I’m really struggling with watching/read the national news these days. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. I have been trying to follow local reports of federal immigration/deportation activities. Trump hasn’t sent troops to Massachusetts yet, but ICE has still been very busy here. A few recent stories:
Last week, João Marciano do Carmo returned to his family in Milford, embraced his crying mother, and fell into the comfort of his living room couch. The 19-year-old had finally made the journey home from a jail in Mississippi, one of the detention facilities where he had been held since September on an immigration-related violation that, lawyers say, never warranted his detention in the first place.
He’s not alone, according to a Globe analysis of arrest and detention data and interviews with immigration attorneys and experts. Immigrants in New England targeted for deportation are being whisked away quicker and to farther locations than ever before. They are increasingly brought to remote areas of the country where they face more conservative judges who are less likely to grant them freedom,according to the interviews and the data analysis.
Kelly Lamphere, the mother-in-law of João Marciano do Carmo’s sister, embraced João as he arrived at his family’s home in Milford, Nov. 18. Erin Clark, Globe Staff
As agents carry out that agenda, advocates and legal analysts say, immigrants have lost essential due process rights. Detainees legally eligible for bondare moved quickly, and at times in violation of court orders. It can take days for them to be able to call their families. Often, not even their lawyers know where they are.
Legal experts warn the rapid rise in transfers to far-flung states is likely to accelerate as billions of dollars allocated by Congress in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer begin to flow to detention centers.
“To be super clear, this is the beginning,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They are ramping up, but they have plans to go so much bigger.” [….]
ICE arrests in the Boston area more than tripled in the first seven months of this year compared to last, while the number of people sent to facilities outside New England spiked sixfold, according to the Globe analysis.
At the same time, the median period before someone was moved to an out-of-region facility was cut in half. Last year, it took around 20 days to move someone out of New England, while this year it took around 10 days.
What happened to João:
In Carmo’s case, the teenager, who moved to Milford from Brazil at age 11, was arrested on the way to work at a nearby farm with a friend from Milford High School. Immigration agents shattered his car window to apprehend them. The two teenagers, who have no criminal record, were put in a van with their hands and feet shackled.
For the first six days, they weren’t allowed to make a phone call. None of their family members or their lawyer could locate them. For days, their mothers in Milford wondered if they were alive.
In the seven weeks that followed, Carmo and Marcos Oliveira Martins were transferred from detention facility to detention facility, with stops in Massachusetts, New York, and Mississippi. They slept on concrete, the floor of a gymnasium, and in traditional jail cells.
“I was being really treated like an animal … I didn’t matter,” Carmo said at his home. His journey from New York to Mississippi lasted 16 hours between buses and a plane, and he was shackled the entire time.
Immigration authorities detained and swiftly deported a freshman at Babson College to Honduras last week while she was at Logan Airport on her way to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving, according to attorneys and a family friend.
The young woman, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, came to the United States from Honduras with her family when she was a young child and was at Logan Thursday to catch a flight to Texas, where her parents live, according to her attorney, Todd Pomerleau.
Lopez Belloza made it through security but was stopped as she was about to board the plane, Pomerleau said. “They wouldn’t tell her why she was being detained. She didn’t understand it at all,” Pomerleau said. She was then taken to the Burlington ICE field office, then flown to Texas, Pomerleau said.
abson college student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, at her high school graduation.Family Photo
After a frantic 48-hour search, her family received a call from her on Saturday from Honduras, a country she had not lived in since she was a child. The federal government had quickly deported her, the lawyers said, and Lopez Belloza had found her way to her grandparents’ house and called her father.
“It really didn’t feel like it was real life because nothing made sense,” said Ricky Soto, a close friend of the family who was desperately trying to contact attorneys to help the family. “I can only imagine how terrifying that was for her.”
Soto, 41, had bought Lopez Belloza plane tickets and helped organize the surprise for her family — he considers them family, too, and works with her father at a tailor shop in Texas.
The student’s parents and her two youngest siblings are also in Texas, and it would have been her first Thanksgiving break during college. “She was so excited, because she wasn’t expecting to come home,” Soto told the Globe.
Why did this happen?
Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, has also been assisting the family with the case, quickly scrambling to find local lawyers and contact representatives on Thursday evening after hearing of the case. Lopez Belloza apparently had a removal order from around 2017 that neither she nor her family was aware of, Gupta said.
“They didn’t know to show up somewhere, and she certainly had no idea of any of this,” Gupta said.
Before Trump, people in this category weren’t targeted; now that has changed. Now Lopez Belloza may not be able to continue her education.
Soto, the family friend, remembers Lopez Belloza‘s father learning of his daughter’s college acceptance last year, bursting into their shop with such enthusiasm to share the news.
“Based on what I know about her father and his family, and what they went through, and how he’s been able to grow and persevere, and have a family — and then his oldest daughter is achieving this,” Soto said, “everybody was just really proud.”
Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza‘s attorney based in Massachusetts, said that she is a business student who received a scholarship to attend Babson. Now, Lopez Belloza isn’t sure if she’ll be able to finish her finals, Pomerleau said. He was able to speak with Lopez Belloza for the first time on Monday.
“She was really sad,” Pomerleau said. “I told her, ‘We’re going to fight like hell until we bring you back.’”
There must be terrible stories like this all over the country. It makes me sick at heart.
Officials have detained the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew amid the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took the woman into custody in Revere, Massachusetts, this month, the source said.
Bruna Ferreira has an 11-year-old son with Michael Leavitt, who is the press secretary’s brother.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Bruna Caroline Ferreira is a “criminal illegal alien from Brazil” who overstayed her tourist visa, which expired in June 1999.
The woman has an arrest on suspicion of battery, the spokesperson said. It’s not clear how the case was resolved.
Ferreira, who the source familiar with the situation said has never lived with Leavitt’s nephew, is at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center amid proceedings to have her removed, the DHS spokesperson said….
The source said Leavitt’s nephew has lived full time in New Hampshire with his father since he was born, has never resided with his mother and has not spoken with her in many years….
Ferreira’s family said in a GoFundMe campaign that she was brought to the United States as a child in 1998 and that she has done “everything in her power to build a stable, honest life here.”
It says she “maintained her legal status” in the United States by receiving protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which seeks to allow immigrants brought to the United States as children, albeit illegally, to enjoy protection from removal.
With headline-grabbing posts on social media, combative interactions with reporters and speeches full of partisan red meat, Mr. Trump can project round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina. Now at the end of his eighth decade, Mr. Trump and the people around him still talk about him as if he is the Energizer Bunny of presidential politics.
The reality is more complicated: Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging. To pre-empt any criticism about his age, he often compares himself to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who at 82 was the oldest person to hold the office, and whose aides took measures to shield his growing frailty from the public, including by tightly managing his appearances….
Mr. Trump remains almost omnipresent in American life. He appears before the news media and takes questions far more often than Mr. Biden did. Foreign leaders, chief executives, donors and others have regular access to Mr. Trump and see him in action.
Still, nearly a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.
He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.
And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.
At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.
A bit more:
Mr. Trump has prompted additional questions about his health by sharing news about medical procedures he has had, but not details about them. While in Asia, Mr. Trump revealed that he had undergone magnetic resonance imaging at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early October.
“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump told reporters, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician, which did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and contained few other details….
Trump dozing in an Oval Office meeting
Mr. Trump also applies makeup to a bruise on the back of his right hand, adding speculation about a medical condition that his physician and aides say is caused by taking aspirin and shaking so many hands. In September, the bruising on his hand, coupled with swollen ankles, caused observers on the internet to speculate wildly about his health….
According to a Times analysis of the official presidential schedules in a database maintained by Roll Call, Mr. Trump’s first official event starts later in the day. In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at around the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.
The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.
Mr. Trump still regularly comes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule. This routine is a holdover from his first term: After he complained about being overscheduled in the mornings, Mr. Trump kept so-called executive time hours in the White House residence before he headed downstairs for work.
It’s nothing we don’t know about, but at least the Times admits Trump is declining with age.
In the report, the Times noted, “… when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs,” before reporting that the 79-year-old president appeared to all observers to have dozed off as those around him spoke.
Clearly stung, Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday morning to lash out, while also boasting about his last election win for some curious reason.
“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. I won the 2024 Presidential Election in a Landslide, winning all Seven Swing States, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a lot. I one our Nation’s Districts by 2750 to 550, a complete wipeout. I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history – I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down,” he wrote.
He continued, “To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite.”
