Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It

Posted: November 3, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, Cheater in Chief, Journalism, kakistocracy, Our Media is Complicit with Autocracy, Televising Propaganda instead of News | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)

I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.

I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.

I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.

This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”

Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.

And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.

By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.

But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.

They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.

NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–

NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.

Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.

`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long.  Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.

We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.

If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.

Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.

It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’

Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.

I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:

  • “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
  • “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
  • “Why won’t Putin end this war?
  • “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
  • “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”

Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?

But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.

At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).

But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.

There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:

  • “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
  • “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
  • “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
  • “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
  • “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
  • “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
  • “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
  • “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
  • “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
  • “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
  • “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
  • “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
  • “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
  • “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.

Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.

CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”

Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.

The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.

And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.

I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it.  I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.

The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.

Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.

The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.

While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.

At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.

During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.

“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”

During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.

The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.

Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post.

 

“And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow!  I’m old!

 

 What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?

 

Finally, Friday Reads: A Trumpy Halloween!

Posted: October 31, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: , , , , , , | 9 Comments

“We are so blessed to have a businessman in charge.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, if you need to be scared out of your wits, no need to rewatch those Freddy Krueger Movies. Just pick up a newspaper or two and be prepared to be chilled to your bones, if the weather isn’t already doing that to you. I’m a lot on the late side today because Temple snuggled up so close to me last night she nearly shoved me off the bed several times. The furnace is already on, but I’ve also brought out the space heater to try to warm her up and then lower the temperature back to the foot of the bed.

It appears the New York Times may have gone woke. My jaw dropped reading the Editorial Board headline. Cue the Jaws Shark theme song.”Donald Trump has wielded power as no previous president has, often in open defiance of the law. His actions have raised a chilling question.” Oh, really? Finally, starting to notice that, are we? “Are We Losing Our Democracy?” (The link is shared for you to read.)

Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.

Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.

The first section is on authoritarian speech, which seems a fitting place for reporters to start.

Authoritarian takeovers in the modern era often do not start with a military coup. They instead involve an elected leader who uses the powers of the office to consolidate authority and make political opposition more difficult, if not impossible. Think of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and, to lesser degrees, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India. These leaders have repressed dissent and speech in heavy-handed ways.

Over the past year, President Trump and his allies have impinged on free speech to a degree that the federal government has not since perhaps the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. His administration pressured television stations to stop airing Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show when Mr. Kimmel criticized Trump supporters after the murder of Charlie Kirk; revoked the visas of foreign students for their views on the war in Gaza; and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups. Mr. Trump so harshly criticizes people who disagree with him, including federal judges, that they become targets of harassment from his supporters.

The Bottom Line
Many forms of speech and dissent remain vibrant in the United States. But the president has tried to dull them. His evident goal is to cause Americans to fear they will pay a price for criticizing him, his allies, or his agenda.

Emily Atkin has a blog post up at HEATED describing the incredible firings of reporters at CBS News who were covering Climate Change. “The fall of the CBS News climate team. David Ellison, the new pro-Trump chief executive of Paramount Skydance, has dismantled the best climate change reporting team in cable news.”

As Hurricane Melissa raced toward Jamaica on Monday, CBS News senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf sent an email to the newsroom, detailing the historic storm’s scientific connection to climate change.

In the message obtained by HEATED, Wholf explained how an overly-hot Atlantic Ocean supercharged Melissa, fueling its rapid 70-mph intensification in a single day, boosting winds by about 10 mph, and turning what might have been a category 4 storm into a category 5. Wholf suggested a simple sentence CBS News reporters could use in storm-related stories to make the connection.

Wholf usually sent emails like this in the wake of deadly extreme weather events, two CBS News staffers told HEATED. But it was the first such email Wholf had sent under the company’s new pro-Trump billionaire chief executive David Ellison, and its new anti-“woke” editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

It was also the last. Two days later, as Hurricane Melissa smashed into the Caribbean, Wholf was laid off, along with the majority of the five person team supporting CBS News’s climate coverage.

Today, the only person remaining at CBS News to cover climate change is national environmental correspondent David Schechter, who no longer has a dedicated producer. In addition to Wholf’s layoff, two producers supporting the climate team were let go, and another dedicated climate producer was reassigned.

The cuts were part of a larger layoff on Wednesday that affected nearly 100 other CBS News staffers, including the network’s race and culture team, and around 1,000 staffers across newly-merged parent company Paramount Skydance.

Two days ago, CNN reported on other areas that have lost staff, which may be seen as areas that likely offend Trump, as Paramount Skydance plans more mergers. Under any functional Justice Department, these mergers would be viewed as leading to excessive concentration in a single industry. A high concentration of markets is non-competitive and detrimental to the economy and consumers. There are numerous laws, starting with the Sherman Act, that block such mergers. Brian Stelter reports that “Paramount begins steep layoffs as David Ellison reshapes the media giant.”

The new Paramount is laying off about 10% of its workforce, achieving some of the cost savings that CEO David Ellison promised investors when he took charge of the media company over the summer.

Many divisions of Paramount Skydance will be impacted, from the iconic movie studio to CBS News to Comedy Central.

About a thousand jobs are expected to be cut this week, and another thousand in the near future, as a new management team reorganizes the company.

Ellison, who headed the production company Skydance and merged it with the much larger Paramount, said in a memo on Wednesday morning that “these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.”

“In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” he said. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth.”

Steep cuts and sweeping changes are common after mergers, but Paramount has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, so employees have been especially on edge about this fall’s expected terminations.

At CBS News, nearly 100 positions will be eliminated, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on condition of anonymity.

The person said the CBS News cuts were already in the works before Ellison appointed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief earlier this month, following the purchase of her startup outlet, The Free Press.

