Posted: November 19, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: ABC News reporter Mary Bruce, Adelita Grijalva, Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, discharge petition, Donald Trump, Epstein Files, Epstein Files Transparency Act, Jamal Khashoggi, Jeffrey Epstein, Pam Bondi, Ro Khanna, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Thomas Massie, Trump polls |
Good Afternoon!!
Long-time friends Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump
Yesterday was a dramatic day in the efforts by Congressional Democrats and a few Republicans to force the release of the Epstein files held by the DOJ. Could the Epstein scandal along with the struggling economy finally bring down Donald Trump after all these years?
Jason Lange and Tim Reid at HuffPost: Brutal New Poll Shows Just How Badly Donald Trump Is Tanking On Epstein And The Economy.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to 38%, the lowest since his return to power, with Americans unhappy about his handling of the high cost of living and the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The four-day poll, which concluded on Monday, comes as Trump’s grip on his Republican Party shows signs of weakening. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a measure to force the release of Justice Department files on Epstein. Trump had opposed the move for months while one of his closest supporters in Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, turned into a harsh critic over his resistance. Trump reversed his position on Sunday as lawmakers prepared to move forward without him.
The survey showed Trump’s overall approval has fallen two percentage points since a Reuters/Ipsos poll in early November.
The poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,017 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
Trump started his second term in office with 47% of Americans giving him a thumbs up. The nine-point decline since January leaves his overall popularity near the lows seen during his first term in office, and close to the weakest ratings for his Democratic predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden. Biden’s approval rating sank as low as 35% while Trump’s first-term popularity fell as low as 33%
NPR: Poll: Democrats have biggest advantage for control of Congress in 8 years.
Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, there are some very big warning signs for Republicans in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
The survey of 1,443 adults, conducted from Nov. 10-13 found:
- Democrats holding their largest advantage, 14 points, since 2017 on the question of who respondents would vote for if the midterm elections were held today;
- President Trump’s approval rating is just 39%, his lowest since right after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol;
- A combined 6-in-10 blame congressional Republicans or Trump for the government shutdown; and
- Nearly 6-in-10 say Trump’s top priority should be lowering prices — and no other issue comes close….
Coming off huge wins up and down the ballot across the country in this year’s off-year elections, Democrats lead Republicans, 55%-41%, when people were asked who they would vote for in their district if the election for Congress were held today.
It’s the largest Democratic advantage on this question, known as the congressional ballot, in the Marist poll since November 2017. The parallel is striking, considering that was at the same point in Trump’s first term as this poll now. Democrats wound up winning 40 House seats in 2018.
If the midterms were today, most say they would pick a Democrat. What’s more, independents chose Democrats by a 33-point margin on this question. It’s all quite the reversal of fortune from a year ago when, just before the 2024 elections when President Trump won back the White House, the parties were tied on the congressional ballot.
Historically, Democrats have needed a sizable advantage on the congressional ballot to signal that they would do well in upcoming midterms.
After months of efforts by Democrats to force the release of the Epstein files, suddenly yesterday their plans came to fruition in surprising fashion.
AP: Congress acts swiftly to force release of Epstein files, and Trump agrees to sign bill.
Both the House and Senate acted decisively Tuesday to pass a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a remarkable display of approval for an effort that had struggled for months to overcome opposition from President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.
Congressman Thomas Massie speaks at a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November 18, 2025, with fellow Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ro Khanna [Annabelle Gordon Reuters]
Read more about the bill and Trump’s sudden reversal at the AP link.
This morning, the bill went to Trump. Politico: Senate sends Epstein files bill to Trump.
The Senate has officially passed legislation forcing the Justice Department to release more information about the case it built against the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Senators had locked in an agreement to automatically pass the bill as soon as it was received from the House, which overwhelmingly passed it on Tuesday.
It now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where he has said he will sign it. That comes despite the fact that Speaker Mike Johnson sought eleventh-hour changes to the House-passed bill and didn’t rule out the possibility he would encourage Trump to veto it.
Assuming Trump follows through, the Justice Department will have 30 days to release the materials with redactions to protect Epstein’s victims.
Will Pam Bondi resist releasing the files? William Kristol at The Bulwark: ‘The Epstein Class.’
Who says Congress never gets anything done?
It was only a week ago that newly sworn in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) provided the final signature needed on the discharge petition to force a vote on The Epstein Files Transparency Act. Yesterday, the House approved the act by a vote of 427–1. About three hours later, the Senate deemed it passed by unanimous consent. The legislation will be transmitted to the White House today. President Trump has said he will sign the bill into law.
Epstein survivors speak at Capitol Hill news conference.
This act requires that the Justice Department make public within thirty days all the unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession related to any of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity, plea agreements, and investigatory proceedings. It specifies that “no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
The authors of the legislation tried to make sure any exceptions were narrowly drawn. The attorney general can only withhold or redact information from personal or medical files—the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy—or information that would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, “provided such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary.” The law requires that all redactions must be accompanied by a written justification in the Federal Register.
Obviously, there is no guarantee that Donald Trump’s attorney general will carry out these legislative instructions in good faith. Pam Bondi could try to turn tight and reasonable exceptions into wide open loopholes. Her boss, the president, has already ordered up an investigation of Democrats tied to Epstein—and she quickly said she’d comply. Could that be a predicate for withholding documents?
But would she even bother to cite that investigation? There are, after all, no assurances that the attorney general won’t try to simply withhold documents and information without telling us she’s done so.
And so “distrust and verify” should be the motto going forward. Congress, the media, the survivors—everyone committed to having the truth come out—needs to be prepared to keep the pressure on throughout, and to scream from the rooftops if there seems to be evasion or stonewalling.
Read the rest at The Bulwark.
Trump’s blatant corruption and his disdain for women reporters were both on display as he struggled to deal with his failure on the Epstein files issue.
Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his tacky, gold-encrusted oval office yesterday, and then held a state dinner in bin Salman’s honor last night. The U.S. intelligence community found that bin Salman gave the order to murder Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2019, but also Saudi Arabia was largely responsible for the 9/11/2021 attacks.
Kathryn Watson and Jennifer Jacobs at CBS News: Trump welcomes MBS for White House visit with fanfare for Saudi crown prince and military flyover.
President Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, to the White House with an elaborate military display Tuesday, praising the crown prince and insisting the U.S.-Saudi relationship has never been better as the two countries look to sign major business and national security deals.
Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince in the oval office.
The pomp and circumstance — and the president’s praise and warmth toward MBS — were more typical of a visit from an allied Western democracy than an absolute monarchy with a troubled human rights record, pointing to the president’s focus on economic and business ties above virtually all else. The White House sees Saudi Arabia as a critical security partner in a turbulent Middle East, as well as an economic partner.
The White House arrival ceremony for the crown prince on Tuesday morning was laden with fanfare, complete with a U.S. military flyover, cannons, horses, and a red carpet. American and Saudi flags adorned the White House South Lawn, and a military band greeted the Saudi royal. Mr. Trump and the crown prince exchanged greetings as they shook hands, and then watched the formation of F-35 and F-16 fighter jets fly by before going inside the White House….
Ahead of bin Salman’s arrival, Mr. Trump told reporters Monday that the U.S. would sell F-35 fighter jets to the Saudis. In the Oval Office, MBS said the Saudis will increase a planned investment of $600 billion in the U.S. to closer to $1 trillion, an announcement that pleased Mr. Trump greatly.
Mr. Trump praised the crown prince in the Oval Office, calling him a “very good friend” and insisting his record on human rights is commendable, despite the State Department’s long list of concerns of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. Arbitrary and unlawful killings, disappearances, torture, serious restrictions on freedom of expression and restrictions on religious freedom continue to plague the nation, according to the latest 2024 State Department report.
Trump’s businesses are heavily involved with Saudi Arabia.
During the meeting with bin Salman, Trump denigrated reporter Mary Bruce for asking questions about Jeffrey Epstein and Jamal Khashoggi.
CNBC: Trump calls for ABC’s license to be revoked after reporter asks about Jeffrey Epstein files.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for ABC’s broadcast license to be revoked as he angrily lashed out at a reporter from the network who asked why he has not released files on notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his former friend.
ABC News reporter Mary Bruce
“I think you are a terrible reporter,” Trump told ABC News White House correspondent Mary Bruce.
The president said he did not like Bruce’s “attitude.”
“You ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter. No more questions from you,” Trump said in the Oval Office, where he was meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s tirade came shortly before the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to compel the Department of Justice to release all of its records on Epstein.
Bruce also asked the Crown Prince about ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Brian Stelter at CNN: Analysis: Trump’s anti-press outburst hits differently with a Saudi prince by his side.
President Trump frequently demonstrates his disdain for journalists. He expresses his admiration for authoritarians almost as often.
Tuesday showed how intertwined those two instincts really are.
Trump repeatedly objected to press questions during an Oval Office photo op with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, whose country does not have a free press.
He lashed out at an ABC correspondent, Mary Bruce, after she invoked the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.
The president said his ally, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, should “look at” punishing ABC over its news coverage.
“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he asserted.
Trump misstated how FCC licenses actually work, but his message was clear: He’d like his government to retaliate the way a dictator would.
The president also called Bruce “insubordinate,” a word he rarely ever uses, while sitting next to the son of the Saudi king.
According to Reporters Without Borders, which tracks press freedom all around the world, “independent media are non-existent in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi journalists live under heavy surveillance, even when abroad.”
Trump even defended bin Salman. BBC: ‘Things happen’ – Trump defends Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing.
US President Donald Trump said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “knew nothing” about the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as he welcomed the kingdom’s de facto ruler to the White House.
Trump’s comments appeared to contradict a US intelligence assessment in 2021 which determined the crown prince had approved the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Jamal Khashoggi
The crown prince, who has denied any wrongdoing, said at the White House that Saudi Arabia “did all the right things” to investigate Khashoggi’s death, which he called “painful”.