“They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.’ The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” he complained, once again insulting a female reporter’s physical appearance.
“Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever, and with record setting investment being made in America, they should only go up,” he insisted before claiming, “There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (‘That was aced’) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
He’s not just old; he’s certifiably insane.
Based on what is reported in the news, Trump spends much of his time on his redecorating obsessions.
President Donald Trump has argued with the architect he handpicked to design a White House ballroom over the size of the project, reflecting a conflict between architectural norms and Trump’s grandiose aesthetic, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
Trump with ballroom architect James McCrery
Trump’s desire to go big with the project has put him at odds with architect James McCrery II, the people said, who has counseled restraint over concerns the planned 90,000-square-foot addition could dwarf the 55,000-square-foot mansion in violation of a general architectural rule: don’t build an addition that overshadows the main building.
A White House official acknowledged the two have disagreed but would not say why or elaborate on the tensions, characterizing Trump and McCrery’s conversations about the ballroom as “constructive dialogue.” [….]
Trump’s intense focus on the project and insistence on realizing his vision over the objections of his own hire, historic preservationists and others concerned by a lack of public input in the project reflect his singular belief in himself as a tastemaker and obsessive attention to details. In the first 10 months of his second term, Trump has waged a campaign to remake the White House in his gilded aesthetic and done so unilaterally — using a who’s-going-to-stop-me ethos he honed for decades as a developer.
Multiple administration officials have acknowledged that Trump has at times veered into micromanagement of the ballroom project, holding frequent meetings about its design and materials. A model of the ballroom has also become a regular fixture in the Oval Office.
The renovation represents one of the largest changes to the White House in its 233-year history, and has yet to undergo any formal public review. The administration has not publicly provided key details about the building, such as its planned height. The 90,000-square-foot structure also is expected to host a suite of offices previously located in the East Wing. The White House has also declined to specify its plans for an emergency bunker that was located below the East Wing, citing matters of national security.
President Trump said Jack Nicklaus, the retired professional golfer, will oversee an overhaul of the golf courses at Joint Base Andrews.
Trump told reporters he was tapping Nicklaus as the architect of the project on Saturday before boarding Marine One to head to Andrews, where he later took an aerial tour of the landscape.
85 year old Jack Nichlaus
“We’re doing some fix-up of the base, which it needs. We’re going to try and reinstitute the golf courses. I’m meeting with the greatest Jack Nicklaus,” Trump said.
“He’s involved in trying to bring their recreational facility back,” he added, calling it a “great place that has been destroyed over the years through lack of maintenance, so we’ll fix that up, and Jack will be the architect and he’ll design it.”
Trump said the project would address “two existing courses that are in very bad shape” and said, “We can, for very little money, fix it up.”
Trump has time for all this because he doesn’t really care about serious issues and leaves those to his staff, his pal Putin, and apparently Jared Kushner. I haven’t really gotten into politics and foreign policy in this post, but here are some headlines if you’re interested.
Temple doesn’t have to be incensed that her Louisiana Swamp Dog breed isn’t part of the latest ICE raid in New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s no longer called Catahoula Cut-off. It has now officially been renamed ‘Swamp Sweep’. That doesn’t make it easier to deal with. It’s hard to express the feeling that you have that your own country is basically sending a military invasion to your neighborhood. We have the basic statistics that these racists go after. We have women in our leadership positions. They represent our multicultural city. We’re terrifically liberal and blue as fuck. Trump and his ilk hate us.
I’m already part of the ‘good trouble’ we’ve got planned for them. Let me fill you in.
Roughly 250 federal border agents will deploy to New Orleans in a two-month operation called “Swamp Sweep,” which aims to arrest almost 5,000 people across Louisiana and Mississippi, The Associated Press has reported, citing internal documents and sources familiar with the matter.
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander reported to be leading the new effort, has drawn scrutiny in the past. In Chicago, Bovino was publicly rebuked by a federal judge for misrepresenting threats by protesters and using tear gas and pepper balls without justification during disturbances. His involvement in the plan indicates that it is a major enforcement priority for the Trump administration.
According to planning documents obtained by The Associated Press and sources familiar with the operation, Swamp Sweep is scheduled to begin in early December and continue for two months.
It signals both an expansion of the administration’s immigration crackdown in key Southern states and an intensifying showdown between federal agencies and local governments in areas with divergent approaches toward immigration policy.
They are specifically targeting one of the smaller cities adjacent to Orleans Parish. It has long been a place where various diasporas have settled even thought it undoubtedly a White Flight Burb. The City of Kenner is high on the list and their police are aligned with the Governor and his anti-immigrant MAGA positions. This is from the Louisiana Luminator. “In heavily Hispanic Kenner, some residents on edge ahead of Border surge. The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly deploying 250 Border Patrol agents to the New Orleans area, echoing recent operations in Chicago and North Carolina.”
In Chicago, federal agents focused on heavily Hispanic suburban neighborhoods near the city’s northwest side, sparking allegations of racial profiling — including of U.S. citizens of color caught up in the sweeps — and excessive use of force.
Kenner, a suburb to New Orleans’ northwest, has the highest share of Hispanic residents — largely Honduran — of anywhere in the metro area. The city of about 66,000 is 30% Hispanic and is well-known for its concentration of Hispanic-owned businesses, particularly along Williams Boulevard.
Kenner has already seen immigration enforcement operations stepped up this year, including early this month, when the city’s police department partnered with ICE, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Louisiana State Police for a nighttime raid at the boat launch in Laketown, which resulted in 15 immigration arrests.
In a video posted on the Kenner Police Department’s Facebook page, Kenner Police Department Chief Keith Conley said the operation was in response to years of nuisance complaints from city residents. Kenner PD was also one of the first local departments in Louisiana this year to ink a formal partnership pledging to work with federal immigration authorities.
In a phone interview with Verite News, Conley said the agency had not been briefed by their partners at ICE or anyone at U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the upcoming operation, adding that Kenner PD will work with federal immigration authorities if asked.
“From what I understand, they’re going to be operating independently. Certainly if they need our assistance for anything, we stand ready to assist and aid in their mission,” he said.
Conley said reports that fears over immigration enforcement are causing Hispanic residents to stay indoors might be overblown by social media.
“I don’t see any interruption in customers in restaurants and stores or anything like that,” Conley said. “If [residents] have any concerns or fears they’re more than welcome to call this office or to speak to any of our officers about it.”
But one business operator with locations in New Orleans and Kenner told Verite News that he is already seeing a drop in sales, even before the operation has officially begun.
“It’s a bad time,” said José Castillo, a manager at Norma’s Sweets Bakery, which is owned by his mother. “Business is down in Kenner, in New Orleans, in all our areas. … People are afraid to go out.”
Conley said Kenner PD has long been a good partner to federal immigration enforcement agencies. In March, the department signed an official agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the 287(g) program, which deputizes officers to carry out some ICE duties. President Donald Trump has urged departments across the country to enter into such partnerships, as has Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Trump ally and immigration hardliner.
The agreement allows KPD officers to draft their own “detainer” requests, authorizing local jailers to hold immigrants beyond when they might otherwise be released so that they can potentially be transferred into ICE custody.
In an investigation published in August, Verite News and Gulf States Newsroom found that Kenner PD traffic stops were creating a pipeline for immigrants from the city’s jail to federal immigration detention and even deportation. Between January and May ICE issued six times as many immigration detainer requests through Kenner PD than during the same time period in 2024.
As New Orleans area residents await the operation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been fairly tight-lipped about what to expect.
Here, in the city itself, several resistance groups have banded together to use some of the most successful strategies seen in Chicago. The biggest is the strategy of a whistle brigade. These whistles are easy to assemble; anyone with a 3D printer can mass-produce them quickly and affordably. The whistles are distributed throughout the cities with instructions. The basic idea is to draw enough attention to a raid that it will disrupt its efficiency and alert people in the zone to an active raid. Everyone has instructions and can pick up the whistles at various locales in each neighborhood. There are also some mass protests in the wings.
The key is also to document and report the activity. Activists are primarily there to demonstrate a large community presence, use their cameras to capture the raid, and then report to key resistance groups with resources to engage lawyers and the press. Again, this has been successful in Chicago.
Another successful tactic is to embarrass and boycott any local businesses that are facilitating any part of the invasion and kidnapping. Marriott Hotels has been identified as a group that has allowed ICE agents to rent rooms. Boycotting these entities is a key part of discouraging collaboration. The Washington Posthas an article up today listing the 20 top billionaires who are influencing our politics. “The top 20 billionaires influencing American politics. Campaign donations from the country’s richest are soaring. But only 12 percent of the public says billionaires have a positive impact on society. This is reported by Clara Ence Morse and Eric Lau.
