I’m going to focus on the immigration fight today. So much is happening in Minnesota and now in Maine. The murder of Alex Pretti has raised people’s consciousness in the public and even in Congress. The protests are working. I’m not kidding myself that Trump’s attempts to calm the federal government rhetoric are really sincere, but he seems to feel he needs to fake some semblance of compassion if only for a short time.
Federal immigration officers have been collecting personal information about protesters and agitators in Minneapolis, sources told CNN – and had documented details about Alex Pretti before he was shot to death on Saturday.
It is unclear how Pretti first came to the attention of federal authorities, but sources told CNN that about a week before his death, he suffered a broken rib when a group of federal officers tackled him while he was protesting their attempt to detain other individuals….
A memo sent earlier this month to agents temporarily assigned to the city asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,” according to correspondence reviewed by CNN.
Pretti’s previous encounter is another reflection of the aggressive approach federal agents are taking with observers and protesters – a philosophy underscored by the request for agents to collect information about protesters whose activities are broadly protected by the First Amendment.
DHS has repeatedly warned of threats against federal law enforcement officers during immigration enforcement operations—and criticized protesters who they argue are impeding those operations. On Tuesday, the department also publicized an online tip form to share information about people allegedly harassing ICE officers….
The earlier incident started when he stopped his car after observing ICE agents chasing what he described as a family on foot, and began shouting and blowing his whistle, according to a source who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.
Pretti later told the source that five agents tackled him and one leaned on his back – an encounter that left him with a broken rib. The agents quickly released him at the scene.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” said the source.
Pretti was later given medication consistent with treating a broken rib, according to records reviewed by CNN.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” Yet he went back out to observe ICE agents and help immigrants.
The two Border Patrol agents who subdued, punched, and fatally shot Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti have been placed on administrative leave, according to multiple reports.
The paid leave will only last three days, an anonymous official told MS NOW. An unnamed Homeland Security official claimed to The New York Times that the placement was “standard protocol.”
MS Now reported that those involved in the brutal killing will return to “desk duty” after three days, not field work. The report added that the two agents who opened fire at Pretti received “mental health support” after killing the 37-year-old in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
Now Trump is pretending to “de-escalate.” I don’t buy it for one minute. It won’t last.
The government’s account of the killing on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, was unraveling. Stephen Miller, the mastermind of President Trump’s hard-line immigration policy, had called Mr. Pretti a “terrorist” and told other administration officials, including Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to call him an “assassin.”
But videos clearly contradicted that story. Mr. Pretti was pinned down when immigration agents opened fire and killed him. Protests and a palpable sense of outrage were growing across the country. Even the president’s allies were alarmed. Many of them wanted to see changes on the ground, and several made a recommendation directly in calls to the president: Send Tom Homan, the White House border czar, to Minneapolis.
Early Monday, Brian Kilmeade, the co-host of “Fox & Friends,” of which Mr. Trump is a loyal viewer, repeated the message three times in two hours.
Twenty minutes later, the president announced on social media that he was sending Mr. Homan to Minneapolis, a tacit acknowledgment that he was losing control of a situation that posed one of the most serious political threats of his second administration.
Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who had been directing on-the-ground operations in Minneapolis, and who was known for aggressive tactics, was out. “Bovino is pretty good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of guy,” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
And while there is no sign that Mr. Trump is repudiating the tactics used by the federal agents in Minnesota or the core tenets of his immigration policies, the moment was a rare example of the president moving to mitigate the harsh optics associated with a crackdown his administration has otherwise celebrated.
A bit more:
Mr. Trump has honed a survival tactic over many years facing criticism in the public eye: He creates diversions to barrel from one news cycle into the next. But in other moments, when he has faced particularly intense — and politically damaging — public outcry, he has taken stock of news coverage and decided to take a different tack, often temporarily.
Mr. Pretti’s killing and its aftermath created one of those moments. And Mr. Trump seemed to realize in this case that his message, at least, had to change. Shortly after he made the announcement about Mr. Homan, Mr. Trump and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, softened their tone about the shooting and distanced themselves from the incendiary comments made by Mr. Miller, Mr. Bovino and Ms. Noem. Mr. Trump also said he spoke with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whom he had castigated only days before.
And as the White House walks back some of its harshest statements, a blame game of sorts has erupted, with Mr. Miller suggesting immigration authorities in Minneapolis may not have been following protocol.
In a statement, Mr. Miller said the White House had advised Customs and Border Protection officials to create a “physical barrier” between “arrest teams” and “disrupters.”
“We are evaluating why the C.B.P. team may not have been following that protocol,” said Mr. Miller, who just days earlier had called Mr. Pretti a “would-be assassin.”
It remains to be seen if the rhetorical shift will tamp down the outcry or if there is any will inside the Trump administration to change tactics on the ground. Mr. Homan, a longtime ICE official, is seen among Mr. Trump’s allies as someone who could bring a measure of calm to the chaos in Minnesota, particularly because he has called for targeted arrests instead of sweeping raids. But he is fully on board with Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign; in 2018, he, along with two senior officials, recommended a policy that eventually led to families being separated at the southern border.
Homan was the architect of the family separation policy in Trump’s first term. He’s also on video accepting a $50,000 bribe. I’m not holding my breath expecting him to be a peacemaker.
The media verdict is in: President Trump has “softened” his stance on his paramilitary war on Minneapolis. He struck a “cooperative tone” in a call with Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz. The administration hopes to “shift its strategy” on its ICE raids. Trump is executing a “pivot” and is attempting to “deescalate.”
You get the idea: Trump is chastened by the backlash to the ICE murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. So he’s now recalibrating the government’s approach in an effort to appear to dial down the violent social conflict that’s been unleashed.
Tom Homan and Kristy Noam
So let’s stipulate some threshold questions: Will any of this change how ICE is actually conducting its operations in American cities that fundamentally do not want ICE’s presence among their populations? Is Trump reversing the underlying reality of these operations—that they have become akin to military occupations of enemy territory within the American nation? Will there be serious governmental efforts to investigate those shootings, mete out accountability for them, and address what went wrong?
The answers to those questions sure look like “no,” “no,” and “no.” To wit, The Wall Street Journalreports that some Trump aides have realized that all this has become a “political liability,” so they’re in discussions over “how to continue deportations without clashing with protesters.” They’re also planning new steps to “improve ICE’s image.”
Meanwhile, The New York Timesreports that Trump met with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for two hours amid “concern” about the shootings. But Noem’s job is safe. Trump has replaced the public face of the Minneapolis occupation, removing Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who swaggers around these scenes of occupation like a conquering general, with border czar Tom Homan, who swaggers around on Fox News like a conquering general.
Note the problem here. Trump does apparently want to minimize clashes between government security services and protesters. But he doesn’t appear to want those heavily armed government militias to stop doing the things that are causing those clashes in the first place.
What’s really going on here is this: Trump is looking to defuse anger among congressional Democrats for purposes that don’t portend a meaningful shift. An administration official gave away the game to Punchbowl News, admitting that these “de-escalatory measures” are about placating Senate Democrats so they don’t seize this moment to demand restrictions on ICE as part of any government funding package.
I don’t think that is going to work. Democrats in the Senate at least seem to be getting the message that the majority of the public doesn’t like what’s happening.
ICE Barbie has passed the blame to Stephen Miller after she received calls to be fired in response to immigration officials killing another U.S. citizen, multiple sources told Axios.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told one source who relayed her comments to Axios.
In an earlier copy of the Axios report, others blamed Miller for divisive comments about slain anti-ICE protestor Alex Pretti wanting to “massacre law enforcement,” which were made by Border Patrol senior official Greg Bovino.
Miller denied the blame placed upon him for the “massacre” statement, instead deflecting the fault to information provided by Customs and Border Protection, which is under Noem’s Department of Homeland Security.
“Any early comments made were based on information sent to the White House through CBP,” he told the outlet.
President Trump’s shakeup in Minnesota immigration operations in the wake of two fatal shootings is “a disaster” for Kristi Noem, sources have told the Daily Beast.
Kristy Noam and Cory Lewandowski
Trump, 79, announced Monday that border czar Tom Homan, 64, will now run the embattled Minnesota operation and report directly to him. He did so amid rising public anger over the brutal and deadly manner in which operations have been carried out on Noem’s watch under her Border Patrol “commander-at-large” Gregory Bovino, who has been shown the door by the president.