It was his first US visit since the assassination, which sent shockwaves through the US-Saudi relationship.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump shot back at a reporter who asked a question about the killing.
“You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial,” the US president said.
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
“But he [the Crown Prince] knew nothing about it,” Trump added. “You don’t have to embarrass our guests.”
The crown prince added that Saudi Arabia “did all the right steps” to investigate the murder, which he called “painful” and a “huge mistake”.
A US intelligence report made public in 2021 – under President Joe Biden’s administration – determined that the crown prince had approved of a plan to “capture or kill” Khashoggi in Istanbul. During his first administration, Trump White House officials declined to release the report.
While dozens of Saudi officials faced sanctions in the wake of the assassination, none directly targeted the crown prince.
Trump attacked another reporter on Air Force One on Friday for asking about the Epstein files. The Guardian: Trump faces criticism for referring to female Bloomberg reporter as ‘piggy’
Donald Trump, who has a history of making extremely personal attacks on female journalists, referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One on Friday.
While the remark did not initially get much attention, it picked up some traction on Tuesday and has drawn backlash from fellow journalists, including some who have previously been attacked by Trump themselves.
Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey
Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg’s White House correspondent, had taken advantage of a press opportunity with the president – known as a gaggle – to ask a question about the unfolding Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the possibility of the House voting to release all of the files related to his case, which now appears likely.
As Lucey started to ask why Trump was behaving the way he was “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”, Trump pointed at her and said: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” [….]
“Disgusting and completely unacceptable,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote on X, sharing a clip of the incident. Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson also called the remark “disgusting and degrading”.
When asked about the incident, Lucey directed the Guardian to a spokesperson for her news organization.
“Our White House journalists perform a vital public service, asking questions without fear or favor,” a Bloomberg News spokesperson said on Tuesday afternoon. “We remain focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.”
The New York Times on the guests at the state dinner for Crown Prince bin Salman last night (gift link): Who Attended Trump’s Dinner for the Saudi Crown Prince?
The world’s richest man. One of the world’s most famous soccer players. The president of soccer’s governing body. Dozens of executives from the finance, tech and energy sectors.
These are some of the guests who attended President Trump’s black-tie dinner for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the White House on Tuesday evening.
The red carpet welcome for Prince Mohammed is an extraordinary moment in diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. It is his first visit to the United States since the 2018 killing of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence determined the prince ordered. Prince Mohammed has denied involvement.
After Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, some Western business executives and government officials backed out of Saudi Arabia’s global investment conference, including leaders of major American financial institutions. But by the following year, top deal makers were back at the event in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump and the crown prince cast their partnership as one that would reap benefits for both countries. Already, Mr. Trump has agreed to sell F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom, and the prince has promised to invest nearly $1 trillion in the United States.
Use the gift link to see the list of powerful people who saw fit to honor the Saudi Crown Prince at last night’s state dinner.
More stories to check out today:
Politico: Appeals court panel mulls $1M penalty for Trump in lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.
The Harvard Crimson: Harvard To Launch New Investigation Into Epstein’s Ties to Summers, Other University Affiliates.
The New Republic: Trump’s Plot to Rig 2026 Is Falling Apart, and Boy Is He Mad About It.
Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: Trump’s Scheme to Give the GOP Extra House Seats Just Blew Up in His Face.
Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket: Moral rot in elite journalism is killing the whole field.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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Posted: November 15, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: Bill Clinton, cat art, caturday, China soybean purchases, Donald Trump, Epstein Files, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers, Nicolas Maduro, Pam Bondi, Reid Hoffman, Steve Bannon, TACO Trump, Trump Tariffs, Venezuela |
Good Afternoon!!
Elizabeth Taylor with her Siamese cat, 1956, photo by Sanford Roth
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. He’s everywhere in the news. We still haven’t seen the DOJ Epstein files, but we’re already learning more about Epstein’s relationship to Trump from the recently released text messages. We don’t know yet how bad it will get when the files are released, but the extent to which Trump is publicly panicking suggests it will be very bad for him.
In Trump’s latest effort to control the Epstein story, he ordered Attorney General Bondi to investigate Democrats who had connections to the child sex trafficker.
AP: At Trump’s urging, Bondi says US will investigate Epstein’s ties to Clinton and other political foes.
Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.
Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.
Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”
There’s no evidence that any of the people Trump is targeting were involved in sexual abuse or sex trafficking.
A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”
“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.
Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.
Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.” [….]
Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.
Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.
At Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:
In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.
Marlon Brando and cat
Although the attorney general is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.” Maegan Vazquez and Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton, Summers, and Hoffman for years, and that in July, Justice Department officials said an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein—a different cache than Wednesday’s—“did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Meidas Touch noted: “In normal times, it would be a major scandal for the President to direct his AG to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal—and for the AG to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover up just got even bigger.”
This scandal truly has Trump flailing. I hope this will be the one that really brings him down, but he somehow seems to wriggle out of every scandal. But he certainly is terrified of the Epstein files being released.
Politico: House plans to vote Tuesday on releasing Epstein files.
House Republican leaders are planning to hold a vote Tuesday on legislation to force the release of federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal plans ahead of a public announcement.
The tentative scheduling decision follows a successful effort by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on their bipartisan bill to compel the Justice Department to release all of its records related to the late convicted sex offender.
President Donald Trump has made repeated attempts to kill the effort, which continued in a series of Truth Social posts Friday. But Johnson said Wednesday he intends to move quickly to hold the vote and put the matter to bed.
Under the current GOP plan, the House Rules Committee would approve a procedural measure Monday night to advance eight bills for floor consideration, including language to tee up the Epstein legislation. If that measure is approved on the floor, likely early Tuesday afternoon, debate and a final vote on the Epstein bill could immediately follow. GOP leaders are considering whether to postpone the Epstein vote until Tuesday evening….
The four Republicans who signed on to the discharge petition forcing the vote — Massie, plus Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — are likely to examine Johnson’s moves very closely. They could together block any procedural measure that would undercut the Epstein legislation, postpone it or otherwise alter it.
One more story on the Epstein texts from Jason Wilson at The Guardian: Steve Bannon advised Jeffrey Epstein for years on how to rehab his reputation, texts show.
Hundreds of texts over almost a year show Maga influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.
The texts, released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday, show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia.
Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a “sophisticated op”, and over time he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system and his victims.
All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s rightwing populist agenda, and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.
In all of Epstein’s messages, the identity of his correspondent is redacted. But Bannon’s identity in the threads cited in this reporting is clear from contextual clues including his documented activities at the time, details of his business and media pursuits, and other disclosures. In one document, the sender’s phone number is not redacted – and it is the same number linked to Bannon in a legal case against Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Trump is also beginning to panic about the economy and the negative effects of his insane tariffs.
David J. Lynch at The Washington Post: Trump goes on defense over tariffs as prices on everyday items keep rising.
President Donald Trump’s bid Friday to sootheconsumers by dropping tariffs on a wide array of groceries, including coffee, beef, bananas and tomatoes — contradicting his repeated claims that the levies were not affecting retail prices — shows he is on the defensive over his signature policy initiative.
Public opposition, eroding support on Capitol Hill and a potentially lethal challenge before the Supreme Court have Trump scrambling to defend his economic strategy even as the administration notches diplomatic agreements that are cementing its high-tariff approach to rebalancing global trade.
Sophia Loren with her cat, 1959
Public opinion is the immediate worry, following recent Democratic electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey that were fueled by Americans’ ire over the cost of living. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, registered voters disapproved of the president’s tariffs in a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, a finding that has been consistent all year and could imperil Republican candidates in next year’s congressional elections.
The president on Friday issued an executive order rolling back import taxes on many foods, his most significant retreat on the emergency tariffs he imposed in April, which were billed at the time as loophole-free. In September, the White House had signaled that some products that are not generally produced in the United States could be spared tariffs once nations where they originate reached trade deals with the United States. But Friday’s exemptions apply to products from any nation, even those that have not agreed on trade terms.
“They know that they shouldn’t have imposed a lot of these tariffs and that they’re hurting affordability for consumers. Now they’re looking for a way to justify lowering them. And that’s fine. But did we really need to go through all this in the first place?” said Christopher Padilla, senior adviser to the Brunswick Group and a former trade official in the George W. Bush administration….
This week’s tariff cuts appear aimed at responding to public concern over high prices. Inflation overall is running at an annual rate of 3 percent, above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target for price stability but well down from the mid-2022 peak of 9.1 percent.
Prices on many everyday items, however, continue to soar. Through September, the most recent data available, coffee prices were up 19 percent over the previous 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bananas were up 7 percent.
Elizabeth Buchwald at CNN: Trump’s latest tariff TACO probably won’t make your life more affordable.
Americans could soon see some goods get cheaper after President Donald Trump exempted certain agricultural imports from a set of tariffs on Friday. But any price drops likely won’t be enough to make life feel more affordable any time soon.
The executive order exempted products like coffee, beef and some fruit from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, which began rolling out in April.
The new exemptions are part of what traders have dubbed TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out, to describe times when the president backs off a policy after unintended consequences pop up. In the case of tariffs, Trump has already reversed a number of his measures, a sign that the administration is reshaping his signature economic tool.
The latest TACO comes after voters, worried about affordability, gave Republicans a drubbing in recent off-year elections.
Why this likely won’t help consumers much:
Nevertheless, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the new exemptions generally won’t help improve affordability.
“It depends on what the importers do with the tariff,” he said in a CNBC interview on Friday. “So when you look at the overall price trend, it hasn’t been because of tariffs. It’s been because of these other events going on and just supply and demand.”
Steve Martin and cat
But in cases where tariffs have been passed along to consumers, prices could drop, Greer said.
