Wednesday Reads: ICE in Massachusetts, Trump’s Aging, and His Decorating Fetish

Good Afternoon!!

I’m really struggling with watching/read the national news these days. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. I have been trying to follow local reports of federal immigration/deportation activities. Trump hasn’t sent troops to Massachusetts yet, but ICE has still been very busy here. A few recent stories:

Marcela Rodrigues and Scooty Nickerson of The Boston Globe write that the feds are acting quickly to get detainees out of New England (and away from friendly judges) to red states where it will be easier to keep them imprisoned: ‘Treated like an animal’: ICE is moving detained immigrants quickly to conservative states, raising due process concerns.

Last week, João Marciano do Carmo returned to his family in Milford, embraced his crying mother, and fell into the comfort of his living room couch. The 19-year-old had finally made the journey home from a jail in Mississippi, one of the detention facilities where he had been held since September on an immigration-related violation that, lawyers say, never warranted his detention in the first place.

He’s not alone, according to a Globe analysis of arrest and detention data and interviews with immigration attorneys and experts. Immigrants in New England targeted for deportation are being whisked away quicker and to farther locations than ever before. They are increasingly brought to remote areas of the country where they face more conservative judges who are less likely to grant them freedom, according to the interviews and the data analysis.

Kelly Lamphere, the mother-in-law of João Marciano do Carmo’s sister, embraced João as he arrived at his family’s home in Milford, Nov. 18. Erin Clark, Globe Staff

As agents carry out that agenda, advocates and legal analysts say, immigrants have lost essential due process rights. Detainees legally eligible for bond are moved quickly, and at times in violation of court orders. It can take days for them to be able to call their families. Often, not even their lawyers know where they are.

Legal experts warn the rapid rise in transfers to far-flung states is likely to accelerate as billions of dollars allocated by Congress in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer begin to flow to detention centers.

“To be super clear, this is the beginning,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They are ramping up, but they have plans to go so much bigger.” [….]

ICE arrests in the Boston area more than tripled in the first seven months of this year compared to last, while the number of people sent to facilities outside New England spiked sixfold, according to the Globe analysis.

At the same time, the median period before someone was moved to an out-of-region facility was cut in half. Last year, it took around 20 days to move someone out of New England, while this year it took around 10 days.

What happened to João:

In Carmo’s case, the teenager, who moved to Milford from Brazil at age 11, was arrested on the way to work at a nearby farm with a friend from Milford High School. Immigration agents shattered his car window to apprehend them. The two teenagers, who have no criminal record, were put in a van with their hands and feet shackled.

For the first six days, they weren’t allowed to make a phone call. None of their family members or their lawyer could locate them. For days, their mothers in Milford wondered if they were alive.

In the seven weeks that followed, Carmo and Marcos Oliveira Martins were transferred from detention facility to detention facility, with stops in Massachusetts, New York, and Mississippi. They slept on concrete, the floor of a gymnasium, and in traditional jail cells.

“I was being really treated like an animal … I didn’t matter,” Carmo said at his home. His journey from New York to Mississippi lasted 16 hours between buses and a plane, and he was shackled the entire time.

Another heartbreaking story by Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio at The Boston Globe: A Babson College student wanted to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was deported instead.

Immigration authorities detained and swiftly deported a freshman at Babson College to Honduras last week while she was at Logan Airport on her way to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving, according to attorneys and a family friend.

The young woman, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, came to the United States from Honduras with her family when she was a young child and was at Logan Thursday to catch a flight to Texas, where her parents live, according to her attorney, Todd Pomerleau.

Lopez Belloza made it through security but was stopped as she was about to board the plane, Pomerleau said. “They wouldn’t tell her why she was being detained. She didn’t understand it at all,” Pomerleau said. She was then taken to the Burlington ICE field office, then flown to Texas, Pomerleau said.

abson college student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, at her high school graduation.Family Photo

After a frantic 48-hour search, her family received a call from her on Saturday from Honduras, a country she had not lived in since she was a child. The federal government had quickly deported her, the lawyers said, and Lopez Belloza had found her way to her grandparents’ house and called her father.

“It really didn’t feel like it was real life because nothing made sense,” said Ricky Soto, a close friend of the family who was desperately trying to contact attorneys to help the family. “I can only imagine how terrifying that was for her.”

Soto, 41, had bought Lopez Belloza plane tickets and helped organize the surprise for her family — he considers them family, too, and works with her father at a tailor shop in Texas.

The student’s parents and her two youngest siblings are also in Texas, and it would have been her first Thanksgiving break during college. “She was so excited, because she wasn’t expecting to come home,” Soto told the Globe.

Why did this happen?

Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, has also been assisting the family with the case, quickly scrambling to find local lawyers and contact representatives on Thursday evening after hearing of the case. Lopez Belloza apparently had a removal order from around 2017 that neither she nor her family was aware of, Gupta said.

“They didn’t know to show up somewhere, and she certainly had no idea of any of this,” Gupta said.

Before Trump, people in this category weren’t targeted; now that has changed. Now Lopez Belloza may not be able to continue her education.

Soto, the family friend, remembers Lopez Belloza‘s father learning of his daughter’s college acceptance last year, bursting into their shop with such enthusiasm to share the news.

“Based on what I know about her father and his family, and what they went through, and how he’s been able to grow and persevere, and have a family — and then his oldest daughter is achieving this,” Soto said, “everybody was just really proud.”

Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza‘s attorney based in Massachusetts, said that she is a business student who received a scholarship to attend Babson. Now, Lopez Belloza isn’t sure if she’ll be able to finish her finals, Pomerleau said. He was able to speak with Lopez Belloza for the first time on Monday.

“She was really sad,” Pomerleau said. “I told her, ‘We’re going to fight like hell until we bring you back.’”

There must be terrible stories like this all over the country. It makes me sick at heart.

One more Massachusetts immigration story by Tara Prindiville and Dennis Romero at NBC News: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s relative detained by ICE.

Officials have detained the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew amid the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took the woman into custody in Revere, Massachusetts, this month, the source said.

Bruna Ferreira has an 11-year-old son with Michael Leavitt, who is the press secretary’s brother.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Bruna Caroline Ferreira is a “criminal illegal alien from Brazil” who overstayed her tourist visa, which expired in June 1999.

The woman has an arrest on suspicion of battery, the spokesperson said. It’s not clear how the case was resolved.

Ferreira, who the source familiar with the situation said has never lived with Leavitt’s nephew, is at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center amid proceedings to have her removed, the DHS spokesperson said….

The source said Leavitt’s nephew has lived full time in New Hampshire with his father since he was born, has never resided with his mother and has not spoken with her in many years….

Ferreira’s family said in a GoFundMe campaign that she was brought to the United States as a child in 1998 and that she has done “everything in her power to build a stable, honest life here.”

It says she “maintained her legal status” in the United States by receiving protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which seeks to allow immigrants brought to the United States as children, albeit illegally, to enjoy protection from removal.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that DACA recipients have been among those detained in immigration sweeps.

The New York Times has finally noticed that Trump is really old.

Katie Rogers and Dylan Freedman at The New York Times (gift link): Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office.

With headline-grabbing posts on social media, combative interactions with reporters and speeches full of partisan red meat, Mr. Trump can project round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina. Now at the end of his eighth decade, Mr. Trump and the people around him still talk about him as if he is the Energizer Bunny of presidential politics.

The reality is more complicated: Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging. To pre-empt any criticism about his age, he often compares himself to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who at 82 was the oldest person to hold the office, and whose aides took measures to shield his growing frailty from the public, including by tightly managing his appearances….

Mr. Trump remains almost omnipresent in American life. He appears before the news media and takes questions far more often than Mr. Biden did. Foreign leaders, chief executives, donors and others have regular access to Mr. Trump and see him in action.

Still, nearly a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.

He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.

And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.

A bit more:

Mr. Trump has prompted additional questions about his health by sharing news about medical procedures he has had, but not details about them. While in Asia, Mr. Trump revealed that he had undergone magnetic resonance imaging at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early October.

“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump told reporters, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician, which did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and contained few other details….

Trump dozing in an Oval Office meeting

Mr. Trump also applies makeup to a bruise on the back of his right hand, adding speculation about a medical condition that his physician and aides say is caused by taking aspirin and shaking so many hands. In September, the bruising on his hand, coupled with swollen ankles, caused observers on the internet to speculate wildly about his health….