For months, senior officials have griped that Homeland Security Secretary Noem, 54, and her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52, built a parallel power structure around Bovino, 55. This, they say, marginalized ICE and cut Homan out of key calls as Noem and Homan both fought to lead Trump’s mass deportation drive.
With Homan now tapped to take the reins in Minnesota, administration insiders say it doesn’t bode well for Noem’s job prospects. “Homan taking control is a disaster for Noem,” one Department of Homeland Security source said, adding that Homan was likely to be everything that the publicity-obsessed Noem and Bovino were not.
Meanwhile, ICE is ramping up it’s operation in Maine.
As a snowstorm blanketed the region, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday that federal agents have so far arrested more than 200 people in the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration operation in Maine.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dubbed its operation “Catch of the Day,” the latest in the administration’s immigration crackdowns across the country.
On Monday, the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project of Maine, the largest organization of its kind in the state, called for ICE to stop its operation, while also sending condolences to their counterparts in Minneapolis.
“There are not adequate words to describe how difficult the past week has been,” ILAP’s Executive Director Sue Roche said.“We are seeing mostly people in lawful immigration processes with no criminal records being arrested. Many have been racially profiled and abducted from their cars off the street, and some have been targeted at home. ICE is stalking grocery stores and schools. The lack of due process or humanity in this enforcement operation is appalling.”
The group added that it is leading a legal effort to file emergency habeas petitions and seek bond hearings “to try to secure the freedom of Maine residents swept up in the ICE operation.” As of Monday, ILAP said, it has received requests for emergency legal help from more than 60 people arrested in the operation, and federal judges have issued at least eight emergency orders blocking ICE from transferring individuals out of the area.
BIDDEFORD, Maine — Five-year-old Keyli Camila Espin Vaca expected her mother to come pick her up after school on Friday, just as she always did.
But her mother never came.
Mayra Vaca Latacunga, 25, had dropped Camila off at the Biddeford Primary School that morning, then went to get groceries. Soon after, ICE agents stopped her car and requested her documentation, her brother said. She didn’t have it. The agents handcuffed her and transferred her to Massachusetts.
Camila sat for a photo with her aunt and uncle, after Camila’s mother was detained by ICE in Biddeford, Maine.Finn Gomez for the Boston Globe
Vaca Latacunga, a single mother from Ecuador, was Camila’s sole caretaker. On Friday, school officials escorted the kindergartner to her Uncle Javier’s house. She stayed there for several days, pleading for her mom.
“Quiero mi mamá, tío,” Camila said in Spanish on Sunday. “Yo quiero estar con mi mamá.”
“I want my mom, uncle . . . I want to be with my mom.”
Camila is among a growing number of children who have been left without a parent as the Trump administration carries out a major immigration enforcement effort in Maine, according to local officials. “Operation Catch of the Day,” as the Department of Homeland Security calls it, is meant to arrest around 1,400 people. They have arrested more than 200 so far, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Monday to the Globe….
On Tuesday morning, a few hours after the Globe published this article, ICE released Vaca Latacunga in Massachusetts with an ankle monitor, according to Javier. The family was fearful to pick her up because of their legal status, so Vaca Latacunga was in a waiting room at the Burlington field office until the family found an Uber to take her back to Maine. On Tuesday afternoon, she was reunited with Camila.
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — When Fátima Lucas Henrique left home before 6 a.m. last Friday to head to her shift as a certified nursing assistant, it was with a sense of resolve. She had come to the United States from Angola, and pursued a career as a nurse so she could help people and make a difference. The ongoing immigration crackdown in the state wasn’t going to change that.
Fátima Lucas Henrique moved to Maine over two years ago from Angola. She was arrested in South Portland on Friday when heading to work.David Fonseca
Then came the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, rushing to her and forcing her from her car as onlookers honked their horns and shouted for help. Her terrified, piercing screamsthroughout the arrest, captured in a video widely circulated on social media, confirmed the fears and panic that many here worried would take hold once federal agents arrived. Since the arrest, Henrique has been detained in Boston and not been able to communicate at length with friends or family.
“We’re not safe right now. We can’t go grocery shopping. We can’t even go put the trash out without being afraid,” said a close friend of Henrique, who asked to not be identified because of her immigration status. When she first saw the video, the friend said, she recognized Henrique’s desperation, because it could have been her. “I felt so impotent,” said the friend, who also came to Maine from Angola and has been following the legal process for applying for citizenship.
The arrest has been held up as an example over recent days of the sort of strong-arm tactics by agents that immigrant-rights advocates have been watching for, as they embark on a campaign to monitor and document an immigration enforcement operation that began in Maine last week and that continues today.
A bit more:
Over the last several weeks, in anticipation of the surge, a team of activists has been training people on what to look out for, preparing them to deploy with whistles and car horns to warn immigrants and to monitor the agents’ tactics. And they said they are already seeing it: The apprehension of people while still in their vehicles, seemingly based on racial profiling; the patrols of bus stops; the arrest of people with no criminal background who are pursuing immigration legally.
The attorney general’s office has also urged Mainers to send in reports of intimidating and excessive federal enforcement behavior, in response to “evidence of constitutionally-deficient, excessive, and intimidating enforcement tactics” in the state.
DHS has maintained it is going after people with criminal histories, though advocates say many of those taken into custody have no criminal backgrounds at all. And they say Henrique’s case has resonated widely because of the rawness of her screams and because she, also, is not a criminal.
A search of the Maine criminal history record information request service returned no results for Henrique. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment Monday about her case.
So that’s the latest on ICE in Minnesota and Maine. Here in Massachusetts, we are wonder if we’ll be next.
What do you think? What else is on your mind?
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Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. There were serious efforts to mark the occasion, as well as unserious efforts by the White House to convince Americans to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
A couple of reads on the significance of the January 6 anniversary:
Five years! Half a decade ago today, Donald Trump summoned his angriest, most loyal fans from across America to Washington, D.C., with a call to arms and a fervent plea: They’re trying to steal the country from us, and they’ll get away with it, unless we stop them. They assembled on the National Mall, their frustration and rage crackling in the air, waiting to be told what to do. Trump whipped them into a frenzy, sent them marching down to the Capitol, and waited.
Last week, an excellent New York Times editorial described the insurrection of January 6th as a riot that never ended—“a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be.” To some, it felt like an ending, the final, violent death spasms of the cult of Trump—so much so that the Senate Republicans who could have slammed the door on him forever deluded themselves into thinking he would stay gone without their having to lift a finger.
Instead, it proved to be the dawn of Trump’s total liberation. He had stress-tested his own theory of his base: that they would swallow insane, ludicrous election lies simply because he asked them to, would march themselves into felonies because they thought he wanted them to, and would then sit in their jail cells, not disillusioned but unshaken in their faith in him, patiently awaiting the day of his return and their reward. Eventually, they got it.
Ever since, Trump has lived his life in accordance with the lessons he learned that day. There was no act of selfishness or vindictiveness too grotesque for him to survive, provided he kept his people adequately juiced in the belief that their enemies were worse—and provided he could claw his way back to actual, hard power.
So it’s true: We’ve never left the January 6th era. But what’s most staggering is how many people would prefer to pretend we never entered it in the first place. Outside the core of Trump’s zealot base, which celebrates the patriotic heroes of that day, sits a larger faction of more grudging GOP supporters, for whom the Capitol insurrection is an unpleasant memory repressed as a matter of mental hygiene. These people wouldn’t flat-out deny that January 6th happened, but they’ve mentally sequestered its memory and significance, refusing to allow it to force them into any uncomfortable conclusions. They’d laugh you out of the room for suggesting, for instance, that what happened just five years ago could plausibly happen again.
Three years from today, Donald Trump may well find himself in a familiar situation: asked to leave the White House and preferring not to. The strong odds are, of course, that he won’t be on the ballot himself. But if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, he’ll have far more compelling reasons not to let the transfer of power go ahead smoothly than he ever did in 2020. Back then, it was mostly a matter of arrogance and pride: He simply couldn’t accept that he’d lost to Joe Biden. This time, the personal stakes will be much higher. Wrapped in the powers of the presidency, he’s acted as a law unto himself for too long not to dread going back into private life, where long-delayed legal consequences might be lurking, waiting for him.
