“Seems like for the estimated $10M midnight apocalyptic firework extravaganza for our Dear Leader, they could have afforded a T.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
While getting ready for the Netherlands v Mexico last night, I just happened to flick through some headlines and let out a loud ‘What the Hell?’ Loud enough to get a response from down the hall: “What now?” The hell was two headlines — one from the New York Times and the other from The Independent — that convinced me it was real. I posted excerpts in response to JJ’s post last night downthread.
It basically gave the world another good reason to hate us or laugh at what we’ve become under Orange Caligula. My thought is we’ve become a Mafia state. This is the headline from the NYT: “Trump Asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player’s Suspension. Now He’s Eligible to Play. The reversal of Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension is highly unusual. It was the first time since 1962 that FIFA has nullified a suspension for a red card received during the World Cup.”
It’s basically big news today, so I’ll lead with it. This time, he insulted our friend and ally, Belgium, so I’ll start with their response today as reported by the AP. It’s reported by Samuel Petraquin. Also, there are pictures of the offense that got the red card. “Belgian federation to challenge FIFA’s decision to let Folarin Balogun play in World Cup match.”
The Belgian soccer federation wants an explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game.
Belgium takes on the United States later Monday for a spot in the quarterfinals.
The Belgian federation (RBFA) said it has still not received either “FIFA’s decision or any explanation regarding this matter. In these circumstances, it has no choice but to challenge the player’s eligibility for the upcoming match.”
It did not specify where it intends to appeal FIFA’s decision.
U.S. President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allowed him to play against Belgium.
The Belgian federation said it learned through media reports about the FIFA’s move and sent a letter to the governing body requesting a copy of the decision as well as an explanation of the process.
“As its only response, FIFA sent a letter to the RBFA stating that it considered this correspondence to constitute an appeal, that a judge had been appointed, and that the RBFA had only a few hours to complete that appeal,” it said. “No information whatsoever was provided by FIFA.
Politico reports this on the Trump maneuver. “Inside the White House push to get Folarin Balogun back on the field. President Donald Trump got involved minutes after the U.S. striker received a red card that would have banned him from a crucial match.” Sophia Cai has the lede.
The campaign to keep Folarin Balogun on the field for the United States’ World Cup run began just minutes after the team’s leading goal-scorer received a red card that would sideline him for the team’s next match.
Following Wednesday’s victory against Bosnia and Herzegovina, White House FIFA World Cup Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani alerted President Donald Trump to Balogun’s punishment for a rash tackle — removal from the Bosnia match and a routine one-match suspension that would keep him out of a must-win encounter against Belgium.
Trump and Giuliani had been speaking regularly about the World Cup for months. During the planning stages for the tournament, the president received frequent briefings on logistics, security and the U.S. team’s prospects. Once the competition began in mid-June, those conversations accelerated to multiple times each week.
By Wednesday night, the White House had committed itself to taking action over Balogun’s red card, which some soccer analysts believed to be a harsh punishment for the infraction. Giuliani, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and senior U.S. Soccer Federation officials — all of whom had watched the Bosnia match in person at Levi’s Stadium near San Francisco — began activating plans to challenge the referee’s on-field decision to issue a red card. Successful appeals of World Cup red cards are exceedingly rare.
That kicked off four days of coordinated lobbying, legal maneuvering and diplomacy that stretched from the Oval Office to FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich — and underscored how invested Trump’s inner circle had become in the second World Cup hosted on U.S. soil and the fortune of the U.S. men’s national team competing in it. POLITICO spoke to a half-dozen U.S. government and soccer officials who were either directly involved in or briefed on the week’s events.
On Sunday, a day before the U.S. was due to face Belgium with Balogun on the bench, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee announced that it was suspending Balogun’s one-match suspension for a year. Trump thanked FIFA for “doing what was right and reversing a great injustice.” The Royal Belgian Football Association and European confederation UEFA, of which Belgium is a member, are considering taking action against the FIFA ruling, according to a high-ranking UEFA official granted anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations.
On Thursday, Trump placed a call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The two men had built a friendship over nearly eight years, with Infantino becoming a frequent visitor to the Oval Office during Trump’s second term. They remained in contact even when events put U.S. government policy in conflict with FIFA’s objectives, according to people familiar with their relationship. That included when the Trump administration launched military strikes against Iran in February, jeopardizing the country’s ability to compete in the World Cup — a personal history that mattered when Trump dialed Infantino about the Balogun matter.