According to a Times analysis of the official presidential schedules in a database maintained by Roll Call, Mr. Trump’s first official event starts later in the day. In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at around the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.

The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.

Mr. Trump still regularly comes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule. This routine is a holdover from his first term: After he complained about being overscheduled in the mornings, Mr. Trump kept so-called executive time hours in the White House residence before he headed downstairs for work.

It’s nothing we don’t know about, but at least the Times admits Trump is declining with age.

Predictably, Trump was unhappy with the story. Tom Boggiani at Raw Story: Trump flips out at New York Times ‘creeps’ in furious rant over ‘hit piece’ about his naps.

The New York Times appears to have touched a nerve with Donald Trump after reporting that observers are noting his lack of energy and increasing fatigue as his age catches up with him during his second year.

In the report, the Times noted, “… when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs,” before reporting that the 79-year-old president appeared to all observers to have dozed off as those around him spoke.

Clearly stung, Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday morning to lash out, while also boasting about his last election win for some curious reason.

“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. I won the 2024 Presidential Election in a Landslide, winning all Seven Swing States, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a lot. I one our Nation’s Districts by 2750 to 550, a complete wipeout. I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history – I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down,” he wrote.

He continued, “To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite.”

“They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.’ The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” he complained, once again insulting a female reporter’s physical appearance.

“Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever, and with record setting investment being made in America, they should only go up,” he insisted before claiming, “There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (‘That was aced’) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

He’s not just old; he’s certifiably insane.

Based on what is reported in the news, Trump spends much of his time on his redecorating obsessions.

Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond at The Washington Post (gift link): Trump wants a bigger White House ballroom. His architect disagrees.

President Donald Trump has argued with the architect he handpicked to design a White House ballroom over the size of the project, reflecting a conflict between architectural norms and Trump’s grandiose aesthetic, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

Trump with ballroom architect James McCrery

Trump’s desire to go big with the project has put him at odds with architect James McCrery II, the people said, who has counseled restraint over concerns the planned 90,000-square-foot addition could dwarf the 55,000-square-foot mansion in violation of a general architectural rule: don’t build an addition that overshadows the main building.

A White House official acknowledged the two have disagreed but would not say why or elaborate on the tensions, characterizing Trump and McCrery’s conversations about the ballroom as “constructive dialogue.” [….]

Trump’s intense focus on the project and insistence on realizing his vision over the objections of his own hire, historic preservationists and others concerned by a lack of public input in the project reflect his singular belief in himself as a tastemaker and obsessive attention to details. In the first 10 months of his second term, Trump has waged a campaign to remake the White House in his gilded aesthetic and done so unilaterally — using a who’s-going-to-stop-me ethos he honed for decades as a developer.

Multiple administration officials have acknowledged that Trump has at times veered into micromanagement of the ballroom project, holding frequent meetings about its design and materials. A model of the ballroom has also become a regular fixture in the Oval Office.

The renovation represents one of the largest changes to the White House in its 233-year history, and has yet to undergo any formal public review. The administration has not publicly provided key details about the building, such as its planned height. The 90,000-square-foot structure also is expected to host a suite of offices previously located in the East Wing. The White House has also declined to specify its plans for an emergency bunker that was located below the East Wing, citing matters of national security.

You can read the rest using the gift link.

Trump also plans to redesign some golf courses. Sarah Fortinsky at The Hill: Trump says Jack Nicklaus will lead golf course overhaul at Joint Base Andrews.

President Trump said Jack Nicklaus, the retired professional golfer, will oversee an overhaul of the golf courses at Joint Base Andrews.

Trump told reporters he was tapping Nicklaus as the architect of the project on Saturday before boarding Marine One to head to Andrews, where he later took an aerial tour of the landscape.

85 year old Jack Nichlaus

“We’re doing some fix-up of the base, which it needs. We’re going to try and reinstitute the golf courses. I’m meeting with the greatest Jack Nicklaus,” Trump said.

“He’s involved in trying to bring their recreational facility back,” he added, calling it a “great place that has been destroyed over the years through lack of maintenance, so we’ll fix that up, and Jack will be the architect and he’ll design it.”

Trump said the project would address “two existing courses that are in very bad shape” and said, “We can, for very little money, fix it up.”

Trump has time for all this because he doesn’t really care about serious issues and leaves those to his staff, his pal Putin, and apparently Jared Kushner. I haven’t really gotten into politics and foreign policy in this post, but here are some headlines if you’re interested.

Jacqueline Cole, Mariana Lastovyria, and Tim Mak at The Counteroffensive: NEWSFLASH: Witkoff was secretly giving Russians advice.

Shaun Walker at The Guardian: Who leaked Witkoff’s call advising Kremlin on how to get Trump on side?

Betsy Klein at CNN: Trump brushes off concerns about Witkoff’s interactions with Russians as leaked transcript roils Washington.

Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times: Doctor Critical of Vaccines Quietly Appointed as C.D.C.’s Second in Command.

David Cole at The New York Times: Mark Kelly Is Being Investigated for Telling the Truth.

Politico: Trump opens the door to Obamacare subsidy extension.

The Independent: Trump denies he pushed two-year healthcare subsidies extension, calls Obamacare a ‘disaster.’

The Daily Beast: Why Trump Aide Is Thinking 25th Amendment: Wolff.

Raw Story: Nobel Prize-winning economist drops grim warning for Trump about ‘broader recession.’

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: November 8, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: ACA subsidies, Broadview ICE facility, Chicago, Donald Trump, government shutdown, ICE, immigration, Inside Trump's Head, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Michael Wolff, SCOTUS, Senator Chuck Schumer, SNAP benefits, Steve Vladeck, Trump polls | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Raphael Balme, Three cats and wallpaper.

I’m feeling slightly more optimistic after Tuesday’s Democratic sweep of theoff-year elections on Tuesday. According to the polls, Trump is very unpopular, and I have to believe that his efforts to avoid giving food to starving Americans are not going to help him. Democracy is still in danger, but it is beginning look as if there’s still hope for saving it.

Julia Manchester at The Hill: Trump approval drops as Dems show more motivation for midterms: Poll.

President Trump’s approval rating is dropping as Democrats signal more motivation than the GOP ahead of next year’s midterm elections, according to a new Emerson College Polling survey released on Friday.

Forty-one percent of voters said they approved of the job Trump is doing as president, a four-point drop from Trump’s October approval rating of 45 percent. Forty-nine percent of voters said they disapproved of Trump’s job in office, up from 48 percent last month.

Meanwhile, the same poll found that 71 percent of Democratic voters said they were motivated to vote in next year’s midterm elections compared to 60 percent of Republicans. Forty-two percent of Independents said the same.

Fifty-seven percent of all voters said they were more motivated to vote than usual, while 12 percent said they were less motivated. Thirty-one percent said they were motivated as usual ahead of the midterms.

The polling comes after Republicans suffered losses to Democrats in Tuesday’s off-year elections, which were seen as a referendum on the first year of Trump’s second term in office….

The same poll found that 43 percent of voters said their vote in the midterms would be an expression of opposition to Trump, while 29 percent said their vote would be an expression of support.

The Emerson College national poll was conducted Nov. 3-4 among 1,000 active registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Here’s the full report from Emerson College polling.

I’ve been listening to/watching regularly a Daily Beast podcast called Inside Trump’s Head.” The show consists of interviews with journalist Michael Wolff, who has written 3 books about Trump. You can watch it on YouTube. Wolff is not only an expert on Trump (and Jeffrey Epstein), but also has numerous current sources inside the Trump circle. In addition, he is often funny.

Robert Davis at Raw Story: ‘Measure of optimism’: Analyst predicts ‘end of Trump’ after Democratic election wins.

Controversial journalist Michael Wolff made a bold prediction about the future of the second Trump administration on Thursday during a new podcast interview.

Wolff joined The Daily Beast’s Joana Coles on a new episode of “Inside Trump’s Head” that aired on Thursday, where the two discussed what Tuesday’s election results mean for President Donald Trump. Democrats won a spate of key races, including two governor’s offices and a host of statewide offices.

By Timothy Matthews

Trump and Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) have tried to brush off the Democratic victories. Wolff argued that they reveal a troubling trend for the Trump administration.

