new makeup of the agency’s board could set off a series of “standoffs, showdowns, chaos and uncertainty” that he said “would be truly frightening,” in an op-ed published in Bloomberg Wednesday.

“The attack on Cook represents a major escalation that could end very badly,” Dudley wrote. “Never before has a president tried to fire a Fed governor, and there’s much more at stake than one person’s job.”

Dudley went on to note that, should Cook be removed from her position, Trump would then have appointed four of the central bank’s seven governors, granting him a powerful majority that would grant the president far more leverage at the Fed.

“The Board of Governors could, for example, refuse to reappoint some or all of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, whose five-year terms come up for renewal in February 2026 – and five of whom vote on the FOMC on a rotating basis. In theory, this could be a way to populate the (Federal Open Market Committee) with members that would do Trump’s bidding, empowering the president to get the big rate cuts he seeks.”

One more on the Fed crisis from former Fed Chair Janet Yellen at Financial Times: Trump’s attack on the Fed threatens US credibility.

US President Donald Trump’s claim that he has “fired” Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook “for cause” is not only unlawful. It is profoundly dangerous.

It represents a direct attempt to politicise the Fed, intimidate its leadership and bend monetary policy to the president’s will. This action threatens to end the independence of the Federal Reserve — and with it, the credibility of the US’s monetary policy both at home and abroad.

Janet Yellen

The law is clear: Federal Reserve governors serve 14-year terms precisely so they cannot be tossed aside by presidents who dislike their views or who seek their allegiance. Removal “for cause” is intended for documented misconduct. “Accusations” are not “cause”.

Cook has done her job with integrity — weighing evidence and voting for policies designed to achieve the Fed’s dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment. For Trump to invoke cause here is a fiction; it is a pretext to justify an autocratic power grab.

This is not about one Federal Reserve governor. It is about intimidation. By targeting Cook, Trump is sending a chilling message to every member of the Federal Reserve board and to the regional reserve bank presidents who take part in the Federal Open Market Committee: express disagreement with the president’s views and you are next.

Such threats could stifle these Federal Reserve leaders in their duty to offer honest, professional and independent views on monetary policy to the public. It could alter their voting behaviour. It would turn an institution renowned for its independence and strong record of accomplishment into a puppet stage for presidential whims and priorities.

A bit more:

At the moment, a key Trump administration priority is for the Fed to substantially cut interest rates to reduce the cost of servicing the US government’s $37tn debt. The consequences are likely to be catastrophic.

History offers a blunt lesson: chaos follows when leaders capture their central banks and force them to buy government debt or cut interest rates to hold down debt service expense. Germany in the 1920s, Hungary after the second world war. Likewise, Argentina and Turkey quite recently — the names change, but the story is the same.

Politicised central banks deliver higher inflation, volatile growth and weakened currencies. Such a road cannot be good for the US. We took this road once before: during the second world war, when the Fed was obliged to hold interest rates down to help the Treasury finance the war. The result was high inflation.

In other news, what is happening at the Social Security Administration is terrifying. A whistleblower has accused former DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine of endangering every American’s Social Security data.

Nicholas Nehamas at The New York Times (gift link): DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says.

Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.

The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.

Edward “Big Balls” Coristine

The account by the whistle-blower, Charles Borges, underscores concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency built by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data. In his complaint, Mr. Borges said DOGE members copied the data to an internal agency server that only DOGE could access, forgoing the type of “independent security monitoring” normally required under agency policy for such sensitive data and creating “enormous vulnerabilities.”

Mr. Borges did not indicate that the database had been breached or used inappropriately.

But his disclosure stated that as of late June, “no verified audit or oversight mechanisms” existed to monitor what DOGE was using the data for or whether it was being shared outside the agency. That kind of oversight would typically be provided by the agency’s career information security professionals, Mr. Borges said in his account.

And his complaint cites an official agency security assessment that described the project as “high risk” and that warned of “catastrophic impact” to Social Security beneficiaries and programs if the database were to be compromised.

“Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital health care and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for reissuing every American a new Social Security number at great cost,” Mr. Borges’s complaint said. He alleged that DOGE did not involve him in discussions about the project, despite his role as chief data officer, leaving him to piece together evidence of what had happened after the fact.

Included in his account, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, are more than two dozen pages of internal emails, memos and other records to document his claims. Mr. Borges’s complaint said that DOGE’s actions “potentially violated multiple federal statutes” designed to protect government data.

Unbelievable. Use the gift link to read the rest.

Trump’s crackdown on Washington DC continues. A couple of updates:

The Independent: National Guard called in to deal with ‘crime emergency’ in DC are now picking up trash outside the White House.

The National Guard, called in to deal with a “crime emergency” in DC declared by Donald Trump, have been spotted picking up trash.

Troops were seen donning yellow marigolds and orange high-visibility vests over their camouflage gear Tuesday as they picked up litter in Lafayette Park, just outside the White House.

According to officials, the military was deployed as part of a “beautification and restoration mission” in Lafayette Square, the National Mall, and the Tidal Basin.

At least 2,234 active guardsmen are on duty throughout the city; 929 of those are from the D.C. National Guard, while 1,305 come from Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, say the Joint Task Force-DC Office.

Trump previously said he’d deployed the National Guard to grapple with “complete and total lawlessness” in the city, despite crime rates hitting a 30-year low earlier this year

 

Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark: Trump Is Strangling the Life Out of D.C.’s Restaurants.

BY DONALD TRUMP’S TELLING, WASHINGTON, D.C.’s restaurants are doing great. And, naturally, it’s all because of him.

“Friends of mine are going out to dinner,” Trump told reporters Monday, claiming that his deployment of federal forces brought unaccustomed tranquility to the streets of the nation’s capital. “They haven’t gone out to dinner in four years, they were petrified. Half the restaurants closed because nobody could go because they’re afraid to go outside. Now those restaurants are opening, and new restaurants are opening up, it’s like a boomtown.”