We can only hope the Democrats take over the House and Senate and manage to impeach him.
After a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it appeared the attack would result in a rare moment of reckoning in American politics — at least for a moment. Even hardline GOP politicians had distanced themselves from Trump, then President Joe Biden was in charge and Congress and the Department of Justice were investigating both the attack and the plot to overturn the 2020 election behind it.
Five years later, any accountability, political or legal, that Trump and his allies faced has been erased.
One of Trump’s first acts after assuming office in his second term was to pardon the nearly 1,600 people who had either already been convicted or were awaiting trial for crimes related to Jan. 6. Many of these people had prior criminal records including sexual assault and domestic violence, many were part of far-right organizations like the Proud Boys and many have been charged with additional, unrelated crimes following their release. None of them, however, will have to serve their sentences for storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election results and allow Trump to cling to power.
Likewise, Trump has avoided both legal and political accountability. Trump has effectively excised any Republicans willing to stand up to his false claims that the election was stolen from the party. He easily won the GOP nomination for president in 2024, though he faced multiple prosecutions over the plot to overturn the 2020 election, the first coming in the form of his second impeachment, for which he was acquitted. He was later indicted in Georgia, in a state-level racketeering case and again in Washington D.C. on charges of defrauding the U.S. and obstructing an official proceeding. Both cases stalled out in court and were not tried before the 2024 election.
Since winning re-election, any chance of legal accountability for Trump or the rest of the people who crafted the plot to deny the election results has dissolved. Bennet Gershamn, a law professor at Pace University, said that in his opinion, delay tactics from Trump’s lawyers and his victory in the 2024 election are the primary reasons why Trump has been able to escape any legal consequences.
“Trump was able to escape prosecution because he was elected,” Gershman told Salon. “If you want to say that Merrick Garland dragged his feet a little bit, maybe. If you want to say that the prosecution’s investigation took a little bit more time, I don’t know. I was a prosecutor for a long time, and these investigations are very, very complicated … But at the end of the day, the indictments that were handed down were very strong indictments. The evidence was overwhelming.”
Read the rest at Salon.
Trump responded to the anniversary by publishing a pack of outrageous lies.
The White House published a website Tuesday with a false telling of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, underscoring President Donald Trump’s years-long effort to reshape the narrative surrounding the day when a mob of his supporters violently overran the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.
The White House website criticizes Democrats and some Republicans for engaging in what Trump has called a “witch hunt” against him after the Jan. 6 attack. Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2023 on four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, in a case investigating his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results….
The White House website also falsely claims — as Trump has for years — that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” and that Pence had the power to “return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification” but chose not to “in an act of cowardice and sabotage.”
Pence, who presided over the certification of the electoral votes following the attack, has steadfastly defended his actions on Jan. 6, saying to do otherwise would have been unconstitutional. Trump’s former vice president was inside the Capitol during the attack and had to be evacuated from the Senate floor with his family as rioters stormed the complex. Many in the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” on the misguided belief that Pence could have stopped Congress from certifying Biden’s victory….
The new White House website also repeats a claim made often by Trump and his allies — that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who was speaker of the House at the time of the attack, is to blame for “security lapses” at the Capitol. Pelosi has vehemently rejected those accusations, saying again Tuesday that Trump resisted appeals to intervene in the attack for more than three hours.
“For over three hours we begged [Trump] to send the National Guard! He never did it. He took joy in not doing it. He was savoring it. … What he’s saying today is an insult to the American people,” Pelosi said at a Tuesday House event.
Taxpayers’ money paid for Trump lying website.
So much for the past. As usual, Historian Heather Cox Richardson’s commentary on our current situation at Letters from an American is very helpful:
“They say that when you win the presidency you lose the midterm,” President Donald J. Trump said today to House Republicans. “I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public because we have the right policy. They don’t. They have a horrible policy. They do stick together. They’re violent, they’re vicious, you know. They’re vicious people.”
“They had the worst policy. How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator. Nobody is worse than Obama. And the people that surrounded Biden.”
And there you have it: in a rambling speech in which he jumped from topic to topic, danced, and appeared to mimic someone doing something either stupid or obscene, Trump explained the ideology behind his actions. He and MAGA Republicans have absorbed the last 40 years of Republican rhetoric to believe that Democratic policies are “horrible” and that only Republicans “have the right policy.” If that’s the case, why should Republicans even have to “run against these people?” Why even have elections? When voters choose Democrats, there’s something wrong with them, so why let them have a say? Their choice is bad by definition. Anything that they do, or have done, must be erased.
That is the ideology behind MAGA, amped up by the racism and sexism that identifies MAGA’s opponents as women, Black Americans, and people of color. In their telling, the world Americans constructed after World War II—and particularly after the 1965 Voting Rights Act protected Black and Brown voting—has destroyed the liberty of wealthy men to act without restraint. Free them, the logic goes, and they will Make America Great Again.
Trump with Peter Thiel
As tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel wrote in 2009: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He continued: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”
“Because there are no truly free places left in our world,” he wrote, Thiel called for escaping into cyberspace, outer space, or seasteading.
While tech leaders are focusing on escaping established governments, Trump’s solution to an expanded democracy appears to be to silence the voters and lawmakers who support the “liberal consensus”—the once-bipartisan idea that the government should enable individuals to reach their greatest potential by protecting them from corporate power, poverty, lack of access to modern infrastructure, and discrimination—and to erase the policies of that consensus.
On Trump’s version of January 6 history:
Nowhere does Trump’s conviction that he, and he alone, has the right to run the United States show more clearly than in the White House’s rewriting of the history of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were Trump supporters determined to overthrow the free and fair election of Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes in 2020, replacing him with Trump by virtue of their belief that no Democrat could be fairly elected.
But the official White House website reversed that reality today, claiming that the insurrectionists who beat and wounded at least 140 police officers, smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol building, and called for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence were “peaceful patriotic protesters.” The real villains, the White House wrote in bold type, were “the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.”
In reality, modern Republican policies have rarely served everyday people, while the policies enacted by Democratic president Joe Biden demonstrably did. Biden rejected the ideology that called for cutting taxes, regulations, and social services in the name of liberty. Instead, he urged Congress to invest in public infrastructure, creating jobs, and he shored up the social safety net.
Read the rest at the link.
Bill Kristol reacted to Richardson’s piece at The Bulwark: The Spirit of Fascism.
MAGA is a vulgar, cartoonish, cultish, and incoherent movement.
So, a century ago, was fascism.
And as today’s MAGA more openly and explicitly embraces the spirit of yesteryear’s fascism, it’s perhaps worth noting that it is the era of the rise of fascism to which MAGA looks back with nostalgia and yearning.
In her most recent newsletter, the historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us of this 2009 statement by Peter Thiel, who as much as anyone could be considered the theorist of Trumpism as an intellectual movement.
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women . . . have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.”
The first sentence is a bit startling. But there is, to be fair, a long tradition of worrying about various tensions between freedom and democracy. Thiel, one could say, has simply adopted the radically pessimistic view that those tensions can no longer be managed or resolved.
Far more striking is the rest of Thiel’s statement, his yearning for the pre-welfare-state and pre-women’s-franchise 1920s, “the last decade during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics.”
Thiel’s history is not striking just because it is wrong—the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in the summer of 1920, making the general election that fall the first to feature the mass participation of women, though some states had granted women full suffrage even earlier.
It’s striking because we do now know, after all, what followed the decade of the 1920s: A 1930s that featured a worldwide Great Depression, and the rise of fascism—which, while unsuccessful in America, came closer here than we often remember, and was dominant overseas. All of that culminated in the horrors of World War II. The terrible events from 1929 to 1945 followed on—followed from—the economic and foreign policies of the decade for which Thiel is so nostalgic.
Kristol on Stephen Miller:
If Peter Thiel is a MAGA theoretician, Stephen Miller is MAGA’s chief propagandist. On Sunday, in the wake of Trump’s Venezuelan intervention, Miller posted:
“Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have [sic] already made them far wealthier and more successful). The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry. The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”
So Britain and France should not have dissolved empires and colonies, but rather have fought to hold countries like, say, India and Vietnam? And the United States’ openness to immigrants from, say, India and Vietnam, has been an exercise in self-punishment?
