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.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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It has been another horrible week under the Trump regime. Almost no one who is paying attention still believes that we still live in a democracy. We retain a few of the trappings–the courts (except the Supreme Court, of course), a few Congresspeople, some courageous journalists, citizens protesting in the streets.
The “president” who would be king is busy slapping gold on the walls of the oval office and talking to architects about his planned $200 million golden ballroom, while Stephen Miller runs the country. Oh, and he’s still signing executive orders prepared by Project 2025 and throwing tantrums when anyone dares to criticize or make fun of him.
It was clear Donald Trump and his allies would ramp up their crackdown against any and all opposition in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — and this week, the president’s second administration unleashed its most authoritarian blitz yet.
The Trump administration got late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show taken off the air by threatening companies’ broadcast licenses if they continued to run his show. Trump and his team threatened to strip the tax-exempt status of liberal nonprofit groups, while the president called for left-wing activists to be jailed for protesting him at dinner. Trump announced he’ll once again try to designate “antifa” — America’s disparate anti-fascist movement — as a terrorist group, with no legitimate basis, clarifying once again where he stands on the whole fascism question.
Meanwhile, the administration worked toward its goal to deport a legal U.S. resident for speaking out against Israel’s relentless assault on Palestine. Reports trickled out that Trump would fire a U.S. attorney for failing to bring charges against one of his enemies, before Trump publicly called for his departure and he quit.
This ugly, authoritarian week didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump just last month mused about how Americans want a “dictator,” and the administration now appears to be using Kirk’s shocking murder as an excuse to escalate Trump’s ongoing campaign for total power.
The ramp-up began on Monday, as Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast from the White House and huddled with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and the man responsible for leading his mass vengeance campaign.
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, no,” Vance said, before immediately pledging to go after a network of liberal nonprofits that supposedly “foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”
During the discussion, Miller repeatedly invoked Kirk’s death to justify the effort to shut down liberal groups.
On the Jimmy Kimmel firing:
…[O]n Wednesday, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, began issuing explicit threats, demanding that broadcasters take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
Speaking with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Carr pressured broadcasters to tell ABC: “‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore, until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”
By Diya Sanat
Carr added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Within hours, ABC had indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s show and two large broadcast companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they wouldn’t run it. (Note: The companies all have regulatory matters before the FCC.) Sources told Rolling Stone that while multiple executives at ABC and its parent company, Disney, did not feel that Kimmel’s comments merited a suspension, they caved to pressure from Carr.
“They were terrified about what the government would do, and did not even think Jimmy had the right to just explain what he said,” a person familiar with the internal situation said on Thursday, calling the decision “cowardly.”
Throughout Trumpland and the federal government, there was a heightened sense of glee over their silencing of Kimmel. Administration officials feel emboldened by the multiple scalps they’ve now collected — first Stephen Colbert, now Kimmel — to the point that they’re confident they have momentum to pressure corporate bosses to get rid of Trump’s late-night nemeses over at other networks.
Trump has gotten so full of himself after this big win that he’s now claiming that criticism of him is illegal.
President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.
A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting such reporters were lawbreakers.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
He added: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.”
Asked for comment, the White House did not cite a specific law Mr. Trump believed was being violated, but a White House official pointed to settlements that media companies, including ABC, have agreed to pay after Mr. Trump’s legal team filed lawsuits against them, and suggested Mr. Trump was attempting to rein in “extreme left-wing bias in television.” [….]
Mr. Trump’s comments on Friday came a day after he suggested that protesters who called him “Hitler” to his face inside a Washington restaurant should be jailed.
The president, who has accused the protesters of being paid agitators and said such people “should be put in jail,” told reporters on Air Force One that he believed the protesters were “very inappropriate” and “a threat.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Friday for threats he made this week related to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, calling the Trump administration official’s actions “dangerous as hell.”
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”
Girl with Cat – Augusta Oelschig , 1945 American, 1918–2000
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell,”Cruz said.
Cruz is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FCC. He warned Carr’s actions could have long-term consequences.
“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it,”Cruz said….
Cruz went on to say Friday: “I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” but likened Carr’s comments about Disney taking the easy way or the hard way to a classic mob movie.
“I gotta say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Cruz said.
Of course Kimmel never said anything critical of Charlie Kirk. What he did do was make fun of Trump blowing of a question about how he was recovering from the loss of his friend to brag about his White House ballroom construction:
Kimmel has also mocked Trump for a specific comment he made in response to being asked by a reporter how he was personally “holding up” after the assassination of Kirk, who he has said was a friend.
Trump had replied saying he was “very good” and then immediately started boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House.
Kimmel said after the clip: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
Wholly unsurprising to anyone paying attention, the backlash over the abrupt cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is only continuing to grow and spread, and Disney is now scrambling to fix a situation quickly spiraling out of its control. After far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, reactions have been intense, but it’s Disney’s knee-jerk reaction that has drawn the most ire.
Carl Wilhelmson, Svarta Katten (Black Cat).
There has been considerable pressure from the right to crack down on anyone saying anything even remotely controversial about Kirk, and media companies have acquiesced to this pressure. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Disney announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel from the air indefinitely after a monologue in which he didn’t hold back about Trump’s seeming indifference to Kirk’s murder. [See the quote from Kimmel that I posted above.] You can watch the video at the link.
The media is generally framing it as Kimmel being indefinitely suspended for his comments about Charlie Kirk. If you just watched the above, however, and are now wondering why, as Kimmel’s jabs weren’t aimed at Kirk, but Trump, then you’ve hit on precisely why the backlash against Disney’s Jimmy Kimmel decision is growing – and why it’s not likely to stop any time soon.