Hold up. We’re supposed to believe that “half the restaurants” in the city were closed? Because Washingtonians were cowering at home, peeking through their blinds? Famed chef and humanitarian José Andrés fired back in a tweet:

Chef José Andrés 
@chefjoseandres
Mr. President
@realdonaldtrump

I understand why you are confused…all your time in DC you haven’t eaten ONCE outside the White House or your own hotel. I’ve lived here for 33 years, and it’s a flat out lie that half the restaurants have closed because of safety…but restaurants will close because you have troops with guns and federal agents harassing people…making people afraid to go out. Cities and towns and rural areas of America need policies that allow small business to thrive and all people including immigrants to live and work with dignity. People shouldn’t be afraid of their government…government should have respect for its people, not terrorize them.

Andrés is right. Trump’s deployment of 2,300 National Guard troops and 500 federal law enforcement agents has hurt foot traffic, chilled business, and made people cancel trips and nights out. It is slowly choking the life out of Washington, D.C. restaurants, which were still struggling to gain their post-pandemic footing just as Trump returned to town and started firing tens of thousands of their customers.

Shawn Townsend, head of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, announced that the city’s annual Restaurant Week is being extended because of the business-dampening effects of Trump’s actions, noting that “reservations were down in restaurants pretty significantly” the week after Trump launched his federal takeover. Data from OpenTable shows restaurant reservations down 24 percent from last year’s Restaurant Week, the New York Times reported.

But numbers tell only part of the story. In interviews with restaurant owners, chefs, and workers, another picture emerged: that of small businesses being harmed by a president who was elected because of his purported business acumen; of a man whose obsession with appearing tough on crime now threatens to sabotage urban economies across the country.

“People used to say Washington is recession-proof. Today Washington is a recession magnet,” Immigrant Food cofounder and “Restaurateur of the Year” candidate Peter Schechter told me. “We’re back to a very pandemic-feeling city. There are fewer people going to work, fewer people walking around, fewer cars, reservations are down, events have been canceled.”

“Everything Trump touches dies” — Rick Wilson

Another potential disaster is in the making. Trump and Kristy Noem have decimated FEMA and it has gotten worse.

Maxine Joselow at The New York Times: FEMA Suspends Staff Who Signed a Letter Criticizing Trump.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday suspended around 30 employees after those workers wrote to Congress warning that the Trump administration had gutted the nation’s ability to handle hurricanes, floods and other extreme weather disasters.

Of the 182 FEMA employees who signed the letter to Congress, 36 attached their names, while the rest withheld their identities for fear of retaliation.

Those who used their names received emails on Tuesday night saying they had been placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to copies of the emails reviewed by The New York Times.

The emails did not provide a reason for the decision. Representatives for FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Colette Delawalla, the executive director of Stand Up for Science, an advocacy group that helped publicize the letter, said the move appeared to be an act of retaliation.

“Once again, we are seeing the federal government retaliate against our civil servants for whistle-blowing — which is both illegal and a deep betrayal of the most dedicated among us,” Ms. Delawalla said in a statement.

The letter to Congress rebuked President Trump’s plan to drastically scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response — and more costs — to the states. It was sent on Monday, days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms ever to strike the United States.

As I said, everything is awful. Here are a few more stories to check out if you can bear it:

CBS News: Denmark summons U.S. envoy over report people linked to Trump trying to foment dissent in Greenland.

Paul Waldman at Public Notice: Chairman Trump’s Great Grift Forward.

Huffpost: Trump Has Forced Out Nearly 10% Of The Federal Workforce.

Jennifer Rubin at The Contrarian: The Police State is Here. While proposing otherwise, Trump luxuriates in aspiring dictatorship.

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: All the Things Trump Thinks He Owns.

AP: Trump’s transportation secretary takes management of Washington’s Union Station away from Amtrak.

CNN: Pirro’s office fails three times to win felony indictment of alleged attacker of FBI agent.

That’s all I have for you today. As I said, everything is awful. Take care everyone!

Lazy Caturday Reads: Space Cat Visits Venus (and some news, unfortunately)

Posted: August 23, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Book Cover

Good Afternoon!!

I think I’ve hit a wall this morning. I’m feeling so exhausted and overwhelmed with what Trump is doing to the country, that I just want to lie down and give up. I hope I can raise my spirts somehow as the day goes on.

Anyway, it is Caturday, and I have a new installment of Space Cat to share today. It’s the second book in the space cat series, Space Cat Visits Venus. Here is the synopsis from Amazon:

Flyball the Space Cat is back, and this time he’s living in Luna Port, the first city on the Moon. Workers at the lunar station are building a rocket to transport him and his pilot buddy, Colonel Fred Stone, to Venus. The two friends take a long voyage to the planet, where they encounter violet skies, torrential ammonia rains, and strange plants that can communicate without speaking.

This new edition of a charmingly illustrated storybook from 1955 is the second of a four-book series starring the intrepid feline known as Space Cat. Young readers will delight in taking a look at space exploration from Flyball’s point of view and following his escapades across the solar system.

It’s hard to believe these books are still in print after all this time, but I  think they are really cute. See some of the illustrations scattered through this post.

As you know, John Bolton’s home and office were searched by the FBI yesterday. Below are some articles that analyze and comment on Trump’s retribution project.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton.

President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term.

His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.” Agents showed up unannounced at his Bethesda, Md., home at 7 a.m. They confiscated his wife Gretchen’s phone because it was visible and not on her person. Mr. Bolton had already left for his office, which is where FBI agents greeted him….

Cat with Venus rocket

It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication. The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material.

The book investigation faded away under President Biden, but now it looks as if Mr. Patel is reviving it. Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. Mr. Patel knows what the President thinks about Mr. Bolton, and the President’s minions in Trump II don’t serve as the check on his worst impulses the way grown-ups did in his first term. The presidential id is now unchained.