“Let’s look at that in the context of we are not today in an autocracy and [with] a measure of optimism, which is that we’ve just spent a year since last Election Day with Trump as this omnipotent figure in politics,” Wolff said. “And while I would not say that today spells in any way the end of Trump, I would say that the end of Trump could well happen.”

Leading up to Tuesday’s election, Trump shared multiple social media posts attempting to help his preferred candidates win. However, Trump-aligned and Trump-backed candidates did not fare well in the election.

“That’s what happens in American politics,” Wolff continued. “That’s one of the great things in American politics. Reversals, landslides. Things that you would not dream of happening, happen.”

“This has been a horrifying year of Trump, and without any sense that anyone could stand in his way,” he continued. “But in American politics, that’s what happens. You think these people are permanent, and it turns out that they are fleeting.”

Late last night, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson allowed Trump to continue withholding full SNAP benefits to the states after an appeals court ordered the payments to begin immediately.

Jennifer Ludden at NPR: Supreme Court temporarily blocks full SNAP benefits even as they’d started to go out.

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily granted the Trump administration’s request to block full SNAP food benefits during the government shutdown, even as residents in some states had already begun receiving them.

The Trump administration is appealing a court order to fully restart the country’s largest anti-hunger program. The high court decision late Friday gives a lower court time to consider a more lasting pause.

The move may add to confusion, though, since the government said it was sending states money on Friday to fully fund SNAP at the same time it appealed the order to pay for them.

Shortly after U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. issued that decision Thursday afternoon, states started to announce they’d be issuing full SNAP benefits. Some peoplewoke up Friday with the money already on the debit-like EBT cards they use to buy groceries. The number of states kept growing, and included California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Connecticut among others.

The Supreme Court’s decision means states must, for now, revert back to the partial payments the Trump administration had earlier instructed them to distribute. While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected the administration’s request for an administrative stay, the appeals court said it would consider the request for the stay and intends to issue a decision as quickly as possible.

SCOTUS whisperer Steve Vladeck quickly published an explainer at One First: SNAP WTF?.

Basically, Vladeck thinks that Jackson knew that if she didn’t issue the hold, the 5 right wing justices would go along with Trump’s wish for an administrative hold, and it might take a long time for them to get around to making a final decision on the SNAP payments.

I wanted to put out a very brief post to try to provide a bit of context for Justice Jackson’s single-justice order, handed down shortly after 9 p.m. EST on Friday night, that imposed an “administrative stay” of a district court order that would’ve required the Trump administration to use various contingency funds to pay out critical benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Willem den Ouden (NL 1928) Ferry with cat

It may surprise folks that Justice Jackson, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the Court’s behavior on emergency applications from the Trump administration, acquiesced in even a temporary pause of the district court’s ruling in this case. But as I read the order, which says a lot more than a typical “administrative stay” from the Court, Jackson was stuck between a rock and a hard place—given the incredibly compressed timing that was created by the circumstances of the case.

In a world in which Justice Jackson either knew or suspected that at least five of the justices would grant temporary relief to the Trump administration if she didn’t, the way she structured the stay means that she was able to try to control the timing of the Supreme Court’s (forthcoming) review—and to create pressure for it to happen faster than it otherwise might have. In other words, it’s a compromise—one with which not everyone will agree, but which strikes me as eminently defensible under these unique (and, let’s be clear, maddening and entirely f-ing avoidable) circumstances.

Everyone agrees that, among the many increasingly painful results of the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can no longer spend the funds Congress appropriated to cover SNAP—a program that helps to fund food purchases for one in eight (42 million!) Americans. Everyone also agrees that there are other sources of appropriated money that the President has the statutory authority to rely upon to at least partially fund SNAP benefits for the month of November. The two questions that have provoked the most legal debate is whether (1) he has the authority to fully fund SNAP; and (2) either way, whether federal courts can order him to use whatever authorities he has.

The dispute in the case that reached the Supreme Court on Friday involves a lawsuit that asked a federal court in Rhode Island to order the USDA first to partially fund SNAP for November, and then, as circumstances unfolded, to fully fund it. Having already ordered the USDA to do the former, yesterday, Judge McConnell issued a TRO ordering it to do the latter (to fully fund SNAP for November)—and to do so by the end of the day today.

I won’t quote any more, but I hope you’ll go read the explanation. Vladeck thinks that Jackson did the right thing under the circumstances, because she wants to make sure that the full court debates the case and makes a decision quickly. Vladeck also notes that Trump could just approve payment of the SNAP benefits. There’s no need of a court order. Democrats should make sure people understand that Trump is willing to starve children and old people in order to get his way on the shutdown and the cruel cuts in his big ugly bill.

Meanwhile, Democrats have offered a new proposal to reopen the government. NBC News: Democrats make a new offer to end the shutdown, but Republicans aren’t buying it.

Senate Democrats made an offer Friday to reopen the government, proposing a one-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies alongside a package of funding measures in order to secure their votes.

By Kichisaburou Hirota

The offer, rolled out on the floor by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., includes a “clean” continuing resolution, which would reopen the government at current spending levels, and a package of three bipartisan appropriations bills to fund some departments for the full fiscal year.

“After so many failed votes, it’s clear we need to try something different,” Schumer said, calling it “a very simple compromise.”

The short-term health care funding extension would prevent a massive increase in insurance costs for millions of Americans on Obamacare next year. In addition, Democrats proposed creating a bipartisan committee to negotiate a longer-term solution.

“This is a reasonable offer that reopens the government, deals with health care affordability and begins a process of negotiating reforms to the ACA tax credits for the future,” Schumer added. “Now, the ball is in the Republicans’ court. We need Republicans to just say yes.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called the Democratic offer a “nonstarter.”

“The Obamacare extension is the negotiation. That’s what we’re going to negotiate once the government opens up. … We need to vote to open the government — and there is a proposal out there to do that — and then we can have this whole conversation about health care,” he said.

Yeah, no. Republicans can’t be trusted to honor their promises.

Trump has started trying to get Republicans to get rid of the filibuster in order to reopen the government. Theodoric Meyer at The Washington Post: Trump wants to abolish the filibuster. GOP senators aren’t on board.

Senate Republicans have largely backed President Donald Trump’s agenda since he returned to office — but many refuse to support his campaign to scrap the filibuster.

Trump asked Republican senators at a meeting at the White House on Wednesday to end the government shutdown by getting rid of the filibuster and reiterated his demand Thursday at a news conference.

By Tatyana Rodionova

The filibuster, a long-standing Senate rule, allows a single senator to block most legislation unless 60 senators vote to cut off debate. Democrats have used the filibuster to block Republicans’ government funding bill for more than a month despite Republicans’ 53-seat Senate majority.

Some Senate Republicans returned from the White House saying they were open to ending the filibuster. But doing away with the rule would require the support of almost every Republican senator — and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and many other Republicans say they are implacably opposed to it.

“There’s nothing that could move me on the filibuster,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) told reporters Wednesday after the White House meeting.

Senate Republicans’ unwillingness to scrap the filibuster underscores the limits of Trump’s influence in his second term, during which lawmakers have been reluctant to defy him.

There is quite a bit of immigration news out there today.

NBC News: Judge permanently bars Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Portland in response to immigration protests.

A federal judge in Oregon on Friday issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard on the streets of Portland in response to protests against the president’s immigration policies.

“This Court arrives at the necessary conclusion that there was neither ‘a rebellion or danger of a rebellion’ nor was the President ‘unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States’ in Oregon when he ordered the federalization and deployment of the National Guard,” U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, wrote in her ruling.

The Trump administration can appeal the ruling if it wants to.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek responded to the ruling Friday, calling Trump’s move to federalize the guard “a gross abuse of power.”

“Oregon National Guard members have been away from their jobs and families for 38 days. The California National Guard has been here for just over one month. Based on this ruling, I am renewing my call to the Trump Administration to send all troops home now,” Kotek said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose justice department argued in the case objecting over his state’s National Guard’s deployment, called the decision “a win for the rule of law, for the constitutional values that govern our democracy, and for the American people.”

There are a number of immigration stories coming out of the Broadville neighborhood in Chicago where there is a large ICE facility.

Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark: ICE Has Created a ‘Ghost Town’ in the Heart of Chicago.