The reorganization comes as the wider media industry waits to see Ellison’s ambitious plans for Paramount. In recent weeks Ellison has been pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of CNN, HBO Max and the Warner Bros. studio.

The WBD board has rebuffed those initial offers and started a strategic review, which could result in a sale of the entire company, a continuation of the current plan to split WBD into two, or some other outcome.

The impact on reporting and free expression could be huge.

There are indications that “U.S. poised to strike military targets in Venezuela in escalation against Maduro regime.” This is reported by Antonio Maria Delgado writing for the Miami Herald.”

The Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment, sources with knowledge of the situation told the Miami Herald, as the U.S. prepares to initiate the next stage of its campaign against the Soles drug cartel. The planned attacks, also reported by the Wall Street Journal, will seek to destroy military installations used by the drug-trafficking organization the U.S. says is headed by Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and run by top members of his regime.

Sources told the Herald that the targets — which could be struck by air in a matter of days or even hours — also aim to decapitate the cartel’s hierarchy. U.S. officials believe the cartel exports around 500 tons of cocaine yearly, split between Europe and the United States.

While sources declined to say whether Maduro himself is a target, one of them said his time is running out. “Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” the source said. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.”

Well, aren’t we the rogue nation now? The Associated Press reports that the “UN human rights chief says US strikes on alleged drug boats are ‘unacceptable’.”

The U.N. human rights chief said Friday that U.S. military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean allegedly carrying illegal drugs from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called for an investigation into the strikes, in what appeared to mark the first such condemnation of its kind from a United Nations organization.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for Türk’s office, relayed his message Friday at a regular U.N. briefing: “These attacks and their mounting human cost are unacceptable. The U.S. must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”

She said Türk believed “airstrikes by the United States of America on boats in the Caribbean and in the Pacific violate international human rights law.”

President Donald Trump has justified the attacks on the boats as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States, but the campaign against drug cartels has been divisive among countries in the region.

Orange Caligula is insisting that the United States Senate nix the Filibuster. This is reported by Politico. “Republicans quickly push back on Trump’s call to nix filibuster. Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson poured cold water on the idea Friday.” We’ll have to see if the two leaders will hold to that.

Republicans are quickly tamping down President Donald Trump’s call to eliminate the Senate filibuster as they try to keep pressure on Democrats to end the 31-day government shutdown.

GOP leaders believed Thursday they were on track to reopen agencies as soon as next week. Then Trump threw a fresh complication into their laps overnight when he revived calls for Republicans to invoke the “nuclear option” and eliminate the 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation. Without it, Republican senators could reopen the government on their own.

But many GOP senators have vocally defended the filibuster, including Majority Leader John Thune, calling the 60-vote rule a fundamental feature of the Senate and one that works to conservatives’ benefit in the long run.

Thune has defended the filibuster multiple times during the shutdown, calling it a “bad idea” to suggest eliminating it. “The 60-vote threshold has protected this country,” he said earlier this month.

More news on Epstein is keeping the scandals on the front page. This is from The Independent, as reported by Harry Cockburn. “JPMorgan Chase alerted Trump admin to over $1B in ‘suspicious’ transactions involving Epstein and prominent Wall Street figures: report Over 4,700 transactions, including wire transfers to Russian banks raised red flags in 2019, new documents reveal.”

Just weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died in jail in 2019, banking giant JPMorgan Chase alerted the Trump administration to more than $1 billion in potentially suspicious transactions involving several high-profile U.S. business figures, as well as wire transfers to Russian banks.

The report, which JPMorgan filed – and which was released this week among hundreds of pages of previously sealed court records – flagged over 4,700 transactions, amid concerns they could potentially be related to human trafficking operations involving Epstein.

Among the names highlighted in JPMorgan’s suspicious activity report are: Leon Black, co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management and former MoMA chairman; billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz; and trusts linked to retail magnate Leslie Wexner.

Though each man appeared in connection with financial dealings tied to Epstein, what those transactions involved, and precisely how Epstein fits into the picture, remains unclear. None of them has been charged with crimes in connection with the disgraced financier.

According to The New York Times, which – alongside The Wall Street Journal – requested the documents to be made public, the report alerted authorities to wire transfers to Russian banks, while also mentioning sensitivities surrounding Epstein’s “relationships with two U.S. presidents.” Epstein is known to have been close to President Trump and former President Bill Clinton.

The report offered few specifics about the suspicious transactions or why they raised red flags, other than their apparent ties to Epstein.

Key points it highlights include $65 million worth of wire transfers linked to trusts controlled by retail billionaire Wexner. The transfers, dating back to the mid-2000s, appeared to pass through multiple banks.

Epstein served as a trustee for some of Wexner’s trusts and acted as a close financial adviser for nearly 20 years.

Julia Ainsley has the Halloween Cruelty story at NBC News. “‘Happy Halloween!’: DHS spokeswoman responds to report of immigration agents wearing horror masks in L.A.. The story by a local news site featured images posted to social media showing what the outlet says were agents in unmarked cars donning Chucky and Momo masks.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman offered a two-word reply Friday in response to a local news report that said immigration agents were seen wearing Halloween masks in the Los Angeles area.

“Happy Halloween!” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote to NBC News when asked about the report.

The story by the local news site LA Taco featured images posted to social media showing what the outlet says were agents in unmarked cars donning Chucky and Momo masks. It said a member of the Harbor Area Peace Patrol, which monitors federal activity in the area, spotted the vehicle with the Momo mask-wearing driver at an immigration raid on Tuesday.

An activist with Harbor Area Peace Patrol told NBC News that he observed cars previously used on immigration raids leaving an ICE staging area on Tuesday, as they typically do ahead of raids. Two people in the cars were wearing masks – one Momo, the other Chucky.