Mr. Trump made clear that he was out for blood against Mr. Bolton when he pulled the former adviser’s protective detail after his re-election. Mr. Bolton is widely known as a defense hawk, and in 2022 the Justice Department charged an Iranian national it said planned to murder him.

A bit more:

It’s unlikely that Mr. Bolton broke any laws on national secrets, and he certainly didn’t share any with us over our long association with him. But perhaps Mr. Trump intends for the process itself to be the punishment even if there is ultimately no criminal charge. Mr. Bolton has to pay for legal counsel, and his family has to endure the anxiety of being under federal government siege.

Mr. Bolton has continued to speak candidly about Mr. Trump’s second-term decisions, pro and con, including in these pages this week. The President may also hope the FBI raid will cause Mr. Bolton to shut up, though knowing him we can’t imagine that working.

The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.

Shane Harris at The Atlantic (gift link): The Bolton Raid Feels Like a Warning.

FBI directors don’t customarily announce raids in progress. But early this morning, Kash Patel celebrated the search of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home as agents were rolling into his suburban-Maryland driveway: “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission,” Patel wrote on X. Agents also executed a search warrant at Bolton’s office in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump later told reporters that he had learned about the raid on one of his most voluble critics from TV news, but he took the opportunity to call Bolton a “lowlife” and “not a smart guy.” Then he added: “Could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”

Flyball dreams of mice

The FBI’s actions were hard not to read as payback for Bolton’s years of criticism of the president, even as the facts that persuaded a judge to approve a search warrant remain unknown. That’s the problem with a politicized legal system—even if an investigation is legitimate, it’s easy to assume that its motives are corrupt. Trump has spent years vowing retribution against Bolton, particularly after Bolton published a 2020 memoir that portrayed the president as incompetent and out of his depth on foreign policy.

If this was revenge, it wasn’t an isolated act. As agents were still packing up boxes of Bolton’s effects, The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had pushed out yet another senior military officer, firing Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In June, its analysts delivered a preliminary assessment that U.S. bombers had caused relatively limited damage to Iranian nuclear facilities, undercutting Trump’s pronouncements that the sites were “obliterated.” And just three days ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked the security clearances of more than three dozen current and former national-security officials. Several played key roles in efforts to counter or expose Russia’s 2016 election interference, what Trump calls the “Russia Hoax” and Gabbard has described as part of a “years-long coup” against the president.

Put it all together, and this may be remembered as the week Trump’s campaign against the “deep state” kicked into high gear. To some intelligence professionals I spoke with, it felt as though something fundamental had shifted in their historically apolitical line of work.

“Given the dystopian nature of it all—clearance revocations of former officials who did no wrong, forced retirements of long-standing intelligence officials, reductions in force that include junior officers who were just hired, and a wildly politicized leadership in the intelligence community—I no longer recommend young Americans to pursue careers in intelligence,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a veteran CIA officer who had his own security clearance yanked earlier this year, told me.

Purge doesn’t adequately capture what national-security experts see happening here. Chilling effect is too mild, though revoking the security clearances of two senior intelligence officers, as Gabbard did, effectively ending their government careers, will indeed send a message. Terrorizing the workforce is a phrase I heard a lot this week. And that may indeed be the point.

“Instead of being honest about what we think, now people will just keep their mouths shut or tell Trump what he wants to hear,” said one former official, who would only speak anonymously. The administration publicly identified this person as part of the “Russia Hoax,” and they’ve hired personal security for outside their home, fearing that Trump’s most fevered supporters might pay a visit.

Forget about calling out misbehavior or wrongdoing by administration officials, the person added: “Where would we go to file a grievance, or to report misconduct? Who’s going to do that?”

You can use the gift link to read rest. I wonder if they will target Hillary Clinton? I’m sure Trump would like to do that.

The Trump DOJ seems to have hit on mortgage fraud as their go to accusation against critics.

Flyball and Fred look out at Venus.

The Wall Street Journal: Mortgage-Fraud Accusations Are Trump’s New Political Weapon.

The Trump administration has a new weapon at its disposal in its efforts to take down Democrats and their appointees: mortgage records.

Members of the administration have now alleged three public officials have committed mortgage fraud, referring each to the Justice Department. The administration has signaled that it has just gotten started: U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin was recently tapped “to investigate fraud by public officials in mortgages,” according to a letter Martin sent.

The targets have denied wrongdoing, but the probes represent an aggressive new spin on opposition research that has long dug into tax records and financial disclosures public officeholders have to make. Mortgage applications go beyond the typical disclosure requirements.

Another twist is the allegations are coming from a government official overseeing an agency able to access massive amounts of mortgage data.

At the forefront of the campaign is Bill Pulte, a homebuilder heir Trump tapped to lead the government agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest players in the mortgage market.

At the historically quiet but powerful Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte has turned himself into a Trump attack ally, probing mortgages of prominent Democrats and a Biden-appointed official at the Federal Reserve.

So far, DOJ has announced investigations of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, Senator Adam Schiff, andNew York Attorney General Letitia James.

Heading into an election season, mortgage documents could become even more a source of contention across the country, for both sides of the aisle. Mortgage fraud allegations have also emerged against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who is campaigning for a Senate seat. (Paxton’s campaign has declined to comment on his properties.)

Mick Mulvaney, a former chief of staff for Trump who had faced questions about taxes on his nanny when he was facing Senate confirmation, says the attacks are going to be part of the new normal for Republicans to use versus Democrats now.

“Right now it’s classified documents and mortgage applications,” Mulvaney said of the new opposition research. “Whether or not you pretend to need a wheelchair at an airport to get on the plane faster, that may be used next if that’s illegal.”

In other news, the troops (and FBI agents and ICE thugs) are still occupying Washington DC. Here’s the latest on that story.

CNN: Hegseth orders National Guard troops in DC to carry weapons.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered National Guard members patrolling the streets of Washington, DC, to begin carrying their service weapons as they fulfill President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital, according to a US defense official.