One potential example: bananas. American consumers are paying about 8% more for bananas than before Trump’s second term began.
The US largely imports bananas from South American countries. With bananas exempt from “reciprocal” tariffs that started at 10%, prices could go back to where they were earlier this year, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. But it’s unlikely to be something most consumers notice unless they’re buying bananas often, she added.
But not everyone is convinced it will even do that much.
“It is not clear that lowering tariffs will lower prices — it depends on what retailers think they can get away with. The import price of bananas has fallen since tariffs were imposed, but the US consumer price has risen,” Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS global wealth management, said in a note last week. (The United States tracks import prices before accounting for tariffs. In some cases, import prices have fallen as exporters lower what they charge as a way to share in the tariff expense importers pay.)
More analysis at the CNN link.
Another flop: Trump’s soybean deal with China may have just been a mirage. AP: USDA data casts doubt on China’s soybean purchase promises touted by Trump.
New data the Agriculture Department released Friday created serious doubts about whether China will really buy millions of bushels of American soybeans like the Trump administration touted last month after a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The USDA report released after the government reopened showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit in South Korea that totaled 332,000 metric tons. That’s well short of the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China agreed to purchase by January and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she said they would buy in each of the next three years.
American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank’s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn’t much incentive for China to buy from America right now because they have plenty of soybeans on hand that they have bought from Brazil and other South American countries this year, and the remaining tariffs ensure that U.S. soybeans remain more expensive than Brazilian beans.
“We are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,” Ehmke said.
Beijing has yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached “consensus” on expanding trade in farm products. Ehmke said that even if China did promise to buy American soybeans it may have only agreed to buy them if the price was attractive.
Will Trump try to distract from the Epstein files and his failures on the economy by taking us to war with Venezuela?
David E. Sanger, Eric Schmit, Tyler Pager, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times (gift link): Trump Escalates Pressure on Venezuela, but Endgame Is Unclear.
The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its pressure campaign against Venezuela, with America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ford, about to take up a position within striking distance of the country, even as President Trump’s aides provide conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are seeking to achieve.
Mr. Trump held back-to-back days of meetings at the White House over the past two days, reviewing military options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela.
Marlyn Monroe with her cat
It is still not clear whether Mr. Trump has made a decision about what kind of action to authorize, if any. On Friday, he told reporters on Air Force One that “I sort of made up my mind.” “I can’t tell you what it is,” he said, “but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.”
It is possible Mr. Trump is relying on the arrival of so much firepower to intimidate the government of Nicolás Maduro, who the United States and many of its allies say is not Venezuela’s legitimate president. Mr. Maduro has put his forces on high alert, leaving the two countries with their weapons cocked and ready for war.
There were signs that the administration was moving into a new and more aggressive posture. Shortly after a meeting on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that the mission in the Caribbean now had a name — “Southern Spear.” He described its goal in expansive terms, saying the operation “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere.”
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood,” he wrote, “and we will protect it.” With the arrival of the Ford and three accompanying missile-firing Navy destroyers, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, more than there have been at any time in decades.
The only thing missing is a strategic explanation from the Trump administration that would clarify why the United States is amassing such a large force. Mr. Hegseth’s posting on X was only the latest in a series of statements from administration officials that, at best, are in tension with one another. Some are outright contradictory.
Mr. Trump has been the most consistent, saying it is all about drugs. But that would not explain why the Ford was rushed from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean region, adding to an American force that has now reached 15,000 soldiers and sailors, to attack small boats that until early September had been intercepted by the Coast Guard. Nor would it explain why Colombia or Mexico — Mexico being the main conduit for fentanyl — are not in the Navy’s sights.
Dan Lamothe, Tara Copp, Michael Birnbaum, and Noah Robertson: Trump weighs Venezuela strikes as U.S. forces prepare for attack order.
President Donald Trump said Friday night that he has “sort of made up my mind” about how he will proceed with the possibility of military action in Venezuela, following a second consecutive day of deliberations at the White House that included top national security advisers.
Trump’s vague remarks aboard Air Force One were delivered as he traveled for the weekend to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and included no additional new details. The comments came as U.S. forces in the region awaited possible attack orders and after days of high-level discussions about whether — and how — to strike in Venezuela, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is highly sensitive. Joining Trump in deliberations Friday were Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, these people said.
Robert Redford with his cat
Earlier in the day, an administration official said “a host of options” had been presented to the president. Trump is “very good at maintaining strategic ambiguity, and something he does very well is he does not dictate or broadcast to our adversaries what he wants to do next,” the official said.
Any strike on Venezuelan territory would upend the president’s frequent promises of avoiding new conflicts and betray promises made to Congress in recent weeks that no active preparations were underway for such an attack. It also would further complicate U.S. cooperation with other Latin American countries, and deepen suspicions — there and in Washington — over whether Trump’s endgame is the forced removal of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump has accused of sending drugs and violent criminals to the United States.
Maduro, a socialist strongman, came to power in Caracas in 2013 and increasingly has become a fixation for Trump.
In August, U.S. officials increased the reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction from $25 million to $50 million, citing alleged ties to drug cartels and U.S. beliefs dating back to the Biden administration that he lost Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election and refused to step down.
“The United States is very plugged into what’s going on in Venezuela, the chatter among Maduro’s people and the highest levels of his regime,” the administration official said. “Maduro is very scared, and he should be scared. The president has options on the table that are very bad for Maduro and his illegitimate regime. … We view this regime as illegitimate, and it’s not serving the Western Hemisphere well.”
CNN: Trump likely to face long military commitment and chaos if he ousts Maduro in Venezuela, experts say.
President Donald Trump has said he believes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s days are numbered, and that land strikes inside Venezuela are possible.
Experts say that the US doesn’t currently have the military assets in place to launch a largescale operation to remove Maduro from power, though Trump has approved covert action within Venezuela, CNN has reported.
Bette Davis with cat
But if Trump did order strikes inside Venezuela aimed at ousting Maduro, he could face serious challenges with fractured opposition elements and a military poised for insurgency, according to experts, as well as political backlash at home for a president who promised to avoid costly entanglements overseas.
CNN reported that Trump received a briefing earlier this week to review updated options for military action inside Venezuela, a concept the White House has been weighing. The administration had not made a decision on whether to launch strikes, CNN reported, though the US military has moved more than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops into the region as part of what the Pentagon branded Operation Southern Spear in an announcement Thursday.
The concentration of military assets and threats of further attacks beyond the ongoing drug boat campaign have served to increase pressure on Maduro, with administration officials saying he needs to leave office while arguing that he’s closely tied to the Tren de Aragua gang and leading drug trafficking efforts.
But if Maduro does flee Venezuela or is killed out in a targeted strike, experts worry about a military takeover of the country or the boosting of another dictator similar to Maduro.
Read the rest at CNN.
Those are my recommended reads. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. What stories are you interested in today?
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Posted: September 27, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, James Comey, Lindsey Halligan, National Weather Service, Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Portland OR, Todd Blanche |
Good Afternoon!!
Sophia and her kitten, by Lena Revo
It’s just another crazy day in the USA. Our “president” is a madman who has surrounded himself with sycophants and assorted insane groupies. The news today is just as insane as it was yesterday and the day before and the day before that. What else can I say? Here’s what’s happening as of this morning.
The top story is still the Comey indictment.
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Overcame Internal Dissent to Get His Case Against Comey.
President Trump asked advisers directly last week: Where were the prosecutions that he wanted to see?
He had been hearing from allies that the Justice Department wasn’t moving aggressively against the people who had investigated and prosecuted him, according to people familiar with the matter. Chief among them was former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey.
Senior Justice Department officials told him the evidence against Comey wasn’t a slam dunk, and prosecutors in Virginia didn’t want to bring the case. Other White House officials worried that such a case could end badly.
Trump told the DOJ officials to make the best case they could, officials said. He said any lack of evidence was just like what he faced in his own criminal cases, the people said.
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered, extracting from a grand jury a two-count indictment against Comey related to five-year-old congressional testimony. Comey says he is innocent. The grand jury appeared to have some doubts, rejecting one additional count against Comey.
In the process, Bondi has effectively transformed the Justice Department in Trump’s second term, from an independent enforcer of the law into an extension of the White House that has pursued Trump’s foes and their associates with relish.
The Comey family is in Trump’s crosshairs.
Comey, who oversaw the initial 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia that dogged much of the president’s first term, has emerged as one of the Justice Department’s biggest targets for retribution along with his family.
In July, it fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, who had been a star federal prosecutor in Manhattan, with a supervisor telling her only that the decision “came from Washington.” On Thursday, Troy Edwards Jr., a son-in-law married to another daughter, resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, saying that he was doing so to uphold his oath to the Constitution.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said in a video after his indictment. The longtime Republican served as a senior Justice Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush and was nominated as the FBI director by President Barack Obama, before Trump fired him in 2017….
…Comey’s indictment thrust the Justice Department into uncharted territory, with Trump’s clearest breach yet of rules designed to insulate the agency from partisan pressure after the Watergate scandal roiled the agency more than five decades ago.
Tensions over the case came to a head last week after some administration officials, including Ed Martin, a Justice Department official pursuing cases of interest to Trump, privately told the president that the Justice Department was slow-walking cases against Trump critics, people familiar with the discussions said.
The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, had told colleagues he didn’t see a case against Comey or Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, people familiar with the matter said.
Last Thursday, an administration official called Siebert and told him he would likely be fired.
Kat, Cat, by Katherine Ace
According to the WSJ, AG Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche defended Siebert, but to no avail. Trump replaced Sibert with Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case. Halligan then presented the case to a grand jury by herself and obtained 2 indictment of Comey. Only 14 of 23 grand jurors voted to indict him on 2 of 3 counts. Apparently, Bondi is in the Trump’s dog house now, although he’s telling people he still likes her. Trump said yesterday he expected and hoped for more indictments of his political enemies.