Apparently so. On Monday, Miller extended his critique of the modern world, going on television to decry “This whole period that happened after World War II where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging.”
Miller is terrifying.
MILLER: The US is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We're a superpower. It's absurd we'd allow a nation in our backyard to become a supplier of resources to our adversariesTAPPER: Sovereign countries shouldn't be able to do what they want?M: *yells*
Stephen Miller has spent the bulk of his White House career furthering hard-right domestic policies that have resulted in mass deportations, family separations and the testing of the constitutional tenets that grant American citizenship.
Now, Mr. Miller, President Trump’s 40-year-old deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, is casting his hard-right gaze further abroad: toward Venezuela and the Danish territory of Greenland, specifically.
Mr. Miller is doing so, the president’s advisers say, in service of advancing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy ambitions, which so far resemble imperialistic designs to exploit less powerful, resource-rich countries and territories the world over and use those resources for America’s gain. According to Mr. Miller, using brute force is not only on the table but also the Trump administration’s preferred way to conduct itself on the world stage.
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper of CNN on Monday, during a combative appearance in which he was pressed on Mr. Trump’s long-held desire to control Greenland.
“These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,” he said.
This aggressive posture toward Greenland — and in turn, the rest of the world — is a perfect encapsulation of the raw power that Mr. Trump wants to project, even against Denmark, the NATO ally that controls Greenland. The moment also illustrates how people like Mr. Miller have ascended to the inner circle of a leader who has no interest in having his impulses checked, and how they exert their influence once they arrive there.
The moment also shows just how differently Mr. Trump has operated in his second term from how he did in his first.
About midway through his first term, the president began joking with his aides about his desire to buy Greenland for its natural resources, like coal and uranium. At the time, his advisers humored him with offers to investigate the possibility of buying the semiautonomous territory. They did not think Mr. Trump was serious, or that it could ever actually happen. Those advisers are gone.
Flash forward to the second term. Mr. Miller has the president’s complete trust, a staff of over 40 people, and several big jobs that include protecting the homeland and securing territories further afield. A first-term joke made in passing about purchasing Greenland for its natural resources is now a term-two presidential threat to attack and annex the Danish territory by force if necessary, under the guise of protecting Americans from foreign incursions.
TAPPER: Can you rule out the US is going to take Greenland by force?MILLER: Greenland should be part of the US. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US is the power of NATOT: So force is on the table?M: Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over future of Greenland
When a bleary-eyed Trump explained the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro this past Saturday, he invoked the Monroe doctrine: while the US president sounded like he was reading about it for the first time, historians of course recognized the idea of Washington as a kind of guardian of the western hemisphere. Together with the national security strategy published in December, the move on Venezuela can be understood as advancing a vision for carving up the world into what the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt called “great spaces”, with each effectively supervised by a great power (meaning, in today’s world, Washington, Moscow and Beijing). But more is happening than a return to such de facto imperialism: Trump’s promise to “run the country” for the sake of US oil companies signals the internationalization of one aspect of his regime – what has rightly been called the logic of the mafia state. That logic is even more obvious in his stated desire to grab Greenland.
The theory of the mafia state was first elaborated by the Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar in 2016. Such a state is less about corruption where envelopes change hands under the table. Instead, public procurement is rigged; large companies are brought under the control of regime-friendly oligarchs, who in turn acquire media to provide favorable coverage to the ruler. The beneficiaries are what Magyar calls the “extended political family” (which can include the ruler’s natural family). As with the mafia, unconditional loyalty is the price for being part of the system.
As so often with Trump 2.0, practices that other regimes try to veil have been unashamedly in the open: the “pausing” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signaled that the US is not only open for business but also bribing (be it with a jet or a fake prize from Fifa); not only do pardons appear to be for sale; and not only can companies curry favor by financing a grotesque ballroom – but also the president’s political family, which includes billionaires like Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick, seems poised to profit handsomely, including from foreign deals, and now foreign military adventures: according to the investigative reporter Judd Legum, the Trump oligarch Paul Singer, owner of the oil company Citgo, is to set to do very well with a Trump-controlled government in Caracas.
This does not mean that the US’s “special military operation” in Venezuela is entirely a matter of “it’s the oil, stupid”; there is an argument that it helps push back against Iran, China and Russia (even if the precedent that killing 40 people and kidnapping sets also legitimizes interventions by other powers, as those lamenting the weakening of international law have rightly pointed out). There is also the old-style neoconservative justification for removing a tyrant from power, something that the former self of Marco Rubio, before bending the knee, would have favored – though leaving a decapitated regime in place has made talk of democracy and human rights protection a tad implausible. But the point is not regime change, as long as a regime is fine with Trumpian exploitation. The alternative is extortion: if the US oil companies get “total access”, the rulers of what is also a mafia state of sorts can stay in place; if not, it’s a bigger boss talking to a minor boss along the lines of: “Nice country you have there; pity if we had to do a full-scale invasion.”
Read the rest for an exploration of Trump’s Greenland obsession.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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I haven’t been feeling well for the past several days, and I’ve only been following the news superficially. There is so much going on, but I’ll do my best. Here’s the latest.
Trump is scheduled to give a speech from the White House tonight at 9PM.
President Donald Trump intends to preview his agenda for next year and beyond in a live speech from the White House on Wednesday night. His remarks are coming at a crucial time as he tries to rebuild his steadily eroding popularity.
The White House offered few details about what the Republican president intends to emphasize in the 9 p.m. EST speech. Public polling shows most U.S. adults are frustrated with his handling of the economy as inflation picked up after his tariffs raised prices and hiring slowed.
In 2026, Trump and his party face a referendum on their leadership as the nation heads into the midterm elections that will decide control of the House and the Senate.
Trump has said that he thinks more Americans would back him if they simply heard him describe his track record. Administration officials say investment commitments for new factories will reverse the recent decline in manufacturing jobs and that consumer activity will improve dramatically as people receive increased tax refunds next year.
“It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump said in a Tuesday social media post announcing the speech.
Sorry, Grandpa. Your economy sucks because of your idiotic tariffs, your cruel mass deportations, and your general incompetence.
Tariffs are unpopular, prices remain stubbornly high and Americans are souring on President Trump’s handling of the economy.
So Mr. Trump has reprised a familiar political strategy: promise people cash.
The president has repeatedly floated the idea of sending one-time $2,000 rebate checks to many families.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
The White House is trying to tamp down Americans’ economic anxieties by dangling the prospect of checks and other paydays next year, hoping that the money might assuage voters who blame the president for their rising cost of living.
Mr. Trump, who is set to address the nation on Wednesday night, has repeatedly teased the idea of sending one-time $2,000 rebate checks to many families, funded using money collected from his sweeping global tariffs. But he has not devised a detailed plan for providing the rebates, an expensive policy that Republicans in Congress must approve and one that they have not yet considered.
The president has also begun hyping up the tax refunds that Americans are slated to receive in 2026. For many people, these cash payments are expected to be larger than they were last year, after Republicans adopted a sprawling set of tax cuts in July.
Both Mr. Trump and members of his administration have periodically drawn an equivalence between the supposed tariff rebates and the enacted tax law. They have claimed the money could bolster the economy and alleviate some of the financial strains on families, even at a time when Mr. Trump maintains that much of the talk about affordability is a “hoax.”
“Next year is projected to be the largest tax refund season ever, and we’re going to be giving back refunds out of the tariffs, because we’ve taken in literally trillions of dollars,” Mr. Trump said at a cabinet meeting last week. “And we’re going to be giving a nice dividend to the people, in addition to reducing debt.”
But economists take a dimmer view. Even if Americans were to delight in a series of new government-issued checks, the payments would hardly address the reasons that prices remain so high — including a shortage in housing that has driven up rents and mortgages and the global tariffs that have made imports more expensive. And the money that may soon be sloshing around the economy could end up worsening inflation, undermining Mr. Trump’s own economic goals.
Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, said that simply “pumping money” into the economy — without any other underlying changes — threatened to “just generate a cycle where you continue to get higher prices.”