Taking off their helmets

The directive from Hegseth represents a notable shift in guidance from the Pentagon, which had previously indicated that National Guard members could be armed if the circumstances warranted, and suggests hundreds of guard troops deployed in DC will soon be carrying weapons despite serving in a support role.

“At the direction of the Secretary of Defense, (Joint Task Force) JTF-DC members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our Nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training,” the official said….

It comes as other states’ National Guard members have begun arriving in Washington, DC, to be in-processed to assist the DC National Guard.

More than 1,900 troops from multiple states have been called up as part of the mission including from West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Louisiana, and Tennessee National Guards, according to a release from Joint Task Force – DC on Thursday.

What could possibly go wrong? I wonder if Hegseth has heard about Kent State?

ABC News reports that National Guard troops will now be permitted to act as law enforcement: National Guard in DC to carry M17 pistols, conduct law enforcement duties, task force says.

National Guard troops deployed on the streets of Washington, D.C., will now carry weapons for personal protection and are allowed to carry out law enforcement duties, defense officials announced Friday.

The decision is an escalation in President Donald Trump’s use of military troops to address what he insists is “out of control” crime in the nation’s capital. Since his announcement, Trump has mobilized nearly 2,300 National Guard troops from Washington, D.C., and six states with Republican governors. But troops had remained unarmed until now.

ABC News first reported Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had officially authorized the troops to carry weapons if their mission required it. On Friday, the joint task force overseeing the troops confirmed the move, noting that Guard personnel sent on missions would carry M17 pistols, “which are intended for person protection.” The task force said Guard members would receive proper training on how to use the weapons before being allowed to carry them.

“This decision is not something taken lightly,” said Army Brig. Gen. Leland D. Blanchard, III, the Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard, in a statement.

Flyball and the Venus Mouse.

Really? I think it is taken very lightly, considering there’s not as serious crime problem in DC and it’s illegal for the military to perform law enforcement functions in the U.S.

The task force also noted in its statement late Friday that Guard troops can carry out law enforcement duties because they are operating under Title 32 status, a law that exempts troops from restrictions under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, because they are still technically under a state governor’s command.

Legal experts have long warned about how presidents might use Title 32 as a kind of legal loophole to Posse Comitatus, which is supposed to prevent the president from using the military as a domestic police force. Under Title 32, a president pays for a Guard mission while keeping troops under control of the governors; in this case, Trump asked red-state governors to send their troops to D.C.

While those governors technically retain control of the troops, their missions are being decided by the White House, according to several administration officials.

Reuters: Trump crime crackdown deploys troops in Washington’s safest sites.

Hundreds of National Guard soldiers in military fatigues and combat boots mingled with tourists, posed for selfies, and treated themselves to ice cream from food trucks on Thursday along Washington’s National Mall, one of the safest parts of America’s capital.

On occasion an angry local would hurl verbal abuse at them, but the soldiers simply shrugged and carried on what appeared to be an undemanding assignment.

Outside the National Museum of African American History and Culture, five members of the West Virginia National Guard were standing on the street corner far away from the city’s crime hot spots.

A grateful rescued mouse.

“It’s boring. We’re not really doing much,” said Sergeant Fox, who declined to give his first name.

Fox is among almost 2,000 troops, including 1,200 from six Republican-led states, who are being deployed in Washington as part of an extraordinary militarization inside the Democratic-led city.

The soldiers, some of whom told Reuters they did not get involved in arrests, are officially in Washington to support a federal crackdown on what President Donald Trump calls a crime epidemic. But that depiction appears to run counter to the fact that crime rates overall have shrunk in recent years.

That disconnect, combined with the troop concentration near the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and in view of the U.S. Capitol, highlights criticism by the city’s Democratic leaders that this massive deployment is more a show of power by Trump, rather than a serious effort to fight crime.

No kidding.

This is something I hadn’t heard about before. Trump is also mobilizing National Guard troops in other parts of the country. The Independent: Trump mobilizing up to 1,700 National Guardsman in 19 states to widen crime and immigration crackdown.

The Trump administration reportedly plans to mobilize up to 1,700 National Guard troops across 19 states in the coming weeks to support its immigration and anti-crime crackdowns, a dramatic expansion of the controversial operation that’s seen federal agents and Guard troops carrying out activities across Washington, D.C.

The troops, who will largely be activated across Republican-controlled states, will serve in support of the administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, as well as other law enforcement priorities, according to comment from unnamed Pentagon officials and documents obtained by Fox News.

Taking photos of the plants

The Guardsmen assisting ICE will be carrying out tasks that may include “personal data collection, fingerprinting, DNA swabbing and photographing of personnel in ICE custody,” an official told outlet.

The deployments will take place across the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, per Fox.

Texas is reportedly slated to have the largest deployment.

The Guardsmen will be serving under Title 32 Section 502F authority, in which they technically remain under state command and control, but can assist with federal missions and are paid with federal funds. The status allows them to avoid running afoul of a federal law limiting military involvement in domestic law enforcement.

Read more at the link.

Trump is also fantasizing about occupying Democratic cities like Chicago and New York. The Guardian: Trump targets Chicago and New York as Hegseth orders weapons for DC troops.

Donald Trump has threatened to take his federal crackdown on crime and city cleanliness to New York and Chicago, as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered that national guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC under federal control will now be armed.

The US president talked to reporters in the Oval Office and said: “When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess.” He added that then the administration “will help with New York”, amid the controversial and aggressive federal efforts to control leading Democratic-voting cities, each of which has a Black mayor….

Touching the telepathic moss.

On the issue of suddenly announcing that it would now arm the federalized troops in DC, the defense department did not immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.

The step is an escalation in the federal government’s rare intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and came as nearly 2,000 national guard members are stationed in the city.

Earlier this week hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states arrived to bolster the DC national guard.

The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.

There’s more information about the DC occupation in the Guardian article.