CBS News: Judge who reviewed James Comey’s indictment was confused by prosecutor’s handling of case, transcript shows.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala expressed confusion and surprise at some points during the seven-minute court session when a federal grand jury impaneled in Alexandria, Virginia, returned the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey Thursday night.
According to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by CBS News, Judge Vaala asked the newly named interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan — a former Trump personal lawyer — why there were two versions of the indictment.
A majority of the grand jury that reviewed the Comey matter voted not to charge him with one of the three counts presented by prosecutors, according to a form that was signed by the grand jury’s foreperson and filed in court. He was indicted on two other counts — making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding — after 14 of 23 jurors voted in favor of them, the foreperson told the judge.
But two versions of the indictment were published on the case docket: one with the dropped third count, and one without. The transcript reveals why this occurred.
“So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another,” Vaala said to Halligan. “There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the (grand jury) foreperson.”
Halligan didn’t know why two versions had been published and claimed she had only seen the one with two indictments–which she had signed herself, presumably because no line prosecutor had been willing to do so. The questioning went on for awhile.
I wonder who Halligan will find to prosecute the case? Will she do it herself? Comey has a very good attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, remember him? He was the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case during the George W. Bush administration.
Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney at Politico: Why the case against James Comey may end in humiliation for Trump’s DOJ.
The indictment of James Comey, ordered up by President Donald Trump in a breathtaking breach of Justice Department independence, is being welcomed with glee in MAGA circles.
But the case against the former FBI director and longtime Trump nemesis may quickly end in disappointment — and even humiliation — for the prosecutor who was conscripted by the president to bring the charges.
Nataliya Bagatskaya, A Glass of Milk
The bare-bones indictment secured by that prosecutor, Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, is exceptionally weak, former prosecutors and legal experts say. Fundamental problems with the case itself — as well as the unusual events that preceded the indictment — will make it difficult to bring Comey to trial, let alone secure a conviction.
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Former federal terrorism prosecutor Andy McCarthy called the charges “poorly done” and predicted they will be thrown out by a judge well before any trial.
“The whole thing is just bizarro,” McCarthy said. “This is the kind of thing that should never ever happen. … This case should never go to trial because it’s obvious from the four corners of the indictment that there’s no case.”
The issues that could doom the case include the overt political pressure by Trump to bring the indictment, Halligan’s own inexperience, peculiarities in the indictment itself and even a five-year-old technology issue.
Read all the details at Politico.
Alan Feuer at The New York Times (gift link): Trump’s Repeated Attacks May Undercut Case Against Comey.
Even before James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted this week, legal experts were already questioning whether the case might be vulnerable to an uncommon but powerful legal attack: allegations that President Trump, who has long called for Mr. Comey to be jailed, had pushed the Justice Department into opening an improper vindictive prosecution.
Such speculation gained at least a little steam this week after Mr. Trump weighed in on the charges, which center on whether Mr. Comey lied to Congress, in a manner that seemed to prejudge his guilt.
“Whether you like Corrupt James Comey or not, and I can’t imagine too many people liking him, HE LIED!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday morning. “It is not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one. There is no way he can explain his way out of it.”
The remarks by Mr. Trump were not the first time he had shared — or over-shared — his opinions about whether Mr. Comey should be prosecuted, evincing what defense lawyers may seek to argue was a political animus by the Justice Department.
By Stu Morris
Last weekend, in an even more pointed social media post, Mr. Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately get to work prosecuting Mr. Comey and two of his other enemies, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.
“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Mr. Trump wrote, adding, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
While vindictive prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win, the president’s voluble vitriol and his incessant need to be on the attack could provide defense lawyers with an avenue to protect the very people he most wants to punish.
“Ironically, by demanding the prosecutions, Trump may have undercut any possibility of success by providing the people on his ‘enemies list’ with a built-in defense,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, wrote in a recent blog post on the subject.
Use the gift link to read the rest if you’re interested.
Trump has chosen the next city to get his fascist beatdown–Portland, Oregon.
AP: Trump says he’ll send troops to Portland, Oregon, in latest deployment to US cities.
President Donald Trump said Saturday he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” to handle “domestic terrorists” as he expands his controversial deployments to more American cities.
He made the announcement on social media, writing that he was directing the Department of Defense to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland.”
Trump said the decision was necessary to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which he described as “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for details on Trump’s announcement, such as a timeline for the deployment or what troops would be involved. He previously threatened to send the National Guard into Chicago without following through. A deployment in Memphis, Tennessee, is expected to include only about 150 troops, far less than were sent to the District of Columbia for Trump’s crackdown or in Los Angeles in response to immigration protests….
The ICE facility in Portland has been the target of frequent demonstrations, sometimes leading to violent clashes. Some federal agents have been injured and several protesters have been charged with assault. When protesters erected a guillotine earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security described it as “unhinged behavior.” [….]
“We’re going to get out there and we’re going to do a pretty big number on those people in Portland,” he said, describing them as “professional agitators and anarchists.”
The Washington Post: Trump deploys troops to Portland, authorizing ‘full force’ if necessary.
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, and to immigration detention facilities around the country, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” and escalating a campaign to use the U.S. military against Americans that has little modern precedent….
Portrait with Cat by Arsen Kurbanov
Portland has been a target of right-wing politicians for the way it has handled racial-justice protests as well as its homeless population, tolerating encampments in the central part of the city. But Trump will again encounter the dynamic he did when he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles — a military deployment in a state run by a Democratic governor who objects to the decision and will have grounds to fight it in court.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump plans to deploy active-duty troops, National Guard members, or both, to Portland. As was the case in similar discussions in other cities, there are legal limits to how he can do so.
One official familiar with the discussion on Saturday said defense officials were seeking clarity on what Trump desires in this situation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about private planning.
wweek.com Portland: Federal Agents Amass in Portland, Local Officials Say.
President Donald Trump has dispatched federal agents to Portland, local elected officials said in a hastily scheduled press conference on Friday night. Those agents have amassed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on the South Waterfront and have been observed in other locations across the city, officials said.
“We now have a sudden influx of federal agents in our city,” Mayor Keith Wilson said. “We did not ask for them to come. They are here without precedent or purpose.”
Over and over, officials described the agents’ arrival as an attempt to goad residents into a confrontation that would give the president a pretext for a military crackdown.
“This is the ‘Don’t take the bait’ press conference,” said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “Their goal is to create an engagement—an engagement that will lead to conflict. President Trump has one goal. His goal is to make Portland look like what he’s been describing it as. Let’s not grant him that wish.”
The phalanx of local officials assembled at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Northeast Portland—ranging from the majority of city councilors to two members of Congress—admitted they weren’t sure whether the federal ingress into Portland consisted of military officers or merely agents from the Federal Protective Service.
More details at the link.
We may soon learn how much damage Trump has done to the National Weather Service.
Hannah Natanson and Brady Dennis at The Washington Post (gift link): National Weather Service at ‘breaking point’ as storm approaches.
Some National Weather Service staffers are working double shifts to keep forecasting offices open. Others are operating under a “buddy system,” in which adjacent offices help monitor severe weather in understaffed regions. Still others are jettisoning services deemed not absolutely necessary, such as making presentations to schoolchildren.
The Trump administration’s cuts to the Weather Service — where nearly 600 workers,or about 1 in every 7, have left through firings, resignations or retirements — are pushing the agency to its limits, according to interviews with current and former staffers.
By Ramy Salah Hefny
The incoming head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has promised to prioritize filling those jobs, and the White House recently granted the Weather Service an exemption from a government-wide hiring freeze. But as the Atlantic hurricane season peaks and wildfires ramp up in the West, hundreds of positions remain vacant, staff said. Forecasters are currently watching two storms, including one that could pose a threat for the eastern United States by early next week.
So far, exhausted employees have maintained weather monitoring and forecasting almost without interruption, staff said. But many are wondering how much longer they can keep it up. If the government shuts down next week when funding runs out, many employees could also find themselves working without pay, at least temporarily.
“We have a strained and severely stretched situation,” said Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents the agency’s workers. The Weather Service has a famously dedicated workforce, he said, but workers can put in only so many long hours and extra shifts. “There’s a breaking point.”
Fahy said two offices — one in California’s Central Valley and another in western Kansas — no longer have enough staffing to operate around the clock. And, he added, “there are still a dozen offices across the country that are operating on reduced staffs.”
Use the gift link if you want to read more.
Pete Hegseth’s power play
I’m sure you’ve heard about the weird meeting Pete Hegseth has order hundreds of top military officers to attend in person.
Natasha Bertrand and Alayna Treen at CNN: Hegseth’s surprise gathering of top military brass is to deliver speech on ‘warrior ethos,’ sources say.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s surprise gathering of hundreds of generals and admirals in Virginia next week is being called so he can describe the administration’s reinvention of the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” and outline new standards for military personnel, according to half a dozen people familiar with the planning.
“It’s meant to be a show of force of what the new military now looks like under the president,” a White House official told CNN.
The meeting is expected to resemble “a pep rally” where Hegseth will underscore the importance of the “warrior ethos” and outline a new vision for the US military, said three of the sources. He is expected to discuss new readiness, fitness and grooming standards the officers are expected to adhere to and enforce.
“It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” said a defense official familiar with the planning. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”
WTF?!
Hegseth’s team is planning on recording his speech and releasing it publicly later, three of the sources said, and the White House is planning to amplify it, the White House official said.
As of Friday, there were no plans for Hegseth to make a major national security-related announcement as part of the meeting, all of the sources said, making it even more surprising that he has ordered the officers to attend in person and leave their posts for what will essentially be a major speech.