Trump asked about FIFA’s rules around the red card decision and the grounds for a suspension. Infantino listened carefully but made no promises about the outcome. FIFA declined to confirm any specific discussions but reiterated to POLITICO that the decision to suspend the one-match ban was made by an independent disciplinary committee.
As U.S. Soccer’s legal team formally prepared and submitted its appeal to FIFA, Giuliani and Lutnick also offered to make White House attorneys available to assist with legal analysis if needed, according to people involved in the discussions.
At the same time, Giuliani and Scott Goodwin — a hedge-fund manager who had helped to personally pay the salary of U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino — zeroed in on the officiating history of referee Raphael Claus, who made the red card call on Wednesday. Articles examining previous controversies involving the Brazilian referee circulated among senior government officials as they evaluated every possible argument that could bolster the appeal, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
Stephen Collinson of CNN has the story on what the rest of the world thinks about this shake-down.
For 24 days, the World Cup seemed to achieve a rare feat in America in 2026: It had almost nothing to do with Donald Trump.
But in an extraordinary twist following an appeal from the president, star US goal-scorer Folarin Balogun will play in the knockout clash with Belgium on Monday, despite being sent off in the previous match and earning a one-game ban.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted Sunday, taking a victory lap on Truth Social.
“I didn’t say, ‘You have to do this,’” Trump said in the Oval Office, adding that he didn’t think Balogun’s offense was even a foul.
Balogun’s reprieve rocked global soccer, triggering fresh speculation about the cozy relationship between Trump and the FIFA supremo.
Trump’s call to Infantino and FIFA’s ultimate decision lifted a controversy about soccer refereeing into an international incident surrounding the world’s most popular sporting showcase.
The subsequent drama raises concerns about political interference and the integrity of the tournament. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether Trump’s muscling into the issue was decisive. Just the impression that it was risks souring global perceptions of an event that had generated remarkably positive headlines.
Controversy is guaranteed at World Cup finals. Who could forget Diego Maradona’s “hand of God” goal for Argentina in 1986 or French star Zinedine Zidane’s 2006 World Cup final headbutt?
Read more on this controversy at any of the three links. Believe me, there are a lot more out there. So, here’s another headline that’s making me think doing all that ish to get my passport was a good idea. This headline is from Wired as reported by Maddy Varner. “ICE’s Internal Watchdog Is Now Investigating Online Critics. The Office of Professional Responsibility has opened more than 100 cases over what ICE officials call “incidents of doxing and threats” against ICE employees.” ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is set up to conduct internal investigations, but has recently begun investigating American Citizens.
OPR is supposed to act as an internal watchdog. It’s responsible for inspecting detention facilities, investigating allegations of employee and contractor misconduct, and processing security checks for new applicants. On its site, it says it also protects against “external threats” by managing badge access to buildings and maintaining the agency’s network security. But lately, court documents indicate, it appears to be pursuing more civilians like Gonyea for what they say online.
In a court declaration filed in April, an ICE official said that between January 2025 and March 2026, OPR investigated 131 cases involving “incidents of doxing and threats directed towards ICE employees nationwide.”
It’s unclear how many of those cases resulted in criminal charges. WIRED was able to identify only one instance when OPR was credited for its investigative work in a case where the Justice Department accused a California man of harassing an ICE attorney and her mother. The DOJ alleged that the man, who pleaded guilty, used to live in the same building as the mother and that he started his harassment campaign in January 2024, well before President Trump took office. ICE did not respond to questions about whether other cases have been brought based on OPR’s work or how many additional cases OPR has opened since March.
“It takes a lot to actually convict someone for their speech, and it’s only possible in very limited circumstances,” says Laura Moraff, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “People do have a First Amendment right to criticize the government and to do that online and to do that anonymously.”
OPR was behind at least one of the flurry of administrative subpoenas sent to tech companies in recent months in an effort to unmask online critics. In court filings, lawyers for the poster argued that the subpoena, which asked for the poster’s name, address, telephone number, and other details, violated the poster’s right to free speech. The government withdrew the subpoena rather than trying to litigate its merits.
You may read some examples of U.S. citizens they’ve bothered by these claims in the article. You might recall this story via the article cited above.
… ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse, New York, during the state’s primaries in June. The agents were there to see Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker who says they were concerned about an Instagram post she had supposedly made in January, “doxing” an ICE agent.