DHS’S IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS continue to land like hammer blows on communities across the United States. Families are being torn apart, protesters are catching pepperballs, businesses are at risk, and, increasingly, entire neighborhood economies in areas with large Latino populations are grinding to a halt.

The worst consequences occur when these different aspects of the Trump administration’s deportation regime overlap. Case in point: Chicago’s food scene, specifically the capital of the Mexican Midwest, Little Village, where I got both a firsthand look at the compounding harms of ICE’s actions and the best gorditas I’ve ever had in my life.

By Cindy Revell

The first sign of how different things are come well before you take a bite of the gordita. It’s when you look around and realize that there is now an eerie emptiness to a once-vibrant place.

As I pulled into Little Village for dinner with some local Chicagoans, we experienced no traffic and had our pick of parking spots. “Traffic used to be bumper to bumper for decades and start blocks away, I’ve never experienced it like this,” Chicago food writer Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu told me. In a TikTok about the neighborhood, she noted that Little Village is the second-largest shopping district in the city after Michigan Avenue, which is home of the “Magnificent Mile” of luxury stores.

Our destination that day last month was Carniceria Aguascalientes, which sits on the main thoroughfare of 26th Street. We passed through a glittering Mexican grocery store at the street side to get to the large diner-style restaurant lined with tables and booths. Only two or three of roughly thirty tables were in use when we sat down. As we enjoyed our food, the largely vacant dining room became less and less comprehensible.1

When I told our friendly waitress, Michelle Macias, 24, what I do and why I was in town, she was eager to share what had happened to the restaurant. Aguascalientes, a staple of “La Villita,” has welcomed customers for half a century. But lately, its business has plummeted. Sales are down a staggering amount: more than 60 percent compared to last year.

Everything has been turned on its head, Macias explained. While in past years Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were bustling, lately Mondays have become the restaurant’s busiest day—perhaps a result of people trying to avoid the usual crowds of the weekend. The restaurant announced this year that it would be closing an hour earlier, a money-saving measure. And as I had noticed, there’s now parking readily available, a fact that shocks longtime patrons accustomed to the gridlock that formerly surrounded the popular eatery.

Everything has been turned on its head, Macias explained. While in past years Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were bustling, lately Mondays have become the restaurant’s busiest day—perhaps a result of people trying to avoid the usual crowds of the weekend. The restaurant announced this year that it would be closing an hour earlier, a money-saving measure. And as I had noticed, there’s now parking readily available, a fact that shocks longtime patrons accustomed to the gridlock that formerly surrounded the popular eatery.

The bleak reality facing Carniceria Aguascalientes weighs on its forty employees—especially Macias, whose parents own the restaurant.

As I took it in, I couldn’t help but think back to when Trump’s mass-deportation policy was just getting underway, and the many conversations I had then with Democratic lawmakers who wondered aloud about where we would be in three years. Forget three years: In the Latino enclaves of Little Village, and in Back of the Yards, in Pilsen, and on the North Side, they’re wondering how they will get through the next three weeks.

“Everyone is staying home, everyone is scared,” Macias told me. “There’s so much uncertainty. COVID was bad, but this is way worse.”

It sounds like what happened in Washington DC. Read the whole thing at the Bulwark link.

Charles Thrush at Block Club Chicago: Feds Tell Faith Leaders ‘No More Prayer’ Outside Broadview Facility.

BROADVIEW – Federal authorities told demonstrators Friday that there would be “no more prayer” in front of or inside the Broadview ICE facility, in a move that mystified local leaders and raised legal questions.

A federal representative delivered the news to a huddle of faith leaders and activists standing outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility Friday, speaking after faith leaders were denied entry to the building for the third time Friday.

By Miroslaw Hajnos

Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills, whose department helped facilitate the phone call, said that he was “trying to figure out” in discussions with Mayor Katrina Thompson and an attorney if a federal agency could legally ban religious gatherings on land owned by the village. Religious groups previously have been allowed to practice outside the facility, he said.

“I’m just a messenger,” an anonymous voice stuttered over the phone to a huddle of faith leaders and activists standing outside the Broadview immigration processing facility on Friday.

During the call, which took place with a Block Club reporter present, the anonymous representative told a group of faith leaders and activists that “There is no more prayer in front of building or inside the building because this is the state and it’s not [of a] religious background.”

“I’m dumbfounded,” the police chief told Block Club. “Every time I talk with [federal officials], it feels like their rules keep changing. We don’t really know what’s happening, I’m sorry I can’t say more. We just want to keep people safe and let them peacefully protest without getting hurt.”

That sounds like a violation of the First Amendment to me.

Chicago Sun-Times: 14 suburban moms arrested in sit-in protest outside Broadview ICE facility.

A group of moms from the western suburbs were arrested Friday morning during a protest against the separation of families outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview.

Fourteen mothers jumped over the barricades and sat in a circle on Beach Street to “demand an end” to the immigration raids that have swept through the Chicago area since the Trump administration launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in September.

Less than a minute later, the women were arrested by Cook County sheriff’s deputies. The women were charged with obstruction, disorderly conduct and pedestrian walking on highways.

“We want to encourage other people who feel strongly about ICE’s actions to step off the sidelines and take our cities back,” said Teresa Shattuck, a mother from Oak Park. “We want to use our collective power and our white privilege in the way it should be used.”

Meghan Carter, another mother from Oak Park, said the women who were arrested understood the risks when they chose to take a stand, adding their experiences paled in comparison to what the detained immigrants inside the facility were enduring.

Carter said the suburban moms were a group of parents “fed up” with seeing immigration agents “terrorizing” their communities.

One more immigration/deportation story from NBC News: ‘Mega detention centers’: ICE considers buying large warehouses to hold immigrants.

The Trump administration is exploring buying warehouses that were designed for clients like Amazon and retrofitting them as detention facilities for immigrants before they are deported, a move that would vastly expand the government’s detention capacity, according to a Homeland Security Department official and a White House official.

By Timothy Matthews

The precise warehouses that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may buy have not yet been determined, but the agency is looking at locations in the southern U.S. near airports where immigrants are most often deported, the DHS official and the White House official said. Selecting such warehouses would “increase efficiency” in deportations, the DHS official said.

A deal to purchase the warehouses, which on average are more than twice the size of current ICE detention facilities, is past the early stages but not yet final, the DHS official and the White House official said. The DHS official described the warehouses as future “mega detention centers.”

Amazon would not be a part of any deal and would not profit from it as the warehouses were built by developers for Amazon but never used or leased by the company, the officials said.

An Amazon spokesperson said that the company is not involved in any discussions with DHS or ICE about warehouse space and that it leases and does not own the vast majority of its warehouse space.

It was not immediately clear who owns the warehouses that the government may buy and the DHS official and the White House official did not know how much the deals could be worth. The DHS official said some of the warehouses under consideration were built by developers with Amazon in mind but never used.

That’s it for me today. I hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend. I’m working on it.

Lazy Caturday Reads: Literary Cats Along With Some News

Posted: October 4, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: 82nd Airborne, cat art, caturday, deportations, Donald Trump, drone strikes on boats, extrajudicial executions, Howard Lutnick, immigration, Jeffrey Epstein, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, literary cats, Mark Hertling, Miranda Devine, Pete Hegseth, Portland OR, Signal app leaks, Venezuela | 5 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Haruki Murakami with Kafka

It’s the end of another week in which lots of bad things happened. Frankly, I can’t keep track of everything anymore. Here are some of the stories that interested me most.

I’m still recovering from Tuesday’s insane performances by Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump in front of 800 military leaders whom they forced to travel to Quantico Marine Corps base from all over the world. Former Lt. General Mark Hertling writes about it at The Bulwark: Questions After Quantico.

THE SPEECHES ON TUESDAY IN QUANTICO—by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of Defense (or War, as he would have it) Pete Hegseth, and President Donald Trump—were over in just two hours. But for the generals, admirals, and senior enlisted who left that auditorium and started their long flights home to the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East, those speeches were just the beginning. Because when Washington speaks—especially when it speaks with bluster, ambiguity, or hostility—it is the commanders who must translate to their troops, steady their units, and respond to the challenges of new orders.

I’ve been that commander. I’ve flown back overnight from Washington to Germany, walked into my headquarters in Heidelberg, and faced staff officers and soldiers who were waiting—not for a policy memo, not for another directive from the Pentagon, but for their commander to tell them what it all meant and to give them implementing instructions. After Tuesday’s meeting, they will want to know what things they will have to change, if their country still believes in them, if the oath they swore still anchors their service, if the mission they’re preparing for or executing still has clarity and legitimacy….