“We are out there six days a week,” said the activist, who only wanted to be identified as Victor. “We take pictures of the cars as they leave. We put information out for the community to be aware.”

Between this immigration nightmare, the incredibly increasing costs of health insurance and food, and the lack of any nutrition support to many families, I think this will be the scariest Thanksgiving ever.

Additionally, Thanksgiving may have few tangible blessings to be thankful for. It’s time we stand up against deliberate cruelty and exploitation.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Waking up to?

Posted: October 24, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, American Fascists, Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

“So, a supposed desperately needed huge ballroom that seats anywhere from 650 to 1K people doesn’t include necessary parking for that kind of crowd? Seems a real estate genius would have thought of that. If only he hadn’t sold the hotel next door.’ @repeat1968, John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Each news cycle brings us to yet another fresh hell. Considering the breaking news cycle is now endless, we’re suffering ongoing PTSD. I admit that I’ve always been a night person. However, I now sleep away as much of the morning as possible. Given that I teach in the evenings, it’s easy for me to hand over the morning to the Poland Avenue Rooster and the commuters from Chalmette bound for whatever the sons of overseers have planned for them on any particular day. So, yes, I’m late. It’s lucky my dog is very patient with me about morning walks.

The news from today is just as full of shock and awe as usual. We’re still blowing up fishing boats and watching the people’s house being turned into a tacky midcentury modern whore house. Who can be auctioned off next? Who is losing their livelihood and next meal today?  Today’s attack on hapless South Americans in boats is another demonstration of how far the illegal, expensive, murder of innocents will be allowed by rapists Trump and the Drunkard Secretary of “War” will go to attempt to overcompensate for their lack of true manhood. This is from the AP as reported by Konstantin Toropin. “US is sending an aircraft carrier to Latin America in major escalation of military buildup.” We’re a rogue, terrorist country now demonstrating that the rule of law is no longer our guiding North Star.

The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.

The USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. A person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press that one of those destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another is in the Red Sea. At the time of the announcement, the USS Ford was in port in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to arrive in the waters off South America or if all five destroyers would make the journey.

Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela.

Hours before Parnell announced the news, Hegseth said the military had conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, leaving six people dead and bringing the death count for the strikes that began in early September to at least 43 people.

The move to deny Americans and bully them away from their ability to vote has begun. This move was announced by the JustICE department today. We are dismantling our democracy in plain sight. “Justice Department to Monitor Polling Sites in California, New Jersey.” All we need now are fierce dogs and ‘literacy’ tests.

” Today, the Department of Justice announced that it will monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions ahead of the upcoming November 4, 2025, general election to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.

The Department, through the Civil Rights Division, enforces federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all eligible citizens to access the ballot. The Department regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections in communities across the country.

“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”

So, we can find funds to demolish the East Wing of the White House, carry out bombing of fishing boats, and harass voters, but we can’t pay any of our Federal Workers or Soldiers. How can this be? Charlie Savage has this political analysis of our current situation in the New York Times. “The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law. The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs.” It’s been a few foreign atrocities ago since I read the term “summary executions” used. If any of our rogue soldiers were caught doing this, they would be hauled in to a military tribunal immediately. What do we do with a rogue President?

Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.

A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs.

The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like “self-defense” and “armed conflict.” But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply.

The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency.

It is becoming clearer than ever that the rule of law in the White House has depended chiefly on norms — on government lawyers willing to raise objections when merited and to resign in protest if ignored, and on presidents who want to appear law-abiding. This is especially true in an era when party loyalty has defanged the threat of impeachment by Congress, and after the Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed with official powers.

Every modern president has occasionally taken some aggressive policy step based on a stretched or disputed legal interpretation. But in the past, they and their aides made a point to develop substantive legal theories and to meet public and congressional expectations to explain why they thought their actions were lawful, even if not everyone agreed.

I keep seeing that Monty Python skit in my mind. “Nobody expects …” The stacking of the Supreme Court, the complete cowardice and compliance of all Republican elected officials, and the responses of the Democratic Party, which seems lost in Wonderland at times, is something no one from the founders forward ever completely expected. Even when we’ve seen things inch towards totalitarianism, the institutions of governance would eventually pull through. Now we seem to capitulate on all fronts except with lawsuits brought by private lawyers to key judges. Even when we win the lawsuits, however, Trump just ignores things. It’s hard to see the impeachment remedy even being discussed with the current, feckless Speaker of the House. Please take time to read that article.

The Department of Homeland Security has turned into the Gestapo.  I always had a problem with the creation of that Department and felt it would be likely open to abuse at some point, but I never had this on my dance card.  “DHS Tries To Unmask Ice Spotting Instagram Account by Claiming It Imports Merchandise.”  Again, the most interesting information comes from alternative media sources these days. In this case, it’s 404 Media. The big media companies are too busy paying for the Ballroom Atrocity.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is trying to force Meta to unmask the identity of the people behind Facebook and Instagram accounts that post about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, arrests, and sightings by claiming the owners of the account are in violation of a law about the “importation of merchandise.” Lawyers fighting the case say the move is “wildly outside the scope of statutory authority,” and say that DHS has not even indicated what merchandise the accounts, called Montcowatch, are supposedly importing.

“There is no conceivable connection between the ‘MontCo Community Watch’ Facebook or Instagram accounts and the importation of any merchandise, nor is there any indicated on the face of the Summonses. DHS has no authority to issue these summonses,” lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a court filing this month. There is no indication on either the Instagram or Facebook account that the accounts are selling any type of merchandise, according to 404 Media’s review of the accounts. “The Summonses include no substantiating allegations nor any mention of a specific crime or potential customs violation that might trigger an inquiry under the cited statute,” the lawyers add.