The 20 most prolific donors on the Forbes billionaires list have collectively given nearly$5 billion between 2015 and 2024, spending on everything from state ballot measures to congressional elections and presidential races. Somehave concentrated on supporting issues of interest. Finance billionaire Jeff Yass has poured millions into supporting pro-school-choice candidates in his home state of Pennsylvania and across the country.
While some billionaires have given similar amounts to both parties, the most prolific donors gave almost exclusively to one party. In federal races, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman gave just under 90 percent of his total donations to Democrats and liberal committees; all the other top 20 donors were even more lopsided. Nobody gave over $5 million to both Republicans and Democrats.
The Post’s analysis was confined to billionaires identified by Forbes, so some prolific donors, such as conservative investor Tim Mellon, who donated $197 million to influence federal elections last year, are absent from the count.
You may read the list and accompanying names at the link.The Guardian reports that the FBI is spying on activists. “The FBI spied on a Signal group chat of immigration activists, records reveal’. Exclusive: Agency accessed private conversations of New York ‘courtwatch’ group that was observing public hearings.”
The FBI spied on a private Signal group chat of immigrants’ rights activists who were organizing “courtwatch” efforts in New York City this spring, law enforcement records shared with the Guardian indicate.
The FBI, the documents show, gained access to conversations in a “courtwatch” Signal group that helps coordinate volunteer activists who monitor public proceedings at three New York federal immigration courts. The US government has repeatedly been accused of violating immigrants’ due process rights at those courts.
A “joint situational information report” from the FBI and the New York police department (NYPD), dated 28 August 2025, quoted from a chat on Signal, the encrypted messaging app, and also characterized the court watchers as “anarchist violent extremist actors”. The two-page report was distributed to other law enforcement agencies across the US.
All of this reeks of autocracy. Today, I started carrying my birth certificate with me. How’s that for making American great again?
What’s on your reading, action, and blogging list today?
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I’m feeling slightly more optimistic after Tuesday’s Democratic sweep of theoff-year elections on Tuesday. According to the polls, Trump is very unpopular, and I have to believe that his efforts to avoid giving food to starving Americans are not going to help him. Democracy is still in danger, but it is beginning look as if there’s still hope for saving it.
President Trump’s approval rating is dropping as Democrats signal more motivation than the GOP ahead of next year’s midterm elections, according to a new Emerson College Polling survey released on Friday.
Forty-one percent of voters said they approved of the job Trump is doing as president, a four-point drop from Trump’s October approval rating of 45 percent. Forty-nine percent of voters said they disapproved of Trump’s job in office, up from 48 percent last month.
Meanwhile, the same poll found that 71 percent of Democratic voters said they were motivated to vote in next year’s midterm elections compared to 60 percent of Republicans. Forty-two percent of Independents said the same.
Fifty-seven percent of all voters said they were more motivated to vote than usual, while 12 percent said they were less motivated. Thirty-one percent said they were motivated as usual ahead of the midterms.
The polling comes after Republicans suffered losses to Democrats in Tuesday’s off-year elections, which were seen as a referendum on the first year of Trump’s second term in office….
The same poll found that 43 percent of voters said their vote in the midterms would be an expression of opposition to Trump, while 29 percent said their vote would be an expression of support.
The Emerson College national poll was conducted Nov. 3-4 among 1,000 active registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.
I’ve been listening to/watching regularly a Daily Beast podcast called Inside Trump’s Head.” The show consists of interviews with journalist Michael Wolff, who has written 3 books about Trump. You can watch it on YouTube. Wolff is not only an expert on Trump (and Jeffrey Epstein), but also has numerous current sources inside the Trump circle. In addition, he is often funny.
Controversial journalist Michael Wolff made a bold prediction about the future of the second Trump administration on Thursday during a new podcast interview.
Wolff joined The Daily Beast’s Joana Coles on a new episode of “Inside Trump’s Head” that aired on Thursday, where the two discussed what Tuesday’s election results mean for President Donald Trump. Democrats won a spate of key races, including two governor’s offices and a host of statewide offices.
By Timothy Matthews
Trump and Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) have tried to brush off the Democratic victories. Wolff argued that they reveal a troubling trend for the Trump administration.
“Let’s look at that in the context of we are not today in an autocracy and [with] a measure of optimism, which is that we’ve just spent a year since last Election Day with Trump as this omnipotent figure in politics,” Wolff said. “And while I would not say that today spells in any way the end of Trump, I would say that the end of Trump could well happen.”
Leading up to Tuesday’s election, Trump shared multiple social media posts attempting to help his preferred candidates win. However, Trump-aligned and Trump-backed candidates did not fare well in the election.
“That’s what happens in American politics,” Wolff continued. “That’s one of the great things in American politics. Reversals, landslides. Things that you would not dream of happening, happen.”
“This has been a horrifying year of Trump, and without any sense that anyone could stand in his way,” he continued. “But in American politics, that’s what happens. You think these people are permanent, and it turns out that they are fleeting.”
Late last night, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson allowed Trump to continue withholding full SNAP benefits to the states after an appeals court ordered the payments to begin immediately.
The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily granted the Trump administration’s request to block full SNAP food benefits during the government shutdown, even as residents in some states had already begun receiving them.
The Trump administration is appealing a court order to fully restart the country’s largest anti-hunger program. The high court decision late Friday gives a lower court time to consider a more lasting pause.
The move may add to confusion, though, since the government said it was sending states money on Friday to fully fund SNAP at the same time it appealed the order to pay for them.
Shortly after U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. issued that decision Thursday afternoon, states started to announce they’d be issuing full SNAP benefits. Some peoplewoke up Friday with the money already on the debit-like EBT cards they use to buy groceries. The number of states kept growing, and included California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Connecticut among others.
The Supreme Court’s decision means states must, for now, revert back to the partial payments the Trump administration had earlier instructed them to distribute. While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected the administration’s request for an administrative stay, the appeals court said it would consider the request for the stay and intends to issue a decision as quickly as possible.
SCOTUS whisperer Steve Vladeck quickly published an explainer at One First: SNAP WTF?.
Basically, Vladeck thinks that Jackson knew that if she didn’t issue the hold, the 5 right wing justices would go along with Trump’s wish for an administrative hold, and it might take a long time for them to get around to making a final decision on the SNAP payments.
I wanted to put out a very brief post to try to provide a bit of context for Justice Jackson’s single-justice order, handed down shortly after 9 p.m. EST on Friday night, that imposed an “administrative stay” of a district court order that would’ve required the Trump administration to use various contingency funds to pay out critical benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Willem den Ouden (NL 1928) Ferry with cat
It may surprise folks that Justice Jackson, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the Court’s behavior on emergency applications from the Trump administration, acquiesced in even a temporary pause of the district court’s ruling in this case. But as I read the order, which says a lot more than a typical “administrative stay” from the Court, Jackson was stuck between a rock and a hard place—given the incredibly compressed timing that was created by the circumstances of the case.
In a world in which Justice Jackson either knew or suspected that at least five of the justices would grant temporary relief to the Trump administration if she didn’t, the way she structured the stay means that she was able to try to control the timing of the Supreme Court’s (forthcoming) review—and to create pressure for it to happen faster than it otherwise might have. In other words, it’s a compromise—one with which not everyone will agree, but which strikes me as eminently defensible under these unique (and, let’s be clear, maddening and entirely f-ing avoidable) circumstances.
Everyone agrees that, among the many increasingly painful results of the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can no longer spend the funds Congress appropriated to cover SNAP—a program that helps to fund food purchases for one in eight (42 million!) Americans. Everyone also agrees that there are other sources of appropriated money that the President has the statutory authority to rely upon to at least partially fund SNAP benefits for the month of November. The two questions that have provoked the most legal debate is whether (1) he has the authority to fully fund SNAP; and (2) either way, whether federal courts can order him to use whatever authorities he has.
The dispute in the case that reached the Supreme Court on Friday involves a lawsuit that asked a federal court in Rhode Island to order the USDA first to partially fund SNAP for November, and then, as circumstances unfolded, to fully fund it. Having already ordered the USDA to do the former, yesterday, Judge McConnell issued a TRO ordering it to do the latter (to fully fund SNAP for November)—and to do so by the end of the day today.