…[T]he shockwaves of the Quantico gathering are only now beginning to reverberate through bases in Europe, the Pacific, the Middle East, and beyond. Because when those commanders and their enlisted advisors returned to their posts, bases, air wings, or carrier strike groups, the questions began.

As the speech was being publicly broadcast, female soldiers living on the Kasernes of Germany watching on the Armed Forces Network were asking one another: Does this mean our opportunities to serve in jobs we love are closing again? Will I still be allowed to compete fairly for assignments and promotions? Black soldiers, weary and wary of subtle slights and systemic hurdles, will wonder if the new emphasis on “appearance” and “discipline” means a return to the days when shaving profiles for painful and unsightly face “bumps” were treated as liabilities instead of as a need for legitimate accommodations. Sikh soldiers, who after long battles were only recently granted the right to wear turbans and keep beards as part of a commonsense accommodation for their faith, will now wonder if that right will again be questioned. For each of them, their unique individuality and love for service in uniform are inseparable.

And gay and transgender service members—many of whom finally felt able to serve openly over the last decade—felt the floor shift beneath them yet again. Do I need to start making plans to leave? one staff sergeant might quietly ask her first sergeant. Or do I just keep my head down and hope this storm passes? Keeping your head down is sometimes needed in combat when engaging with the enemy; it’s not something we want from our soldiers who are living their Army value of “personal courage.”

There will be broader, increasingly gnawing concerns for the staffs: Are we really being asked to prepare for missions inside our own cities? What happens if peaceful protesters are described as “enemies”? Where does that leave the oath we swore—to the Constitution, not to a man or a party?

These aren’t abstract policy questions. They will be whispered in barracks hallways, posed after hours in a motor pool, or texted late at night to a trusted squad leader. They are the lived reality of a military force watching politics intrude on their profession. And with each one, there is the question of degraded morale, an erosion of trust.

How will commanders handle these overwhelming questions? Read what Hertling has to say about it at The Bulwark.

Patricia HIghsmith with Ripley

I’m also still gloating about the latest exploit by Trump’s stupidest cabinet member (and that’s really saying something, considering that group of morons) Howard Lutnik. Lutnick gave an interview to a podcast hosted by Miranda Devine of the New York Post in which he told personal stories about Jeffrey Epstein, who was once Lutnick’s next door neighbor in New York City. Could there be anything more guaranteed to enrage Trump?

Josh Christenson at The New York Post: Howard Lutnick tells ‘Pod Force One’ ex-neighbor Jeffrey Epstein showed off massage room, m ade creepy comment during townhouse tour.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a notable break with the Department of Justice, claimed late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was “the greatest blackmailer ever” — and may have traded the feds video of his rich and well-connected associates getting massages from young women in exchange for a controversial 2008 plea deal.

Lutnick made the shocking allegations to The Post’s Miranda Devine on the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” out now.

The 64-year-old cabinet secretary said Epstein himself showed off his notorious “massage room” while giving Lutnick and his wife a tour of the infamous East 71st Street townhouse after the couple moved in next door to the since-disgraced financier in 2005.

“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’” Lutnick recalled. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.’”

Lutnick said he and his wife quickly excused themselves and left Epstein’s home, “and in the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

When asked by Devine whether Epstein’s rich and powerful associates — including the likes of Prince Andrew and Microsoft founder Bill Gates — “could hang around him and not see what you saw, or did they see it and ignore it,” Lutnick responded, “They participated.”

“They get a massage, that’s what his MO was. ‘Get a massage, get a massage,’ and what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video,” the commerce secretary went on. “This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever, blackmailed people. That’s how he had money.” [….]

Lutnick added: “I assume way back when they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18-month sentence, which allowed him to have visits and be out of jail. I mean, he’s a serial sex offender. How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? There must have been a trade.

“So, my assumption, I have no knowledge, but my assumption is there was a trade for the videos, because there were people on those videos,” he also claimed.

Hahahaha!! Trump has tried so hard to distract from the Epstein files. He was pals for years with the guy who nauseated Howard Lutnick after one brief interaction. Now Democrats in the Congress want Lutnick to testify for their committees. You can watch the video of the Lutnick interview at the NY Post link.

Gore Vidal with Caligula

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy at USA Today: Trump’s commerce secretary calls Jeffrey Epstein the ‘greatest blackmailer.’

For months, President Donald Trump has pleaded with his supporters to move on from the Jeffrey Epstein controversy − calling it a “Democratic hoax” − even as he faces growing calls from Congress and many in his own MAGA base for more disclosure on the jet-setting sex offender.

But Trump’s fellow billionaire and Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, apparently didn’t get the memo.

Lutnick held forth on a recent podcast about how he found Epstein, who was a close friend of Trump’s for more than a decade, to be “gross” and believed he was a “blackmailer.”

“He was gross,” said Lutnick, in a Oct.1 podcast interview with New York Post’s Miranda Devine. Lutnick described Epstein as the “greatest blackmailer ever” and suggested he had used compromising videos of prominent men to get a 2008 sweetheart deal in Florida amid a child prostitution investigation.

Those comments sharply differ from a memo released by the Justice Department and FBI in July which said that there was no “credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals” or that he kept an “incriminating client list.”

One more on Lutnick by Asawin Suebsaeng at Zeteo: ‘F***ing Dumbass’: Trump Officials Want Howard Lutnick Sidelined After Epstein Comments.

Top officials in Donald Trump’s administration are furious with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, knowledgeable sources tell Zeteo, after he went on a tabloid podcast this week and blabbed about the one sex criminal who Team Trump wants to talk about least: Jeffrey Epstein. Not only that, but Lutnick went off script and undermined the government’s entire story about the late Epstein.

For months, President Trump and the highest levels of his administration have been trying to sell the public and his MAGA supporters on their conclusion that Epstein, the notorious sex offender and former Trump pal,did not run a secret sexual-blackmail operation targeting wealthy, powerful elites.

Sylvia Plath with “Daddy”

On Wednesday morning, the New York Post published parts of its podcast sit-down with Lutnick, who was once Epstein’s neighbor. The Trump Cabinet member told the Post about his tour of Epstein’s townhouse, where Epstein showed him his “massage room.” Lutnick said he was quickly “disgusted,” before asserting that Epstein’s rich and famous associates not only knew about his bad behavior but “participated.” He called Epstein a “blackmailer,” something the Trump administration strenuously denies.

Several senior Trump officials, some of whom were responsible for carefully curating the messaging regarding the administration’s decision to end its Epstein investigation, were apoplectic on Wednesday, bemoaning to one another about why Lutnick is still employed by the president and why the commerce secretary is allowed to do media appearances, four senior Trump administration appointees tell Zeteo.

“That fucking dumbass,” one of the senior Trump administration officials told Zeteo on Wednesday, after seeing a clip of Lutnick riffing on Epstein. “I’ve worked with him and can tell you he doesn’t think he did anything negative… That’s not how he thinks. He just talks and talks, and doesn’t care what unhelpful bullshit comes out.”

Well, Trump appointed that dumbass, along with a bunch of other idiots in his cabinet.

In more serious news, Trump is still murdering people in small boats off the coast of Venezuela.

Kathryn Armstrong at BBC News: Four killed in latest US strike on alleged drug vessel near Venezuela.

US forces have killed four people in an attack on a boat off the coast of Venezuela that was allegedly trafficking drugs, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says.

“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X.

It is the latest in a number of recent deadly strikes that the US has carried out on boats in international waters it says are involved in “narco-trafficking”.

The strikes have attracted condemnation in countries including Venezuela and Colombia, with some international lawyers describing the strikes as a breach of international law.

Hegseth said the attack took place in the US Southern Command’s area of responsibility, which covers most of South America and the Caribbean.

“Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route,” Hegseth said about Friday’s attack.

“These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”

US President Trump also confirmed the strike on his Truth Social platform, saying that the boat was carrying enough drugs “to kill 25 to 50 thousand people”.

However, the US has not provided evidence for its claims or any information about the identities of those on board.

An opinion piece from W.J. Hennigan at The New York Times (gift link): If We’re at War, Americans Deserve to Know More About It.