A judge temporarily blocked DHS from unmasking the owners last week.

“The court now orders Meta […] not to produce any documents or information in response to the summonses at issue here without further order of the Court,” the judge wrote in a filing. The move to demand data from Meta about the identities of the accounts while citing a customs statute shows the lengths to which DHS is willing to go to attempt to shut down and identify people who are posting about ICE’s activities.

We know the Trump Criminal Syndicate is all about the grift. Here are some thoughts by Sidney Blumenthal writing at The Guardian.  “Donald Trump has built a regime of retribution and reward. The president’s purges and attacks on his enemies have developed into a system in which injustice is made routine.” Nice use of alliteration there!

Donald Trump’s voracious desire for retribution has quickly evolved into a regular and predictable system. In the year since his election, the president’s rage and whims have assumed the form of policies in the same way that Joseph Stalin’s purges could be called policies. Figures within the federal system of justice who do not do his bidding are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Leaders who have called him to account or are in his way may face indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been designated under Presidential National Security Memorandum No 7 as “Antifa”: “anti-American”, “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as a “terrorist”. Meanwhile, many aligned with him escape justice, whether through the hand of the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the presidential pardon power. Now, he demands compensation for having been prosecuted to the tune of $230m from the DoJ budget.

Each of the cases involving prosecution of Trump’s enemies and, on the other hand, the leniency extended to his allies has its own peculiarities of outrage. But whatever their unique and arbitrary perversities, they are expressions of what has emerged as a technique. These episodes are not isolated or coincidental. Trump’s purge of DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents, accompanied by his installment of flunkies in senior positions, started in a rush and quickly assumed a pattern, but has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into political agencies under Trump’s explicit command to carry out his wishes. Injustice is made routine. It is the retribution system.

The origin of this system has been exposed in the complaint of three former senior FBI officials filed on 10 September in the US district court in DC against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”. In the complaint, Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director, describes a conversation in which Patel “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.

Driscoll had tried to shield FBI agents from being fired, the complaint alleges. Patel told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the White House and justice department – had directed him to fire anyone whom they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. The complaint continues: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was violating the FBI’s own internal rules, Patel allegedly said “he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.

Read more and weep at the link. Orange Caligula’s favorite presidential power is that of the pardon. He’s been going wild recently, letting white guys who commit high crimes out for no particular reason other than he relates to them and the crimes.  Plus, he loves the power. This is from AXIOS’ Steve Neukam. “Exclusive: Senate Dems move to condemn Trump’s Binance pardon.” This is the case where the evidence and crime were so obvious that the guy copped to the crime. Evidently, saying you’re actually guilty doesn’t count as being actually guilty in TrumpLandia.  That doesn’t even count the amount of the Bribes that bribed Trump for the pardon by throwing crypto at Trump Klan’s plan.

Senate Democrats are moving to officially condemn President Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Some Senate Republicans have already criticized the pardon, with Democrats eyeing rare bipartisan pushback against the White House.

  • Trump’s pardon of CZ, who was facing four months in prison related to money laundering, likely provides a path for Binance to operate in the U.S. after more than a year of lobbying from the president.
  • Democrats argue the pardon is blatant “corruption,” urging Congress to take steps to avoid similar acts in the future.
  • The resolution was led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), two longtime Trump foes.

The big picture: The Trump family’s crypto empire has drawn the ire of Capitol Hill this year. Their connection to Binance is only intensifying the scrutiny.

  • In May, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, announced that an Emirati state-backed venture fund would use World Liberty’s new stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in Binance.
  • “We thank President Trump for his leadership and for his commitment to make the US the crypto capital of the world,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement.

What they’re saying: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said this week that the pardon “is a bad signal.”

Let me know when “officially condemning” actually works with this asshole. He wears that label like a tribute. Another Democratic Governor has stepped up to the fight to contain the Trump Regime. This time it’s Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer.  Her latest speech on the audacities committed by Trump is highlighted in this article in The Hill. “Whitmer: ‘No one is worried about building a ballroom’.” This is reported by Ryan Mancini.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) brushed off debate over the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and President Trump’s plans to build a ballroom, saying Thursday the focus should instead be on the government shutdown’s impact on federal workers in her state.

Whitmer appeared on MSNBC’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki” to talk about the shutdown when the host shared an “insane split screen” that featured the East Wing’s demolition “happening while the shutdown is leaving so many workers without pay and critical benefits.”

“I just wonder, from your vantage point as a governor of a state, what are you making of that split screen?” Psaki asked.

“Well, as I have talked to people, I’m telling you right now, no one is worried about building a ballroom in Washington, D.C.,” Whitmer replied. “What they want is to make sure that they can feed their kids next week. And the longer the shutdown goes, the more precarious it gets for people.”

The governor said most Americans are “never going to step foot in a ballroom over the course of their lifetime.”

“But what they do every single day is try to feed their kids, make sure that they get a job to show up to, make sure that they don’t hit a pothole on their drive to work and they have to take money out of their rent or their child care to pay to fix their damn car,” she continued. “That’s why we got to stay focused on the issues that matter to people.”

On Thursday, excavators completed the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Set to replace is a ballroom the Trump administration expects will be finished before the end of the president’s second term in 2029. Trump said this week the project would cost roughly $300 million, and the administration released a list of donors Thursday who it said it funding the project.

I’m really getting tired of these obvious steps back to Kings, autocracy, and huge wastes of money. Who the Fuck voted for this?

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List today?