So, who knows what they may be up to? Let’s hope the press stays on top of it. You may read a great update on the amount of nothing being done by the ICE Agent who killed Renee Good, who is at the root of the Paigelynne Gonyea OPR shenanigans. It’s at this link at The Atlantic. “The Death of Renee Good Has Yet to Be Properly Investigated. Six months after she and Alex Pretti were shot on the streets of Minneapolis, little has come of the probes into their killings.” Quinta Jurecic is the reporter for the story.
Nearly six months have passed since federal officers shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. No one has been arrested, the Trump administration has provided no reason to believe that any serious investigation is taking place, and federal officials continue to stonewall state and local investigators in Minnesota.
This inaction was predictable. The day after Good’s death, Vice President Vance insisted at a press conference that the agent who shot her would face no criminal charges. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vance told reporters. “He was doing his job.” Soon, Stephen Miller doubled down on the message, announcing “to all ICE officers” that “you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.” Federal agents apparently received the message: The next day, an ICE agent fired a gun into a Minneapolis home, wounding a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The week after that, Pretti was killed outside a doughnut shop. The Department of Homeland Security called him a “domestic terrorist” and said that the officers who shot him had acted in self-defense.
Typically, after a contentious killing by a law-enforcement officer, the Justice Department would launch a criminal civil-rights probe. Following George Floyd’s murder, for example, DOJ conducted an investigation alongside Minnesota law enforcement, and both federal and state prosecutors brought separate charges against the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. So far, though, the federal government has succeeded in protecting immigration officers from serious consequences for the violence of what DHS termed “Operation Metro Surge.” But in promising a total shield from accountability, Miller and Vance may have been premature. Law-enforcement officials in Minnesota are—albeit haltingly—beginning to move forward with investigations and prosecutions on their own. Their efforts may become the locus of yet another clash between state and federal authority in the age of President Trump.
For the first few hours after the ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good inside her car, the mechanisms of accountability appeared to operate normally: The FBI began mobilizing to investigate the crime scene alongside the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state’s investigative agency. By the evening of the day she was killed, however, officials in Washington, D.C., had frozen out both Minnesota police and law enforcement in Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located. In a recent podcast interview, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty recalled joining a conference call after Good’s death with the FBI, federal prosecutors, and Minnesota investigators: “Everybody agreed this would once again be a joint investigation. And then suddenly the BCA was kicked off the case.” Minnesota abruptly found itself without access to any of the evidence collected at the scene. Even Good’s maroon Honda Pilot, the windshield pierced by Ross’s bullet, was bundled away by the FBI into a storage facility before state law enforcement could get a look at it.
DOJ was now the only agency able to conduct a full investigation into the shooting. But it had little apparent interest in doing so. According to The New York Times, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, refused to open a criminal investigation into Ross. Instead, DOJ looked into the possibility of investigating Good, along with her widow, Becca Good. Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned in protest, as did an FBI agent in Minneapolis.
Bobo, who hangs out on the kitchen stairs waiting for friends and food.
The link is gifted and definitely worth the read.
So, that’s it for me today. I’m still working on trapping the feral cats living under my house, whom I feed and speak to daily. Work is progressing on the kathouse. The electrical work is mostly done. The A/C works again. The backyard no longer has a dilapidated pergula. It’s about to get a nice green space with a nice grill/smoker, a fire pit, many more plants, lighting, and Adirondack chairs. I look forward to the nice cooler fall days.
I’m off to set up traps for the infamous duo Bobo and Sparks.
Try to have a nice, quiet week. I was hoping the games would be a nice break, but then Orange Caligula can never let good enough alone. He has to get involved and ruin it for everyone. I still enjoy the openers where all the soccer kids come out with the players. Their looks make me realize we have to ensure the world is a better place before we leave it.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Before I get going with today’s news, I want to share this disturbing, but absolutely essential piece by Robert Reich: You could be next. This is personal.
If agents of the federal government can murder a 37-year-old woman in broad daylight who, as videotapes show, was merely trying to get out of their way, they can murder you.
Even if Trump and his vice president and his secretary of homeland security all claim, contrary to the videotapes, that Renee Nicole Good was trying to kill an agent who acted in self-defense, they could make up the same about you.
Even if Trump describes her as a “professional agitator” and his goons call her a “domestic terrorist,” they could say the same about you regardless of your political views or activism. If you have left-wing political views and are an activist, you’re in greater danger.
Renee Good
How can we believe what the FBI turns up in its investigation, when the FBI is working for Trump and is headed by one of his goons, and is investigating possible connections between Renee Good and groups that have been protesting Trump’s immigration enforcement?
What credence can we give federal officials who are blocking local and state investigators from reviewing evidence they’re collecting?