The Trump administration told Congress this week that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.

The average American knows vanishingly little about what its government seeks to accomplish in this fight. Citizens aren’t in possession of the metrics by which to judge the administration’s pursuit of those goals.

George Bernard Shaw with Pygmalian

We haven’t been told which specific drugs they seek to stop. We haven’t been told much about which specific groups they seek to destroy. We haven’t been told much about what legal authorities they are acting on.

Withholding this information from the American public is the administration’s way to escape scrutiny. At the very least, the country deserves some evidence of whether the military operation is working.

If stopping the flow of drugs is the goal, the actions taken so far have been unpersuasive. American forces, at the direction of President Trump, executed a lethal airstrike on Friday on a boat off Venezuela, killing four people on board. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a video of the attack on X, saying, “The vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people,” adding that it was “affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations.”

This is the sort of vague language the administration has used in its campaign over the past two months as it directs the military to sporadically launch airstrikes — now totaling four — against boats in the region that the government says are running drugs. No corresponding evidence has been provided to the public to support the actions. The operation amounts to extrajudicial executions, according to U.N. officials.

A bit more:

Without delving into the strikes’ questionable legality again, the bombing runs fall well short of decisive military actions. It would be hard to convince anyone that blowing up a few motorboats — and all the people aboard them — will prove conclusive in winning the half-century-old war on drugs.

For one thing, this isn’t how the Pentagon combats enemy networks. Say what you will about the many failures of America’s global war on terrorism, but it’s undeniable the U.S. military became frighteningly proficient at penetrating and taking apart organizations over the past quarter-century.

Instead of systematically killing low- and midlevel henchmen in pinprick airstrikes, U.S. forces learned that more information could be gleaned through capturing those suspects and gathering, bagging and tagging their personal electronics for intelligence analysis. A phone from a suspect’s pocket in Iraq, for instance, would often include enough information, such as phone numbers and text conversations, so that a follow-on raid on other operatives could be planned. This is how U.S. forces mapped out countless terrorist groups’ leadership ranks along with the fighters under their command.

The infrastructure for ship interdictions already exists in the Caribbean. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have long interdicted vessels that they suspected of drug running.

Why the administration has opted to blow apart potential leads and sources instead of exploiting them is anyone’s guess.

These are serious questions, but Trump and Hegseth aren’t serious people. All they are interested in is blowing people and boats up and posting videos of the action. It’s disgusting that they are getting away with doing this in our name. You can use the gift link to read the rest of this thoughtful article.

The Abrego Garcia case is still going on, and there was a notable ruling yesterday.

Alan Feuer at The New York Times (gift link): Judge Finds ‘Likelihood’ That Charges Against Abrego Garcia Are Vindictive.

A federal judge in Nashville ruled on Friday that there was a “realistic likelihood” that the indictment filed against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and then brought back to face criminal charges, amounted to a vindictive prosecution by the Justice Department.

The ruling was an astonishing rebuke of both the department and some of its top officials, including Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general. Mr. Blanche was called out by name in the ruling for remarks he made about Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case on the same day in June he was returned to U.S. soil to face the charges in Federal District Court in Nashville.

Doris Lessing with Black Madonna

In a 16-page decision, Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. said there was evidence that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s prosecution “may stem from retaliation” by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Judge Crenshaw found that Trump officials may have sought to punish Mr. Abrego Garcia for having filed a lawsuit successfully challenging his initial “unlawful deportation” to El Salvador.

Moreover, Judge Crenshaw indicated how he was serious about getting to the bottom of the issue of vindictiveness. He said he intended to permit Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to pry, at least in part, into the Trump administration’s process of deciding to bring an indictment in the first place and how the charges related to the deportation case.

Vindictive prosecution motions are exceedingly difficult to win because of the high threshold required to prove that prosecutors acted improperly by filing criminal charges. Under the law, cases can be considered vindictive only if defendants can show that prosecutors displayed animus toward them while they were seeking to vindicate their rights in court, and that the charges would not have been brought except for the existence of that animus.

While Judge Crenshaw has not yet made a final decision on the issue of vindictiveness, the fact that he is even considering doing so in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case is a hugely embarrassing blow to the Trump administration. From the moment Trump officials acknowledged that they had mistakenly expelled Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, President Trump and his top aides began a relentless barrage of attacks against him, calling him a violent member of the street gang MS-13, a wife beater and even a terrorist, effectively blaming him for being the victim of their own administrative error.

The judge’s ruling highlighted the ways in which the habit many Trump officials have of speaking out of court about legal cases has — or could — come back to haunt them.

Use the gift link to read the rest if you’re intersted.

Trump has been talking about sending troops to cities governed by Democrats. Lately he’s been focusing on Portland, Oregon. This is just beyond belief. And we know about it because of another leak from Signal.

Catherine Bouris at The Daily Beast: Trump Goon Spills Bonkers Plan to Deploy 82nd Airborne to Blue City.

A senior White House official accidentally disclosed that the Trump administration was considering deploying an elite army strike force into Portland by using Signal in a public place.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported Friday that Anthony Salisbury, one of Stephen Miller’s top deputies, was observed discussing the plans via Signal in view of members of the public while traveling in Minnesota. The newspaper was then contacted by one member of the public who was troubled to see sensitive military plans discussed so openly.

Aldous Huxley with Limbo

In the messages, senior White House officials discussed the potential deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, an elite unit that specializes in parachuting into hostile territory. The division has been deployed in both world wars, including the Battle of the Bulge, as well as Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Across several conversations, the Star Tribune reports, Salisbury spoke about a range of matters with Pete Hegseth adviser Patrick Weaver as well as other officials.

In one of the messages, Weaver revealed that Hegseth wanted Trump to explicitly instruct him to send soldiers to Portland.

“Between you and I, I think Pete just wants the top cover from the boss if anything goes sideways with the troops there,” Weaver reportedly said.

Noting the potentially disastrous optics around sending an elite division into an American city, Weaver told Salisbury, “82nd is like our top tier [quick reaction force] for abroad. So it will cause a lot of headlines. Probably why he wants potus to tell him to do it.”

Ultimately, Trump opted to send 200 National Guard soldiers into Portland, following a similar playbook used in other Democrat-controlled cities like Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Both the state of Oregon and the city of Portland have sued to stop the deployment.

Lazy Caturday Reads: Another Horrible Week Under the Trump Regime

Posted: September 20, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: ABC, authoritarianism, Brendan Carr, Charlie Kirk, Chicago, dictatorship, Disney, Donald Trump, Erik S. Siebert, extra legal boat strikes, fascism, FCC, first amendment, H1B visas, ICE, immigration, Jimmy Kimmel, Kat Abughazaleh, Midway Blitz, Pentagon reporter rules, Ted Cruz, Tyler Robinson | 16 Comments

Good Morning!!

By Leonid Kiparisov

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.

Andrew Perez, Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng summarize the latest dictatorish happenings at Rolling Stone: Donald Trump’s Most Authoritarian Week Yet.

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.

Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really 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.”

Trump got some pushback from a surprising source. NBC News: Ted Cruz rips FCC chair’s Jimmy Kimmel threat as ‘unbelievably dangerous.’

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.”

There’s also no evidence of involvement of left wing groups in the Kirk assassination. NBC News:

The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.

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.

Disney (and perhaps even right wing Sinclair) apparently regret the sudden firing of Jimmy Kimmel.

Screen Rant: Disney Is Scrambling After The Backlash To Jimmy Kimmel’s Cancellation Blew Up.

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.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: August 2, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: authoritarianism, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Prisons, cat art, caturday, concentration camps, Dmitri Medvedev, Donald Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell, ICE, immigration, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein files, nuclear submarines, Pete Hegseth, Philip Hegseth, Russia, tent cities, Use of military for immigration enforcement | 5 Comments

Good Day!!

Michael Cox, in the style of Amadeo Modigliani

The top stories today focus on Trump’s failing economy and his firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer after she released weak job numbers yesterday. Dakinikat provided a deep dive into the economy yesterday and addressed the firing in the comments to her post, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t spend much time on economic issues, which are not my area of expertise, to put it mildly.

I’m still laser focused on the Epstein/Maxwell story. I’m currently reading Julie Brown’s book on the case, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, and it is fascinating and enlightening. Brown is was responsible for keeping the case alive–after Epstein received a only slap on the wrist for his crimes–with her investigative stories in the Miami Herald

I’m also concerned about the news that Trump has moved nuclear submarines closer to Russia, perhaps as a threat to Putin and as another attempt at distraction from Epstein/Maxwell news.