Hegseth’s orders come just a day after Jeanine Pirro, the District of Columbia’s top federal prosecutor, instructed prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible in cases stemming from recent arrests, limiting their discretion as the Trump administration intensifies its law enforcement presence in the capital.

That directive, first reported by the New York Times, was issued this week and narrows the ability of line prosecutors to decide how cases are charged and prioritized. By pushing for the maximum charges allowed, the new policy could lead to longer prison terms for convicted defendants….

According to the White House, federal agents have made more than 630 arrests as of Thursday, though the justice department has not clarified how that figure compares with typical city police numbers.

While Pirro has committed to filing the toughest charges possible in most cases, she has also relaxed enforcement of one local gun law. This week she directed prosecutors not to pursue felony charges against people for possessing rifles or shotguns in the city, despite a DC law prohibiting them.

Finally:

On Thursday, Trump declared his takeover of the Metropolitan police department to be a success.

Yeah, right.

A few more interesting stories to check out today:

NBC News: Kilmar Abrego Garcia notified by ICE that he may be deported to Uganda.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongfully deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador, was notified by immigration authorities that he may be deported to Uganda, less than 24 hours after his release from federal custody.

Abrego was released Friday from a jail near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had been held since his return to the U.S. in June after being mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

Flyball’s first vegetarian meal.

Immigration authorities were expected to attempt to deport Abrego upon his release. Abrego “may be removed to Uganda no less than 72 hours absent weekends,” a source familiar with the case told NBC News on Saturday.

That is in line with standard procedure that ICE must give immigrants 72 hours notice before removing them to third countries.

Abrego, originally from El Salvador, had a withholding of removal order from 2019 that prevents his deportation to his home country due to concerns that he would be persecuted by violent gangs.

The removal order was violated when the Trump administration accidentally deported Abrego to the El Salvador’s CECOT prison, notorious for its harsh conditions, in March. However, the 2019 protective order does not bar Abrego from being deported to another country.

Abrego’s lawyers have now notified the judge in the Middle District of Tennessee that ICE has informed Abrego of its intent to deport him to Uganda. Abrego could not face the criminal charges of human smuggling brought against him by DOJ in that case if he is out of the country.

They are never going to leave this poor man alone.

AP: Judge blocks Trump from cutting money to Chicago, LA and other cities over ‘sanctuary’ policies.

A judge ruled late Friday the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and 30 other cities and counties because of policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco extended a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from cutting off or conditioning the use of federal funds for so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. His earlier order protected more than a dozen other cities and counties, including San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

An email to the White House late Friday was not immediately returned. In his ruling, Orrick said the administration had offered no opposition to an extended injunction except to say the first injunction was wrong. It has appealed the first order.

Orrick also blocked the administration from imposing immigration-related conditions on two particular grant programs.

More at the link.

Newsweek: Florida Locals Defy Ron DeSantis By Restoring Pulse Rainbow Crosswalk.

People in Orlando have defied Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and reinstated a rainbow crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub, after Florida officials removed the painted crossing installed in memory of the 49 people killed at the site in 2016.

Fleeing the ammonia storm.

The restoration was led by local community members and LGBTQ+ advocates who gathered at the intersection following the overnight state-directed repainting. In a video shared to social media by the account @jeremy_rodrigue, people can be seen DIY-ing the rainbow crosswalk and drawing the colors back onto the ground.

“While this attack was meant to demoralize us and push us back in the closet, Orlando refused to be erased,” Democratic state Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, who became the first openly gay Latino elected to the Florida legislature in 2016, told Newsweek. “It was inspiring to see so many local residents spring into action in response to the Governor’s cowardly abuse of power.” [….]

The removal of the rainbow crosswalk— painted in 2017 and approved during the administration of former Republican Governor Rick Scott—has sparked fierce backlash from city officials, survivors, and LGBTQ+ organizations who say it was eliminated in the dead of night with no warning.

The crosswalk was painted over following a directive from the Trump administration. In a letter to governors last month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy instructed states to “eliminate” distractions on public roads. He wrote on X at the time: “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”

That’s it for me today. I’m going to try to ignore the news for awhile. Please take care of yourselves, everyone.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: August 20, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I’ve been surveying the day’s top news stories and my head is spinning. I don’t know what to focus on or where to begin, and there’s no way I can cover everything. There is too much happening, so I’ve just chosen the stories that interested me the most.

Trump’s fascist crackdown on Washington DC

The New York Times: National Guard Troops in Washington Stick to Tourist Areas.

The 800 National Guard troops sent into Washington last week will soon be augmented by hundreds more, as several states with Republican governors commit to supporting President Trump’s crackdown in the city.

But Army officials appear to be trying to keep the troops on the sidelines of the mission, despite the tough-on-crime image that Mr. Trump has sought to project.

The troops have joined an array of federal agents who appeared on city streets after Mr. Trump declared last week that the federal government was assuming law enforcement responsibility in the capital, which he has falsely claimed is essentially lawless.

The first wave of troops sent to the city all came from the D.C. National Guard, which the president can call out directly. National Guard troops from Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia will soon also be deployed, according to the governors of those states. National Guard officials said that there were 869 troops in Washington as of Monday night; the Republican-led states so far have pledged 1,000 more.

The Republican governors said they were providing the additional troops at the request of the Trump administration. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll had asked for the extra troops. “When the secretary of the Army asks for backup support to our troops that are already deployed, yes, we will back up our troops,” Mr. DeWine told the Columbus Dispatch.

The number is still expected to grow. But the role of the additional troops appears vague, and the answers to even basic questions, including whether they will be armed, have shifted.

What is the purpose of this militarization of a city beyond Trump’s effort to distract from the Epstein story and his overall fascist dictatorship project?

“There is no justification for any deployment of Guard forces in D.C., let alone the deployment of hundreds of Guard forces from multiple states, which smacks of a military occupation of the district,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.

“Local crime is a matter to be handled by local law enforcement,” she added.