The fallout from the decision to pull Kimmel off the air was immediate; the Jimmy Kimmel suspension is already so much worse than Stephen Colbert’s cancellation. On Thursday, hundreds of union writers and actors protested Kimmel’s suspension outside Disney’s Burbank studios (via Deadline). On-air and off-air talent have made their anger clear; mega-successful producer Damon Lindelof, for example, has stated he will not work with Disney unless it reinstates Kimmel.
Read more at Screen Rant.
In more First Amendment news, Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times isn’t going well.
On Friday, September 19, a federal district judge in Florida struck President Donald Trump’s complaint in his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against TheNew York Times, four Times reporters, and Penguin Random House, describing the complaint as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint is supposed to include “a short and plain statement” alleging enough facts that, if true, could warrant legal relief. The complaint Trump filed on Monday, by contrast, is 85 pages long and reads more like an anthology of his Truth Social posts, with slightly better punctuation.
By Leonid Kiparisov
Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not get tossed under Rule 8, but most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting, as Trump’s does, the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. Trump’s complaint is also crowded with boasts about his purported magnificence (for example, “President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history”) and snipes about legacy media’s anti-Trump bias (for example, “Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”).
Friday’s order, in turn, is full of the judge’s unmasked exhaustion. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote Steven Merryday, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “This complaint stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Merryday gave Trump 28 days to amend the complaint and come back with something less ridiculous, and not exceeding forty pages. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” he wrote.
Read the rest at the link.
In immigration news, ICE is ramping up their activities in Chicago.
PARK RIDGE, Ill. (AP) — Immigration enforcement officials have arrested almost 550 people as part of an operation in the Chicago area that launched a little less than two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The updated figure came hours after a senior immigration official revealed in an interview with The Associated Press that more than 400 people had been arrested in the operation so far. The figures offer an early gauge of what is shaping up as a major enforcement effort that comes after similar operations were launched in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The figures released by Homeland Security include arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as other federal agencies assisting in the operation.
ICE launched its Chicago area operation dubbed “Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities who say there’s been a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement agents. That has deepened dread in communities already fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by President Donald Trump ’s hardline immigration policies.
The operation has brought allegations of excessive force and heavy-handed dragnets that have ensnared U.S. citizens, while gratifying Trump supporters who say he is delivering on a promise of mass deportations.
Federal agents clashed with protesters and threw a congressional candidate to the ground Friday morning during a protest outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The chaotic scene unfolded in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago. Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic candidate running for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District seat, was thrown to the ground by an armed and masked federal agent outside the ICE facility, according to video footage posted on her social media.
Abughazaleh said about 100 demonstrators were at the facility to protest what the Trump administration has labeled “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, a drastic ramp-up of immigration operations and ICE raids that began in early September.
Chic Woman with a Cat, Robert Bereny, 1927
In an interview with The Washington Post, Abughazaleh described arriving to the protest about 4 a.m. as a van was entering or exiting the facility. During one clash, officers pushed protesters back and dragged one individual by the hood of his sweatshirt, she said, before she also was picked up and thrown to the ground.
A later incident, which Abughazaleh described as “more aggressive” and which was captured on video, occurred about 9 a.m., when an officer she described as an ICE agent pulled her away and threw her on the ground again as another ICE vehicle was leaving the facility.
Video depicts what appears to be a mix of ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection officers on the scene….
“They had dragged a protester into the facilities. … They put this person in chains, in a van, and they had the van come out, and ICE tried to drive through us,” Abughazaleh told The Post. “My friend was on the hood of the car. They started shooting pepper balls at us. A man got shot in the face with one, a guy almost fell into the wheel of a car. Then they teargassed us, and the van drove away with the protester in there.”
More violations of the First Amendment, but what else is new?
President Donald Trump on Friday announced an annual $100,000 fee on successful applicants for a high-skilled worker visa program that is widely used in Silicon Valley, constraining a key path to legal immigration.
The president also signed an executive order that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay $1 million for a “gold card” for U.S. residency and companies to pay $2 million for a “corporate gold card” that would permit them to sponsor one or more employees.
“The main thing is we’re going to have great people coming in and they’re going to be paying,” Trump said. “We’re going to take that money and we’re going to be reducing taxes and we’re going to be reducing debt.”
Self portrait with Cat – Charlotte ‘Sarika’Góth, 1934. Hungarian , 1900 – 1992
Both moves probably will face legal challenges. If upheld, however, they would dramatically tighten legal immigration systems while opening access to the United States for wealthy foreigners. That would deliver a win to outspoken members of Trump’s nationalist base who have argued for years that the H1-B program takes jobs from American workers. Left-leaning critics also have faulted the program, which they say can be used to exploit workers from overseas….
The $100,000 payment for an H-1B visa could be made each year for six years, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an Oval Office ceremony unveiling the actions. Roughly half a million people in the U.S. work through H-1B visas, and most renew their status every three years. A significant number apply for green cards through their employer to receive legal permanent residency but confront significant delays because of backlogs in processing.
“The company needs to decide … is the person valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” Lutnick told reporters. “Stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on visas that were given away for free. The president is crystal clear: valuable people only for America.”
This will just drive skilled workers to other countries.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters that he said was affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.
In a social media post, Trump said the strike targeted a vessel operating in US Southern Command’s area of responsibility – which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean – and killed three male “narcoterrorists” onboard….
“On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
“STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS!!!,” the president said.