Another important story breaking today is about Trump’s plans to further involve the military in his deportation efforts and build more concentration camps to detain migrants.

Two economic stories of possible interest

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The Trump Economy Stumbles.

President Trump has now imposed his new tariff regime on the world, and the triumphalism is palpable in MAGA land. But maybe hold the euphoria, as this week’s reports on jobs and the economy suggest the new golden age may take a while to appear.

Friday’s labor report arrived with a particular jolt, with a mere 73,000 net new jobs in July. Even more bearish were the downward revisions of 258,000 jobs in May and June. Job gains over the last three months are barely more than 100,000.

The details in the report provide little solace. The jobless rate ticked up only to 4.25% from 4.1%, but that was in part because the labor force continued to shrink. The labor participation rate fell again to 62.2% and is now down half a percentage point in a year.

Employers aren’t laying off workers, but they have all but stopped new hiring. Notably, most of the new jobs are in healthcare and social assistance, which rely heavily on government spending. This continues the Biden-era trend that Trumponomics was supposed to change. Not so far.

The much-advertised rebirth of U.S. manufacturing also hasn’t arrived. The economy shed 11,000 manufacturing jobs in July, following a loss of 26,000 in May and June. The ISM Manufacturing Index fell again in July to 48, the fifth straight month below 50.

A bit more:

One labor market problem may be the crackdown on migrant workers. The foreign-born workforce has fallen by about a million since Mr. Trump took office. The National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, says immigrants accounted for over half of the labor force increase in each of the last three decades. Fewer workers means fewer new jobs as employers conclude they can’t fill them.

How much of this jobs and growth slowdown owes to Mr. Trump’s tariffs? It’s hard to say for sure. But it has occurred in the wake of Mr. Trump’s April 2 tariff shock, his rapid backtrack from the highest rates, and then his willy-nilly threats and deal-making with the world. The policy uncertainty has surely affected business hiring and investment. How can you hire or invest if you don’t know what your cost of goods will be, or from which supplier you will be able to buy at a competitive price?

On that score, Mr. Trump’s latest tariff blast this week hasn’t put an end to the uncertainty. Much of the world will now pay 15%, if Mr. Trump sticks to his deals. But some of the biggest U.S. trading partners—Mexico, Canada, China and India—remain in tariff limbo. Brazil will pay 50%, though it has a trade surplus with the U.S. And what did Switzerland ever do to Mr. Trump to deserve 39%? Charge too much for a watch?

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?: Trump Shoots the Messenger. Firing the BLS Commissioner moves us into banana republic territory.

One basic character of the politicization necessary to create an authoritarian regime is that public employees are reluctant to share information that displeases their political bosses. When those bosses can fire them, the incentives to suppress uncongenial information, or provide false information, become overwhelming.

Modigliani’s Cat by Eve Riser Roberts

Over time, life in these countries become bifurcated. Statistics become propaganda. There is an official reality, which many proclaim but few believe, and actual reality. And at some point actual reality catches up with the fantasy.

We have seen examples of this dynamic already play out in the Trump administration. Career civil servants have been reluctant to contradict, for example, Musk’s false claims about fraud in government, or Kennedy’s nonsensical claims about vaccines, knowing that doing so would probably cost them their jobs. In certain areas, such as environmental policy, the people that produce factual information that the administration dislikes are being fired.

Trump just took his attack on reality to a different level, by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Why? Because he did not like the job numbers her agency produced.

In related news, we just saw the last credible BLS data for the rest of the Trump administration….

Trump’s claim is that the head of the BLS is somehow “rigged” the data “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” “We need accurate Jobs Numbers” that reflect Trump’s opinion that “The Economy is BOOMING.”

As Trump fires an official because he does not like the job numbers, he proclaims that says that such numbers “can’t be manipulated for political purposes.” But revisions to job numbers are routine, and there is no reason to assume that an official would willingly publish false data knowing the ire that would follow from the White House.

Trump has no evidence for what he claims. He simply does not like reality, and will do what he can to deny it. And as tariffs kick in, and Trump’s layoffs of public employees becomes incorporated into jobs data, that reality will look worse and worse.

Read the rest at the Substack link.

Epstein/Maxwell News

Anna Betts at The Guardian: Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell transferred to lower-security prison in Texas.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate of Jeffrey Epstein who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, has been transferred from a federal prison in Florida, to a lower-security facility in Texas, the US Bureau of Prisons said on Friday.

“We can confirm, Ghislaine Maxwell is in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan in Bryan, Texas,” a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement.

Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, also confirmed the transfer but declined further comment. FPC Bryan is described as a “minimum security federal prison camp” that houses 635 female inmates.

According to the Bureau of Prisons’ inmate locator, the Texas facility is also home to Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of the California-based blood-testing company Theranos, who is serving a lengthy sentence for fraud. Real Housewives of Salt Lake City TV star Jen Shah is also serving time there for fraud.

Oh good. Maybe they can all hang out.

Maxwell’s move from FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison, to the federal prison camp in Bryan comes roughly a week after she was interviewed in Florida over two days about the Epstein case by the deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, who is also one of Donald Trump’s former lawyers.

Amadeo Modigliani, by Nancy Alari

Blanche had said that he wanted to speak with Maxwell – who was sentenced in 2022 for sex trafficking and other related crimes – to see if she might have “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims”.

Details of that meeting have not been made public but Maxwell’s lawyer described it as “very productive”, adding that Maxwell answered the questions “honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability”.

The interview took place amid growing political and public pressure on the Trump administration to release additional federal documents related to the Epstein case – a case which has, for years, been the subject of countless conspiracy theories.

Earlier in July, the justice department drew bipartisan criticism and backlash after announcing that it would not be releasing any more documents from the investigation into the late Epstein, who died in prison in New York in 2019 while awaiting federal trial. This was despite earlier pledges to release more files, by the US president and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.

Allison Gill notes that this transfer was highly irregular:

The reason for the move is listed as a “lesser security transfer” (code 308) according to a transfer document I reviewed, which is completely inappropriate of for inmates who are in the early stages of serving their sentences, according to another source. “This is such obvious corruption. I have never seen this before,” said another person at BOP familiar with the situation.

The unit that approves waivers for sex offenders to be moved to minimum security camps is the Designation and Sentence Computation Center near Dallas. Currently, the senior deputy assistant director is Rick Stover, a career BOP employee who speaks frequently with White House officials.

I can’t help but wonder whether this is part of a deal struck between Maxwell and Blanche in exchange for her testimony.

It sure looks like it.

CNBC: Jeffrey Epstein victims and family blast Trump for Ghislaine Maxwell prison transfer.

Two sexual abuse victims of Jeffrey Epstein and the family of late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre on Friday blasted President Donald Trump after learning that Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell had been transferred to a less restrictive prison in Texas from Florida….

“President Trump has sent a clear message today: Pedophiles deserve preferential treatment and their victims do not matter,” the statement said, noting that the two women and Giuffre’s family had not been notified of Maxwell’s transfer before media reports of it….

“It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received,” the statement said.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency,” the statement said.

“Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas,” the statement said.

“This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes. The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar,” the statement said.

“This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better,” the statement said.

No kidding. And as we all know, the coverup is usually worse than the crime.

This is interesting, from Alison Detzel at MSNBC: Legal expert breaks down the ‘curious’ timeline of Ghislaine Maxwell’s DOJ meeting.

Before Maxwell’s arrival in Texas was reported, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin was asked about the interactions between Maxwell and the Trump administration on Thursday’s “Deadline: White House,” and called the timeline “curious.”

Rubin recounted that before that late July meeting between Blanche and Maxwell, the Trump administration, through Solicitor General D. John Sauer, submitted a brief to the Supreme Court arguing Maxwell’s conviction should stand. (Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 after being convicted of sex-trafficking-related crimes.) In that July 14 filing, Sauer shot down Maxwell’s claim that she was protected from prosecution due to Epstein’s 2007 plea agreement in Florida.

But the following day, Rubin recalled, on July 15, Trump was contacted by reporters from The Wall Street Journal about an alleged birthday card he had written to Epstein in 2003. Trump has denied the Journal’s reporting, but the president was inundated with questions about the details of his relationship with Epstein.