I won’t quote any more, but I hope you’ll go read the explanation. Vladeck thinks that Jackson did the right thing under the circumstances, because she wants to make sure that the full court debates the case and makes a decision quickly. Vladeck also notes that Trump could just approve payment of the SNAP benefits. There’s no need of a court order. Democrats should make sure people understand that Trump is willing to starve children and old people in order to get his way on the shutdown and the cruel cuts in his big ugly bill.
Senate Democrats made an offer Friday to reopen the government, proposing a one-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies alongside a package of funding measures in order to secure their votes.
By Kichisaburou Hirota
The offer, rolled out on the floor by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., includes a “clean” continuing resolution, which would reopen the government at current spending levels, and a package of three bipartisan appropriations bills to fund some departments for the full fiscal year.
“After so many failed votes, it’s clear we need to try something different,” Schumer said, calling it “a very simple compromise.”
The short-term health care funding extension would prevent a massive increase in insurance costs for millions of Americans on Obamacare next year. In addition, Democrats proposed creating a bipartisan committee to negotiate a longer-term solution.
“This is a reasonable offer that reopens the government, deals with health care affordability and begins a process of negotiating reforms to the ACA tax credits for the future,” Schumer added. “Now, the ball is in the Republicans’ court. We need Republicans to just say yes.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called the Democratic offer a “nonstarter.”
“The Obamacare extension is the negotiation. That’s what we’re going to negotiate once the government opens up. … We need to vote to open the government — and there is a proposal out there to do that — and then we can have this whole conversation about health care,” he said.
Yeah, no. Republicans can’t be trusted to honor their promises.
Senate Republicans have largely backed President Donald Trump’s agenda since he returned to office — but many refuse to support his campaign to scrap the filibuster.
Trump asked Republican senators at a meeting at the White House on Wednesday to end the government shutdown by getting rid of the filibuster and reiterated his demand Thursday at a news conference.
By Tatyana Rodionova
The filibuster, a long-standing Senate rule, allows a single senator to block most legislation unless 60 senators vote to cut off debate. Democrats have used the filibuster to block Republicans’ government funding bill for more than a month despite Republicans’ 53-seat Senate majority.
Some Senate Republicans returned from the White House saying they were open to ending the filibuster. But doing away with the rule would require the support of almost every Republican senator — and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and many other Republicans say they are implacably opposed to it.
“There’s nothing that could move me on the filibuster,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) told reporters Wednesday after the White House meeting.
Senate Republicans’ unwillingness to scrap the filibuster underscores the limits of Trump’s influence in his second term, during which lawmakers have been reluctant to defy him.
There is quite a bit of immigration news out there today.
A federal judge in Oregon on Friday issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard on the streets of Portland in response to protests against the president’s immigration policies.
“This Court arrives at the necessary conclusion that there was neither ‘a rebellion or danger of a rebellion’ nor was the President ‘unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States’ in Oregon when he ordered the federalization and deployment of the National Guard,” U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, wrote in her ruling.
The Trump administration can appeal the ruling if it wants to.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek responded to the ruling Friday, calling Trump’s move to federalize the guard “a gross abuse of power.”
“Oregon National Guard members have been away from their jobs and families for 38 days. The California National Guard has been here for just over one month. Based on this ruling, I am renewing my call to the Trump Administration to send all troops home now,” Kotek said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose justice department argued in the case objecting over his state’s National Guard’s deployment, called the decision “a win for the rule of law, for the constitutional values that govern our democracy, and for the American people.”
There are a number of immigration stories coming out of the Broadville neighborhood in Chicago where there is a large ICE facility.
DHS’S IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS continue to land like hammer blows on communities across the United States. Families are being torn apart, protesters are catching pepperballs, businesses are at risk, and, increasingly, entire neighborhood economies in areas with large Latino populations are grinding to a halt.
The worst consequences occur when these different aspects of the Trump administration’s deportation regime overlap. Case in point: Chicago’s food scene, specifically the capital of the Mexican Midwest, Little Village, where I got both a firsthand look at the compounding harms of ICE’s actions and the best gorditas I’ve ever had in my life.
By Cindy Revell
The first sign of how different things are come well before you take a bite of the gordita. It’s when you look around and realize that there is now an eerie emptiness to a once-vibrant place.
As I pulled into Little Village for dinner with some local Chicagoans, we experienced no traffic and had our pick of parking spots. “Traffic used to be bumper to bumper for decades and start blocks away, I’ve never experienced it like this,” Chicago food writer Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu told me. In a TikTok about the neighborhood, she noted that Little Village is the second-largest shopping district in the city after Michigan Avenue, which is home of the “Magnificent Mile” of luxury stores.
Our destination that day last monthwas Carniceria Aguascalientes, which sits on the main thoroughfare of 26th Street. We passed through a glittering Mexican grocery store at the street side to get to the large diner-style restaurant lined with tables and booths. Only two or three of roughly thirty tables were in use when we sat down. As we enjoyed our food, the largely vacant dining room became less and less comprehensible.1
When I told our friendly waitress, Michelle Macias, 24, what I do and why I was in town, she was eager to share what had happened to the restaurant. Aguascalientes, a staple of “La Villita,” has welcomed customers for half a century. But lately, its business has plummeted. Sales are down a staggering amount: more than 60 percent compared to last year.
Everything has been turned on its head, Macias explained. While in past years Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were bustling, lately Mondays have become the restaurant’s busiest day—perhaps a result of people trying to avoid the usual crowds of the weekend. The restaurant announced this year that it would be closing an hour earlier, a money-saving measure. And as I had noticed, there’s now parking readily available, a fact that shocks longtime patrons accustomed to the gridlock that formerly surrounded the popular eatery.
Everything has been turned on its head, Macias explained. While in past years Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were bustling, lately Mondays have become the restaurant’s busiest day—perhaps a result of people trying to avoid the usual crowds of the weekend. The restaurant announced this year that it would be closing an hour earlier, a money-saving measure. And as I had noticed, there’s now parking readily available, a fact that shocks longtime patrons accustomed to the gridlock that formerly surrounded the popular eatery.
The bleak reality facing Carniceria Aguascalientes weighs on its forty employees—especially Macias, whose parents own the restaurant.
As I took it in, I couldn’t help but think back to when Trump’s mass-deportation policy was just getting underway, and the many conversations I had then with Democratic lawmakers who wondered aloud about where we would be in three years. Forget three years: In the Latino enclaves of Little Village, and in Back of the Yards, in Pilsen, and on the North Side, they’re wondering how they will get through the next three weeks.
“Everyone is staying home, everyone is scared,” Macias told me. “There’s so much uncertainty. COVID was bad, but this is way worse.”
It sounds like what happened in Washington DC. Read the whole thing at the Bulwark link.
BROADVIEW – Federal authorities told demonstrators Friday that there would be “no more prayer” in front of or inside the Broadview ICE facility, in a move that mystified local leaders and raised legal questions.
A federal representative delivered the news to a huddle of faith leaders and activists standing outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility Friday, speaking after faith leaders were denied entry to the building for the third time Friday.
By Miroslaw Hajnos
Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills, whose department helped facilitate the phone call, said that he was “trying to figure out” in discussions with Mayor Katrina Thompson and an attorney if a federal agency could legally ban religious gatherings on land owned by the village. Religious groups previously have been allowed to practice outside the facility, he said.
“I’m just a messenger,” an anonymous voice stuttered over the phone to a huddle of faith leaders and activists standing outside the Broadview immigration processing facility on Friday.
During the call, which took place with a Block Club reporter present, the anonymous representative told a group of faith leaders and activists that “There is no more prayer in front of building or inside the building because this is the state and it’s not [of a] religious background.”
“I’m dumbfounded,” the police chief told Block Club. “Every time I talk with [federal officials], it feels like their rules keep changing. We don’t really know what’s happening, I’m sorry I can’t say more. We just want to keep people safe and let them peacefully protest without getting hurt.”
That sounds like a violation of the First Amendment to me.
A group of moms from the western suburbs were arrested Friday morning during a protest against the separation of families outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview.
Fourteen mothers jumped over the barricades and sat in a circle on Beach Street to “demand an end” to the immigration raids that have swept through the Chicago area since the Trump administration launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in September.
Less than a minute later, the women were arrested by Cook County sheriff’s deputies. The women were charged with obstruction, disorderly conduct and pedestrian walking on highways.
“We want to encourage other people who feel strongly about ICE’s actions to step off the sidelines and take our cities back,” said Teresa Shattuck, a mother from Oak Park. “We want to use our collective power and our white privilege in the way it should be used.”