Mostly Monday Reads: Proving us Right

Posted: October 20, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, Broligarchy, No Kings, Ukraine, White Christian Nationalism | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments

“Pfft… don’t tell me chemtrails aren’t real.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

All you have to do is to take a look at Orange Caligula’s response to the 7 million plus Americans letting them know how much he sucks to figure out how deeply we owned his thoughts on Saturday.  He had no fake military birthday parade to distract him for this one. The headlines in the legacy media were so overtly blasé that you got a true sense of how deeply they’ve sucked the last decade.  The problem is we might be living rentfree in his mind, but he’s still held up in the White House turning it into a mid-century modern whore house.

So, let’s go find the consensus among the public intellectuals who don’t worry about the threats of law suits and shutdowns to their bottom lines.  Paul Waldman provides this analysis over at Public Notice. “No Kings was a huge success. Just look at Trump’s response. Turnout was enormous. There was no violence. And the wannabe king is triggered.”

There were some immediate attempts to simply dismiss the No Kings protests; White House spokespeople asked by journalists about the event responded “Who cares?” But President Trump cares very, very much.

The Republican Party has increasingly come to define itself by what and whom it hates. If some new issue bursts into public awareness, they won’t know what they think until they find out what position Democrats were taking so they can take the opposite one. They’re anti-anti-racism, and anti-anti-climate change, and all it takes to get them to denounce something is to tell them liberals like it. They’ll even get worked up about a corporate logo if a bunch of bots tell them it’s woke, apparently because the Founding Fathers would never have stood for sans serif fonts.

So calling this event (and the larger movement it seeks to create) “No Kings” turns out to have been a stroke of genius, because Trump’s response was to essentially say Yeah, I’m the king — and because I’m the king, I can poop on people!

After so many years one would think he had lost the ability to shock, but no — generative AI slop tools give Trump a whole new way to act like a petulant toddler:

Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-19T02:36:49.465Z

Yes, the president of the United States posted a video showing him wearing a crown and pooping on crowds of Americans. Whether you think this is evidence of rapidly advancing dementia or just a new expression of the same vulgar and juvenile impulses Trump has always had, there is no universe in which posting a video like that one is politically beneficial for him.

“The rule of kings is bad and just what America was created to reject” is a pretty fundamental American idea. But in the world of today’s Republican Party, if Donald Trump says kings are good and it’s good that he’s a king, everyone else in the party is required to agree.

Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his SubStack. “Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy. While MAGA’s spin was both insane and revealing, the No Kings Day 2 Marches were a major step towards taking our country back.”

Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness.

And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so unhinged, so utterly disconnected from reality, that they defeated their ostensible purpose of intimidating the marchers into silence. While the rest of us saw families, old people, young people, folks in funny costumes, many of them waving the Stars and Stripes, MAGA saw criminals and America-haters.

But I have a theory about the deeper purpose of the MAGA attacks on No Kings Day 2. America, I’d argue, is currently operating in a strange condition — what I would call a “bubble autocracy.” Donald Trump has not yet consolidated anything like absolute political power. But parts of our society — the Republican Party and a number of supposedly independent institutions like, say, CBS — are in effect living inside a bubble in which they operate as if he has. Within that bubble, a cult of personality around Trump has been built, a cult of personality worthy of Kim Jong Un. And to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric.

Before I explain my theory of how the right lost its mind, some personal observations.

I attended Saturday’s No Kings Day march in Manhattan, for several reasons. As a citizen, I felt it was my duty. As a journalist, I wanted to see with my own eyes the mood, and whether there was violence either by or, far more likely, against the protestors. And I was, to be honest, feeling some anxiety about crowd size: a disappointing turnout would have been a significant blow to our chances of saving American democracy. No surprise that Trump attempted to discourage participation by declaring in advance that “I hear that very few people are going to be there,” while his lackeys spouted insane conspiracy theories.

I needn’t have worried. The march I joined was immense. G. Elliott Morris and the independent science newsroom Xylon estimate that 320,000 people protested in New York, and their median estimate is that more than 5 million protested nationwide. As Morris says, Saturday’s events were very likely “the biggest single-day protest since 1970.” Furthermore, the event was completely nonviolent: The New York Police Department reported zero arrests.

As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday Substack, Letters from an American.”

A video of Trump in a bomber attacking American cities carries an implied threat that the disdain of throwing excrement doesn’t erase. This morning, Trump reinforced that threat when he reminded Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo: “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, I’d rather do this, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that, that you know they it’s not like a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”

That “safety” apparently involves detaining U.S. citizens without due process. On Thursday, Nicole Foy of ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents. She reports they “have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”
On Friday, the Trump administration pushed its attempt to use the military in Democratic-led cities, asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in Chicago immediately. Chris Geidner of Law Dork notes that four judges, two appointed by Democrats and two appointed by Republicans, have rejected the administration’s arguments for why they must send in troops. Now the Department of Justice has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the so-called shadow docket, which would provide a fast response, but one without any hearings or explanation.
The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court warned that there was “pressing risk of violence” in Chicago—a premise the judges rejected—and said preventing Trump from going into the city “improperly impinges on the President’s authority.”

How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the administration’s attempt to get rid of our democratic political system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against federal agents?

Scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan noted that large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments. Corrigan notes, too, that yesterday “every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo.”

It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for Liberal Currents–has this to say about the increasingly isolated Republican Party. He presents an analsyis of what we’ve learned about those gross Young Republican chat logs. We always knew the incels would be the last to leave and failures with the lead. “Sex Is Gay, Rape Is Epic, No Fatties: Young Right-Wing Men Are Obsessed With Male Power and Male Bodies. The group chat leak reveals what over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans.”