When Politico recently asked Donald Trump to grade the current U.S. economy, he replied “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” He made this boast at a time when actual economic data were still scarce, a consequence of the government shutdown that stopped or delayed key information about the state of the job market.
Yesterday the report on employment during the month of November finally arrived. And the message of the report on the state of the US economy was clear: A+++++ my A++. While it’s too soon to declare that we’re in a recession, the data are at least pre-recessionary: that is, the numbers are weak enough that we should be seriously worried that a recession is coming. And that’s a state of affairs completely at odds with Trump’s rose-colored — spray-tanned? — picture.
I’ll talk about the reasons the gap between Trump’s big boasts and the glum reality matters in a minute. First, however, let’s talk about what we learned from yesterday’s report.
Most importantly, the data show a weak labor market. Employment isn’t falling off a cliff, but job growth has been weak and hasn’t kept pace with the number of people seeking work. The headline unemployment rate in November was 4.6 percent, up from an average of 4 percent in 2024. That number is close to triggering the Sahm Rule, an economic rule of thumb devised by Claudia Sahm, a former economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, that has historically been highly successful at identifying the early stages of a recession.
We can’t do a strict application of the Sahm Rule yet because Sahm’s method is based on the average unemployment rate over the past three months. Unfortunately, the shutdown prevented the Bureau of Labor Statistics from collecting key data in October. But if we do an interpolation of October’s unemployment rate by averaging over September’s rate of 4.4% and November’s rate of 4.6%, we can estimate that October’s unemployment rate was 4.5%. And those 3 months of unemployment numbers bring us within a whisker of the unemployment rise that, according to the Sahm Rule, signals that a recession is on the horizon.
The state of the economy looks even worse if we take a wider view of the labor market. The BLS calculates 6 different measures of unemployment. The most commonly cited number is U-3 — the number of workers who are actively seeking jobs but haven’t found them. But the broadest measure is U-6, which includes underemployed workers stuck in part-time employment and discouraged workers who have temporarily given up job search. And U-6 has risen sharply since January, when Trump took office:
Source: BLS
Further evidence consistent with a poor and deteriorating job market is data showing that the number of job-seekers who are long-term unemployed – that is, have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more – has risen by almost a third (from 1.45 million to 1.91 million) since 2024. This means that the unemployed are finding it harder to find jobs.
Read more details at the Substack link.
Most Americans aren’t stupid. They can see how much prices have gone up on necessities like food and electricity. Trump is losing popularity even with his MAGA base.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: "I think the midterms are gonna be very hard for Republicans. I'm one of the people that's willing to admit the truth and say I don't see Republicans winning the midterms right now, so that doesn't bode well for Mike Johnson."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) on Tuesday said President Donald Trump has “real problems” within the Republican Party, adding in an interview with CNN that the president is out of touch with voters on key issues such as affordability.
Greene told Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” that the “dam is breaking” in terms of Trump’s hold onsupport within the party and that she expects Republicans to struggle in next year’s midterm elections.
“I think the midterms are going to be very hard for Republicans,” Greene said. “I’m one of the people that’s willing to admit the truth and say I don’t see Republicans winning the midterms right now.” [….]
Greene had carved out a high-profile role as one of Trump’s most vocal allies, first in the “Make America Great Again” movement and then with her support for the “America First” agenda. But after weeks of speaking out against the president on several issues, Greene and Trump had an acrimonious public split last month after she joined with Democrats on a discharge position to compel a House vote calling on the Justice Department to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein….
Speaking to The Washington Post this week, Greene described herself as a “bellwether” who is closely attuned to Trump’s base. “I say it, and then within four to six months, everybody’s saying the same thing,” she said….
“He’s got real problems with Republicans within the House and the Senate that will be breaking with him on more things to come,” she added.
Greene also said Trump’s supporters “didn’t appreciate” the president’s reaction to the death of Rob Reiner, who was found stabbed to death alongside his wife, photographer Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home Sunday. The couple’s son Nick Reiner faces two counts of first-degree murder, among other charges, in their deaths.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: "What I'd like to see from the president is empathy for Americans. Donald Trump is a billionaire and he's the president. When he looks into a camera and says 'affordability is a hoax,' he's talking to Americans that are suffering and have been for many years now."
Four House Republicans joined Democrats Wednesday to force a House vote on a straight three-year extension of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits that will expire Dec. 31, delivering a sharp rebuke to Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Lawler of New York, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania signed the discharge petition filed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — hours after House GOP leaders rejected attempts by Fitzpatrick and other Republican moderates to seek a floor vote on extending the subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans.
Fitzpatrick said in a late-night House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday that “the only thing worse than a clean extension … would be expiration, and I would make that decision.” Lawler added that “the only feasible path forward is a discharge petition” if GOP leader reject a floor vote.
Under House rules, a completed discharge petition is subject to a waiting period, meaning no vote could happen until next month — though Johnson could choose to move sooner.
“We have worked for months to craft a two-party solution to address these expiring healthcare credits,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement Wednesday. “Our only request was a Floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. … Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”
Jeffries told reporters Wednesday his discharge petition is “the most straightforward path to ensuring that tens of millions of Americans don’t have their health care ripped away from them because of the expiration of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
"It's idiotic, it's political malpractice," Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday of Johnson refusing to give them an ACA extension vote.Lawler, and other moderate Republicans didn't rule out joining Democrats to force a vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies, Axios reported.
Donald Trump is worried that Republicans aren’t as afraid of him as they used to be. Despite his self-billing as a dealmaker, the president has only ever had one tool to control his party: fear. GOP politicians have been afraid of career damage and literal physical harm if they crossed him. Trump is not above reminding elected officials that he has unhinged followers who are known to be violent. But as his approval ratings fall and the 2026 midterm elections inch closer, it seems Republicans are slightly less worried about the president’s wrath.
The first indicator was the House vote on Nov. 18 to release the Epstein files against Trump’s expressed wishes. But the biggest sign that the president’s grip on power is weakening came last week, when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana statehouse struck down a gerrymandering bill Trump had demanded.
As I argued in the latest Standing Room Only newsletter, this context helps explain why Trump responded to the death of beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele with an ugliness that’s shocking — even for this president. Although the Los Angeles Police Department had arrested the couple’s son for the apparent homicide, Trump insinuated on Truth Social that it was one of his own followers who killed the Reiners out of revenge for their anti-Trump activism. He doubled down when asked about it by reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. The message was hard to miss: If you oppose Trump, he wishes you dead.
These are promising signs, but it’s not worth holding your breath waiting for GOP politicians to openly turn on a president who demands absolute loyalty. Instead of public rebellion, most Republicans seem to be engaged in a form of quiet quitting. They won’t go out of their way to resist Trump, but they are losing enthusiasm for defending him. They’re struggling to hide their frustration or their scheming for a post-Trump world. Overall, the posture is one of lying low, waiting for the old man to be gone so they can begin the project of rebuilding the GOP and their own careers in a post-Trump era.
Read the rest at Salon.
Trump is also becoming noticeably less involved in actually running the government (gift link): The White House Is a Lost Cause.
There is a presidency at work in Washington, but it is not clear that there is a president at work in the Oval Office.
Ask Donald Trump about the goings on of his administration, and there is a good chance he’ll defer to a deputy rather than answer the question. “I don’t know her,” he said when asked about his nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, earlier this year. “I listened to the recommendation of Bobby,” he said, pointing to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services.
Ask Trump for insight into why his administration made a choice or to explain a particular decision, and he’ll be at a loss for words. Ask him to comment on a scandal? He’ll plead ignorance. “I know nothing about it,” Trump said last week, when asked about the latest tranche of photographs released from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.
None of this on its own means the president isn’t working or paying attention to the duties of his office. But consider the rest of the evidence. He is by most accounts isolated from the outside world. He does not travel the country and rarely meets with ordinary Americans outside the White House. He is shuttled from one Trump resort to another to play golf and hold court with donors, supporters and hangers-on.
Ronald Reagan took regular meetings with congressional leaders to discuss his legislative agenda; George H.W. Bush spearheaded negotiations with the nation’s allies and led the United States to war in Iraq; and George W. Bush was, for better or worse, “the decider” who performed leadership for the cameras as much as he tried to exercise it from the Oval Office. Trump is a ubiquitous cultural presence, but there is no outward sign that he is an active participant in running the national government. He was mostly absent during discussions of his signature legislation — the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — and practically AWOL during the monthlong government shutdown.