By Ektarina Yastrebova
As of now, there isn’t expected to be a weapons showcase for the officers as President Donald Trump suggested, according to the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning. Trump is not currently planning to be involved or attend the meeting on Tuesday, two officials told CNN.
The original idea for the unprecedented gathering of generals and admirals was Hegseth’s, the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning said. Hegseth later let the White House know about the plans, but Trump himself knew very little about the details when he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Thursday, the White House official said.
I’m no military expert, but isn’t it kind of dangerous to have our enemies know that all those top generals and admirals will be in one room for an hour or so?
The Guardian: US military brass brace for firings as Pentagon chief orders top-level meeting.
US military officials are reportedly bracing for possible firings or demotions after the Trump administration’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, abruptly summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to attend a gathering in Virginia in the upcoming days.
The event, scheduled for Tuesday at Marine Corps University in Quantico, is expected to feature a short address by Hegseth focused on military standards and the “warrior ethos”, according to the Washington Post.
The order to attend the meeting, which has been described as unusual and unprecedented, was reportedly issued with little explanation – and prompted military personnel stationed overseas to have to make last-minute travel arrangements.
A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the upcoming gathering to the Guardian, saying that Hegseth “will meet with his senior military leaders”, but did not provide any further details.
According to the Times, the Pentagon informed congressional committees overseeing the military on Friday that Hegseth intends to use the gathering to share with “most senior service members his intent for the department”, including new guidance on “military fitness standards and several other areas of interest”.
Sources cited by the Post say that Tuesday’s address will be the first of three short lectures by Hegseth. The second, the Post reported, will reportedly focus on the defense industrial base, and the third on deterrence.
More stories of possible interest
The New York Times: Trump Fired a U.S. Attorney Who Insisted on Following a Court Order.
Shuyler Mitchell at Mother Jones: “Extremely Disturbing”: What Does Trump’s “Antifa” Executive Order Actually
Do?
Claire McCaskill at MSNBC: Hegseth’s mystery military meeting broadcasts a damaging message of U.S. instability.
The New York Times: F.B.I. Fires More Agents, Including Those Who Knelt During Racial Justice Protests.
CNN: ‘I’m absolutely terrified’: Federal workers brace for potential government shutdown, mass layoffs.
That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?
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Posted: July 12, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, immigration | Tags: Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp, Camp Mystic, Dan Bongino, deportations, DHS, FEMA, ICE raids in California, immigration, Jaime Alanis, Jeffrey Epstein, Kash Patel, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Texas floods |
Good Afternoon!!
Immigration and deportation are dominating the news today, with stories about ICE in Los Angeles and developments in the Abrego Garcia story. The Texas flood is still in the news, with articles about failures of local officials and the Department of Homeland Security. Finally, MAGAs are still very worked up about Pam Bondi’s handling of the “Jeffrey Epstein files” and Epstein’s supposed suicide.
Immigration/Deportation News
CNN: Judge orders Trump administration to stop immigration arrests without probable cause in Southern California.
A federal judge on Friday found that the Department of Homeland Security has been making stops and arrests in Los Angeles immigration raids without probable cause and ordered the department to stop detaining individuals based solely on race, spoken language or occupation.
US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered that DHS must develop guidance for officers to determine “reasonable suspicion” outside of the apparent race or ethnicity of a person, the language they speak or their accent, “presence at a particular location” such as a bus stop or “the type of work one does.”
Friday’s ruling comes after the ACLU of Southern California brought a case against the Trump administration last week on behalf of five people and immigration advocacy groups, alleging that DHS — which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has made unconstitutional arrests and prevented detainees’ access to attorneys.
The ruling is limited to the seven-county jurisdiction of the US Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Frimpong said in her ruling that the court needed to decide whether the plaintiffs could prove that the Trump administration “is indeed conducting roving patrols without
reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.”
“This Court decides—based on all the evidence presented—that they are,” Frimpong wrote.
Frimpong went on to say that the administration “failed” to provide information about the basis on which they made the arrests. The temporary restraining order also applies to the FBI and the Justice Department, which were also listed as defendants in the lawsuit and have been involved in immigration enforcement.
NBC News: Cannabis farmworker in California is on life support after chaotic federal immigration raid, family says.
A farmworker at a Southern California cannabis farm is in critical condition after being injured during a chaotic immigration raid by federal officers, local officials said Friday.
Jaime Alanis Garcia is hospitalized at Ventura County Medical Center and remains in critical condition, county officials said in a statement authorized by the man’s family.
His family told NBC Los Angeles that the man is on life support using an assistive breathing machine and has “catastrophic” injuries. He has a broken neck, broken skull and a severed artery, a niece said.
The United Farm Workers had previously said Garcia, an employee of Glass House Farms, died after falling some 30 feet.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement to NBC News.
More on the incident:
Immigration officials said in a statement that Garcia was not in federal custody at the time of the fall.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a green house and fell 30 feet,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
Outside federal agents lobbed less-lethal weapons and tear gas at protesters who gathered at the Camarillo grow house Thursday while employees were being rounded up and arrested inside.
It’s not surprising that this person was terrified. DHS/ICE terror tactics are still responsible, IMO.
The Guardian mistakenly reported that the worker, Jaime Alanis, had died, but still provided important information about the incident, which is likely representative of what ICE is doing.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that authorities executed criminal search warrants in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California, on Thursday. They arrested immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and there were also at least 10 immigrant children on site, the statement said.
Four US citizens were arrested for “assaulting or resisting officers”, the department said. Authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of one person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents. At least one worker was hospitalized with grave injuries.
During the raid, crowds of people gathered outside Glass House Farms at the Camarillo location to demand information about their relatives and protest against immigration enforcement. A chaotic scene developed outside the farm that grows tomatoes, cucumbers and cannabis as authorities clad in helmets and uniforms faced off with the demonstrators. Acrid green and white billowing smoke then forced community members to retreat.
Glass House, a licensed California cannabis grower, said in a statement that immigration agents had valid warrants. The company said workers were detained and it was helping provide them with legal representation.
More details:
Federal authorities formed a line blocking the road leading through farm fields to the company’s greenhouses. Protesters were seen shouting at agents wearing camouflage gear, helmets and gas masks. The billowing smoke drove protesters to retreat. It was unclear why authorities threw the canisters or if they released chemicals such as teargas.
Ventura county fire authorities responding to a 911 call of people having trouble breathing said three people were taken to nearby hospitals.
At the farm, agents arrested workers and removed them by bus. Others, including US citizens, were detained at the site for hours while agents investigated.
The incident came as federal immigration agents have ramped up arrests in southern California at car washes, farms and Home Depot parking lots, stoking widespread fear among immigrant communities.
The mother of an American worker said her son was held at the worksite for 11 hours and told her agents took workers’ cellphones to prevent them from calling family or filming and forced them to erase cellphone video of agents at the site.
ABC7 Eyewitness News: Disabled veteran who is a US citizen was taken during Camarillo immigration raid, family says.
CAMARILLO, Calif. (KABC) — Concerned family members are desperate for answers after they say a disabled U.S. veteran and citizen was taken during a federal immigration raid at a cannabis farm in Camarillo.
George Retes, 25, works as a security guard at Glass House Farms, where the raid took place Thursday. His sister and wife told Eyewitness News that he was trying to leave the area as tensions escalated between federal agents and protesters.
They say they saw AIR7 footage of the scene and were able to see his white vehicle.
“ICE thought he was probably part of the protest, but he wasn’t, he was trying to reverse his car,” said his sister, Destinee Majana. “They broke his window, they pepper-sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor. They detained him.”
Retes’ sister and wife have been trying to call anybody she can to find out where he was taken, but they say nobody can tell them where he is.
“We don’t know what to do, we’re just asking to let my brother go. He’s a U.S. citizen. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car,” Majana added.
His wife, Guadalupe Torres, said he hasn’t seen or spoke to him since Thursday.
Disgusting news from the “Alligator Alley” concentration camp from AP: Detained immigrants at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ say there are worms in food and wastewater on the floor.
At the brand new Everglades immigration detention center that officials have dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz,” people held there say worms turn up in the food. Toilets don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.
Inside the compound’s large white tents, rows of bunkbeds are surrounded by chain-link cages. Detainees are said to go days without showering or getting prescription medicine, and they are only able to speak by phone to lawyers and loved ones. At times the air conditioners abruptly shut off in the sweltering heat.
Days after President Donald Trump toured it, attorneys, advocates, detainees and their relatives are speaking out about the makeshift facility, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration raced to build on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. Detainees began arriving July 2.
“These are human beings who have inherent rights, and they have a right to dignity,” immigration attorney Josephine Arroyo said. “And they’re violating a lot of their rights by putting them there.”
More details:
Insider accounts in interviews with The Associated Press paint a picture of the place as unsanitary and lacking in adequate medical care, pushing some into a state of extreme distress.
“The conditions in which we are living are inhuman,” a Venezuelan detainee said by phone from the facility. “My main concern is the psychological pressure they are putting on people to sign their self-deportation.”
The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, characterized the cells as “zoo cages” with eight beds each, teeming with mosquitoes, crickets and frogs. He said they are locked up 24 hours a day with no windows and no way to know the time. Detainees’ wrists and ankles are cuffed every time they go to see an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, accompanied by two guards who hold their arms and a third who follows behind, he said.
Such conditions make other immigration detention centers where advocates and staff have warned of unsanitary confinement, medical neglect and a lack of food and water seem “advanced,” according to immigration attorney Atara Eig.
NBC News: Miami archbishop slams Everglades immigrant detention site as ‘unbecoming’ and ‘corrosive.’
The Archdiocese of Miami is condemning a controversial migrant detention facility in Florida — which state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” — calling it “unbecoming of public officials” and “corrosive of the common good.”