It’s tempting to shrug off the language in the Young Republicans’ group chat as the pathetic humor of pasty losers. But the danger is real. As Bates stresses, we have seen incel ideology drive heinous acts of public violence, most notably in the cases of Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista and the Toronto van attack committed by Alek Minassian. As Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an expert on right-wing extremism and terroristic violence, argues in her new book Man Up: The New Misogyny & The Rise of Violent Extremism:

Such violence is also fueled by the constant dehumanization of women online, along with the casual celebration of violence and harassment directed toward them. One of the neo-Nazi men arrested for plotting an antisemitic attack in New York City in 2022 had previously shared online that he had violently attacked a transgender person and described himself as “most proud of being ‘good at raping women,’ ” according to an assistant district attorney on the case.

In other cases, women are not just targeted with rage as a means of punishment; they are attacked violently as a strategy of elimination. The six Asian women and two others gunned down in a rampage at three Atlanta massage parlors in the spring of 2021 were killed because the 21-year-old gunman believed he deserved to live in a world without the sexual temptation he believed they created for him. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of how mass violence can be generated from a sense of entitlement and male supremacist reasoning. Violent attacks against women in cases like these—as well as in domestic and intimate partner violence and misogynist incel attacks—are not only or even primarily about sex. Rather, they are rooted in what Kate Manne describes as “some men’s toxic sense of entitlement to have people look up to them steadfastly, with a loving gaze, admiringly-and to target and even destroy those who fail, or refuse, to do so.”Supremacy is an all-consuming logic on the MAGA right today. Christian supremacy, white supremacy, male supremacy, almost every corner of MAGA is marked by one or some combination of supremacist logic and a desire to subjugate some other group. This fixation on domination is precisely why I argued back in March that Andrew Tate has natural appeal to many younger Republicans and that rape as an ordering principle defines MAGA politics.

Here’s something scary from CNN to think on with Halloween on the Horizon. “Federal agency overseeing US nuclear stockpile will furlough most of its workforce starting Monday.”

The federal agency responsible for overseeing and modernizing the US nuclear stockpile will furlough the vast majority of its staff Monday as the government shutdown drags on, according to the Department of Energy.

About 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, will receive furlough notices Monday, while fewer than 400 employees will remain on the job to safeguard the stockpile, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright will speak about the shutdown’s impact on the US’ nuclear deterrent efforts Monday while visiting the Nevada National Security Site.

The NNSA Office of Secure Transportation, which oversees the transportation of nuclear weapons around the country, will be funded through October 27.

And remember all that talk of Peace before some one else got the Nobel Prize?  This is from the Washington Post. “In tense meeting, Trump told Zelensky to concede land, meet Putin’s demands. Following the trip to Washington, Zelensky has set up a series of calls and meetings with his main European backers.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is rallying the support of his European partners after a bruising meeting with President Donald Trump, in which he was told to make concessions to end the war or risk facing destruction at the hands of Russia.

In a tense meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomacy.

“He said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will destroy you if you don’t agree now,” one of the people said. “Zelensky had his maps and everything, and he was explaining it to him but [Trump] wanted nothing to do with it.”

Trump listened but was not responsive to the Ukrainian message, the person said. “It was pretty much like ‘No, look guys, you can’t possibly win back any territory. … There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.’”

So much success!  So much winning!  How can we even wrap our minds around it?  And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from Sixty Minutes last night.

Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ.

Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Reuveni’s whistleblower disclosure helped highlight a growing concern in many courts across the country that the Justice Department is allegedly abusing the limits of the law.

“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is that I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law,” Reuveni said. “I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.”

…

When more facts were known about the weekend flights, it turned out a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake.

While people deported in error are normally returned, Reuveni said that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member and a terrorist to prevent his return.

“I respond up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is, that is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief,” Reuveni said.

Reuveni said what was important was not whether or not Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 or a terrorist, but whether or not he received due process.

“What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore, to say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13, you’re a terrorist,” Reuveni said. “What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And now that’s you gone and your liberties changed.”

Reuveni was fired after refusing to sign a brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist. In June, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the help of attorneys from the Government Accountability Project.

While, the news still doesn’t feel like we’re living in America, the streets are begining to fill with enough Americans dedicated to truth, justice, and our evolving society, I have hope.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: No Kings

Posted: October 17, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: No Kings | Tags: , , , | 8 Comments

“I’m for No Kings.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Tomorrow, we will likely see the biggest nationwide protest in our country’s history. This will be the second “No Kings” peaceful assembly this summer. We will undoubtedly view huge protests in America’s cities as well as smaller ones in towns and rural areas. Already, Despot Donnie’s Deplorable collaborators are trying to frame the movement in the most unflattering and untrue manner possible. I’m looking forward to joining my patriotic friends here in New Orleans from the Lafitte Greenway. We are one of 10 anchor cities. Let’s hope the media is up to its role in preserving democracy. I understand that the Portland Frogs, Unicorns, et al will be represented.

This is from Garrett M. Graff writing at his column at Doomsday Scenario. “Three Reasons I Still Have Hope for America. This weekend’s “No Kings” rallies stand as an important corrective amid a dark moment.”

Saturday’s national “No Kings” protests seem likely to be huge, and the Trump administration appears especially concerned and worried about the public backlash it’s facing this weekend. House Speaker Mike Johnson is railing against as them as a “hate America rally,” while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bloviated this week, “No kings equals no paychecks,” a message so dumb, out-of-touch, and wrong that it almost sounds like a tweet from Chuck Schumer’s social media team. Even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy got into the complaining-in-advance act, which for me only underscored that the inner circle of would-be King Donald’s administration is legitimately concerned about a real on-the-ground resistance movement. “The GOP’s desperation meter is at DEFCON 1,” Jill Lawrence wrote.

To me — as someone who cares deeply about the future of American democracy — the rallies stand as an important expression of love for the United States and the idea and dream that the US has represented for 250 years.