You could be murdered because Trump’s attorney general has defined “domestic terrorism” to include impeding law enforcement officers. What if you’re merely standing in the way — in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or maybe you’re engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience?
In October, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials say she “rammed” the car. Her lawyers say she was sideswiped by it.
The agent then got out of his car and shot her five times. She survived. The Justice Department then charged her with assaulting a federal officer.
You could be next. All of us need to realize this. The people who are being assaulted and murdered are abiding the law….
Trump could just as well arrest and expel permanent residents who voice support for, say, transgender people or DEI or “woke” or anything else the regime finds “anti-American” and offensive.
What’s to stop the Trump regime from arresting you for, say, advocating the replacement of Republicans in Congress in 2026 and electing a Democrat to the presidency in 2028? [….]
What’s at stake isn’t just American democracy. It’s also your safety and security and that of your friends and loved ones. This is personal — to every one of us.
A dictatorship knows no bounds.
These are the facts of life in the U.S. now. We are all at risk. Trump can order his goons to any city or state and they will run wild because Trump and Vance have told them they have “absolute immunity.” You can be dragged from your car and beaten–even killed and Trump will celebrate you for it.
Admittedly, those of us who are white are less at risk, but the murder of Renee Good shows that we are not immune from the ICE reign of terror. Trump now has his private army–comparable to Hitler’s SS. They report to him, not to Congress or the American people.
The video shows a young employee in a reflective vest being hauled away by federal agents from the entrance of a Target store in a Minneapolis suburb.
“I’m a U.S. citizen!” the worker shouted as the armed agents shoved him into an S.U.V. after he had directed expletives at one. “U.S. citizen! U.S. citizen!”
In and around Minneapolis in recent days — in quiet residential neighborhoods and busy shopping districts, at gas station and big box store parking lots — similar chaotic scenes are unfolding, an escalation of tensions between residents and federal agents as the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown in Minnesota after the killing of Renee Good by an immigration officer last week.
“It feels like our community is under siege by our own federal government,” said State Representative Michael Howard, a Democrat whose district includes Richfield, where the Target employee and another colleague were seized on Thursday.
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee had been charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Video of the Target arrests:
ICE kidnapping two U.S. citizens from a Target in Richfield, Minnesota. I recognize their head dickhead, Greg Bovino, showed up for the festivities. I’m grateful that there were people there that spoke up and got their names before they could be disappeared. #FuckICE #FuckGregBovino #Minnesota
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee had been charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Local concerns over the federal government grew on Tuesday when six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of Ms. Good and questions over whether the shooter would be investigated.
Use the gift link to read more. There are lots of photos too.
Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.
Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Joseph H. Thompson
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
The Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said in an interview that Mr. Thompson’s resignation dealt a major blow to efforts to root out rampant theft from state agencies. The fraud cases, which involve schemes to cheat safety net programs, were the chief reason the Trump administration cited for its immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are American citizens of Somali origin.
“When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud,” Mr. O’Hara said.
The other senior career prosecutors who resigned include Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Calhoun-Lopez was the chief of the violent and major crimes unit.
A bit more:
Tuesday’s resignations followed tumultuous days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota as prosecutors there and in Washington struggled to manage the outrage over Ms. Good’s killing, which set off angry protests in Minnesota and across the nation.
After Ms. Good was shot, Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told her staff that she would not consider opening an investigation into whether the agent had violated federal law, according to three current and former department officials who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the situation. At least four prosecutors who had already intended to quit or retire signaled they would accelerate their departures, those officials said.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement that “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into the ICE agent.
Instead, the Justice Department launched an investigation to examine ties between Ms. Good and her wife, Becca, and several groups that have been monitoring and protesting the conduct of immigration agents in recent weeks. Shortly after Wednesday’s fatal shooting, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, referred to Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist.”
A week after37-year old Renée Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer near her Minneapolis home, her partner, parents and four siblings have hired an attorney who represented the family of George Floyd to file a claim against federal officials.
“What happened to Renée is wrong, contrary to established policing practices and procedures, and should never happen in today’s America,” Chicago-based law firm Romanucci & Blandin said in a statement to The Washington Post. The statement said Good’s family wants “to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America. They do not want her used as a political pawn, but rather as an agent of peace for all.”
One of the firm’s founding partners, Antonio M. Romanucci, a civil rights lawyer, was among those who represented relatives of George Floyd after he was killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. That legal team’s lawsuit against the city and the four officers involved resulted in a record $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family in 2021, the largest of its kind involving police misconduct.