Meghan Carter, another mother from Oak Park, said the women who were arrested understood the risks when they chose to take a stand, adding their experiences paled in comparison to what the detained immigrants inside the facility were enduring.
Carter said the suburban moms were a group of parents “fed up” with seeing immigration agents “terrorizing” their communities.
The Trump administration is exploring buying warehouses that were designed for clients like Amazon and retrofitting them as detention facilities for immigrants before they are deported, a move that would vastly expand the government’s detention capacity, according to a Homeland Security Department official and a White House official.
By Timothy Matthews
The precise warehouses that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may buy have not yet been determined, but the agency is looking at locations in the southern U.S. near airports where immigrants are most often deported, the DHS official and the White House official said. Selecting such warehouses would “increase efficiency” in deportations, the DHS official said.
A deal to purchase the warehouses, which on average are more than twice the size of current ICE detention facilities, is past the early stages but not yet final, the DHS official and the White House official said. The DHS official described the warehouses as future “mega detention centers.”
Amazon would not be a part of any deal and would not profit from it as the warehouses were built by developers for Amazon but never used or leased by the company, the officials said.
An Amazon spokesperson said that the company is not involved in any discussions with DHS or ICE about warehouse space and that it leases and does not own the vast majority of its warehouse space.
It was not immediately clear who owns the warehouses that the government may buy and the DHS official and the White House official did not know how much the deals could be worth. The DHS official said some of the warehouses under consideration were built by developers with Amazon in mind but never used.
That’s it for me today. I hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend. I’m working on it.
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I’ve been avoiding the news for the past few days, so I’m kind of catching up on the what’s happening. And what’s going on in this country is just unbelievable. In about 8 months, Trump–with the help of the Supreme Court–has nearly destroyed the country. It’s difficult to believe it has happened so quickly. Can our democracy somehow still be saved? I don’t know.
Here the stories I’m going to cover today: the Comey prosecution; the ongoing government shutdown; and Trump’s war on Chicago.
Trump’s revenge prosecutions are beginning. James Comey was arraigned this morning on *trumped* up charges.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to face a criminal case that has thrown a spotlight on the Justice Department’s efforts to target adversaries of President Donald Trump.
The arraignment is expected to be brief, but the moment is nonetheless loaded with significance given that the case has amplified concerns the Justice Department is being weaponized in pursuit of Trump’s political enemies and is operating at the behest of a White House determined to seek retribution for perceived wrongs against the president.
Comey entered a not guilty plea through his lawyer at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, to allegations that he lied to Congress five years go. The plea kick-starts a process of legal wrangling in which defense lawyers will almost certainly move to get the indictment dismissed before trial, possibly by arguing the case amounts to a selective or vindictive prosecution.
The indictment two weeks ago followed an extraordinary chain of events that saw Trump publicly implore Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey and other perceived adversaries. The Republican president also replaced the veteran attorney who had been overseeing the investigation with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor. Halligan rushed to file charges before a legal deadline lapsed despite warnings from other lawyers in the office that the evidence was insufficient for an indictment.
The two-count indictment alleges that Comey made a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, by denying he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source to the news media and that he obstructed a congressional proceeding. Comey has denied any wrongdoing and has said he was looking forward to a trial. The indictment does not identify the associate or say what information may have been discussed with the media, making it challenging to assess the strength of the evidence or to even fully parse the allegations.
Though an indictment is typically just the start of a protracted court process, the Justice Department has trumpeted the development itself as something of a win, regardless of the outcome. Trump administration officials are likely to point to any conviction as proof the case was well-justified, but an acquittal or even dismissal may also be held up as further support for their long-running contention the criminal justice system is stacked against them.
Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges demanded by President Donald Trump as part of his crusade for retribution….
Comey is facing two felony charges stemming from his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, when he discussed leading the FBI amid an investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. The charges, approved by an Alexandria grand jury, were brought by Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former personal attorney who was installed — at Trump’s direction — as the U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia last month after veteran Justice Department lawyers resisted bringing the case.
Near the outset of the hearing, Comey’s defense attorney and longtime friend, Patrick Fitzgerald, entered the not guilty plea on behalf of his client.
After the arraignment, Comey was released on his own recognizance….
Fitzgerald said he will argue that Halligan acted improperly before the grand jury and that she should be disqualified due to the circumstances of her appointment. Fitzgerald also said he will seek to have the case thrown out as a vindictive and selective prosecution, as well as on the grounds of outrageous government conduct.
Nachmanoff, a Biden appointee, presided over the 30-minute arraignment. Comey intends to ask the judge to toss the charges on grounds that the former FBI director is being vindictively prosecuted by Trump over a personal grudge stemming from the 2016 probe.
Halligan nodded along with the proceedings — her first ever as a prosecutor in front of a federal judge. Before being named as the U.S. attorney days before Comey was indicted, her legal background was as an insurance lawyer. She tapped two relatively junior prosecutors from North Carolina — rather than her office in the Eastern District of Virginia — to lead the case.
Halligan did not speak during the hearing, except to identify herself. One of the prosecutors from North Carolina, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons, did the talking for the government. When the judge posed questions, he often deferred to Fitzgerald to speak first.
Federal prosecutors investigating former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly making false statements to Congress determined that a central witness in their probe would prove “problematic” and likely prevent them from establishing their case to a jury, sources familiar with their findings told ABC News.
Comey, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday, was indicted last month on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee — but Justice Department officials have privately expressed that the case could quickly unravel under the scrutiny of a federal judge and defense lawyers.
Daniel Richman — a law professor who prosecutors allege Comey authorized to leak information to the press — told investigators that the former FBI director instructed him not to engage with the media on at least two occasions and unequivocally said Comey never authorized him to provide information to a reporter anonymously ahead of the 2016 election, the sources said.
According to prosecutors who investigated the circumstances surrounding Comey’s 2020 testimony for two months, using Richman’s testimony to prove that Comey knowingly provided false statements to Congress would result in “likely insurmountable problems” for the prosecution.
Investigators detailed those conclusions in a lengthy memo last month recommending that the office not move forward in charging Comey, according to sources familiar with the memo’s contents.
Read the rest at ABC News. Of course the point is not necessarily to convict Comey. Trump just wants him to go though the process of dealing with the courts and paying attorney fees.
The government shutdown continues. Here’s the latest:
– Republicans and Democrats remain at an impasse over how to end the government shutdown, now on its eighth day.
– For the sixth time, the Senate is set to consider dueling measures to fund the government around midday Wednesday. The bills fell short of the 60 votes needed for a fifth time on Monday.
– On Tuesday, confusion spread over whether the 750,000 furloughed federal workers would receive back pay, after a memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget suggested they might not. Congressional leaders have pushed back, insisting that furloughed workers would be made whole.
– At the Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he would not call back the House to vote on a separate bill to pay members of the military, saying Senate Democrats should support the GOP bill to reopen the government: “The House is done. The ball is now in the Senate’s court.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune reiterated to reporters Wednesday morning that Republicans are “happy to sit down with a group and figure out what the path forward might look like” on Democrats’ push to address health care issues, but “we’ve got to open up the government” first.”The conversation will happen when we open up the government,” Thune said. “Nothing’s changed. We all understand what they want to do, and we’re not averse, as I’ve said repeatedly, to having that conversation. At some point, they have to take yes for an answer.”
Democrats have insisted that they need more than assurances on their demands to extend health insurance tax credits.
One week into the government shutdown, top Republican leaders appear to have lost the plot.
President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are straining to project a united front against Democrats, just barely concealing tensions over strategy that have snowballed behind the scenes since agencies closed last week.
Speaker Mike Johnson
In one stark example, Trump scrambled the congressional leaders’ messaging Monday when he told reporters in the Oval Office he would “like to see a deal made for great health care” and that he was “talking to Democrats about it,”
Within hours, Trump walked it back: “I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” he wrote on Truth Social hours after his initial comments.
Johnson said Tuesday he “spoke with the president at length yesterday” about the need to reopen agencies first, while Thune told reporters there have been “ongoing conversations” about strategy between the top Republicans.
A White House official granted anonymity to speak about the circumstances behind the president’s statements said the Truth post was “issued to make clear that the [administration] position has not changed” and was not done at the behest of the two leaders.
But tensions surfaced again Tuesday after a White House budget office memo raised questions about a federal law guaranteeing back pay for furloughed federal workers — one that Johnson and Thune both voted for in 2019.