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
By Ruskin Spear, 1911
Mr. Siebert informed prosecutors in his office of his resignation through an email hours after the president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he wanted him removed because two Democratic senators from Virginia had approved of his nomination.
“When I saw that he got two senators, two gentlemen that are bad news as far as I’m concerned — when I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Mr. Trump said. The president did not mention that he nominated Mr. Siebert only after the two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had already written Mr. Trump praising him.
When asked if he would fire Mr. Siebert, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, I want him out.”
Ms. James, he told reporters, was “very guilty of something.”
Mr. Trump later disputed that Mr. Siebert had resigned, saying in a late-night social media post, “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after a high-stakes internal debate raged on Friday over the fate of Mr. Siebert — with Mr. Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department and key Republicans on Capitol Hill arguing to retain the veteran prosecutor.
Another childish tantrum. It’s so embarrassing for our country.
The Pentagon said Friday it would impose new restrictions on reporters covering the Department of Defense, requiring them to pledge not to gather or use any information that had not been formally authorized for release or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.
The new mandate, described in a memorandum circulated to the press on Friday, was the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to limit the ability of the media to cover the federal government without interference.
The Department of Defense said in the 17-page memo that it “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust.” But it added that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
In addition, the document constrains the movements of the media within the Pentagon itself, designating large areas of the building off limits without escorts for the roughly 90 reporters credentialed to cover the agency. Although many offices and meeting rooms in the Pentagon are restricted, the Pentagon press corps had previously been given unescorted access throughout much of the building and its hallways.
The move could drastically restrict the flow of information about the U.S. military to the public. The National Press Club called the policy “a direct assault on independent journalism” and called for it to be immediately rescinded.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?
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I’m even more overwhelmed than usual with the news today. It’s absolutely insane.
Yesterday we got to see Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, and it is simply disgusting, as JJ wrote yesterday. Trump can deny he wrote the note with his signature all he wants. No one is buying it. He was closse friends with this man for 10-15 years and had to know what Epstein was up to. Not only that, Trump makes other sickening appearances in the book, including one about buying a “fully depreciated” woman from Epstein.
That would be enough horrible news to deal with today, but there’s much more. Poland shot down Russian drones that entered their air space. Israel bombed a building in Qatar. The Supreme Court decision to legalize racial profiling continues to be a top story (Dakinikat covered that extensively on Monday.). ICE is continuing to terrify residents of numerous cities. Trump ventured out of the White House last night with some cabinet members and was called Hitler by citizens of Washington DC.
Looking back, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I opened “Request No. 1,” the PDF file containing the contents of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and co-conspirator, created the book in 2003 by soliciting tributes from the financier’s friends and associates. Given the crimes Epstein was convicted of, I steeled myself before scrolling. Somehow, my internet-addled imagination failed me. This book is a nightmare.
The book was released yesterday by Congress after Epstein’s estate, which was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, provided a copy. It is the same book that contains the now-infamous letter and “bawdy” sketch from Donald Trump that ends: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” When The Wall Street Journal reported on the letter’s existence in July, the newspaper described it but did not republish the letter itself, so Trump vehemently denied that it was real and sued for defamation. But the now-public letter certainly looks real, and so does Trump’s signature. Many of the people who encountered it for the first time yesterday made a similar observation: Its creepy prose is framed by a markered sketch of what looks like the caricature not of a woman’s body, but of a girl’s. (The White House can no longer plausibly deny that the letter exists, but it now insists that Trump did not write or sign it.)
The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.” Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document. Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself.
The book’s contributors apparently include former President Bill Clinton, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, the billionaire retailer Leslie Wexner, and, of course, Maxwell herself, as well as a prominent fashion designer, financiers, and a media magnate. Clinton, Mitchell, and Wexner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Clinton referred The Wall Street Journal to a previous statement that said, “The former president had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein’s 2019 arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.” Wexner declined to comment to the Journal but previously told reporters he cut ties with Epstein in 2007.
Not all of the entries in the book allude to sexual activity, and it’s plausible that not all of the contributors knew about Epstein’s crimes. Still, the document is conspiracy jet fuel—visual and textual confirmation of the long-held suspicions that Epstein’s sex pestery was an open secret, enabled by powerful people who may have participated in it themselves or laughed it all off as a friend’s roguish quirk….
Sanitizing this document would be wrong, so I’ll be blunt: The Epstein birthday book is full of contributions from wealthy and powerful people who appear fully aware of Epstein’s attraction to “girls.” In fact, they seem to celebrate it and, in some cases, allude winkingly to Epstein’s predatory lifestyle.
Use the gift link to read the rest. I haven’t looked through the entire book yet. I suppose I should do it, but I’m not looking forward to it after what I’ve already seen and heard.
The splashy focus of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book released by lawmakers on Monday was a lewd drawing apparently signed by Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s cameo in another part of the book also provided fodder for Democrats and other critics of the president.
An entry in Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, contributed by the Florida real estate developer Joel Pashcow.
The entry, included in a bound volume in 2003, was made by Joel Pashcow, the former chairman of a real estate company in New York and a member of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. It shows a photograph of Mr. Pashcow at the resort with Mr. Epstein, another man and a woman whose face is redacted. Mr. Pashcow is holding an oversize check that appears to have been doctored, with a seemingly phony “DJ TRUMP” signature.
A handwritten note under the photo, which was taken in the 1990s, joked that Mr. Epstein showed “early talents with money + women,” and had sold a “fully depreciated” woman to Mr. Trump for $22,500.