Members of the National Guard stand near D.C.’s Union Station, within view of the U.S. Capitol.

The places where the troops have been deployed so far tell part of the story. Most have been seen near the National Mall, large monuments and other tourist-heavy areas.

Army officials said that more would be sent to 10 metro stations, most of which are also near tourist and entertainment sites. They include the Foggy Bottom, Smithsonian, Eastern Market and Waterfront stations.

Near the Washington Monument over the weekend, troops posed for photos with tourists. The National Guard presence, with desert sand-colored vehicles parked near the capital’s most visited tourists spots, is now showing up regularly on social media feeds in posts by visitors to Washington.

The rules of engagement for the troops, at the moment, remain limited to supporting, but not providing, law enforcement. That means that troops are not making arrests, though Army officials acknowledged that could change if Mr. Trump decides that he wants an even more forceful presence.

CNN: National Guard troops from GOP-led states begin arriving in DC as part of Trump’s crime crackdown.

West Virginia National Guard troops have begun to arrive in Washington, DC, to assist with President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital, a defense official told CNN on Tuesday.

The troops could begin assisting the DC National Guard operationally as soon as Wednesday after they have completed their in-processing, the defense official added.

Their arrival comes after the Republican governors of six states — West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee — announced they will send guard members to Washington, DC.

The deployment of other states’ troops marks an escalation of Trump’s efforts to amass forces in the capital. The president previously announced that he was deploying DC National Guard troops to the city, surging federal agents into the streets, and federalizing DC’s police force. The president has repeatedly complained about rising crime in DC, but overall crime numbers are lower this year than in 2024.

Servicemembers from the West Virginia and South Carolina National Guards receive an orientation brief upon their arrival at the Washington, D.C. Armory, Aug. 19, 2025

The defense official said Tuesday that while there are roughly 2,400 personnel in the DC National Guard, assistance from other states was needed because of how many troops are either undergoing training elsewhere or are on leave.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said Monday he approved about 135 National Guard troops to DC, while Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced he would deploy approximately 200 members.

Tennessee will send roughly 160 guard members to the city this week following a request from the Trump administration, Gov. Bill Lee’s press secretary said in a Tuesday statement to CNN.

Over the weekend, West Virginia’s governor said his state was sending 300 to 400 National Guard troops to the nation’s capital. South Carolina authorized the deployment of 200 troops, and Ohio said it will send 150.

Federal officers assigned to DC are focusing on beating up food delivery people. NBC4 Washington DC: Detentions of D.C. delivery drivers leave immigrant communities on edge.

Washington, D.C., resident Tyler DeSue woke up tired and craving breakfast Saturday morning, so he did what many people in that situation would do: He used Uber Eats to put in an order for burritos.

When his driver took longer than usual, DeSue checked the app and noticed something seemed wrong — the delivery driver’s GPS location had stopped short of his address. He went outside to look for him.

“I stepped into the street, I looked down and see lights in the direction, like police lights, in the direction of where my driver was,” DeSue said in an interview. “It was my driver by himself and, like, nine different officers all wearing different uniforms. … Most of them had face coverings on.”

When DeSue went to investigate, the driver — whose name appeared on the food app as “Sidi” — was being questioned, first about his vehicle’s registration and then about his immigration status, he said.

“You’re gonna come with us, you’re gonna come with us today,” a masked agent can be heard telling Sidi in video that DeSue recorded and provided to NBC News.

“Can you tell me in Arabic, please?” Sidi says, adding that he did not understand what was being said and that he was nervous.

One of the agents, wearing a vest emblazoned “POLICE HSI” — short for Homeland Security Investigations, a part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — replies that they do not have an Arabic translator. The men then cuff Sidi’s hands, waist and feet before they put him in an unmarked car. DeSue said he has since reported the incident to Uber.

There have been other such reports.

The incident is one of several arrests of delivery drivers recorded by eyewitnesses across the Washington area that have gone viral since the Trump administration took over law enforcement in the nation’s capital last week.

An Uber Eats delivery driver is arrested Saturday in Washington, D.C.Tyler DeSue

The videos, scattered across social media and shared among D.C. delivery driver chat groups, are having a chilling effect on the drivers themselves. Some of them have chosen to stop making deliveries in the city.

It has been “five days since working, looking at what to do. And, well, closed down here waiting for things to pass, because I don’t know what to do,” a D.C.-area delivery driver who did not want to be named told NBC News in a voice message in Spanish.

On Sunday afternoon, DeSue said, an area where 15 to 20 delivery drivers typically would be parked out front of his home looking at their phones for their next orders was an empty lot.

“I haven’t seen a driver anywhere in the last two days,” he said.

There’s more at the link.

Immigration, deportation, and ICE

Paul Krugman at Substack: ICEing the U.S. Economy. Mass deportations will hurt more than people realize.

Donald Trump has been able to convert Immigration and Customs Enforcement (and Customs and Border Protection, which is effectively part of the same operation) into a huge secret police force — because what are we supposed to call an organization whose masked agents, bearing no identification, simply grab people off the street? Who shoot at a family fleeing in their truck, after agents refused to identify themselves and smashed the car window, claiming – apparently falsely according to video footage – that the driver tried to harm them?

We’ve also seen both deportations to foreign gulags and the creation of a network of domestic detention centers — call it the ICE archipelago — that are overcrowded, filthy, and breeding grounds for disease. Last week a judge ordered that detainees at ICE’s Manhattan facility be given bedding mats rather than being forced to sleep on dirty concrete floors, have access to decent hygiene, and receive three meals a day. We’ll see whether this order is obeyed, but it gives you an idea of the conditions detainees are currently facing.

And the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill gives ICE $45 billion to expand its network of detention centers, making room for around 100,000 more detainees, plus $30 billion for arrest and deportation efforts, enough to hire around 10,000 more ICE agents.