That’s what happens when you have a senile “president.” It does seem as if Democrats are winning the shutdown public relations war.
There would not be enough air traffic controllers in the tower at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport Tuesday night, the Federal Aviation Administration warned. In Nashville, so many controllers have stayed home, the facility – which guides planes into and out of the airport – is closing.
Now, after more than a week of the government shutdown, same scenarios are unfolding at FAA offices across the country, with ripple effects hitting flights almost everywhere.
The approach and departure facilities for Houston, Newark and Las Vegas did not have enough controllers working for at least part of Tuesday evening, along with the facilities that handle planes in the Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Dallas areas, FAA operations plans noted.
Houston’s two major airports, Hobby and George Bush Intercontinental Airport, were both expected to see ground delays due to staffing shortage.
The aviation problems come as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says more controllers are calling out sick. Like Transportation Security Administration officers, air traffic controllers are considered essential employees and must work without pay during the shutdown.
Organized job actions like strikes or sickouts are prohibited by federal law, but since air traffic control staffing is so tight, a small number of employees taking unscheduled time off can be enough to cause problems.
The Trump administration’s strategy to swiftly roll out mass layoffs of federal workers during the government shutdown has shifted in recent days, administration officials familiar with the talks told CNN, as an increasing number of Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials acknowledge the potential political perils of the move.
With Democrats having shown no signs of budging in their opposition to a stopgap funding measure that doesn’t address their health care demands and a growing number of Republican lawmakers warning about potential blowback, the White House is now planning to hold off at least a little longer on sending out notices of Reductions in Force (RIFs, as the government firings are typically referred to), despite hoping the threat will still motivate Democrats.
“There’s an increasing acknowledgment within the West Wing that the politics of RIFs, at a moment when we know our message on the shutdown is the better one, would be better later,” one of the officials said. It’s “the idea that if we give it more time, it’ll be because the Democrats truly forced our hand and left us no choice.”
“And we do not want to appear gleeful about people losing their jobs, of course,” they added.
Too late. They already appear gleeful. But their threats aren’t working.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t backing down from her very public break with fellow Republicans on health care that shook up Washington.
In an extensive interview Tuesday, Greene, R-Ga., accused her party of not having a plan on health care and made the case that it should be working to fix the problem now.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
“When it comes to the point where families are spending anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 a month and looking at hikes coming on their insurance premiums, I think that’s unforgivable,” she said.
GOP leaders in Congress are desperately working to keep their ranks unified amid Republican efforts to reopen the federal government without making any concessions to Democrats.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., forcefully pushed back against Greene’s argument, saying she isn’t informed on the topic….
Instead of backing down in face of criticism from party leadership, Greene decided to go all in.
“The reality is they never talk about it. And that committee working on, say, health insurance and the industry, that doesn’t happen in a [secure facility]. It’s not a major secret,” Greene said, adding that Johnson hasn’t reached out to discuss her concerns….
“What I am upset over is my party has no solution,” Green said. “It’s not something that we talk about frequently, but it is a reality for Americans, and it’s something that I don’t think we can ignore. I want, I really want to fix it.”
My final topic is Trump’s attack on Chicago. The shit is getting real, folks.
I don’t like sending out “emergency” newsletters, but I’ve had my eye on the situation in Chicago all day and tonight Texas National Guard troops arrived on Illinois soil, in defiance of the wishes of the Illinois governor and the Illinois National Guard’s adjutant general.
This moment has elevated the crisis so that it is no longer just a conflict between the federal government and a state, but between two states. We now have armed soldiers from the state of Texas eagerly volunteered by their governor to impose the president’s will on the citizens of Illinois.
I don’t want to be alarmist, but this is an emergency. It is incumbent on us to name the thing we are seeing and be unflinching as we describe it.
Military personnel in uniforms with the Texas National Guard patch are seen at the US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, on Tuesday. Erin HooleyAP
That’s not a lot of power; but it’s the only power we have in this moment.
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Today President Trump’s military invasion of Chicago crossed another Rubicon. He not only activated and took command of the Illinois National Guard, but just in case the hometown troops are not willing to do his bidding, he has shipped in National Guard troops from a politically reliable territory….
We should be exceedingly clear:
There is no crisis in Chicago that requires the National Guard. To the extent that there is civil instability in Chicago it has been caused by Trump’s surge of federal agents into the city and their lawless assault on the citizens of Chicago.
Examples of Trump’s hostile military activity in Chicago
September 12: ICE agents shoot and kill Chicago resident Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park. ICE claimed that González was shot after he “seriously injured” an ICE agent. But bodycam footage shows the same agent immediately after the encounter describing his injuries as “nothing major.”
September 30: Some 300 federal agents raid an apartment building in the dead of night. Some rappel from a Black Hawk helicopter positioned over the building. They ransack apartments and detain not only children but several U.S. citizens, including one Rodrick Johnson, who spoke with Block Club Chicago:
Rodrick Johnson, who lives in the building and is a U.S. citizen, said he heard “people dropping on the roof” before FBI agents kicked in his door. He was stuffed inside a van with his neighbors for what felt like several hours until agents told them the building was clear, he said.
“They didn’t tell me why I was being detained,” Johnson said. “They left people’s doors open, firearms, money, whatever, right there in the open.”
October 4: CPB agents shoot an unarmed woman, Marimar Martinez. They claim that she provoked them by ramming their vehicle with her car. Martinez’s lawyer tells the Chicago Sun-Times that there is bodycam footage that shows an agent turning left into Martinez’s vehicle, after which an agent says, “Do something, bitch.” The agent then gets out of the vehicle and shoots Martinez.
October 7: A masked federal agent is caught on camera aiming a weapon at a resident who is reportedly doing nothing more than documenting his activity.
Please read the rest at The Bulwark link. it’s a very important post.
In a scathing critique of President Donald Trump, Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday accused the Republican president of deploying National Guard troops to the Democratic cities of Chicago and Portland based on fixations that stem in part from his being mentally impaired.
“This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker said in a telephone interview with the Tribune. “This is a man who has something stuck in his head. He can’t get it out of his head. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date. It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.
“And then, unfortunately, he has the power of the military, the power of the federal government to do his bidding, and that’s what he’s doing.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker
The governor’s comments came as National Guard troops from Texas were assembling at a U.S. Army Reserve training center in far southwest suburban Elwood and Trump’s administration was moving forward with deploying 300 members of the Illinois National Guard for at least 60 days over the vocal and legal objections of Pritzker and other local elected leaders.
The Trump administration has said the troops are needed to protect federal agents and facilities involved in its ongoing deportation surge and has sought to do much the same in Portland, Oregon, though those efforts have been stymied so far by temporary court rulings. A federal judge in Chicago is expected to hold a hearing this week over the legal effort by Illinois and Chicago to block the deployments, which Pritzker and other local officials say is not only unnecessary but a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the use of U.S. military assets from taking part in law enforcement actions on domestic soil.
During the interview, Pritzker — who has been one of Trump’s harshest critics and is a potential 2028 presidential Democratic candidate — said the courts will play an integral role in challenging Trump’s efforts in Illinois and across the nation.
“We’re not going to go to war between the state of Illinois and the federal government, not taking up arms against the federal government,” Pritzker said. “But we are monitoring everything they’re doing, and using that monitoring to win in court.”
While many families prepared their children for school Monday morning, Sept. 29, I woke up to calls from parents in Chicago too afraid to leave their homes. Rumors of immigration enforcement were spreading, and the simple act of walking a child to school felt like too much of a risk. I am a mother and an Illinois state representative, and these calls hit me in two places at once: as a parent who wants my child to grow up free from fear and as an elected official entrusted to protect the rights and dignity of my community.
Some of our worst fears were realized the next day when, as NBC Chicago reported, ICE agents rappelled from helicopters onto a housing complexduring a 1 a.m. raid and zip-tied people, including U.S. citizens and children, in the South Shore neighborhood. That’s near where my family has lived for decades. By all accounts the federal administration has used this exaggerated staging as a media opportunity without producing a shred of evidence that its use of excessive force was justified.
That is what makes President Donald Trump’s latest threat, that Chicago is one of the cities he wants to use as a “training ground” for the military, even more chilling. Trump is not only scapegoating our city and other cities for political gain; he is openly plotting to experiment on working families, immigrants and communities of color by turning our neighborhoods into staging grounds for authoritarian force. We must not turn away at this moment.