I’ve written over the last three months about how the United States has tipped into authoritarianism — we’ve crossed an invisible line never crossed before in our history — but that slide is not necessarily permanent nor irreversible, and I hope that this weekend’s “No Kings” protests will someday be looked back upon as a turning point when the public anger’s and resistance to fascism began to boil.

Graff’s column continues by listing and elucidating three points.

1. People — There are more of us than there are of them.

2. History — America’s progress has always been imperfect.

3. Actuarial — Trump won’t last forever, which means “Trumpism” will fall.

You may read the logic behind his arguments at the link. Meanwhile, Andrew Egger–writing for The Bulwark–describes the desperation inherent in the MAGA response to the protests. “A Noun, A Verb, and Antifa.”

“Those who love Trump are the devout, virtuous patriots that must be protected no matter what; those who hate him are the vile demons who must be destroyed by any weapon to hand.”

It’s been plain for a while that this axiom is the central guiding tenet of MAGA philosophy. But this week, we really got to see just how all-encompassing that rule is.

Last Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson kicked off a small scandal by describing the “No Kings” protests that will take place across the country tomorrow as a “hate America rally” run by “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” This week, those claims became the centerpiece of GOP messaging about the protests. Yesterday, multiple Republicans senators—John Barrasso on the Senate floor and Steve Daines on Fox News—denounced the protests as a “hate America rally.” On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz said he had introduced legislation to allow the Justice Department to target the funders of “these rallies, which may well turn into riots” for racketeering charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi continues to make the case that protesters carrying matching, professionally printed signs is proof they’re secretly Antifa. And Karoline Leavitt said yesterday, while speaking about the New York City mayoral race, that “the Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

As we keep saying: The “No Kings” protests that took place in June were nothing like what these Republicans are describing. They were peaceful, patriotic, and overwhelmingly normie-coded: a bunch of regular people taking to the streets to exercise their right to object to the ongoing depredations of an authoritarian administration. Organizers held deescalation trainings—as they have done again this week—and instructed protesters to distance themselves from anyone who seemed like they were there to cause trouble. As a result, the mammoth protests went off pretty much without a hitch.

This Saturday’s “No Kings” protests are likely to again be the beau idéal of what peaceful protests should be. But they’ll also be anti-Trump, so Republicans are compelled to denounce attendees as anti-American troublemakers who are probably also paid actors and Antifa terrorists.

I guess both Soros and Antifa are supposed to be writing checks to the millions of us marching. I’d like to meet a rube that actually believes that. Jill Lawrence has this critique at MSNBC’s website’s Op-Eds. “The fear driving Trump and the GOP’s attacks on the ‘No Kings’ rallies. Republicans’ fictional portrait is part of a strategy to stop the resistance before it flexes its growing power.”

You might find this hard to believe, but Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are making stuff up. This is a go-to move when they fear their power and corrupt authoritarian plans are at risk, and that’s happening a lot lately. Now, with millions of people signed up to attend thousands of “No Kings” demonstrations Saturday across America, the GOP’s desperation meter is at DEFCON 1.

The alarm is clear from the overwrought Republican leaders spouting hallucinatory talking points in which “No Kings” protests become “‘Hate America’ rallies.” They are weaving a tale of extremists, terrorists, Marxists, agitators, “the pro-Hamas crowd” (House Speaker Mike Johnson’s phrase), and professional protesters supposedly paid by billionaire George Soros. It’s straight-up fearmongering.

In truth, anti-Trump protests, like the first “No Kings” demonstrations earlier this year, have drawn people of all backgrounds, united not by payment but by their deep concern — even despair — about what’s happening to their country. Some may show up this weekend wearing inflatable costumes as frogs, chickens, bears, dinosaurs or unicorns, as they have in Portland, Oregon, and outside Chicago. In D.C., we might once again see and hear a trombonist with the stage name Michael McTrouserpants.

Whoever attends, there will undoubtedly be countless signs and flags. Some of them admittedly, will bear impolite messages, but none of this protest is in any way evil or illegal or, as Johnson argues, “an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes.” Peaceful protest is a constitutional right enshrined in the First Amendment — and peaceful protest is almost entirely what we’ve seen. Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium project reported that less than 0.5% of the first No Kings demonstrations on June 14 — one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history — had injuries or property damage.

While the president and his allies have been known to revel in violence against Trump’s political opponents, the No Kings website features links to primers on safety, de-escalation, and “sacred” religious protest traditions, and this stern warning: “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.”

 The New Yorker‘s Susan B. Glasser argues that the press are complicit. “Donald Trump’s Dream Palace of Puffery. The Pentagon’s ban on real journalism looks to be a preview of where the White House is headed.” They’re enabling the liar-in-chief to ensure access.

But tough questions for Trump are now few and fewer, even as he spends more and more time in front of the cameras in what has become America’s first live-streamed Presidency. Consider what happened on Tuesday, when a reporter from ABC News tried to ask Trump a question. Before the journalist could get her query out, the President cut her off. “You’re ABC fake news,” he said. “I don’t want.” He did not bother to disguise the reason, either: simple retaliation. “I don’t take questions from ABC fake news after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the Vice-President of the United States,” he said, referring to a contentious interview last Sunday between ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Vice-President J. D. Vance.

Instead, Trump called on Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent of an all-Trump, all-the-time news outlet called Real America’s Voice. Glenn is rarely listed on the official White House press-pool roster, yet he manages to make it into restricted events with the President nearly every day. This spring, he bragged to the Times of London, “My job as a conservative journalist is to ask questions that highlight the good things that he’s doing for this country—that a lot of the media outlets in there simply won’t ask.” On Tuesday, he eagerly stepped in when Trump rejected the ABC reporter. But, rather than ask a question, he started with a compliment. “First of all, congratulations on achieving peace,” he told Trump. “You are indeed the peacemaker.”