I worry, as everyone should, about how a huge expansion of this deeply un-American organization may be used as a tool of presidential power and repression. Furthermore, give people power without accountability — and it’s hard to give a better example than masked, unidentified agents authorized to use force — and some of them will abuse their position. And given what ICE has already been doing, what kind of people do you think are likely to sign up as it massively expands?

Compared with these issues, concerns about the economic impact of mass deportations are definitely second-tier. But they’re still important, and a subject I know something about. So the rest of this post will be devoted to how the Trump administration is about to ICE the economy.

A bit more:

First things first: Trump officials and some of their allies have been touting numbers that appear to show 2 million native-born Americans gaining jobs over the past year. But this claim is, as Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute says, a “multiple-count data felony.” Read Kolko for the details showing that this is a statistical artifact, not something that really happened. No, the native-born adult population didn’t suddenly jump by 4 million in a single year.

What will actually happen is a large decline in America’s foreign-born labor force. When Stephen Miller began promising to deport 3,000 immigrants a day, many people dismissed this as an idle boast. It’s true that we can’t possibly deport people anywhere near that rapidly while obeying the law and following due process. And your point is? [….]

We don’t know how many workers will eventually be incarcerated and deported. But undocumented immigrants make up around 5 percent of the U.S. work force. It seems plausible that a significant fraction of those workers will be pushed out, along with a number of legal workers snatched up based, as Trump’s border czar has said, on their physical appearance.

Losing large numbers of workers sounds as if it will be bad for the U.S. economy. In fact, it will be worse than you may think.

The reason is that immigrant workers aren’t spread evenly across the economy. They’re strongly concentrated in certain industries and occupations, where they constitute a large share, sometimes a majority, of the work force. As a result, the Trump administration’s latter-day Edict of Expulsion will be far more disruptive to the economy than the aggregate number of workers deported might suggest.

Read the rest at the link.

Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark: Fascist Secret Police Cars.

ICE has some new cars. They are cartoonishly fascist….

What is the purpose of these vehicles?

ICE has been performing its snatch-and-grab operations largely with unmarked vehicles. ICE officers in the wild seem to eschew any sort of identification: No badges, no uniforms. Most of the time they go to great lengths to conceal their identities, wearing mask, balaclavas, and ballcaps.

Fascist ICE trucks

Are these new vehicles meant for new kinds of operations, as ICE expands to a size commensurate with its funding?

Also: What is the use-case for an ICE pickup truck? Park Rangers and firefighters can use pickup trucks to haul large loads of gear. Why would ICE need pickup trucks in its fleet?

Next, let’s look at the design. You will notice that ICE employs the slogan “Defend the Homeland.” This slogan is emblazoned in multiple spots: On side panels and on hoods. On the Mustang variant—because apparently ICE operational requirements also necessitate a two-door sports coupe—the slogan appears to be plastered on the spoiler.

It is an odd slogan for a law enforcement organization. For starters, it’s not a statement of principle, like common police tag lines: “Protect and Serve,” or “Duty, Honor, Community,” or “Service Before Self.” It’s a command: DEFEND THE HOMELAND.1

This command implies a threat. The “homeland” is under assault, right now, and must be defended from some unnamed enemy. I cannot think of any LEO that uses the specter of an enemy as part of its self-projection.

Then there’s the word “homeland.” Not “America,” or “the United States.”

The Mustang variant

America and the United States are places that anyone might join, or become a part of. But the homeland is about blood and soil. It’s the patrimony of the true volk.

Finally: “Defending the homeland” isn’t even ILstice Department weaponization chief, called for the resignation of New York Attorney General Letitia James and posed for photos outside of her Brooklyn home last week – all as he is conducting investigations into her conduct.

His investigation of James, whose office brought civil fraud charges against Trump, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization resulting in a half-billion-dollar judgment last year, is one of several the Justice Department has launched into the president’s perceived enemies.

But since beginning of the investigation into James, Martin has taken several unusual steps that fall outside the norms of prosecutorial conduct. He sent a letter to James’ attorney Abbe Lowell on August 12 suggesting New York’s top law enforcement officer resign, he appeared outside of James’ home with a colleague trailed by a photographer for the New York Post, and appeared on Fox News pledging to take an expansive look into all of James’ conduct.

In video obtained by CNN, Martin can be seen posing for photos outside of James’ home.

“This is a criminal investigation, not social media,” said Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst. “A stunt like that might get clicks, but it’s patently inappropriate for a prosecutor to do and it certainly will give James and her attorney a basis to oppose any indictment, to argue it was prejudicial to the jury pool and that an indictment was brought in bad faith.”

The conduct is “outside the bounds of DOJ and ethics rules,” Lowell said in a response to Martin.

Justice Department policy generally prohibits discussing criminal investigations publicly, and attorneys are not supposed to pursue investigations for political means or to go on fishing expeditions.

Jah’han Jones at MSNBC: Trump’s ‘weaponization’ chief seems to admit to punitive fishing expeditions.

Ed Martin is going fishing. On Sunday, the lawyer and Donald Trump loyalist tapped to lead a Justice Department “weaponization” group that’s targeting the president’s perceived enemies vowed to rummage around in the lives of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in search of what he says could be potential fraud — or … something.

Ed Martin

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly targeted people who had been investigated or opposed him with thinly veiled threats of legal prosecution. Now, Martin, in his capacity as head of the so-called Weaponization Working Group at the Department of Justice, has been tasked with putting those prosecutions into action. The list of targets includes James, who led a successful mortgage fraud case against the Trump organization that resulted in a judgment of hundreds of millions of dollars; and Schiff, who served on the House Jan. 6 select committee that documented Trump’s role in fomenting insurrection in 2021.

Officials at DOJ are investigating both Schiff and James of mortgage fraud; both deny any wrongdoing and accuse the administration of political retribution. Martin, a former “Stop the Steal” organizer and attorney for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, has been assigned to oversee the cases. He’s previously said his group would be used to “shame” people it can’t charge with crimes.