I know what militarization looks like, and it is not safety, it is fear. It looks like children crying when their parents don’t come home. It looks like families going underground, skipping school or work, because they are terrified of who might be waiting outside their doors. Militarization leads to trauma that lingers long after the raids end.
I know how this feels because I grew up with a mother who was undocumented. I grew up not knowing whether my mother would be there when I came home from school. I also know what real safety looks like. It looks like parents walking their kids to school. It’s stable housing, a living wage, health care and classrooms where children can learn without fear.
The running battle between President Donald Trump and Democratic-led cities is nearing a new inflection point, as National Guard troops gather near Chicago while lawyers prepare for critical court hearings 2,000 miles away from each other.
The Trump administration is tying planned deployments in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to increasingly tense protests outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, as well as citing the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas. Two ICE detainees were killed there. Trump has called it an attack on law enforcement.
The president ramped up his criticism Wednesday of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who called the Guard call-up “Trump’s invasion” over the weekend.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
To capture a democratic nation, authoritarians must control three sources of power: the intelligence agencies, the justice system, and the military. President Donald Trump and his circle of would-be autocrats have made rapid progress toward seizing these institutions and detaching them from the Constitution and rule of law. The intelligence community has effectively been muzzled, and the nation’s top lawyers and cops are being purged and replaced with loyalist hacks.
Only the military remains outside Trump’s grip. Despite the firing of several top officers—and Trump’s threat to fire more—the U.S. armed forces are still led by generals and admirals whose oath is to the Constitution, not the commander in chief. But for how long?
Trump and his valet at the Defense Department, Secretary of Physical Training Pete Hegseth, are now making a dedicated run at turning the men and women of the armed forces into Trump’s personal and partisan army. In his first term, Trump regularly violated the sacred American tradition of the military’s political neutrality, but people around him—including retired and active-duty generals such as James Mattis, John Kelly, and Mark Milley—restrained some of his worst impulses. Now no one is left to stop him: The president learned from his first-term struggles and this time has surrounded himself with a Cabinet of sycophants and ideologues rather than advisers, especially those at the Pentagon. He has declared war on Chicago; called Portland, Oregon, a “war zone”; and referred to his political opponents as “the enemy from within.” Trump clearly wants to use military power to exert more control over the American people, and soon, top U.S.-military commanders may have to decide whether they will refuse such orders from the commander in chief. The greatest crisis of American civil-military relations in modern history is now under way.
I write these words with great trepidation. When I was a professor at the Naval War College, I gave lectures to American military officers about the sturdiness of civil-military relations in the United States, a remarkable historical achievement that has allowed the most powerful military in the world to serve democracy without being a threat to it. I so revered this system that I went to Moscow just before the fall of the U.S.S.R. and told an audience of Soviet military officers that they should look to the American military as a model for how to disentangle themselves from the Communist Party and Kremlin politics. I regularly reminded both my military students and civilian audiences that they had good reason to have faith in American institutions and the constitutional loyalty of U.S. civilian and military leaders.
This new and dangerous moment has arrived for many reasons, including Trump’s antics in front of young soldiers and sailors, through which he has succeeded in pulling many of them into displays of partisan behavior that are both an insult to American civil-military traditions and a violation of military regulations. Senior military leaders should have stepped in to prevent Trump from turning addresses at Fort Bragg and Naval Station Norfolk into political rallies; the silence of the Army and Navy secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and some top generals and admirals is appalling. To their credit, those same officers listened impassively as Trump and Hegseth subjected them to political rants during a meeting at Quantico last week. But young enlisted people and their immediate superiors take their cues from the top, and one day of decorum from the high command cannot reverse Trump’s influence on the rank and file.
Please use the gift link to read the rest. We are in deep deep trouble, folks.
That’s it for me today. Please take care of yourselves, and don’t give up!
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Well, we’ve definitely thrown the dice and entered the Darkest Timeline. Every day brings something shocking and awful. Most of the professional folks have either resigned or been removed from their positions. What we have left are the usual assortment of incompetents, loyalists to Dotard Donald, and the usual grift machine. The DOJ is basically the Don’s personal enforcers now, skating outside the law.
The arraignment date for James Comey is October 9. He will be booked as he was indicted on Trumped-up evidence, including an indictment that includes words that he did not say. Yam Tits has given the press a chance to witness his gloating and using the term “sick, radical left people,” which is about as weird as him taking aim at the Antifa philosophy as some kind of club with a membership list and dues. Meanwhile, what remains of the cult has stewed their brains in this shit so long, it’s impossible to believe they haven’t all lost their minds.
So, the Comey Timeline includes his last-minute maneuvers concerning Hillary Clinton that definitely contributed to Orange Caligula’s first Reign of Terror and Stupidity. You may check our archives for that travesty of justice. However, it’s not difficult to separate his karma from Yam Tit’s likely illegal indictment campaign. So, let’s go there. This is from the SubStack “Public Notice”and Lisa Needham. “The tragicomical indictment of James Comey. In a sane country, this thing would be laughed out of court.”
For the last few days, the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey felt inevitable, so when news of it dropped Thursday night, it wasn’t as much a surprise as a confirmation that the Trump administration is completely out of control.
ABC News broke the news Thursday that Comey had been indicted for obstruction and making a false statement in relation to his 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. NBC News reported that the charges are based on testimony Comey gave in a September 30, 2020, hearing. During it, Sen. Ted Cruz asked Comey about his 2017 testimony, when Comey said he did not authorize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to leak anything to the press. Comey stood by what he testified three years earlier, but MAGAs are convinced he lied.
Ryan Goodman of Just Security has a good rundown on Bluesky of the flimsy basis of the charges against Comey, which can basically be summed up as “Ted Cruz misunderstands or mischaracterizes things or both.”
Why are we all guessing at what the charges are based on when the indictment is available? Well, because Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s myriad former personal attorneys and currently his handpicked acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, didn’t really see fit to include much in the way of detail.
The indictment clocks in at 1.5 pages, and you can read the whole thing in about 30 seconds if you have some time during a commercial break. Here’s the entirety of the explanation of the first charge:
On or about September 30, 2020, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, JAMES B. COMEY JR., did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.
2. That statement was false, because, as JAMES B. COMEY JR. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.
That’s it. That’s the whole of Count One, alleging false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch under 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2). A source told CNN that this is related to “Arctic Haze,” an FBI investigation into leaks that ultimately appeared in four news articles.
Republican Lawmakers are obviously playing victims along with Lady Lindsey, doing the usual pearl-clutching hysteria. Nebraska Republican Don Bacon is one of the few speaking like he’s confused by the Darkest Timeline, too. Here’s another one that’s deeply off the reality vector. This is from The Guardian. “Republican Arizona lawmaker makes post calling for execution of Democratic congresswoman. John Gillette on X called for ‘people like’ Pramila Jayapal to be ‘hanged’ in response to her video on anti-Trump protests.”
An Arizona Republican state representative who has expressed support for January 6 insurrectionists on Wednesday called for a Democratic congresswoman to be executed, as a response to a video clip.
The comment on X by state representative John Gillette of Kingman, Arizona, first reported by the Arizona Mirror, was a reaction to a short clip drawn from a YouTube video in March by US representative Pramila Jayapal, a longtime Democratic congresswoman representing Washington state, entitled “The Resistance Lab.” In the video, Jayapal discusses preparations for street protests against the Trump administration.
“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried, convicted and hanged … it will continue,” he posted.
Nothing in either the clip or the longer video actually suggests Jayapal is advocating for the overthrow of the US government. The video carries explicit calls for non-violent protest and discussed with alarm a rise in political violence in the US.
Gillette’s comment is a continuation of a string of inflammatory far-right online invective by the Mohave county Republican and retired army reserve command sergeant major. Gillette has defended January 6protesters, who were intent on violently overturning Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, as “political prisoners” and described Muslims as “terrorists”.
It also reflects a widening call among Republicans to criminalize protest and speech critical of the Trump administration.
What fucking country is this? Here’s another Gestapo move by the ICE thugs. “ICE agents point guns at bystanders during violent arrest in Maryland. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yelled. “Go ahead. Shoot me.” This analysis is by Maris Kabas writing for “The Handbasket”.
For about nine minutes Wednesday morning, ICE agents pinned a man to the ground in the middle of a Maryland intersection. It was broad daylight as he screamed in anguish and shouted for help in both Spanish and English. When bystanders gathered to bear witness, agents briefly brandished their guns and pointed at them, with one officer appearing to keep his finger on the trigger for several minutes after. According to witness Raphi Talisman, “It looked like he was trying to calm himself, but at the same time, his gun was brandished and he was ready.”