It is difficult for any president to get a clear read on the state of the nation; it takes work and discipline to clear the distance between the office and the people. But Trump, in his second term, does not seem to care about the disconnect. Abraham Lincoln once remarked that it would “never do for a president to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.” A president has to be engaged — attentive to both the government and the public he was elected to serve.
Trump is neither. He is uninterested in anyone except his most devoted fans, and would rather collect gifts from foreign businessmen than take the reins of his administration. “The president doesn’t know and never will,” Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview with Vanity Fair, commenting on the work of Elon Musk in the first months of the year. “He doesn’t know the details of these smallish agencies.”
A bit more:
Russell Vought
Instead, the work of the White House has been delegated to a handful of high-level advisers. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the de facto shadow president for domestic affairs. As one senior government official told ProPublica, “It feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief.” It was Vought who orchestrated the administration’s assault on the federal bureaucracy, including the wholesale destruction of U.S.A.I.D. It was Vought who either froze or canceled hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for anti-poverty programs, H.I.V. reduction initiatives and research into science, medicine and technology. And it is Vought who has been pushing the boundaries of executive power as he attempts to turn the federal government into little more than an extension of the personal will of the president — as channeled through himself, of course.
If Vought is the nation’s shadow president for domestic policy, then Stephen Miller is its shadow president for internal security. Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, is using the president’s authority to try to transform the ethnic mix of the country — to make America white again, or at least whiter than it is now. He is the primary force behind the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection into a roving deportation force. He has pushed both agencies to step up their enforcement operations, targeting schools, restaurants, farms and other work sites and detaining anyone agents can get their hands on, regardless of citizenship or legal status. It is Miller who is behind the militarization of ICE, the use of the National Guard to occupy Democrat-led cities and assist deportation efforts, and the plan to blanket the United States with a network of detention camps for unauthorized immigrants and anyone else caught in his dragnet.
In other words, the Nazis are running White House policy. Use the gift link to read more.
The latest White House mess is the Vanity Fair profile of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Susie Wiles generally helps quietly shape headlines. She is rarely the focus of them.
That changed in dramatic fashion Tuesday after Vanity Fair published a deeply reported profile of the 68-year-old White House chief of staff, whose decades-long career in politics has been defined by a measured, steady-the-ship tone, never one that could be construed as undermining her boss.
In the two-part Vanity Fair piece — which included 11 interviews over nearly a year, with the White House’s cooperation — Wiles comes off as far more candid than her public persona. She not only speaks openly about both President Donald Trump and those who make up the core of his administration, but appears to acknowledge that at times she has been at odds with some of the policies that have been central to Trump’s second term. While not unusual for a chief of staff to disagree with the president they serve, those concerns generally remain part of private conversations.
Susie Wiles
Wiles revealed there had been “huge disagreements” over implementing tariffs, acknowledged that the administration must “look harder” at its process for mass deportation and said she had to “get on board” with Trump’s decision to give blanket pardons to Jan. 6 defendants. She said she initially believed only those who did not commit violent acts should be pardoned.
The profile prompted an all-hands-on-deck pushback from the White House and Trump’s political orbit. The central talking point became that the profile lacked context, and supporters blasted the outlet for being unfair rather than offering any direct refutation of the authenticity of quotes or what was reported.
Wiles herself also offered rare public condemnation.
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she posted on social media. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
In an interview with the New York Post, Trump defended his top staffer.
“I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided,”he said.
Trump added “she’s fantastic” when asked if he continues to have full confidence in Wiles.
JJ spoke for me in her post yesterday. I too am completely exhausted by the news as well as personal stuff. I imagine any American who is paying attention is struggling to take it all in. I hope I can make some kind of sense today.
Trump is out of the country for awhile. He’s over in the UK where they are sucking up to him in hopes of getting more friendly treatment on his ridiculous tariffs and other policies. The Brits absolutely despise Trump, so there will be large protests. The powers that be are trying to keep Trump away from the protesters as much as possible.
President Donald Trump is set to spend nearly all of his two-day state visit to Britain this week behind closed doors — or, at least, manicured hedges — far from massive planned protests and without delivering a traditional address to potential critics in Parliament, which is scheduled to recess as his plane speeds over the Atlantic.
Although the invitation from King Charles III appears designed to please a president whose “America First” policies are upending trade and security relationships, that doesn’t mean Trump’s royal moment can’t be derailed. The president and the king have differences on a laundry list of geopolitical issues they will have to navigate as they project friendship before a global audience.
Trump gets the royal coach ride he always wanted.
Charles and Trump are notably at odds on environmental policy, for example. The British king recently delivered a subtle rebuke of Trump’s calls for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state, proclaiming in May that Canada should remain “strong and free.” As recently as last weekend, Trump told European leaders that they must apply economic pressure on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine before he would levy additional U.S. sanctions.
And the controversy over the ousted British ambassador to the United States still simmers. Last week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired Peter Mandelson after more details emerged about his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a former friend of Trump’s whose case has dogged the president.
Bloomberg News and the Sun reported that they obtained email messages sent by Mandelson to Epstein, who died in 2019 while in federal custody after his conviction on sex offenses. In one, Mandelson reportedly wrote: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.” The former envoy has not denied the authenticity of the emails but said he was duped by the assurances of Epstein and his team.
The agreed-upon European method of dealing with Trump?
During the trip,Trump will eschew public-facing traditions for foreign dignitaries that could lead to moments of tension, such as addressing Parliament or joining in a parade through British streets, as French President Emmanuel Macron did in July. The schedule also allows for tighter security at a time of heightened tensions after the killing of high-profile conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“The U.K. government has decided, like a lot of other allied governments, that there is this sort of formula to dealing with Trump,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department official. “You flatter him, you appease him, you distract him, and, hopefully, he never figures out that you’re not actually doing what he wants.”
“There’s a lot of people from the first Trump administration going around telling governments that this is the way to do things,” Shapiro added. “The U.K. government has really taken this on in the second term, and the royal family is central to that.” [….]
So far, Starmer has led the charm offensive to bridge areas of divergence — using Trump’s fascination for the royals as a diplomatic carrot.
The British leader unveiled the invitation from Charles during an Oval Office meeting in February, presenting the letter-loving Trump with a cream-colored envelope and encouraging him to read the note on the spot.
“It’s an invitation for a second state visit. This is really special. This has never happened before. This is unprecedented,” Starmer said later. U.S. presidents are routinely invited for a state visit during their first terms.
It’s disgusting. Trump behaves like a spoiled child and other countries, as well as the U.S. media and Republican politicians, do everything they can to pacify him.
Police in the U.K. arrested four people after photos of President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were projected onto Windsor Castle on Tuesday night.
Police in the U.K. arrested four people after photos of President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were projected onto Windsor Castle on Tuesday night.
The projections included photos of Trump and Epstein; of the two joined by first lady Melania Trump with Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell; and of a lewd birthday message Trump allegedly sent Epstein in 2003 for a 50th birthday book.
Trump arrived in London on Tuesday for a state visit. He’s expected to spend most of Wednesday at the castle with King Charles III and Queen Camilla and other members of the royal family.
Thames Valley Police said in a statement Tuesday night that they arrested four adults “on suspicion of malicious communications following a public stunt in Windsor.” The police added they will conduct an investigation into the incident, and that all four people arrested remain in custody.
“Our officers responded swiftly to stop the projection and four people have been arrested,” the statement read.
President Trump accused The New York Times and four of its reporters of defaming him ahead of the 2024 election, claiming that a series of articles sought to undermine his candidacy and disparage his reputation as a successful businessman.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Mr. Trump said the articles and a book published by two of the journalists were “specifically designed to try and damage President Trump’s business, personal and political reputation.”
According to the complaint, the articles and the book were published with “actual malice” toward Mr. Trump and caused “enormous” economic losses and damage to his “professional and occupational interests.” The lawsuit asked for damages of at least $15 billion.
The defendants named in the suit were The New York Times Company and Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker and Michael S. Schmidt. The complaint also named Penguin Random House, which published a book about Mr. Trump written by Ms. Craig and Mr. Buettner, as a defendant.