In a strongly worded statement posted to the archdiocese’s website, Archbishop Thomas Wenski criticized both the conditions at the remote detention site in the Everglades and the rhetoric surrounding it.
He wrote: “It is unbecoming of public officials and corrosive of the common good to speak of the deterrence value of ‘alligators and pythons’ at the Collier-Dade facility.”
Wenski’s statement also highlighted humanitarian concerns, noting the isolation of the facility from medical care and the vulnerability of the temporary tent structures to Florida’s harsh summer weather and hurricane threats. He also called for chaplains and ministers to be granted access to serve those in custody.
Meanwhile, a group of Democratic state lawmakers has filed a lawsuit against the state after being denied entry to the site last week. The complaint argues they are legally entitled to “immediate, unannounced access” to the facility.
An update on the Abrego Garcia case from The Washington Post: Maryland judge rebukes Justice Dept. attorney in Kilmar Abrego García case.
A federal judge in Maryland sharply rebuked a Justice Department attorney Friday after an immigration official could not answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s plans to deport Kilmar Abrego García if he is released pending trial on federal human-smuggling charges against him in Tennessee.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has been considering an order that would require the administration to keep Abrego close to Tennessee for 48 hours should the federal judge there decide he can be released pending trial — time enough for her to hold an additional hearing on a motion by Abrego’s lawyers seeking to have him returned to Maryland. But the Maryland judge did not issue a decision Friday, saying an order would be delivered in advance of a hearing in that case next week.
“I can’t assume anything to be regular in this highly irregular case,” Xinis said on Friday during what was continuation of a hearing that began Thursday, suggesting that she did not trust the government’s claims about how it will handle Abrego’s due process rights moving forward after the administration had previously flouted court orders.
In a sharp exchange, Xinis asked Justice Department lawyers if they could produce the detainer filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Abrego’s case. The document would serve as the government’s request for officials in the Nashville jail where Abrego is being held to keep him there until ICE takes him into custody, should the judge in his criminal case determine he could be released during his trial. The lawyers said they did not have the detainer, which Xinis had requested on Thursday. They said they were working to obtain it.
“What’s to work on? It’s a piece of paper,” Xinis said.
She then told the government’s lawyers that she would have doubts about whether the detainer existed until they provided a copy.
“We’re a court of laws, and we don’t operate on ‘take my word for it,’” she said.
About an hour later, the Justice Department lawyers produced the detainer and shared it with the court.
If you’re interested in this case you might want to read this post by Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse: An Angry Judge in the Abrego Garcia Case.
Texas Flood Updates
The New York Times: FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show.
Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.
The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The details on the unanswered calls on July 6, which have not been previously reported, come as FEMA faces intense scrutiny over its response to the floods in Texas that have killed more than 120 people. The agency, which President Trump has called for eliminating, has been slow to activate certain teams that coordinate response and search-and-rescue efforts.
After floods, hurricanes and other disasters, survivors can call FEMA to apply for different types of financial assistance. People who have lost their homes, for instance, can apply for a one-time payment of $750 that can help cover their immediate needs, such as food or other supplies.
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.
Some FEMA officials grew frustrated by the lapse in contracts and that it was taking days for Ms. Noem to act, according to the person briefed on the matter and the documents. “We still do not have a decision, waiver or signature from the DHS Secretary,” a FEMA official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues.
The Washington Post: Kerr County did not use its most far-reaching alert system in deadly Texas floods.
The Texas county where nearly 100 people were killed and more than 160 remain missing had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a blaring alarm, but local officials did not do so before or during the early-morning hours of July 4 as river levels rose to record heights, inundating campsites and homes, a Washington Post examination found.
Kerr County officials, who have come under increasing scrutiny for their actions as the Guadalupe River began to flood, eventually sent text-message alerts that morning to residents who had registered to receive them, according to screenshots of the texts. But The Post’s review of emergency notifications that night found that even as a federal meteorologist warned of deteriorating conditions and catastrophic risk, county officials did not activate a more powerful notification tool they had previously used to warn of potential flooding. The National Weather Service sent its own alerts through this system, beginning at 1:14 a.m. on July 4.
That mass notification system, known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS, is used by National Weather Service meteorologists to warn of imminent threats. Warnings of life-threatening weather events sent on that system — similar to Amber Alerts — force phones to vibrate and emit a unique, jarring tone as long as they’re on and have a signal. They also allow qualified local officials to send tailored messages to targeted areas.
The lack of alerts sent through IPAWS from Kerr County officials as the Guadalupe River flooded was a critical misstep in their response, said Abdul-Akeem Sadiq, a professor at the University of Central Florida who researches emergency management. Residents are more likely to trust — and listen to — their local government officials, he said, and the alert could have made a difference for some people despite the spotty cellphone service along the river and the fact that many people were probably asleep as floodwaters surged.
“If the alert had gone out, there might be one or two people who might have still been able to receive that message, who now, through word of mouth, alert people around them,” Sadiq said.
AP: FEMA removed dozens of Camp Mystic buildings from 100-year flood map before expansion, records show.
Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.
That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors and longtime owner Dick Eastland when historic floodwaters tore through its property before dawn on July 4.
The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by FEMA, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.
But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
“It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said.
News about MAGA’s Jeffrey Epstein Obsession
Yesterday Dakinikat wrote about FBI Assistant Director Dan Bongino’s threat to resign over Pam Bondi’s handling of the “Jeffrey Epstein files.” Now Mediaite reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is also threatening to resign: FBI Director Kash Patel ALSO Considering Resigning If Pam Bondi Keeps Her Job, Per Report.
According to a Friday report from Axios, Bongino and Bondi clashed over President Donald Trump’s administration’s handling of the case of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The Justice Department, led by Bondi, released a joint memo with the FBI announcing that the rumored “Epstein list” naming his associates never really existed. That conclusion contradicted Bondi’s previous claims that the supposed list was on her desk.
As a result, Bongino and Bondi reportedly got into it. That led to Bongino taking off from work on Friday “in protest.” The deputy director, according to The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan, had also made it clear that he would be leaving his post if Bondi kept hers.
Not long after that reporting, Olohan added that Patel has joined Bongino in his stand against Bondi.
“Source close to DOJ says Kash Patel also wants Pam Bondi gone, and that he’d consider leaving if Bongino leaves,” Olohan said. “Also that there are more frustrations with other documents Bondi hasn’t released.”
Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic: If This GOP Conference Is Proof, Trump Is Totally Screwed Over Epstein.
The Trump administration’s complete dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein case continues to backfire as some of the most intense, involved members of his voting base think they’ve lost him to the “deep state.”
As the Student Action Summit conference hosted by Charlie Kirk’s right-wing Turning Point USA group kicked off on Friday, multiple MAGA loyalists expressed anger and exasperation with President Trump’s handling of the case that has dominated much of the conspiratorial far-right.
“It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that. It’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why [the Epstein case] is not gonna go away,” MAGA godfather Steve Bannon yelled from the conference stage. He then went on to detail just how important the case is to the deep base. “For this to go away, you’re gonna lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement right now, we’re gonna lose 40 seats in [20]26, we’re gonna lose the presidency, they won’t even have to steal it … because [the Trump administration] will have disheartened the hardest core populist …”
Trump supporters who felt that the president was the answer to years of liberal and neoconservative deep state corruption are now reeling, feeling lost and confused as their knight in shining armor turns his back on one of their most important issues.
Bannon turned to three young conference attendees and asked them for their take on the situation.
“We need to, we need to enforce the laws of this country and you know, like you said, Steve, there’s no better question than who rules America. It’s not the people. So we need to obviously have the declassification of the Epstein files,” one said before Bannon chimed in.
A bit more:
“You don’t think Donald Trump as president — you would tell Donald Trump in the Oval Office that you think there’s an open question, with him as commander-in-chief and doing all he’s doing, you would actually tell Trump you don’t know, you question who rules this country?”
“I definitely would because it’s a blackmail ring and anybody who wouldn’t is not paying attention. Simply put, Epstein himself said that he was best friends, on the stand, with Donald Trump. So anybody who thought that these files were going to get just declassified because we pressured him enough or you voted harder enough is just lying to yourself frankly.”
The young man continued on.
“In 2016, we trusted the plan with Trump, but now Trump has become the deep state. The exact thing he we voted him in—”
‘Why do you say he’s become the deep state?” Bannon asked.
“What is more deep state than covering up for pedophiles? Why would you go to that island? Why? Tell me why would you go to that island? Why would you go on the plane? … Why his top donors—why are his top donors neighbors with Epstein?”
It seems that Trump’s most ardent supporters are finally asking the important questions. And while some in the MAGAsphere zero in on Attorney General Pam Bondi, others grasp that the one person with the most power over the case, the one person who could even come close to validating any of their theories, is Trump. And he has expressed no interest whatsoever in doing that. In fact, he can’t even believe that his base is still talking about it. And as we approach one full week of uproar, it’s clear that the Epstein thing won’t be going away anytime soon.
Politico: Trump-whisperer Laura Loomer sharpens her knives for Pam Bondi.
MAGA activist Laura Loomer has set her sights on ousting Attorney General Pam Bondi, as the White House fends off fury from the president’s base over its handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal case and death.
Loomer called on FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino to ask for Bondi’s public resignation Friday morning, writing on social media that Patel and Bongino had clashed with Bondi over the investigation.
Loomer also claimed that Bongino had taken the day off from work “to evaluate whether or not he wants to continue his position,” which POLITICO has not independently confirmed. Axios later reported that Bongino did not attend work on Friday after butting heads with Bondi earlier this week.
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“Pam Blondi is very damaging to President Trump’s image. She drags the administration down and the base doesn’t want her as AG,” Loomer wrote in a post on X. “She is harming Trump’s administration and she’s embarrassing all of his staff and advisors by creating a PR crisis for them. It’s incredibly unfair to President Trump and his team.”