Good’s shooting, on a residential street where neighbors were monitoring and protesting immigration enforcement activity, has similarly stirred national outrage on the left and the right. Since the fatal encounter on Wednesday, federal officials have sent additional ICE officers to the city, leading to a number of violent encounters publicized on social media and accusations that the operation to detainundocumented immigrants has become more ofan armed occupation.
“It absolutely is escalating considerably over the last week here and it was already quite intense before that,” said State Rep. Mike Howard (D), who represents the suburb of Richfield. “We’ve seen many many examples of an escalating level of violence from federal immigrant officials, in particular targeting citizens, not just immigrants.”
“We’ve seen agents break windows of cars and pull observers out of vehicles, pepper spraying cars and individuals who are literally just exercising their constitutional rights to observe or protest. We had an incident outside of one of our high schools … where chemical irritants were utilized right as school was getting out,” Howard said. “It’s really honestly an hour-by-hour type of incursion, if you will, in a lot of our communities.”
More significant news stories:
Pete Hegseth is trying to crack down on reporters who receive leaks from the DOD.
The FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter early Wednesday in what the newspaper called a “highly unusual and aggressive” move by law enforcement, and press freedom groups condemned as a “tremendous intrusion” by the Trump administration.
Agents descended on the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. The Post is “reviewing and monitoring the situation”, a source at the newspaper said.
“It’s a clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press,” Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, told the Guardian.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a post on X that the raid was conducted by the justice department and FBI at the request of the “department of war”, the Trump administration’s informal name for the department of defense.
Hannah Natanson
The warrant, she said, was executed “at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars.”
The statement gave no further details of the raid or investigation. Bondi added: “The Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”
The reporter’s home and devices were searched, and her Garmin watch, phone, and two laptop computers, one belonging to her employer, were seized, the newspaper said. It added that agents told Natanson she was not the focus of the probe, and was not accused of any wrongdoing.
A warrant obtained by the Post cited an investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland with a top secret security clearance who has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports.
Natanson, the Post said, covers the federal workforce and has been a part of the newspaper’s “most high-profile and sensitive coverage” during the first year of the second Trump administration.
Democrats are hoping to flip an Alaska Senate seat.
Former Rep. Mary Peltola raked in $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her bid to unseat GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska, a sizable haul to kick off what will likely be a costly battle for Democrats to flip a Senate seat squarely in Trump terrain.
Peltola’s day-one haul was fueled by small-dollar donors from across Alaska, including fisherman, silversmiths and train conductors, according to information her campaign shared first with POLITICO. Ninety-six percent of those contributions were $100 or less.
“In just 24 hours, Alaskans made it clear that we’re ready to put Alaska first,” Peltola said in a statement. “I’m grateful and honored for this incredible support from people who are ready to take on the special interests and DC people and focus on what matters: fish, family, and freedom.”
Former Rep. Mary Petola
Peltola raised more in one day than the roughly $1.2 million that Sullivan brought in over the third quarter of last year, according to federal campaign finance filings. Sullivan had yet to post his fourth-quarter fundraising report as of Tuesday night, but the Republican was sitting on nearly $4.8 million in cash on hand to start the last three months of the year.
Her total was likely padded by messages from prominent Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who blasted out emails Monday asking their supporters to split donations between their political arms and Peltola.
Her campaign said it also recruited more than 500 volunteers in its first day.
Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan says she has learned that federal prosecutors are investigating her after she took part in a video urging military service members to resist illegal orders.
Senator Elissa Slotkin
Ms. Slotkin, a Democrat, said in an interview on Monday that she found out about the inquiry from the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a longtime ally of President Trump’s. In an email sent to the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, Ms. Pirro’s office requested an interview with the senator or her private counsel.
A spokesman for Ms. Pirro’s office declined to confirm or deny any investigation, and it is unclear exactly what officials have identified as a possible crime related to the video.
Ms. Slotkin organized the video, which Mr. Trump and other administration officials have described as “seditious,” along with five other Democratic lawmakers who are also military veterans. Its message that military officers are obligated to ignore illegal orders is a fundamental principle of military law.
The investigation by Ms. Pirro’s office is the latest escalation in a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to exact retribution on those he views as enemies seeking to undermine his administration or his authority as commander in chief.
Tom Tillis isn’t running for reelection, so now he feels free to criticize Trump.
Sen. Thom Tillis is getting some things off his political chest.