The complaint claims that the defendants timed the publication of the articles and books “at the height of election season to inflict maximum electoral damage against President Trump.”
A spokesman for The Times responded: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a note to staff on Tuesday that the lawsuit was “frivolous,” adding that “everyone, regardless of their politics, should be troubled by the growing anti-press campaign led by President Trump and his administration.”
A spokeswoman for Penguin Random House said: “This is a meritless lawsuit. Penguin Random House stands by the book and its authors and will continue to uphold the values of the First Amendment that are fundamental to our role as a book publisher.”
That sounds like an interesting book. Susanne Craig is a fantastic economics reporter.
Kirk’s assassination six days ago at an event at Utah Valley University sent shockwaves across the country and is the latest incident of violence tearing through American politics.
Utah County prosecutors charged Robinson through an information document rather than an indictment. An information court document allows prosecutors to charge someone directly and requires a probable cause hearing, during which a judge determines if there is sufficient evidence to proceed.
The charging document for the 22-year-old suspect outlines evidence collected by investigators, including DNA on the suspected murder weapon and a texted confession.
The charging document says Robinson “intentionally” targeted Kirk because of Robinson’s “belief or perception regarding Charlie Kirk’s political expression.” While prosecutors stopped short of specifically detailing what issues motivated Robinson to carry out the September 10 shooting, the charging document provided some clues.
In separate conversations with his roommate and family, Robinson shared that Kirk “spreads too much hate,” and he “had enough of his hatred,” the document said.
The document also said the suspect’s mother told investigators that “over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented. She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders.”
I admit I was wrong in my Saturday post. I suggested that Robinson was to the right of Charlie Kirk. Despite what Utah authorities are claiming, he wasn’t particularly involved in politics, based on his on-line postings. Investigative reporter Ken Klippenstein gained access to Robinson’s Discord chats, and the members of these groups appear to be friends who have varied political points of view and are mainly interested in playing video games. Everyone who is interested in this case should read this post.
“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all … it was me at UVU yesterday.” Thus Tyler Robinson messaged his friends on Discord, seemingly apologizing for murdering Charlie Kirk. “I’m sorry for all of this.”
I obtained this and other Discord chats I’ve decided to publish (the legacy news media, as usual, refuses), along with new information I’ve learned about Robinson from the people who knew him best.
Trump and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing. The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called Nihilist Violent Extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war.
“It’s been so terrible and seeing it from an inside perspective is so frustrating,” a friend of Robinson’s since middle school told me. The childhood friend, who asked not to be named for fear of threats, provided me with the above non-public photo of Robinson on a camping trip (a favorite activity of his) to corroborate their relationship.
“I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part,” the friend told me. “That’s the big thing, he just never really talked politics which is why it’s so frustrating.”
The picture that emerges bears little resemblance to the media version. Robinson, I am told, though quiet, was a well-liked person with a supportive family. The friend group who he interacted with on Discord, far from some kind of militia camp or Antifa bunker it’s been portrayed as, represented a range of different political views but mostly talked video games.
Yesterday, FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview that Robinson “subscribed to left-wing ideology,” citing his family’s remarks to investigators. But those close to Robinson say there was a lot his family didn’t know about him.
“Their ideas are based on someone they didn’t fully understand,” the childhood friend told me. Though the family was generally supportive of Robinson (a claim corroborated by his mother’s Facebook account, brimming with praise for Tyler) they didn’t seem to know about his relationship with a transgender person named Lance, the friend said.
We haven’t heard directly from the transgender roommate, and Robinson is refusing to talk to authorities, which suggests that he has a good lawyer. We can’t know for sure what his motive was, but it seems possible that he objected to Kirk’s hatred of LGBTQ people. More from Klippenstein:
When I asked if his family would have been accepting, the friend replied: “I don’t think even Tyler knew the answer to that question, which is why he kept it so low key between themselves.”
Tyler’s bisexuality, the friend said, was coupled with openness on LGBT issues. But his wasn’t some cookie cutter lefty position on every or even most issues, his friends say.
Tyler Robinson appeared in court in a suicide vest.
“Obviously he’s okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” the friend said, referring to the right to bear arms.
The friend described Robinson as fairly typical of a young man his age from Utah: someone who loved the outdoors, was a gamer, and into guns.
“To all of us he just seemed like a simple guy who liked playing games like Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, loved to fish and loved to camp,” the friend said. “It really did seem like that’s all he was about.”
The phrase inscribed on one of the bullet casings from the shooting — “Hey fascist, catch!” — though widely reported to mean he was a man of the left, is in fact a reference to the Helldivers 2 game. Three arrows initially believed by federal agents to be a reference to Antifa are also a reference to Helldivers.
Private Discord messages shared with me by a friend of Robinson’s confirm that Robinson wasn’t some political martyr. A search for posts of Robinson’s containing keywords like “Biden” and “Trump” turned up just one hit each. The Trump post was a passing reference to the 2019 impeachment inquiry. The Biden one came on the day of the 2020 election, where he provided an update to another friend asking about the status of the vote count.
I hope you’ll go read the rest of Klippenstein’s piece.
Of course the Trump administration isn’t interested in Robinson’s real motives; they just want to pin the blame for Kirk’s death on Democrats, or as Trump puts it, “the radical left lunatics.”
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, President Donald Trump and his allies have threatened to bring the weight of the federal government against what they refer to as the “radical left.”
“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, said Monday.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller during a television interview outside the West Wing of the White House on Aug. 29.Andrew Cabarello-Reynolds AFP – Getty Images file
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he added. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
But the suggestion that a secret network of violent left-wing extremists was behind the killing stands in contrast to the evidence that law enforcement officials presented on Tuesday in Utah, where Kirk was fatally shot. There was no indication presented Tuesday that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was a member of a group or that he fell under the sway of a particular leader. The investigation is ongoing.
Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray laid out seven counts — including aggravated murder — against Robinson, and detailed the evidence against him in a 10-page court filing. In the hours after the shooting, Robinson was asked twice, by his father and his roommate, why he shot Kirk. He responded that Kirk “spreads too much hate” and “I had enough of his hatred,” the documents show.
Experts told NBC News that the Trump administration appears to be using Kirk’s assassination as an excuse to crack down on left-wing individuals and groups. While administration officials have yet to detail their plans, statements by Miller and others raise questions of who exactly would be targeted, how, and what effect this might have in stifling political dissent.
Russia moved to amplify online conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s killing just hours after it happened, seeding social media with the frightening claim that America is slipping into civil war.
Chinese and pro-Iranian groups also spread disinformation about the shooting, with those loyal to Iran’s interests backing antisemitic conspiracy theories while bots linked to Beijing claimed that Kirk’s death shows that the United States is violent, polarized and dysfunctional.
America’s adversaries have long used fake social media accounts, online bots and disinformation to depict the U.S. as a dangerous country beset with extremism and gun violence. Kirk’s killing has provided another opportunity for those overseas eager to shape public understanding while inflaming political polarization.
“Charlie Kirk’s Death and the Coming Civil War,” tweeted Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin, whose influence earned him the moniker “ Putin’s brain,” referring to Russia’s president. Pro-Russian bots blamed Democrats and predicted more violence. Russian state media published English-language articles with headlines claiming a conspiracy orchestrated by shadowy forces: “Was Charlie Kirk’s Killer a Pro?”
Foreign disinformation makes up a tiny fraction of the overall online discussion about Kirk’s death, but it could undermine any efforts to heal political divisions or even spur further violence.
For the moment, the BLS is still providing reliable measurements of economic activity in the USA. The employment numbers are showing signs of bad policy and Trump-inflicted wounds. The strain from the tariffs is beginning to show. This is from The Guardian. “US added just 22,000 jobs in August, continuing slowdown amid Trump tariffs. The latest report also contained more bad news – the US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey.”
“The US jobs market stalled over the summer, adding just 22,000 jobs in August and continuing a slowdown in the labor market as businesses adjusted to disruptions caused by tariffs.
The latest jobs report also contained more bad news. The US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey, the first time it went into the negative since December 2020.
The unemployment rate for August inched up to 4.3%, the highest it’s been since 2021.