The woman, whose name is also redacted in the files released by the House Oversight Committee, was a European socialite then in her 20s, according to two people familiar with the original photo. She had briefly dated both Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump around that time, according to court transcripts and a person close to Mr. Epstein. The birthday book entry appears to be a reference to the competition between the two men for the woman’s affections.
The nature of the woman’s relationship with Mr. Epstein is murky. The New York Times is not naming her because she may have been one of his victims.
A lawyer for the woman said she knew Mr. Epstein in “a professional capacity” when she was a student but severed ties with him in 1997. She did not know anything about the letter or its “derogatory content,” the lawyer added.
A bit more information:
Mr. Pashcow appears to have contributed several consecutive pages to the book. On the page before the mock check is a vulgar cartoon depicting Mr. Epstein’s grooming of young girls: On one side, marked 1983, Mr. Epstein is handing out balloons to a group of girls; on the other, labeled 2003, he is receiving a naked massage from four topless young women. “What a great country!” it reads at the bottom.
The photograph with the giant check offers fresh insight on the social circles shared by Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein. It is no secret that the two were friendly in the 1990s and early 2000s, before Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes in 2008.
A visual analysis by The Times found that the photo was taken at Mar-a-Lago after the resort opened as a club in 1996 and was landscaped with palm trees and other features.
Use the gift link to read more details if you so desire.
NATO fighter jets shot down multiple Russian drones that violated Polish airspace during an attack on neighboring Ukraine early on Wednesday, as the military alliance denounced Moscow for “absolutely dangerous” behavior that ratcheted up tensions to a new level.
The operation marked the first time that shots were fired by NATO since the start of the war in Ukraine. Polish and Dutch jets intercepted the drones, with assistance from Italian, German and NATO’s multinational forces, officials said.
People watch as a house is damaged after a drone or similar object struck a residential building according to local authorities, following violations of Polish airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Addressing the Polish parliament, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that while there was no reason to say that Poland was in a state of war, it was closer to a conflict than any time since World War II. He said the country was facing an “enemy that does not hide its hostile intentions.”
Tusk also announced that Poland has invoked Article 4 of NATO, meaning the alliance’s main political decision-making body will now meet to discuss the situation and its next steps.
Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement that it had carried out a strike against Ukraine overnight. It said that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range that of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).
The Russian foreign ministry then said that these “specific facts completely debunk the myths repeatedly spread by Poland in order to escalate the Ukrainian crisis further.”
NATO chief Mark Rutte said, however, that the violation of Poland’s airspace was not an “isolated incident.”
Poland invoked Article 4 of NATO’s treaty on Wednesday after the alliance’s fighter jets shot down Russian drones that entered its airspace in the early hours of the morning. Russian drones have crossed into Poland before, including twice last week, but this was the first time that Russian drones had been shot down over the territory of a NATO country.
“What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident,” said Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general. “We will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defenses continually at the ready.”
Here’s what to know about NATO’s Article 4….
Article 4 allows a member state to start a formal discussion among the alliance about threats to its security. While invoking Article 4 does not commit NATO to any military action, it is a required step toward a NATO decision to invoke Article 5. (An invocation of Article 5 is often assumed to have military implications, but the NATO treaty says only that its members will “assist” the party that has been attacked. This can also mean economic or political action.)
Article 4 states that the alliance’s members “will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”
Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked eight times. Before Wednesday, the last was on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now what?
The joint NATO response early Wednesday showed how quickly the war in Ukraine could escalate into a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Mr. Rutte said that the alliance’s air defenses were activated to ensure Poland’s protection. The response included fighter jets and air-defense systems from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, he said.
“The security situation of our airspace has been stabilized, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have returned to standard operational activities,” the Polish military said on social media.
• US President Donald Trump expressed displeasure about the attack. “I’m not thrilled about the whole situation. It’s not a good situation,” he said, adding he would issue a full statement on Wednesday. Qatar’s prime minister was visibly angry as he described the strike as “state terrorism.”
Qatar said it has the right to respond to Israel’s strike in Doha that targeted Hamas political leaders, which it decried as a “blatant attack”.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, described Tuesday’s attack as “state terrorism” that targeted the security and stability of the region.
Aftermath of Israeli strike inside Qatar.
“Qatar… reserves the right to respond to this blatant attack,” he told a late night press conference.
“We believe that today we have reached a pivotal moment. There must be a response from the entire region to such barbaric actions.”
US president Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” about Israel’s airstrike that killed six people, saying it advances neither Israel nor America’s goals.
Trump called the strike on Hamas’s political wing “unfortunate” and said he had directed US envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar but it was too late to stop the strike.
Hamas said five of its lower-ranking members and a Qatari security official were killed in the airstrike, but that all its leaders survived the attack.
A big change happened yesterday, when the Supreme Court said it was okay for ICE and the Border Patrol to racially profile individuals walking freely on America’s streets. If you’re brown, speak Spanish, and work in a blue-collar job, you officially belong to a different class of citizen and according to Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s okay to racially profile you.
We have never in US history seen a federal law enforcement agency operate the way ICE has operated this summer — it marks the arrival of a new style of domestic policing, more in line with the infamous “brown shirts” of authoritarian regimes the world over than any regular policing tradition in the nation’s interior. Yes, we’ve seen similar abuses of civil liberties and due process stem from corrupt and racist state police and country sheriffs in the Jim Crow south, and plenty of local police departments even today suffer from localized corruption scandals, but never we seen what is happening with ICE right now take place the whole country over.