Read more at Politico.
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
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Posted: July 10, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump | Tags: Camp Mystic, David Richardson, FEMA, James Comey, Jeffrey Epstein, John Brennan, Kash Patel, Kerr Country, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Ron Filipkowski, Russia investigation, Texas floods, Trump MAGA cult |
Good Afternoon!!
As usual lately, here’s a massive amount of news today, and I can’t possibly address everything. So I’ve decided to focus on the Texas flooding story, and then I’ll turn to a crazy story about Trump and his MAGA cult.
The catastrophic floods in Texas are still a huge story, and we’re beginning to see the recriminations on how badly the disaster was handled, by local, state, and federal officials. As of now, the death toll is 111, and there 173 missing. 116 of the missing are from Kerr County.
Here’s the latest from The New York Times live updates:
No survivors have been found since Friday in Kerr County, where the worst flooding occurred. The statewide death toll rose to 111, with at least 173 unaccounted for statewide….
At least 173 people remained missing on the fifth day after devastating floods swept through the Texas Hill Country, Gov. Greg Abbott said on Tuesday. Those unaccounted for include 161 in Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding occurred and where local officials said no one has been rescued since Friday.
The number of missing cited by the governor — the first time an official had identified the scale of the recovery operation still ahead — suggested the death toll of 111 could more than double as rescue teams sift through debris in search of bodies….
Search and rescue teams from across Texas, other states and even Mexico are pouring into flood-ravaged Central Texas to aid the strained crews that have been hunting for victims along the Guadalupe River.
Volunteer fire departments from across Texas have sent teams to the hardest-hit areas, as have fire departments from out of state, including those from Shreveport, La., and Memphis….
What about FEMA? I’m reminded of George W. Bush’s handling of Katrina. Remember “Heck of a job, Brownie”?
Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket: Have you seen this man? In the wake of deadly floods in Texas, FEMA Acting Administrator David Richardson is nowhere to be found.
From his very first day as Acting Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), David Richardson’s approach was clear: “I’ve never read a book on leadership,” he said in an all-staff Zoom on May 9th, a fact that quickly became abundantly clear. He told anyone who planned to obstruct his work on behalf of President Trump “I will run right over you. Don’t get in my way…I know all the tricks.”
There have been many Weird Little Guys since the start of Trump’s second administration. In this context, a Weird Little Guy is someone who’s elevated to a position of power with little to no relevant experience and has proved unwavering loyalty to Trump. He allows the higher ups to exert actual power, while he exists mostly as a face and warm body. And as we watch the paltry FEMA response in Texas after floods killed at least 119 people on July 4th and where at least 160 remain missing, Acting Administrator Richardson is proving he can’t even be the face of the agency by staying silent.
Search and recovery crews use a large excavator to remove debris from the bank of the Guadalupe River in Center Point, Texas, on Wednesday. Jim Vondruska Getty Images
As I wrote on Monday, FEMA staffers are alarmed by what they say is the agency’s impossibly slow and deficient response to the death and destruction wrought by the Texas floods. Figures shared with The Handbasket showed just 86 people deployed as of Monday evening. Per Tuesday’s FEMA evening briefing, an additional 204 people had been deployed—just 19 from FEMA, and 185 from other agencies. Few—if any—federal staff are on the ground to help survivors register for assistance.
But perhaps as galling as the weak response is Richardson’s disappearing act: While the former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office is not a particularly vocal leader even during quieter weeks, he still has yet to make a single internal or public comment about the impact of the Texas floods and how his agency is helping survivors.
“It is unprecedented for the leader of FEMA to be absent from the public response to a disaster that has killed over 100 Americans,” Dr. Samantha Montano, Associate Professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told The Handbasket on Wednesday. “Richardson should be on the ground in the impacted areas meeting with local, state, and nonprofit stakeholders. He should be holding press conferences and providing interviews for national outlets. He should be monitoring FEMA’s resources and the broader federal response to ensure it is moving effectively and efficiently.”
And what has Kristi Noem been up to?
CNN: FEMA’s response to Texas flood slowed by Noem’s cost controls.
As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.
But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.
As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
Kristi Noem meets with Gov. Abbott and others in Texas
In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
More details at CNN.
The New York Times: As Texas Flood Raged, Camp Mystic Was Left to Fend for Itself.
In the first three hours after the National Weather Service sent out an alert at 1:14 a.m. on July 4, warning of “life-threatening flash flooding” near Kerrville, Texas, the Guadalupe River would rise 20 feet. Yet local leaders would remain largely unheard from, raising questions about both local preparedness and whether the state of Texas should be doing more to notify flood-prone rural counties when they are in danger.
Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp along the river where at least 27 people lost their lives, experienced severe flooding sometime between 2 and 3 a.m., according to accounts from parents whose children were at the camp. Counselors in one cabin had to force open windows to help young girls get out. “The girls were saying it was a rushing river,” said Lisa Miller, whose 9-year-old daughter, Birdie, had to climb onto a counselor’s back to escape.
At the nearby Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly camp, a facilities manager was awake around 1 a.m. when he saw the rising waters and alerted his boss, which prompted a quick effort to move people to higher ground, camp officials said. No lives were lost.
Yet even as these dramas were unfolding, many of the key local leaders in Kerr County were still asleep or had not been alerted to the danger. The survival of people in local camps and low-lying areas in many cases depended not on official evacuations, but on whether they were paying attention, on their own, to weather alerts in the middle of the night.
After the flood alert shortly after 1 a.m., the National Weather Service went on to put out a series of warnings of mounting intensity, with one at 4:03 a.m. warning of “catastrophic” flooding.
“This came at night when people were asleep, in bed,” Kerrville’s mayor, Joe Herring Jr., said at a news conference. He later told CNN that he had not received the weather alert and was not awakened until 5:30 a.m.
Sheriff Larry Leitha of Kerr County said he had first been notified around 4 or 5 a.m., when “one of my sergeants was in dispatch when the first calls started coming in.”
It’s been reported that campers and counselors at Camp Mystic weren’t allowed to have cell phone with them. Apparently cell phone coverage is poor in the area anyway.
CNN: Officials have yet to explain who did what during critical early hours as deadly floods hit Texas.
Nearly a week after floodwaters swept away more than a hundred lives, Texas officials are facing heated questions over how much was – or was not – done in the early morning hours of Friday as a wall of water raced down the Guadalupe River.
Several officials in the past few days have deflected or become defensive when asked clarifying questions about the county’s actions before and during the disaster.
“We’re in the process of trying to put together a timeline. That’s going to take a little bit of time,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Tuesday, adding his priority was recovering victims, identifying bodies and notifying families.
Authorities were pressed again Wednesday when they shared little information about the early hours of the emergency, instead calling attention to their swift response later in the day on July 4.
“I know that this tragedy, as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse,” Kerrville Police Department Sgt. Jonathan Lamb said.
As search and rescue efforts continue for a seventh straight day, frustration grows over lingering questions about what officials did during those crucial early hours, if existing warning systems worked and whether any loss could have been prevented.
I suppose any even could be worse, but that is hardly the point. See the post for a timeline CNN has created.
NPR: Kerr County struggled to fund flood warnings. Under Trump, it’s getting even harder.
Years before the flooding took more than 90 lives in Kerr County, Texas, local officials knew residents faced threats from rapidly rising water. They started planning a flood warning system, one that could alert residents when a flash flood was imminent.
Still, like many other communities around the country, Kerr County struggled to find a way to pay for it. They turned to the largest source available for most localities: funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
For years, Kerr County officials debated how to fund a flood warning system. Under Trump administration changes, disaster funding opportunities are getting more limited for communities. Denise Rios WaPo
FEMA has granted billions over the last five years to help communities prepare for disasters. The idea is one that has been proven on the ground: When communities invest in infrastructure and preparation before a disaster, it can dramatically lessen the damage when a disaster hits, as well as save lives.
Kerr County’s funding application was turned down by Texas officials in charge of administering the federal funds. As with most of FEMA’s programs, there was more demand for money than was available. Kerr County looked into a Texas state grant program for flood projects, but gave up when they learned it would cover only a small portion of the cost. In Texas alone, more than $54 billion in flood projects are waiting to be built, and state legislators have only dedicated a small fraction of that funding so far.
Now, funding prospects for communities at risk are getting even more limited. The Trump administration has frozen or canceled billions of dollars dedicated to help communities prepare for disasters. Trump signed an executive order saying states should be responsible for funding disaster preparedness, instead of the federal government.
I know I’ve spent a lot of time on this story, but it seems to me that we will see more disasters like this with hurricane and tornado seasons coming up.
Now I want to address a crazy story about Trump and his MAGA cult. This story grew out of Pam Bondi’s announcement that the Jeffrey Epstein files would not be released, as she previously promised.
Axios on July 5: Exclusive: DOJ, FBI conclude Epstein had no “client list,” died by suicide.
President Trump‘s Justice Department and FBI have concluded they have no evidence that convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a “client list” or was murdered, according to a memo detailing the findings obtained by Axios.
— The administration is releasing a video — in both raw and “enhanced” versions — that it says indicates no one entered the area of the Manhattan prison where Epstein was held the night he died in 2019.
— The video supports a medical examiner’s finding that Epstein died by suicide, the two-page memo claims.
Why it matters: The findings represent the first time Trump’s administration has officially contradicted conspiracy theories about Epstein’s activities and his death — theories that had been pushed by the FBI’s top two officials before Trump appointed them to the bureau.
– As social media influencers and activists, Kash Patel (now the FBI’s director) and Dan Bongino (now deputy director) were among those in MAGA world who questioned the official version of how Epstein died.