The President then interrupted him. “Did you ever think I was going to be called the peacemaker?”

Glenn replied, “Actually, I did.”

His question, when he got around to it, was about Alyssa Farah, a former aide in Trump’s first-term White House who is now a co-host of the popular ABC daytime talk show “The View” and a vocal critic of Trump’s. According to Glenn, Farah had promised to wear a Make America Great Again hat on TV if he actually managed to secure the release of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, but she had not yet done so. After explaining all this to the President, his query to Trump was just two words: “Your response?”

A day later, Glenn was back in front of Trump, at a press conference featuring the President and the director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel. The event’s news, among other things, was Trump complaining that law-enforcement agencies should investigate and prosecute more of his political enemies and confirming that he had secretly ordered the C.I.A. to carry out operations inside Venezuela. Glenn, however, wanted to make a point about one of Trump’s longtime preoccupations—what the President calls the “rigged election” of 2020. “By the way, you won Georgia three times,” Glenn shouted over other reporters trying to ask questions. Ed O’Keefe, of CBS News, standing in front of Glenn, could be seen shaking his head with what appeared to be exasperation. It was the last part of the exchange that really stood out, though. In response to Glenn, Trump said, “Yeah, I agree. Do you agree with me?” After Glenn replied, “I do,” the President quickly jumped back in: “And he’s the media! He’s the media!”

Excuse me while I vomit.  Don Holmeyer writing at LiberalCurrents introduces the nail to the hammer. “The Pro-Massacre, Pro-Segregation, Pro-Eugenics Administration. The Trump administration is seeking to rewind the clock on an entire century of legal—and moral—progress.”

Take civil rights, particularly the decades-long, organized push to end Jim Crow discrimination in voting, housing, schooling and other legal arenas half a century ago. Trump et al. are dismantling its legacy piece by piece:

  • In his first week back in office, Trump froze the Department of Justice’s pursuit of civil rights cases, including police reform agreements that followed officers’ killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
  • Also in the first week, Trump rescinded a 60-year-old executive order that banned racial and other discrimination in federal employment—one that was published by Lyndon B. Johnson just weeks after he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  • In February, Trump fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Hegseth pretends was hired only because of his race. Hegseth also proclaimed that “the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’” It fits a broad pattern of removing Black leaders throughout the government and replacing them with white ones.
  • In July, Attorney General Pam Bondi advised schools that essentially any deliberate effort to diversify their student bodies—not just considering race but also any factor, like income, that might correlate to race—would be considered illegal.
  • In August, Trump declared the Smithsonian and other museums focused too much on “how bad Slavery was.”
  • And in September, The New York Times reported that fair housing protections, which say you can’t block people from your apartments and houses because they’re a certain color (as Trump knows from personal experience), are being rolled back and ignored.

These are not the actions of a government that believes the right side triumphed in the Civil Rights Movement, that people of all skin colors belong in all spheres of public life, or that race doesn’t define one’s ability or worth. As Adam Serwer observed in February, we are in the midst of a “Great Resegregation.”

Our societal regression extends to public health as well. As the concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest entered popular culture a century ago, they sprouted the eugenics movement. Eugenics was the high-society term for the idea that we should breed better humans and that worse humans—which usually meant poor, ill or darker-skinned—shouldn’t breed at all.

We may have our first insight into those s0-called drug ships that Trump’s ordered the Navy to sink.  This is from Reuters’ Phil Stewart. “Exclusive: In a first, US strike in Caribbean leaves survivors, US official says.”

The U.S. military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a U.S. official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported, except to say that it was not clear that the strike had been designed to leave survivors.

The development raises new questions, including whether the U.S. military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in U.S. military custody, possibly as prisoners of war.
The Pentagon, which has labeled those it has targeted in the strikes as narcoterrorists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prior to Thursday’s operation, U.S. military strikes against suspected drug boats off Venezuela killed at least 27 people, raising alarms among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.

Videos presented by the Trump administration of previous attacks showed vessels being completely destroyed, and there have been no prior accounts of survivors afterwards.

So, Congress has declared no war but yet, we have prisoners of war now?  War talk is a good time to bring up the Bolton indictment.  This is from CNN’s Aaron Blake.  “Why the Bolton indictment is different from the Comey and James cases.”

In Bolton’s case, there is less of a throughline between Trump’s conduct and the charges.

Yes, Bolton is also someone Trump spotlighted for prosecution, like Comey and James. As far back as 2020, Trump accused Bolton of breaking the law and warned there would be “a really big price to pay.”

“Now he will have bombs dropped on him!” Trump said.

But Trump doesn’t appear to have played a similar role in orchestrating the charges against Bolton, at least from what we know. He didn’t publicly push for the charges as much in recent weeks. And he certainly didn’t force out a prosecutor who resisted the charges before installing a loyalist who brought them, like he did in the Eastern District of Virginia (the site of the Comey and James cases).

The Bolton charges also were ultimately brought by experienced prosecutors, including US Attorney Kelly O. Hayes, who has served in the District of Maryland since 2013, and nonpartisan career prosecutor Tom Sullivan.

In Comey’s and James’s cases, Trump’s handpicked US Attorney Lindsey Halligan was essentially forced to bring the charges herself, after other prosecutors balked or were removed.

That Bolton is facing charges isn’t nearly as surprising. In fact, a federal judge back in 2020 basically warned of exactly that.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in Bolton’s favor in a civil case stemming from a dispute with the Trump administration over the publication of Bolton’s book. But Lamberth otherwise excoriated Bolton for his handling of classified information.

Lamberth said in his ruling that Bolton “likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.”

That’s about all I can take today. Have a good weekend and just sit back and watch the protests and join on in wherever you are!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

RIP Ace Frehley

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