All of the nation’s law enforcement are blending together into an “ICE auxiliary.” — Garrett Graff
The day-to-day behavior and aggression of ICE is corrupting the soul of America. I encourage you to watch this video of federal agents policing the start of an elementary school in DC — there not to secure the school and children, but specifically to intimidate and punish schoolgoers. Tell me that isn’t the picture of authoritarianism? You know how you’re going to be the bad guy in the eyes of history? If school children and mothers have to push their way through your armed, masked gang while you’re carrying assault weapons in order to attend school. I can’t help but think how the Trump administration has turned the proud tradition of the US Marshals at the University of Mississippi or the 82nd Airborne at Little Rock Central High on its head. Similarly, this video of a masked officer detaining a father outside immigration court in New York City — the masked officers are indistinguishable from Wild West bank robbers.
There are four things that have really struck me about ICE’s operations over the last month, all of them worrisome about the trajectory of that agency and the presence and role of federal law enforcement in American life. (Separately, I’m going to write about the warning signs already visible in ICE’s dramatic hiring surge.) Taken together, they paint a picture of an already rogue agency that feels it operates outside of the Constitution and owes nothing to the Americans it’s supposed to serve.
(NOTE from BB: You’ll need to go to the link to read the entire explication under the four headings)
1) Everything is now ICE.
The most worrisome aspect of the quick militarization and turbo-charging of ICE is how American law enforcement across the board — and much of the government beyond — is being subsumed by ICE’s mission and lowering themselves, from hiring to behavior to tactics, down to ICE’s standards.
We have different federal law enforcement agencies for a reason — and moreover, as citizens, we as a country need and want federal law enforcement. The FBI, DEA, ATF, Secret Service, and the US Marshals all have their own lanes, authorities, and responsibilities, but right now we’ve watching the Trump administration turn all of federal law enforcement across both the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security into an faceless quasi-ICE auxiliary, blending all these agencies and agent into some amorphous anonymous blob of masked, brown tactical-vest-wearing federal law enforcement. I wrote recently about how this precisely is what authoritarian regime looks like — armed, masked, anonymous agents of the state jumping from unmarked vehicles and whisking people away….
2) Collapse of Moral Legitimacy.
I wrote earlier in the summer about how in a democracy policing requires moral legitimacy and the permission of the policed. That’s been one of the hallmarks of policing ever since Sir Robert Peel built the first modern police force in London’s Metropolitan Police. One of his core principles of policing was: “To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.”
The DC police department was literally created originally in Peel’s image, which is why it too is known awkwardly as the “Metropolitan Police.” Now, in a historical irony, it is ground zero for the erosion of the moral legitimacy of federal law enforcement writ large….
3) Operating without due regard for civil liberties and due process.
In my essay at the end of August about how America has tipped in fascism, I wrote, “America has become a country where armed officers of the state shout ‘papers please’ on the street at men and women heading home from work, where masked men wrestle to the ground and abduct people without due process into unmarked vehicles, disappearing them into an opaque system where their family members beg for information.”
Add up all of the above and you have a portrait of a rogue agency, which is what leads me to my final dangerous warning sign: This agency clearly knows that it can do no wrong in the eyes of the White House and administration — there is no level of violence, brutality, or abuse of civil liberties that would get any of these agents or officers in trouble with their bosses. Earlier this summer, I wrote about how ICE is acting as if it will never face accountability again. We’ve seen ICE flaunt federal law that requires congressional oversight — and, instead, it has tried to arrest and charge federal lawmakers, a bright line if there ever was one.
At every turn, though, the agency is going out of its way to make it harder to hold officers accountable. ICE officers don’t routinely wear name tags or easily visible badge numbers (in this video, check out how you have to zoom in on his badge on his belt to even begin to identify his badge number.) Moreover, though, despite the fact that we’re weeks and months into this national ICE takeover, the agency has made no effort to make its masked officers on the streets identifiable to either the public — or even to itself.
You there. Stop what you’re doing. Take off that tool belt and hard hat—let’s see some ID. Why? Because we don’t think you’re a citizen. Now show us your papers.
This kind of behavior by government officials is now legal in the United States.
Masked ICE agents in Los Angeles
Yesterday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court allowed ICE officials to conduct roving patrols and use racial profiling to stop and detain people for no other reason than their skin color, the language they’re speaking, suspicions about their national origin—or, really, if immigration officials just feel like it.
But wait, you might object. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Did the Court explain why that protection apparently no longer applies to you if you’re a day laborer or running a fruit stand? Good luck with that: This Court’s majority doesn’t explain itself to anyone. It merely lets stand or overturns the decisions of lower courts—lately, almost always in favor of expanding the power of, and corroding any checks on, President Donald Trump.
Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo is a case from Los Angeles about whether ICE can stop people because of a suspicion of their being in the United States illegally, based solely, as SCOTUSblog summarized it, on any combination of four factors: a person’s “‘apparent race or ethnicity,’ speaking in Spanish or accented English, being present at a location where undocumented immigrants ‘are known to gather’ (such as pickup spots for day laborers), and working at specific jobs, such as landscaping or construction.”
A California district-court judge had earlier enjoined ICE from making such stops, perhaps appalled by this example:
Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in East Los Angeles and identifies as Latino. On the afternoon of June 12, he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of a tow yard in Montebello, California, where he saw agents carrying handguns and military-style rifles. One agent ordered him to “Stop right there” while another “ran towards [him].” The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American—and they repeatedly ignored his answer: “I am an American.” The agents asked Gavidia what hospital he was born in—and he explained that he did not know which hospital. “The agents forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” An agent asked again, “What hospital were you born in?” Gavidia again explained that he did not know which hospital and said “East L.A.” He then told the agents he could show them his Real ID. The agents took Gavidia’s ID and his phone and kept his phone for 20 minutes. They never returned his ID.