The North Carolina Republican, who decided to oppose President Donald Trump’s massive policy bill last summer and not run for reelection this year, has stepped up his criticism of White House advisers and other Republicans whom he accuses of not serving Trump’s best interests.
Senator Tom Tillis
On Sunday night, Tillis leaped out as the first Republican to bash the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. He declared he won’t support any Fed nominees until the central bank’s long-standing independence is fully restored.
That came after Thursday’s significant symbolic victory in getting unanimous Senate support to display a plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol during the 2021 insurrection, overriding the efforts of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to keep the plaque hidden.
And last Wednesday, Tillis delivered a more-than-1,500-word stem-winder on the Senate floor denouncing Trump’s advisers for egging him on with the idea that the U.S. military could take over Greenland.
“I am sick of stupid,” Tillis said.
Early Tuesday afternoon, facing questions about the fallout from the Powell investigation, Tillis said his problems are with the Trump advisers who entertain these positions, not the president himself.
“Who on earth believes that the president could possibly have the depth of expertise to make some of these detailed decisions that he’s making? So, of course, it’s his advisers,” Tillis told a group of reporters in an interview just off the Senate floor.
It would have been nice if he’d spoken up sooner, but better late than never.
Those are my recommended read for today. What stories are you following?
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“The United States of Trump has been eliminated from the Quidditch World Cup. FAFO.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
While I have tried to prepare myself for the daily shock of what comes out of Trump’s mouth and his administration’s actions, I never seem to reach a point where I don’t spend massive amounts of time feeling overwhelmed. Today is no different. I also keep thinking all the physical work and concentration it’s been taking to work on the house would get the other stuff out of my head. That doesn’t work either, because it appears endless.
JJ sent me this link this morning, and I just can’t get over this headline in The Guardian. “‘I don’t need international law’: Trump says power constrained only by ‘my own morality.’ President says morality ‘the only thing that can stop me’ in New York Times interview on limits to his authority.”Maya Yang reports the story.
“Donald Trump has said, “I don’t need international law” and that his power is limited only by his “own morality”.
In a new interview with the New York Times, Trump said the only constraint to his power as president of the US is “my own morality, my own mind”.
“It’s the only thing that can stop me,” Trump said, adding: “I’m not looking to hurt people.” He went on to concede “I do” in regards to whether his administration needed to adhere to international law, but said: “It depends on what your definition of international law is.”
Trump, who spoke to the newspaper as his administration looks into “a range of options” in attempts to gain control of Greenland, also emphasized the importance of ownership.
“Ownership is very important,” Trump said, adding: “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do with, you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
Trump also dismissed concerns that his decision to oust Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president would set the precedent of a potential Chinese takeover of Taiwan or Russia’s attempt to control Ukraine.
Justifying the US’s attacks on Venezuela, Trump repeated his controversial claims Maduro had allegedly sent gang members into the US.
“This was a real threat … You didn’t have people pouring into China. You didn’t have drugs pouring into China. You didn’t have all of the bad things that we’ve had. You didn’t have the jails of Taiwan opened up and the people pouring into China,” Trump said, adding that no criminals were “pouring into Russia”.
He said that he does not believe Chinese president Xi Jinping would seize control of Taiwan, telling the New York Times: “That’s up to him, what he’s going to be doing. But you know, I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t.”
The Guardian’s Jonathan Yerushalmy followed up to day with this headline. “Morality, military might, and a sense of mischief: key takeaways from Trump’s New York Times interview. Trump sounds off on Venezuela’s future, Taiwan’s security and his aims for Greenland, days after operation to seize Nicolás Maduro.” That’s quite the list of ways to become an international piriah.
Just days after launching an unprecedented operation in Venezuela to seize its president and effectively take control of its oil industry, Donald Trump sat down with New York Times journalists for a wide-ranging interview that took in international law, Taiwan, Greenland and weight-loss drugs.
The president, riding high on the success of an operation that has upended the rules of global power, spoke candidly and casually about the new world order he appears eager to usher in; an order governed not by international norms or long-lasting alliances, but national strength and military power.
When asked how long he would be “running Venezuela”, Trump said it would be “much longer” than a year.
After Trump initially claimed that the US was running the South American country, in the hours after the operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro, members of Trump’s cabinet sought to downplay America’s role in its governance. Since then however, Trump has continued to assert that he is in fact “in charge”.