In comments to Fox News this Sunday, Martin suggested his group intends to use its powers to poke around in other parts of James’ and Schiff’s lives in search of things unrelated to the mortgage allegations.

He said, “We’re gonna go to the very bottom of the facts, and if somebody did something wrong, we’re not only gonna hold them accountable, we’re also gonna look at everything else that they’ve been doing. Because when you’re a liar, you lie not just on one thing. When you’re a cheater, you cheat not just on one thing. When you’re doing corruption, you generally don’t just do it on one thing.”

The Independent: Bongino to work alongside ‘co-deputy director’ of FBI after sparring with administration over Epstein files.

The FBI has moved to appoint Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as its new “co-deputy director,” meaning its current deputy, Dan Bongino, will be expected to share his duties in the role in the future.

The appointment was made by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel and comes after Bongino, 50, a former Secret Service agent and podcaster, reportedly clashed with Bondi over the administration’s failure to release the Jeffrey Epstein files last month.

“I am proud to announce I have accepted the role of Co-Deputy Director of the FBI,” Bailey wrote in a brief post on X. “I extend my thanks to President Donald Trump and AG Bondi for the opportunity to serve in the mission to Make America Safe Again. I will protect America and uphold the Constitution.”

Bongino responded to a journalist’s post about the appointment by writing simply, “Welcome,” accompanied by three Stars and Stripes emojis.

Explaining the decision, Patel told The Daily Beast that the FBI “will always bring the greatest talent this country has to offer in order to accomplish the goals set forth when an overwhelming majority of American people elected President Donald J Trump again.

You have to wonder why Bongino hasn’t resigned. Maybe this is a step toward pushing him out.

The Epstein case caused controversy in early July after the FBI and Justice Department put out a statement saying that the late pedophile and sex trafficker left behind no “client list” among his possessions and died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in August 2019.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino will find himself sharing his official duties after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Mitchell was hired by the Trump administration

The assessment started a civil war among Trump’s MAGA movement, many of whose members had long been encouraged to suspect foul play in Epstein’s death and had hoped to see influential people brought to justice over their alleged involvement in the disgraced financier’s crimes.

The controversy raged for more than a month, with the president himself repeatedly urged to release all federal files on Epstein and to explain his past friendship with the disgraced financier, a cause of apparent frustration to him….

Even before the contested verdict on Epstein was published, Patel and Bongino, both of whom had stoked conspiracy theories on conservative media before joining the Trump administration, had drawn fire for attempting to pour cold water on the case during a May interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.

The Epstein story is not going away, and now supposedly the DOJ will begin releasing the Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

CNN: House panel to make Epstein files public after redactions to protect victim identities.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform intends to make public some files it subpoenaed related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, though it will first redact them to shield victims’ IDs and other sensitive matters, a committee spokesperson said Tuesday.

The panel is expected to start receiving materials from the Justice Department on Friday, though it appears the public release will come some time after that. The spokesperson said the committee would work with the Justice Department on the process.

“The Committee intends to make the records public after thorough review to ensure all victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted. The Committee will also consult with the DOJ to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations,” the spokesperson said.

Democrats on the committee complained that Comer was slow walking the release of the material by allowing the Justice Department to miss the Tuesday deadline that had been set by the panel and instead turn over the materials to the committee gradually over time starting Friday. They said DOJ had already been directed by the House subpoena to redact material related to victims’ identities and child sexual abuse – questioning the need for further delay to do so.

“Releasing the Epstein files in batches just continues this White House cover-up. The American people will not accept anything short of the full, unredacted Epstein files,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel. “In a bipartisan vote, the Committee demanded complete compliance with our subpoena. Handpicked, partial productions are wholly insufficient and potentially misleading, especially after Attorney General Bondi bragged about having the entirety of the Epstein files on her desk mere months ago.”

I hope this will really happen, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Trump and Putin

This post is already too long, but I couldn’t resist including this story from The Daily Beast: Trump’s Jaw-Dropping Ignorance Exposed During Putin Meet: Author.

Donald Trump displayed a stunning ignorance of the Cold War during last week’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to his biographer.

Author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head on Tuesday that, in the president’s telling of the decades-long 20th century engagement, “it would appear that the U.S. and USSR are on the same side.”

Michael Wolff

Wolff, who said his sources are “twice removed” from the principals, said Trump began the meeting with “a combination of flattery” and “a combination of things that he’s just pulled out of somewhere…observations, it’s both inconsequential and incoherent.”

When either Special Envoy Steve Witkoff or Secretary of State Marco Rubio interrupted him to lay out an agenda, Wolff said, Trump just talked over them.

“Again, we’re nowhere in this meeting. We’re probably now, you know, 20 minutes in. Nothing is clear about what anyone is doing there except that Putin is totally impassive,” he said.

When Putin did speak, Wolff said, he gave a “history lesson” about ”why [Russia] should conquer Ukraine.”

And a bit more:

“Trump, not to be outdone, as this is relayed to me, goes into his own history lesson, and this is a history of the Cold War,” he said. “And as this is described to me, in Trump’s history of the Cold War, it would appear that the U.S. and USSR are on the same side.” [….]

Trump, who has been attacking “woke” history museums for not talking about “the future,” then seemed to go along with Putin’s statement resisting a ceasefire, Wolff said.

“And Trump seems to accept this and seems to agree with this,” according to the author. “Yes, let’s just move on to the peace.”

Witkoff and Rubio, meanwhile, are “basically helpless.”

“They sit there occasionally trying to interject, but you can’t really interject because Trump just talks all the time,” he continued.

“And this is then to… Putin’s advantage, because rather than any discussion of the details of what might happen here, what territory—what are you going to give for that, what are the trade offs—I mean, that level of detail Trump is not interested in, probably not capable of following the logical sequences that would be necessary there.”

What’s important to Trump, Wolff said, “is to keep talking” and “to have people listen to him.”

Those are the stories that interested me today. There’s much more happening. What’s on your mind?