In overturning the lower court’s decision, five of the Court’s six right-wing justices—there is no other reasonable way to describe them at this point—took advantage of their right to remain silent, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh gamely tried to speak up in a concurrence. If his goal was to be reassuring, he did not help matters: Such stops are usually “brief,” he explained. Again, I am not a scholar of the Constitution, but I had no idea that I could be deprived of my rights under the Fourth (or any other) Amendment as long as my getting roughed up takes only a few moments out of my busy day.
President Donald Trump stepped out for dinner in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday only to find himself immediately confronted by protesters calling him “the Hitler of our time,” forcing him and his entourage of cabinet officials to stand awkwardly listening to their taunts before they could sit down to eat.
Activists took advantage of Trump’s rare public outing to to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, a short walk from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to heckle and berate the president with cries of “Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
“You are not welcome here!” one woman can be seen telling him in a video shared on social media. “Yes he is,” another diner countered.
Trump initially looked unfazed by the provocation but then gestured to his security team and said impatiently: “Come on. Let’s go. Get them out of here.”
The activist in question was escorted out of the dining area but continued to yell, despite some boos: “He’s terrorizing communities all over the world! From Puerto Rico… to Palestine to Venezuela! He’s not welcome to D.C.! He’s not welcome to Palestine! Palestine is not for sale!”
Only after she had been removed could Trump and his guests take their places at their table.
Joining the president for dinner were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other senior White House officials.
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
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“This is what some people voted for…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m quite late. The intense heat and humidity have left New Orleans for the moment. I woke up at 9:30. It was 76°F. I immediately rolled over and went back to sleep. I’m just glad I didn’t get a glance at the headlines then. The chaos of what used to be our institutional protectors of the Constitution worsens. This Reuters headline is like a slap in the face of all democracy-loving people. It’s a good thing I subscribed to them last month because wow! This needs to be shared. “US Supreme Court backs Trump on aggressive immigration raids.” They’re inching closer to the Inquisition with each majority opinion. Andrew Cheung has the lede.
Donald Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration on Monday, letting federal agents proceed with raids in Southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language.
The court granted a Justice Department request to put on hold a federal judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally, by relying on race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent, among other factors.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision, directing pointed criticism at its conservative majority.
The administration “has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion.
“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor added.
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong found on July 11 that the Trump administration’s actions likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge’s order applied to her court’s jurisdiction, covering much of Southern California.
The Supreme Court’s order was brief and issued without any explanation, a common way it handles emergency matters, but one that has generated confusion in lower courts and criticism from some of the justices themselves. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Concurring with the decision on Monday, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be a “‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”
Kavanaugh added: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”
In a written filing, the Justice Department defended targeting people using a “reasonably broad profile” in a region where, according to the administration, about 10% of residents are in the country illegally
The administration’s request marked its latest trip to the Supreme Court seeking to proceed with policies that lower courts have impeded after casting doubt on their legality. The Supreme Court has backed Trump in most of these cases.
This part of the decision is rather stunning.
In other cases, the Supreme Court has allowed Trump to deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering a chance to show harms they may face and to revoke temporary legal status previously granted by the government on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.
So much for the Rule of Law and Due Process. This also violates international treaties and law. We are a nation led by a War Criminal.
The New York Times (article shared) also has an excellent analysis of the situation written by Adam Liptak.”Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops. A federal judge had ordered agents not to make indiscriminate stops relying on factors like a person’s ethnicity or that they speak Spanish.” This is white christian nationalism on full display.
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order prohibiting government agents from making indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area that challengers called “blatant racial profiling.”
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons. It is not the last word in the case, which is pending before a federal appeals court and may again reach the justices.
The court’s three liberal members dissented.
In the near term, it allows what critics say are roving patrols of masked agents routinely violating the Fourth Amendment and what supporters say is a vigorous but lawful effort to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
The lower courts had placed significant restrictions on President Trump’s efforts to ramp up immigrant arrests to achieve his pledge of mass deportations. Aggressive enforcement operations in Los Angeles — including encounters captured on video that appeared to be roundups of random Hispanic people by armed agents — have become a flashpoint, setting off protests and clashes in the area.
Civil rights groups and several individuals filed suit, accusing the administration of unconstitutional sweeps in which thousands of people had been arrested. They described the encounters in the suit as “indiscriminate immigration operations” that had swept up thousands of day laborers, carwash workers, farmworkers, caregivers and others.
“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force,” the complaint said, “and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.
One plaintiff, Jason Brian Gavidia, a U.S. citizen born in East Los Angeles, was stopped by a masked agent while he was working on his car outside a tow yard. The encounter was captured on video.
The agent asked whether Mr. Gavidia was American, and he said he was.
The agent then asked what hospital Mr. Gavidia had been born in, and he said he did not know. According to the lawsuit, the agent and a colleague proceeded to slam Mr. Gavidia against a metal gate, twist his arm and seize his phone.
“Fearing for his life, Gavidia offered to show the agents his ID,” the lawsuit said. “The agents took the ID, and about 20 minutes later, returned Gavidia’s phone and set him free. They never returned his ID.”
This is nothing but siding with grandiose racial profiling. The ACLU of Southern California has this to say on the subject. “U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay in L.A. Raids Case. Decision lifts temporary order barring DHS from unlawful stop practices .”
Today, the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request for a stay (or pause) of a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting federal agencies–including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)–from continuing their unlawful actions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties.
The court judgment reverses the judgement from two lower courts in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem that bars immigration agents from stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion and from relying solely on four factors – alone or in combination – including apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in a particular location like a bus stop, car wash, or agricultural site; or the type of work a person does.