2. Seize Greenland or preserve the Nato alliance?
Trump has spent the days since the attack on Venezuela renewing his push for the US to acquire Greenland and has not ruled out using military force to take it. He has framed the issue as one of national security, but when pushed by White House correspondent David E Sanger on why he hasn’t chosen to simply reopen bases and send troops to Greenland under the terms of a decades-old treaty, Trump insisted the territory must be part of the US.
“I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do with … a lease or a treaty,” the president said, adding “that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.”
When asked by the Times whether obtaining Greenland or preserving the Nato alliance was more important, Trump declined to answer. He did however acknowledge that it “may be a choice” between the two options.
Greenland was formerly ruled by Denmark – which still controls its foreign and security policies – and both countries are members of Nato. However in his interview on Wednesday, Trump said that alliance was essentially useless without the US.
“I think we’ll always get along with Europe, but I want them to shape up … If you look at Nato, Russia I can tell you is not at all concerned with any other country but us,” he said.
You may read the rest at the link. Dr. Paul Krugman also had a good headline for his latest SubStack post. “The Mad King’s Madness Deepens. Trump wants war, war, and more war – even against Americans.” He may want the Nobel Peace Prize, but he is definitely undermining his own arguments.
Things are not going well politically for Donald Trump. The polls show him underwater on every major issue. And while he insists that these are fake, it’s clear that he knows better. He recently lamented that the Republicans will do badly in the midterms and even floated the idea that midterms should be canceled.
And as January 6th 2021 showed, Trump simply can’t stand political rejection. He will do anything, use any tool or any person at his disposal, to obliterate the sources of that rejection.
So as we head into the 2026 midterm season, the best way to understand U.S. policy is that it’s in the pursuit of one crucial objective: Propping up Trump’s fragile ego.
What was the motivation for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro? It wasn’t about drugs, which were always an obvious pretense. By Trump’s own account it wasn’t about democracy. Trump talks a lot about oil, but Venezuela’s heavy, hard-to-process oil and its decrepit oil infrastructure aren’t big prizes. The Financial Times reports that U.S. oil companies won’t invest in Venezuela unless they receive firm guarantees. One investor told the paper, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.”
The real purpose of the abduction, surely, was to give Trump an opportunity to strut around and act tough. But this ego gratification, like a sugar rush, won’t last long. Voters normally rally around the president at the beginning of a war. The invasion of Iraq was initially very popular. But the action in Venezuela hasn’t had any visible rally-around-the-flag effect. While Republicans, as always, support Trump strongly, independents are opposed.
And now the story of the moment is the atrocity in Minneapolis, where, on Wednesday, an ICE agent killedRenee Nicole Good by shooting her in the head.
Trump and his minions responded by flatly lying about what happened. But their accounts have been refuted by video evidence which show an out-of-control ICE agent gunning down a woman who was simply trying to get away from a frightening situation. Yes, MAGA loyalists will fall into line, preferring to believe Trump rather than their own lying eyes. But public revulsion over Good’s murder and Trump’s mendacity are high and growing.
A president who actually cared about the welfare of those he governs would have taken Good’s killing as an indication that his deportation tactics have veered wildly and tragically off course. He would have called for a halt of ICE actions and made sure there would be an objective and timely federal investigation into this national tragedy.
But for Trump, ICE’s violent lawlessness is a feature, not a bug. Sending armed, masked, poorly trained, masked and out-of-control armed thugs into blue cities is, in effect, a war on Americans, just as January 6thwas a war on American institutions. In effect, Trump would rather savage his own people than be held accountable for his actions.
So in Trump’s mind, Renee Nicole Good’s murder is at most collateral damage, in service to his insatiable need to dominate and feel powerful — so insatiable that he is attempting to create an alternate reality, claiming that that Good ran over an agent although there is irrefutable video evidence that she didn’t.
And when one set of lies doesn’t work, he switches tactics – changing the topic, deflecting, and spouting even more lies. Thus, just hours after Good’s death, Trump proclaimed that he was seeking a huge increase in military spending.
Michelle Goldberg used her column at the New York Times to further elucidate the murder of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of an ICE Agent. “By Killing Renee Good, ICE Sent a Message to Us All.”
Many of these people probably believed that even in Trump’s America, citizens still have inviolable liberties that allow them to stand up to the jacked-up irregulars who’ve descended on their communities. The civil rights of immigrants have been profoundly curtailed; even green card holders are on notice that this government may detain and deport them simply for protesting. But Americans — particularly, let’s be honest, white Americans — might have thought themselves immune from ICE abuses.