One week later, Blanche posted to social media that the Justice Department would reach out to Maxwell for an interview, and later that week, he met with her in Florida.

Rubin noted that the government had “two days of conversations with her, not in the federal prison where she’s serving time, but in a U.S. Attorney’s Office, so she theoretically could be more comfortable during those conversations.”

While we know that the meeting took place, Rubin stressed that many of the details are still unknown: “We still don’t know who else from the Department of Justice was there. We don’t know how that conversation was recorded, if at all. And yet, we still don’t know what the resolution is.”

So what changed? Was it just about the birthday note/drawing? Or did Trump learn something else about how he was portrayed in the FBI files?

Cat in a Hat, inspired by Amadeo Modigliani painting, by Olga Koval

One more Epstein story from Newsweek: Donald Trump’s Name in Jeffrey Epstein Files Redacted by FBI: Report.

The FBI redacted Donald Trump‘s name, along with the names of other prominent public figures, from references in the Jeffrey Epstein files, three people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg‘s Jason Leopold.

Internal directives instructed about 1,000 FBI agents to flag any mention of Trump during a March review of roughly 100,000 pages of records, people familiar with the process told Bloomberg.

The Justice Department said the review turned up no “client list” or evidence linking Trump to criminal activity, despite his name appearing in Epstein’s contact book and flight logs….

The president and senior White House officials have repeatedly said in recent weeks that there was no reason to release the remaining Epstein files, and they have sought to move on from the saga despite calls from Trump’s base to release all documents as promised.

The Bloomberg report said that earlier this year, FBI agents were directed to search for all documents associated with the Epstein case and determine which could be released, totaling tens of thousands of pages, following Attorney General Pam Bondi‘s request for them.

During the review, in March, FBI personnel were said to have identified numerous references to Trump and other high-profile people, with the names then redacted by FOIA officers because they were private citizens at the time—a common practice under FOIA case law.

Trump Moves Nuclear Submarines

Brad Lendon at CNN: Trump is moving nuclear submarines following remarks by an ex-Russian president. Here are the subs in the American fleet.

US President Donald Trump said Friday he was ordering two US Navy nuclear submarines to “appropriate regions,” in response to remarks by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of its Security Council.

In what he called an effort to be “prepared,” Trump said in a Truth Social post that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”

The president did not specify what type of submarines were being moved or where to, and the Pentagon usually reveals little about any of its subs’ movements.

The US Navy has three types of submarines, all of which are nuclear-powered, but only one of which carries nuclear weapons.

Ballistic Missile Submarines

The US Navy has 14 Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), often referred to as “boomers.”

SSBNs “are designed specifically for stealth and the precise delivery of nuclear warheads,” a Navy fact sheet on them says.

Each can carry 20 Trident ballistic missiles with multiple nuclear warheads. Tridents have a range of up to 4,600 miles (7,400 kilometers), meaning they wouldn’t need to move closer to Russia to hit it – in fact, they could do so from the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian or Arctic oceans….

Olga Koval, Cat is on the chair, inspired by Amadeo Modigliani painting

Guided missile submarines

In the 1990s, the Pentagon determined the Navy didn’t need as many Ohio-class SSBNs in the nuclear deterrent role, converting four of them into guided-missile submarines (SSGNs).

Retaining the same overall specs as the boomers, the SSGNs carry Tomahawk cruise missiles instead of the Trident ballistic missiles.

Each can carry 154 Tomahawks with a high-explosive warhead of up to 1,000 pounds, and a range of about 1,000 miles….

Fast-attack submarines

These form the bulk of the US Navy’s submarine fleet and are designed to hunt and destroy enemy subs and surface ships with torpedoes. They can also strike land-based targets with Tomahawk missiles, though they carry the Tomahawks in much smaller numbers than the SSGNs.

Are More Concentration Camps Like Alligator Alcatraz Coming?

Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Trump’s Domestic Use of Military Set to Get Worse, Leaked Memo Shows.

President Donald Trump has already enmeshed the United States military in domestic law enforcement operations involving immigration to an unprecedented degree. He has authorized a major military buildup at the border. He has maximized the use of military planes for deportations, complete with the White House pumping out imagery of migrants getting frog-marched onto souped-up military aircraft. He sent the National Guard into Los Angeles amid large-scale protests there—and then sent in the Marines.

But an internal memo circulated inside the Department of Homeland Security suggests that Trump’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement on immigration could soon get worse. The memo—obtained by The New Republic—provides a glimpse into the thinking of top officials as they seek to involve the Defense Department more deeply in these domestic operations, and it has unnerved experts who believe it portends a frightening escalation.

Woman red dress grey cat, by Theresa Tanner, based on a painting by Modigliani.

The memo lays out the need to persuade top Pentagon officials to get much more serious about using the military to combat illegal immigration—and not just at the border. It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed “for years to come.” And it likens the threat posed by transnational gangs and cartels to having “Al Qaeda or ISIS cells and fighters operating freely inside America,” hinting at a ramped-up militarized posture inside the interior.

“The memo is alarming, because it speaks to the intent to use the military within the United States at a level not seen since Japanese internment,” Carrie Lee, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told me. “The military is the most powerful, coercive tool our country has. We don’t want the military doing law enforcement. It absolutely undermines the rule of law.”

The memo was authored by Philip Hegseth—the younger brother of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who is a senior adviser to Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and DHS liaison officer to the Defense Department. As such it also sheds light on Hegseth the Younger’s role, which has been the subject of media speculation labeling him an obscure but influential figure in his brother’s MAGA orbit.

The memo outlines the itinerary for a July 21 meeting between senior DHS and Pentagon officials, with the goal of better coordinating the agencies’ activities in “defense of the homeland.” It details goals that Philip Hegseth hopes to accomplish in the meeting and outlines points he wants DHS officials to impress on Pentagon attendees.

Participants listed comprise the very top levels of both agencies, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several of his top advisers, Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine, and NORTHCOM Commander Gregory Guillot. Staff include Phil Hegseth and acting ICE commissioner Todd Lyons….

Please read the rest if you have time.

Samantha Michaels at Mother Jones: ICE Plans to Build More Tent Jails for Immigrants. What Could Go Wrong?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), now the best-funded federal lawenforcement agency in the United States, is embarking on a plan to drastically expand its detention infrastructure. But considering the $45 billion it’s been given for the job, the agency’s vision for its new facilities seems startlingly low-tech.

In July, the Wall Street Journal got its hands on internal government documents revealing that ICE wants to incarcerate more immigrants in tents, or “hardened soft-sided facilities.” The administration hopes to erect thousands of these tents “as quickly as possible to expand detention capacity…at US military bases and adjoining bricks-and-mortar ICE jails,” the Journal reported. Officials say they like this approach, at least for now, because they can quickly set up tons of beds in a few new locations rather than finding space at existing facilities here and there.

But tents raise serious humanitarian and safety issues. “There’s a reason no one wants to live in a tent,” says Eunice Cho, an attorney who challenges unconstitutional conditions in immigrant detention centers with the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “There are many, many logistical problems—with sanitation, getting food. They certainly are not weatherproof. They do not have the setup to make sure people’s medical concerns are addressed.”

Prior to 2025, ICE did not use tents for long-term detention, but soft-sided facilities are not completely new in the incarceration realm. Here are some recent examples, each highlighting problems that are almost sure to repeat themselves as the Trump administration rolls out its plan.

Michaels provides a detailed history of tent cities in the U.S. The article is well worth reading in full.

Those are my offerings for today. What do you think? What else is on your mind?

	dakinikat on Thursday Cartoons: Jaws
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Wednesday Reads: ICE in Massachusetts, Trump’s Aging, and His Decorating Fetish

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Lazy Caturday Reads

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Lazy Caturday Reads: Literary Cats Along With Some News

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Lazy Caturday Reads: Another Horrible Week Under the Trump Regime

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Two economic stories of possible interest

Epstein/Maxwell News

Trump Moves Nuclear Submarines

Are More Concentration Camps Like Alligator Alcatraz Coming?

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Good Morning!!

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Good Day!!

Two economic stories of possible interest

Epstein/Maxwell News

Trump Moves Nuclear Submarines

Are More Concentration Camps Like Alligator Alcatraz Coming?

Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:

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