Today’s unexplained order from the Supreme Court does not halt further proceedings in the case. On September 24, the federal district court will hear arguments on whether to issue a preliminary injunction based on additional evidence of the government’s unlawful tactics.
In response, the following statements were issued:
“When ICE grabbed me, they never showed a warrant or explained why. I was treated like I didn’t matter–locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay? That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge,” said Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, named plaintiff in the case. “I joined this case because what happened to me is happening to others everyday just for being brown, speaking Spanish, or standing on a corner looking for work. The system failed us today, but I’m not staying silent. We’ll keep fighting because our lives are important.”
“This decision is a devastating setback for our plaintiffs and communities who, for months, have been subjected to immigration stops because of the color of their skin, occupation, or the language they speak,” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “In running to the Supreme Court to request this stay, the government made clear that its enforcement operation in Southern California is driven by race. We will continue fighting the administration’s racist deportation scheme to ensure every person living in Southern California—regardless of race or status—is safe.”
“Today’s decision gives license to the Trump administration to resume racially discriminatory raids across Los Angeles, detaining people without evidence or due process simply because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the work they do,” said Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel. Our community has come together to confront this injustice with courage and determination, uncovering the truth and showing the nation these raids were never about public safety but about targeting immigrants and sowing fear. This fight is not over. We will continue pressing our case in court until every person in our communities can live free from fear, with their rights and dignity fully protected.
“The Supreme Court’s decision deals a devastating blow to communities reeling from the government’s racially discriminatory raids. Through the stroke of a pen, through its emergency shadow docket, the court has written off decades of Fourth Amendment law. But we always knew this was going to be a long fight, and we are already preparing for what comes next,” said Annie Lai, director of the Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic at the UC Irvine School of Law. “Our clients have faced the government with incredible bravery and will continue to do so. We will be right there alongside them.”
“Today’s SCOTUS ruling puts farm workers — and every Californian who looks or sounds like they might be an immigrant — in greater danger,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “This does not impact immigrants in a vacuum, it will affect all of us. We will continue to seek a preliminary injunction in this case, and we will keep fighting for farm workers and all immigrant communities across the USA.”
“The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of racial profiling. A dark shadow has been cast over this country’s Constitution and its future,” said Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network (LAWCN). “This is a dangerous precedent for immigrant rights and civil liberties. The decision legitimizes the unconstitutional practice of targeting individuals based on their race, language, or neighborhood. It turns back the clock on decades of legal progress and reinforces a system where some communities are seen as suspect by default.”
I am ashamed of my country. As David Bowie puts it, “I’m afraid of Americans.” This decision jeopardizes the economy, the legal system, and our humanity. The Supreme Racists on the Court have gone mad with power, enabling Yam Tit’s Reign of Terror with abandon. Ari Berman, writing for Mother Jones, has this headline today. “Project 2026: Trump’s Plan to Rig the Next Election, From nationalizing voter suppression to flooding the streets with federal agents, the president and his allies are using all the tricks in the authoritarian playbook to tilt the midterms in their favor.”
On an April episode of the popular Politics War Room podcast, the veteran journalist Al Hunt posed an increasingly common question from listeners to Democratic strategist James Carville. “Is Trump looking to spark enough protest to justify declaring martial law in 2026, thus suspending the election?” Hunt asked.
“You’re so correct to be concerned about this,” Carville responded. “It’s getting worse by the day. It is not going to stop getting worse. And I would be—we ought to be—on high, high alert.”
Such chatter is widespread these days among Trump’s opponents—and with good reason. Trump is the most openly authoritarian president in US history and has already incited an insurrection in an attempt to remain in office.
The good news, according to experts, is that Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally cancel the midterms. The states, with oversight from Congress, run their elections. Voting will go forward whether Trump likes it or not.
But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the rapidly escalating threats to America’s election system. Given Trump’s extreme assertions of executive power, the autocratic nature of his second term, and the stacking of his administration with hardline loyalists, many of the outlandish schemes he considered to stay in power in 2020—such as using the military to seize voting machines in battleground states—don’t seem as far-fetched today. And his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in response to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, which was followed by a similar federal takeover of Washington, DC, has heightened fears about how far Trump will go to keep his party in control of Washington. “The California events really rattled a lot of people,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks. The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order. “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.”
But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the rapidly escalating threats to America’s election system. Given Trump’s extreme assertions of executive power, the autocratic nature of his second term, and the stacking of his administration with hardline loyalists, many of the outlandish schemes he considered to stay in power in 2020—such as using the military to seize voting machines in battleground states—don’t seem as far-fetched today. And his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in response to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, which was followed by a similar federal takeover of Washington, DC, has heightened fears about how far Trump will go to keep his party in control of Washington. “The California events really rattled a lot of people,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks. The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order. “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.”
What kind of President Declares war on an American City?
The article then lists 10 ways that Trump will interfere with the midterms and voting. Voter Suppression Tactics are at the top of the list, but the others are equally as devious. If you’re going to read just one thing today, please give the list a thorough read. It’s coming to a voting place near everyone.
ProPublica continues to be an enormously useful source of real journalism with real investigations. This is a must-read for those who will be or are dependent on Social Security. “The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security.” Eli Hager has the lede. I’m just going to use their “highlights” since the story is a narrative of everything that went on. It also has some interesting insight into Leland Dudek and his management of the process and gaffs.
Reporting Highlights
Missed Opportunity: Some Social Security officials said they welcomed DOGE — the agency needs a technological overhaul — only to see DOGE ignore them and prioritize quick (often empty) wins.