The killing of Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three and widow of a military veteran, tests that assumption. ICE, said Ellison, is all but telling people, “‘You want to defend your neighbors, you’re going to do it at the risk of your own life.’ I think that’s the unmistakable message. Just looking at the tape, they could have said, ‘You get out of here,’ right? And then she gets out of there. They didn’t want her to get out of there. They wanted to either drag her out of that car or do what they did. And it was all about teaching lessons.”
The lesson didn’t end with Good’s killing — the administration had to smear her afterward. As The New York Times reported, bystander footage filmed from several different angles shows that the agent who shot Good wasn’t in the path of her S.U.V. when he fired on her. That did not stop Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from accusing Good of trying to run agents over in “an act of domestic terrorism.” Vice President JD Vance called her a “deranged leftist.”
In the imagination of some on the right, Good quickly came to stand in for all the grating Resistance moms they’d like to see crushed. Fox News sneered that Good was a “self-proclaimed poet” — she’s the winner of a prestigious poetry award — “with pronouns in her bio.” The conservative radio host Erick Erickson described her as an “AWFUL,” or “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.”
It’s entirely possible that had Good lived, the Trump administration might have tried to prosecute her. That’s essentially what happened to Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, in October. Martinez was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials claimed she “rammed” a car driven by the agent Charles Exum, while her lawyers say he sideswiped her. Exum then got out of his car and shot her five times.
Martinez survived, only for the Justice Department to charge her with assaulting a federal officer. Her lawyers soon discovered that Exum had been boasting about the shooting in text messages. In one, he wrote, “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” In another, he said, “Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao.” The Justice Department ended up dropping the case before even more messages could be revealed.
Exum’s giddy sadism shouldn’t have been surprising; it reflects the culture the administration is encouraging among its immigration enforcers. In one ICE recruiting ad, an agent mans a mounted gun atop some sort of militarized vehicle, with the words, “Destroy the flood.” It was a reference to the video game Halo, where players must kill hostile space aliens. Another shows sword-wielding knights with the words, “The enemies are at the gates.”
On MS NOW today, columnist Philip Bump broke down when talking about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good yesterday in Minneapolis. “I have a six year old,” he said. “And…seeing the image of the stuffed animals in the glove compartment of her car—really emotional for me and…what I take away from this is, for me that’s the thing that stands out: that this was a family that could have been like mine.”
Bump went on to emphasize that “there are a lot of situations, a lot of incidents that have involved ICE, have involved the government over the course of the past thirteen months in which there is resonance for other families in similar ways,” but what he hit on in his first reaction to Good’s killing was the one the administration must fear most of all. Good was a white, suburban mother, whose ex-husband told reporters she was a Christian stay-at-home mom, and Bump is a white man.
President Donald J. Trump’s people see that demographic as their base. If it turns on Trump, they are politically finished, as finished as elite southern enslavers were when Harriet Beecher Stowe reminded American mothers of the fragility of their own childrens’ lives to condemn the sale of Black children; as finished as the second Ku Klux Klan was when its leader kidnapped, raped, and murdered 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer; as finished as the white segregationists were when white supremacists murdered four little girls in church in 1963.
Evidence that President Donald J. Trump has sexually abused children would likely be enough to crater his political support from this group, making it no accident that the administration is openly flouting the law that required the full release of the Epstein Files by December 19, 2025. The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of those files, and many of them were so heavily redacted as to be useless. In a court filing on Monday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that “substantial work remains to be done” before it can release them all.
But there is no hiding the murder of Renee Good, captured on video by several witnesses as it was. And so the Trump administration is working desperately to smear Good and to convince the public that, contrary to widespread video evidence, the federal agent put in place by the Trump regime shot her in self-defense.
Just remember what Warren Zevon once said: “Enjoy every Sandwich,” we never know what comes next …
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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.
It’s basically big news today, so I’ll lead with it. This time, he insulted our friend and ally, Belgium, so I’ll start with their response today as 
Politico
Stephen Collinson of CNN
Read more on this controversy at any of the three links. Believe me, there are a lot more out there. So, here’s another headline that’s making me think doing all that ish to get my passport was a good idea. This headline is from 
You may read some examples of U.S. citizens they’ve bothered by these claims in the article. You might recall this story via the article cited above.
So, who knows what they may be up to? Let’s hope the press stays on top of it. You may read a great update on the amount of nothing being done by the ICE Agent who killed Renee Good, who is at the root of the Paigelynne Gonyea OPR shenanigans. It’s at this link at 
You may read the rest at the link. Dr. Paul Krugman also had a good headline for his latest 
Michelle Goldberg used her column at the 
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