– Patel and Bongino have since said Epstein killed himself. But it has become an article of faith online, especially on the right, that Epstein’s crimes also implicated government officials, celebrities and business leaders — and that someone killed him to conceal them.
– The memo says no one else involved in the Epstein case will be charged. (Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offenses.)
You can read more at the link. The problem is that Bodi promised a big reveal and a client list and now she’s changed her mind–probably because Trump is all over the Epstein files. But MAGA is enraged. They don’t get that she’s probably protecting Trump. They think Democrats and the “deep state” are involved.
Yesterday, MAGA expert Ron Filipkowski wrote about the firestorm at Meidas: Trump Made His Epstein Problem Much Worse. And how this could hurt Republicans in the midterms.
Years have gone by since Jeffrey Epstein was tried, convicted, sent to prison, and committed suicide (allegedly). Trump made it through his first election and term with the Epstein case not affecting him negatively with his MAGA base despite his obvious personal connections with him, which were pretty extensive. His MAGA cult accepted his explanations that none of his contacts with Epstein involved girls and he cut ties with him as soon as he learned about the allegations against him.
In February, MAGA influencers showed off their copies of the so-called Epstein files.
Four years went by with Trump out of office and the Epstein story largely fell out of the public consciousness as these things do with so much other news happening. But not with Trump’s MAGA base. The various conspiracies surrounding the case continued to build online on social media and in right-wing podcasts. The conspiracies garnered huge numbers of clicks and views for the grifter class, so they were more than happy to feed the beast.
There were many different conspiracies involving Epstein, but most who are obsessed with the case generally fall into either one of two camps. The first believes that there is a “Deep State” cabal that secretly controls all aspects of government and society run by elites from both parties, and that many of them were caught up in what Epstein was doing so there is ample incentive for leaders of both political parties to cover everything up to try and get the public to move on. The second group believes that Epstein was a Mossad agent used to gather blackmail videos of powerful elected officials so Israel would be able gain control of the US government through extortion.
When Trump won the 2024 election, many of the influencers with huge followings believed that all the information would finally be released by his new FBI Director and Attorney General. They believed that former AG Bill Barr was very much part of the Deep State and covered everything up in term one. They were primarily interested in 3 things: 1. The names of everyone who Epstein brought into his orbit to rape girls; 2. Evidence that his death was not a suicide and who killed him; 3. Who were Epstein’s co-conspirators?
Filipkowski notes that Trump appointed heavy-duty MAGA conspiracy theorists to high level law enforcement posts.
…which only poured gasoline on the fire for MAGA anxiously awaiting the big reveal. Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Pam Bondi may have been chosen for their loyalty to Trump over qualifications and competence, but they also carried with them a lot of baggage on Epstein. Their mouths had written a lot of checks to MAGA on this issue, and they expected to be cashing them right about now.
But it was not to be. Patel and Bongino told Maria Baritromo on Fox last month that they had reviewed the files and were convinced that Epstein killed himself, which infuriated MAGA. But still they were assuaged by the fact that Bondi gave two separate interviews to Fox where she said there were hundreds of victims and thousands of videos that were “on her desk” that she was reviewing. She said some of the materials had to be “redacted,” but everything would be released shortly. Then DOJ posted a memo on their website this week that nothing would be released and the case was closed. No formal announcement, no press conference, no Fox interview. Just an unsigned memo posted on a website.
So now the crazies are outraged. Click the link to read the rest of Filpkowski’s post.
Axios: Trump faces MAGA trust crisis over Epstein debacle.
Top MAGA influencers warn the Trump administration is bleeding trust over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and that the president is drifting out of step with the movement he built.
Why it matters: The MAGA base was blindsided by the Justice Department’s conclusion that the notorious sex trafficker died by suicide in 2019 and had no “client list.” Days after the initial shock, Trump’s insistence on moving on is fueling a deeper sense of betrayal.
- “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump asked incredulously during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting after a reporter pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on the findings.
- “I can’t believe you’re asking a question about Epstein at a time like this,” he added, calling it a “waste” of time and a “desecration.”
Driving the news: The chorus of MAGA outrage has only intensified since the Justice Department and FBI released a memo on Sunday finding no evidence that Epstein was murdered, had a “client list” or had blackmailed powerful figures.
- Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon — influential Trump allies who have feuded with the president at times — are among those who have accused the administration of a cover-up.
- But even MAGA’s most loyal foot soldiers are struggling to explain how top Trump officials could close the Epstein case after promising — for years — that it would expose shadowy global elites.
The Independent: MTG says Americans are ‘not going to accept’ there is no Epstein client list.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Americans are “not going to accept” that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had no client list.
A memo released by the Justice Department and the FBI on Monday stating there was never any client list caused waves among President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again base.
Greene, a prominent MAGA figure, told Real America’s Voice network on Wednesday, “I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do — this is Jeffrey Epstein,” The Hill reports.
“This is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history, and people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list,” she said.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers had pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to release what was suspected to be a record of high-profile names associated with Epstein, a wealthy financier who died in jail ahead of his trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
You’d think it might dawn on these morons that Bondi and the rest are protecting Trump, who was pals with Epstein for at least 15 years, but they are too brainwashed, I guess.
The Daily Beast: Pam Bondi Hanging on by Her Fingertips Amid MAGA Firestorm.
Pam Bondi is clinging to her job as she faces a firestorm of criticism from MAGA loyalists over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
It’s hard to find a Trump official who has faced more wrath than Donald Trump’s attorney general, as the president’s supporters pile on after the Justice Department indicated this week there was no more information to release on the convicted sex offender and denied the existence of an Epstein “client list.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo on Monday stating that the department and the F.B.I. had determined “that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times
Across social media, the president’s supporters have been accusing Bondi of lying to the American people. They’re calling for the president to fire her or for her to resign. Some have even thrown around the word “impeachment.”
Some of the biggest conservative activists have added fuel to the burning outrage with their heated takedowns of the attorney general.
“She can say whatever she wants to say. She also said she is committed to ‘combatting human trafficking.’ Do you really believe her? I don’t,” posted far-right activist Laura Loomer.
“She can say whatever she wants to say. She also said she is committed to ‘combatting human trafficking.’ Do you really believe her? I don’t,” posted far-right activist Laura Loomer.
The MAGA’s are angry because they were invited to the White House in February where they received binders of information that turned out to be old news.
Alt-right podcaster Jack Posobiec skewered her on his show for calling the Epstein case closed and saying that’s “not how you treat the American people.”
“I feel very angry, upset, used… from having gone to the White House and receiving this binder full of baloney that was completely publicly available information already that we were told was new information on Epstein. It wasn’t,” he said. “We were told that more information was coming. It wasn’t.”
He was referring to influencers being invited to the White House in February, where they were handed binders marked “Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained Epstein material that was largely already public knowledge.
Megyn Kelly suggested on Tuesday that Bondi was “too lazy” to check if any of the information was new before handing it over to influencers earlier this year.
Now Trump and the gang have leaked supposed criminal investigations of James Comey and John Brennan, most likely in an effort to change the subject.
Another one from Axios: Trump on Brennan, Comey probe reports: “Maybe they have to pay a price.”
President Trump responded Wednesday to reports that former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey are being investigated over allegations that they made false statements to Congress during the Russia probe.
…Brennan and Comey were under criminal investigation over the FBI probe into possible links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia after CIA director John Ratcliffe referred evidence to the FBI of possible wrongdoing….
“I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you, I think they’re very dishonest people,” Trump said when asked about the investigation by a reporter during a White House meeting with African leaders….”I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that….”I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people,” Trump added. “So whatever happens, happens.”
Ratcliffe last week released a review that criticized intelligence leaders for rushing the Russia report and for the intelligence community assessment relying on a single source to express “high confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump win the 2016 election….However, it did not dispute “the quality and credibility” of the CIA’s conclusions….”Agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy,” Ratcliffe said in a statement on the report.
What they’re saying: Brennan told MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” Wednesday afternoon that neither the Department of Justice nor the CIA had contacted him about the investigation.
The New York Times on the Comey “investigation”: Comey Tracked by Secret Service After Post Critical of Trump.
The Secret Service had the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey followed by law enforcement authorities in unmarked cars and street clothes and tracked the location of his cellphone the day after he posted an image on social media in May that President Trump’s allies said amounted to a threat to assassinate the president, according to three government officials.
Mr. Comey and his wife, Patrice, were tailed by the authorities as they drove from the North Carolina coast, where they had been vacationing, through Virginia to their home in the Washington area, the officials said, describing the details of the surveillance on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a federal investigation.
At the same time, the Secret Service was receiving information showing the location of Mr. Comey’s phone while federal authorities were stationed at his home waiting for him to return, the officials said.
The intense surveillance occurred a day after Mr. Comey, long perceived by Mr. Trump as an enemy, had posted a photo on social media of seashells he said he had found while walking on the beach. The shells were arranged in the formation “86 47,” combining a slang term meaning to dismiss or remove with the numerical designation of Mr. Trump’s second presidency. Trump critics have often displayed the phrase on signs and clothing at protests….
Shortly after the image was posted, Donald Trump Jr. wrote on social media that Mr. Comey was “casually calling for my dad to be murdered.” The accusation created a firestorm online, as Mr. Trump’s supporters accused Mr. Comey of plotting to assassinate the president.
When Mr. Comey learned of the uproar, he deleted the post, said he did not know that it had a violent connotation and that he opposed violence of any kind. The Secret Service interviewed him by phone that evening, and Mr. Comey said he had no intent to cause the president harm.
The Secret Service followed him home and then insisted on taking him back to DC to be questioned. I don’t know that is what the so-called “investigation” is about. Frankly, I don’t think there really are investigations of Brennan and Comey. It’s just Trump’s effort to distract from the Epstein furor.
That’s it for me today. What do you think? What’s on your mind?
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