Internal Revolt: Leland Dudek, the agency’s then acting chief, helped DOGE at first, then tried to resist when he saw what it was doing, Dudek said in 15 hours of candid interviews.
DOGE Lives On: Multiple former DOGErs have taken permanent roles at the Social Security Administration, and Senate-confirmed Commissioner Frank Bisignano has embraced its approach.
Trump has started to move on to a “crime” agenda. As usual, it’s racist, full of lies and bias, and is designed to push buttons on the MAGA Cult. This is from AXIOS and is written by Marc Caputo. “Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message.”
MAGA influencers are drawing repeated attention to violent attacks to elevate the issue of urban crime — and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases.
Shocking video of the fatal Aug. 22 knife attack on 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail car in Charlotte, North Carolina, dominated weekend conversation on Trump-friendly social media.
The big picture: The rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including on Charlotte’s light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases.
The video is easily shared or leaked, and can instantly pollinate across social media — a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.
Driving the news: President Trump, asked about the Charlotte video by a reporter Sunday, said he wanted to find out more about the stabbing before commenting.
“I’ll know all about it by tomorrow morning,” Trump said.
A Trump adviser told Axios: “This is exactly what he’s talking about, and it’s going to be an issue he’s going to highlight. This is not just about North Carolina. Other campaigns will deal with this.”
Elon Musk repeatedly posted about the Charlotte case this weekend for his 225 million X followers.
North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley — a former chair of the national GOP — invoked the case to accuse his Democratic opponent, Gov. Roy Cooper, of being soft on crime.
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles called it a “heartbreaking attack.”
Zarutska recently arrived in Charlotte from Ukraine to escape the war there, The Charlotte Observer reports.
The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, was charged with first-degree murder. His criminal record includes charges of armed robbery, felony larceny, breaking and entering, and shoplifting, according to jail records cited by WBTV.
Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather, in an interview with Axios Charlotte last week, didn’t comment directly on the case but acknowledged the limitations and complexities of holding defendants with mental health issues accountable.
What they’re saying: Whatley wrote on X that in June 2020, “Cooper signed a soft-on-crime executive order, and just three months later, Brown was released from prison.”
The executive order established a “racial profiling task force” and sought to reduce “systemic” racism. But it didn’t call for the early release of suspects.
Cooper’s campaign accused Whatley of “lying,” and said: “Roy Cooper prosecuted violent criminals and drug dealers, increased the penalties for violence against law enforcement, and kept thousands of criminals off the streets and behind bars.”
Whatley spokesperson Danielle Alvarez countered that Brown was released from prison early, just as Cooper was spending more time talking about “fighting racism” and less about keeping “career criminals” like Brown locked up.
Between the lines: Influential conservative social media accounts accused major national news outlets of not covering the racial dynamics of the Charlotte killing — a white victim and a Black suspect — with the same intensity as they did in the case of Daniel Penny.
Penny, who is white, choked to death a homeless Black man who was threatening passengers on a subway car in Manhattan in 2023. A jury acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide.
You may read more about this at the link. I will close with this article concerning Yam Tits and the decimation of Science and Universities. It’s a New York Times (shared) Guest Op-Ed written by Stephanie Greenblatt, a Harvard Humanities Professor. “We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself.”
The Trump administration’s assault on America’s universities by cutting billions of dollars of federal support for scientific and medical research has called up from somewhere deep in my memory the phrase “duck and cover.” These were words drilled into American schoolchildren in the 1950s. We heard them on television, where they accompanied a cartoon about a wise turtle named Bert who withdrew into his shell at any sign of danger. In class, when our teachers gave the order, we were instructed to follow Bert’s example by diving under our desks and covering our necks. These actions were meant to protect us from the nuclear attack that could come, we were told, at any time. Though even in elementary school most of us intuited that there was something futile in these attempts to shield ourselves from destruction, we dutifully went through the motions. How else could we deal with the anxiety caused by the menace?
The anxiety greatly increased in October 1957, when Americans learned of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1. The vivid evidence of the technological superiority in rocketry of our Cold War enemy provoked a remarkably rapid response. In 1958, by a bipartisan vote, Congress passed and President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, one of the most consequential federal interventions in education in the nation’s history. Together with the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, it made America into the world’s undisputed leader in science and technology.
Nearly 70 years later, that leadership is in peril. According to the latest annual Nature Index, which tracks research institutions by their contributions to leading science journals, the single remaining U.S. institution among the top 10 is Harvard, in second place, far behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Trump’s war on science and academia is one of the most-sighted of all his ego-stroking projects. The pride that people like me felt about our Space Program and medical achievements was beyond the moon. As a cancer survivor of a rare cancer that has now become more curable since I had the disease, I just can’t believe this administration has such a fixation on killing people. But there it is.
There’s another Countrywide “No Kings” demonstration on October 18th, if you care to take part.
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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.
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.
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.
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
This part of the decision is rather stunning.
This is nothing but siding with grandiose racial profiling. The ACLU of Southern California has this to say on the subject. “U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay in L.A. Raids Case. Decision lifts temporary order barring DHS from unlawful stop practices .”
I am ashamed of my country. As David Bowie puts it, “I’m afraid of Americans.” This decision jeopardizes the economy, the legal system, and our humanity. The Supreme Racists on the Court have gone mad with power, enabling Yam Tit’s Reign of Terror with abandon. Ari Berman, writing for 
You may read more about this at the link. I will close with this article concerning Yam Tits and the decimation of Science and Universities. It’s a
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