Talisman posted to Facebook Wednesday a more than nine minute video he’d just recorded at the intersection of Hamilton St. and Queens Chapel Rd. in Hyattsville, just 6.5 miles from The White House. The freelance photojournalist captioned it: “The video I took of them speaks for itself. Ice treated the man they arrested like an animal! I just dropped my son off at school and I was coming home when I saw this. Notice the Ice officer pulls his gun out.”
Talisman’s video, along with others reviewed by The Handbasket, begin while the incident is already in progress, with the man face down in the middle of the intersection just beyond a crosswalk while two ICE agents physically restrain him. Just before he began recording, Talisman was sitting in his car when he saw a man run into the intersection with the two agents chasing him. Once they tackled him to the ground, Talisman got out of his car and began recording.
The Handbasket spoke to Talisman by phone Friday morning to get additional context about the violence he witnessed. He said after seeing videos from around the country this year of ICE brutality, he’d been waiting for something like this to happen in the town he calls home. “It felt totally familiar and I think a lot of people are primed for it, especially if you live in an area that has a diverse population, and if one is following the news and just paying attention,” Talisman said.
In the video, agents can be seen kneeling on the man’s back and crushing his neck. At one point the gun falls out of one of the agents’ holsters and after scrambling to grab it, he points it at the crowd of people watching and filming his brutality. His partner briefly draws his weapon and aims at the crowd, too, while the man on the ground repeatedly yells “I am American!” Talisman estimates there were about 30 witnesses gathered at the scene, with many others driving by.
After about 20 seconds, the first officer aims his gun towards the ground, with one hand resting on top of the gun and the other appearing to still be on the trigger. He remains in this position for another seven minutes. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yells. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”
At least four additional agents arrive on the scene to help keep the captured man on the ground while their armed colleague gazes menacingly at witnesses and takes heaving breaths. At one point you can hear the man on the ground yell “I live in America! I love you America!” None of the agents on the scene would provide their badge numbers or names when asked repeatedly by witnesses.
This comes a few days after this act of cruelty. NBC NEWSreports. “Video shows ICE with 5-year-old girl while agents attempt to arrest her father. The Department of Homeland Security said the father ignored directions to pull over and “abandoned” his daughter.” This is absolute cruelty and child abuse!
A video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a 5-year-old girl, whose mother says is autistic, while agents attempt to arrest her father near their Massachusetts home.
The video, provided to Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra by the girl’s mother, depicts the girl sitting beside an SUV with three agents nearby outside her home in Leominster last Tuesday. Her father at the time was inside.
The girl’s mother told Telemundo — which is owned and operated by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News — that her husband called her while he was driving with their daughter shortly before the incident and told her he thought he was being followed.
Her husband, Edward Hip Mejia, drove home and “managed to run back into the parking lot of my house,” she said, and her daughter as a result was left with the agents.
“They took my daughter, she’s 5 years old. She has autism spectrum,” the girl’s mother is heard telling agents in the video. “Give me my daughter back.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Mejia “ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house. He fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house. He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car. Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.”
Then there is this:
This has particular meaning to me. I’ve visited the Wounded Knee site many times. I was there, in 1974, when Russell Means ( Waŋblí Ohítika) and Lakota activists took over the Nebraska State Capitol. I spent time at the encampments and heard many stories of the horrible treatment of the indigenous people. I cannot believe we’re totally reversing history, where this massacre is once again a monument to white colonialism and racism. This is from The Independent. “Pete Hegseth says Wounded Knee veterans will be allowed to keep their medals. Secretary of War rules that U.S. troops who received America’s highest military honor for their part in the explosion of violence in which hundreds of Lakota Sioux were killed can hold onto their accolades.”What’s next? Statues of Custer everywhere?
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ruled that U.S. Army soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their part in the Battle of Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, will be allowed to keep them.
In a video posted to X Thursday, the secretary explained that Joe Biden’s administration established a special review panel to determine whether the combatants should have been rewarded for their part in the shoot-out, otherwise known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which as many as 375 Lakota men, wome,n and children were killed or injured, according to a 1990 Senate resolution.
Twenty-five U.S. Army troops were also killed, and another 39 were wounded. Nineteen people were subsequently awarded America’s highest military honor for their role in the bloodshed in South Dakota.
The Biden panel recommended in October 2024 that the medals should stand, but, according to Hegseth, his predecessor, then-secretary of defense Lloyd Austin, failed to act because he was “more interested in being politically correct than historically correct.”
“Such careless inaction has allowed for their distinguished recognition to remain in limbo until now,” the secretary continued. “Under my direction, we’re making it clear without hesitation that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals.
The EVIL! It BURNS! One more and then I’m going to go take a shower to wash all of this off of me. This is from the SubStack “Scenes from a Slow Civil War” by Jeff Sharlet. “Rubber Glue Fascism. A close reading of “NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”
The news cycle yesterday was still spinning around Kimmel, and tomorrow it’ll be busy with Comey. But in between came bigger news: the “memo” named in my subtitle. A “Terror Memo.” I don’t like sending traffic to this White House, but you should read it. In its expansive definition of “terror,” “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” may prove to be as much of an acceleration in this slow civil war as the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
I’m no lawyer. Just a journalist, long on the rightwing beat, and an English professor who likes to linger in the luxury of close reading. What follows is my preliminary pass.
First, there’s the form: an executive memo instead of an order. Even as this memo goes into much deeper detail than Monday’s executive order designating an amorphous anything called “antifa” as a “terrorist organization,” the memo, as a form, is looser, free of the need to cite constitutional authority. And yet it retains the “force of law”—perfect for the president who says “it’s not illegal if it saves the country.” And, given what appears to be the vast reallocation of resources called for the Terror Memo, another advantage of the form is that it doesn’t require the Office of Budget and Management to issue a “budgetary impact statement.” What’ll the tab be? Don’t ask. Such questions could, according to the memo, become subject to investigation.
Section 1 lays out the case for action, and from its very first words—”heinous assassinations”—it’s a subtle sleight-of-hand. Note the plural, assassinations. There’s Charlie Kirk, yes. “This was preceded,” the memo continues, “by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive… the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh [and] two separate assassination attempts against my own life.” Excluded from the list is the assassination by a politically-motivated Christian nationlist of Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted murder of state senator John Hoffman his wife. Not all murders matter; but those that do, the memo declares, are a conspiracy hatched by forces far greater than the actual individual gunmen, little fish in whom the the memo shows no interest.
The real enemy, according to the memo, is “organized”:
This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.
It’s critical to name this bait-&-switch: Using real acts of violence by a handful of unaffiliated individuals to launch an attack on the much greater strength of liberal / left “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, [and] funding sources.” This isn’t about a manhunt to stop the next murderer before he can shoot; it’s a “new… strategy,” the deconstruction by state power of far less dramatic efforts to build the very step-by-step systemic rule-of-law resistance that is the opposite of violence.
Please continue to read the rest of this at the link. I think the Darkest Timeline includes Domestic Terrorism by the Trump administration.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
They are specifically targeting one of the smaller cities adjacent to Orleans Parish. It has long been a place where various diasporas have settled even thought it undoubtedly a White Flight Burb. The City of Kenner is high on the list and their police are aligned with the Governor and his anti-immigrant MAGA positions. This is from 
Here, in the city itself, several resistance groups have banded together to use some of the most successful strategies seen in Chicago. The biggest is the strategy of a whistle brigade. These whistles are easy to assemble; anyone with a 3D printer can mass-produce them quickly and affordably. The whistles are distributed throughout the cities with instructions. The basic idea is to draw enough attention to a raid that it will disrupt its efficiency and alert people in the zone to an active raid. Everyone has instructions and can pick up the whistles at various locales in each neighborhood. There are also some mass protests in the wings.
You may read the list and accompanying names at the link. 
Republican Lawmakers are obviously playing victims along with Lady Lindsey, doing the usual pearl-clutching hysteria. Nebraska Republican Don Bacon is one of the few speaking like he’s confused by the Darkest Timeline, too. Here’s another one that’s deeply off the reality vector. This is from 
What fucking country is this? Here’s another Gestapo move by the ICE thugs. “ICE agents point guns at bystanders during violent arrest in Maryland. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yelled. “Go ahead. Shoot me.” This analysis is by Maris Kabas writing for 
This comes a few days after this act of cruelty.
The EVIL! It BURNS! One more and then I’m going to go take a shower to wash all of this off of me. This is from the
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