The healthcare sector added 31,000 last month but most other sectors were flat or lost jobs.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.
E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.
An outspoken critic of the nonpartisan BLS, which calculates US job growth and unemployment figures, Antoni is a stout Trump loyalist. NBC News reported and CNN confirmed that he was a “bystander” at the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. There is no evidence he entered the Capitol.
His appointment comes after Trump fired the Biden-appointed BLS commissioner and accused the agency without evidence of corruption after a report showed job growth in May and June was weaker than previously estimated.
Antoni has positioned himself as a watchdog for government accountability in media appearances and Heritage Foundation blog posts. But his own digital trail reveals a pattern of incendiary rhetoric that veered frequently into conspiracy theories and misogyny.
In 2019, the since-deleted account known as “ErwinJohnAntoni” changed its username to “phdofbombsaway.” The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.
Shortly after Harris ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Antoni wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” in response to a tweet of a doctored campaign poster that depicted a sexually explicit image of Harris.
Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy.” In February 2020, he retweeted a post titled “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” which instructed women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” The post concluded: “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”
Disgusting.
Speaking of disgusting Trump appointees, Steven Miller is evidently the one running the District into the ground, according to the Washington Post. “How Stephen Miller is running Trump’s effort to take over D.C.” It’s amazing how many young NAZIs are in his employ.
From the head of the conference table in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Stephen Miller was in the weeds of President Donald Trump’s takeover of policing in the nation’s capital.
The White House deputy chief of staff wanted to know where exactly groups of law enforcement officers would be deployed. He declared that cleaning up D.C. was one of Trump’s most important domestic policy issues and that Miller himself planned to be involved for a long time.
Miller’s remarks were described to The Washington Post by two people with knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House business. The result is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of one of Trump’s most trusted aides in action, someone who has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department and deployed thousands of National Guard troops to patrol city streets. While widely seen as a vocal proponent for the president’s push on immigration and law and order, Miller’s actions reveal how much he is actually driving that agenda inside the White House.
The deputy White House chief of staff has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department.
“It’s his thing,” one White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. “Security, crime, law enforcement — it’s his wheelhouse.”
Miller’s team provides an updated report each morning on the arrests made the night before to staff from the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security, among others. The readouts include a breakdown of how many of those arrested are undocumented immigrants.
He has also led weekly meetings in the Roosevelt Room with his staff and members of the D.C. mayor’s office. Last week, he brought Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to two people briefed on the meeting. It’s unclear why Bessent attended the meeting.
A person familiar with Bessent’s thinking said he was encouraged by D.C. officials’ enthusiasm and collaborative tone.
Yam Tits and Miller know they have the District’s leaders over a barrel. Its special status gives the federal government a lot of power over the District. Its leadership is undoubtedly trying to avoid Trump taking the entire District over and removing them.
The source of all federal power over Washington comes from Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. It grants Congress authority “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” over the federal district.
That phrase—”exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever”—is absolute. It establishes a power imbalance between the federal government and D.C. residents that has defined their relationship for over two centuries.
Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court would give Orange Tits whatever he wanted.
Trump’s approach to the economy and foreign policy continues to bring one failure after another. The Washington Examiner reports that “Immigration officers raid Hyundai EV manufacturing site in Georgia.” This is a bizarre strategy given that any produced in the United States goes to the US GDP numbers despite foreign ownership. Additionally, these are good jobs for parts of the country that really need them. Then there’s the factor that we just pissed off one of our major trade partners. This makes no sense whatsoever.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told the Associated Press that agents were focused on the electric vehicle battery plant construction site.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.” It did not say whether anyone was detained or arrested.
Georgia State Patrol troopers blocked the road to the Hyundai plant, and the state Department of Public Safety said it was assisting. A social media video showed agents telling workers that they were with DHS and that they had a search warrant.
“We need construction to cease immediately,” the man said. “We need all work to end on the site right now.”
Operations at Hyundai’s EV manufacturing plant weren’t stopped, a spokesperson said.
The joint venture, HL-GA Battery Company, “is cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities,” the company said. “To assist their work, we have paused construction,” they added.
The administration has targeted other businesses in large raids as well. Two California cannabis farm raids in July yielded more than 300 arrests. One farm worker died after sustaining injuries during the raid.
The Trump administration has made deporting numerous illegal immigrants and migrants a top priority.
The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hundreds Arrested in Immigration Raid at Hyundai Site in Georgia. South Korea protests after more than 300 Korean company workers are detained.”
Nearly 500 people were arrested as part of an immigration raid at a Hyundai Motor battery plant under construction in Georgia as part of a criminal investigation into employment practices at the site, a Homeland Security official said Friday.
The operation Thursday resulted in the arrest of 475 individuals. More than 300 were South Korean nationals, according to an official from the country.
Those arrested had illegally crossed the border, entered through a visa waiver program that prohibited them from working or had overstayed their visas, Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlant a, said at a press conference Friday morning.
“This was the largest single site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations,” Schrank said.
No criminal charges were filed as of Friday, he said, and the investigation remains ongoing.
“Those who exploit our workforce, undermine our economy, and violate our federal laws will be held accountable,” Schrank said. Schrank said the government’s investigation has been ongoing for months.
The carmaker has pledged $26 billion in U.S. investments in recent weeks.
South Korea protested the action to the U.S. and said it was trying to secure the release of its citizens.
“This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses,” Schrank said. “This has been a multimonth criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents, and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant.”
A search warrant in the case was issued Aug. 31, according to a court filing. The government filed a motion to unseal a redacted version of the warrant Friday, and a judge granted the request. A copy of the warrant wasn’t immediately available.
“The United States is proud to be a home for major investments and looks forward to continuing to build on these historic investments and partnerships that President Trump has secured,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. “Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations. President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws.”
The New York Times (gifted article)reports that we now have a diplomatic issue with an ally, South Korea. “South Koreans Swept Up in Immigration Raid at Hyundai E.V. Plant in Georgia. They were among nearly 500 workers apprehended at a construction site for a South Korean battery maker, officials said. The episode prompted diplomatic concern in Seoul.” Like I said previously, why would you want to disturb a huge plant that is creating good jobs and value for our country?
The battery manufacturer, LG Energy Solution, which co-owns the plant with Hyundai Motor Group, said in a statement that employees of both companies had been taken into custody.
Hyundai said in a statement that none of those detained were Hyundai employees, as far as the company was aware.
“We are closely monitoring the situation and working to understand the specific circumstances,” Hyundai said on Friday.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that South Koreans were among those in custody, without saying how many. Mr. Schrank told reporters at the plant on Thursday that some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents had been detained initially and were being released.
The agencies involved in the operation included the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the F.B.I., according to the Atlanta division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which also participated.
The operation, part of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, caused diplomatic alarm in South Korea. Just over a week earlier, Mr. Trump hosted President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea at the White House, where the South Korean leader pledged to invest an additional $150 billion in the United States, including in battery manufacturing.
The lithium-ion battery plant, which predated Mr. Lee’s pledge, was expected to start operating next year. It is the kind of large-scale, job-creating investment that the United States has pushed for from South Korea and other nations.
The Ellabell site is part of one of Georgia’s largest manufacturing plants. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has promoted the $7.6 billion Hyundai E.V. factory there as the largest economic development project in state history.
Yes, I saved the most disgusting for last. The RFK Jr. hearing yesterday was on a whole different level as the pathological liar and loony proved himself unfit again and again. There were some major players in the Senate Committee showing exactly how ignorant Worm Boy is of his own department and science. The one thing I found amazing was the number of Republicans giving him a difficult time. There are likely several reasons for this. NBC News‘ Berkley Lovelace reports the story. “Ahead of Kennedy hearing, GOP saw poll showing Trump voters support vaccines. The poll, conducted by veteran Republican pollsters, found that a majority of Trump voters believe vaccines save lives and support immunizations against measles and hepatitis B.”
Polling showing that a majority of President Donald Trump’s voters support vaccines was shared with several Republicans lawmakers’ staffers in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
NBC News obtained a copy of a memo, dated Aug. 26, summarizing the poll results. It was conducted by veteran Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward and concluded “that there is broad unity across party lines supporting vaccines such as measles (MMR), shingles, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (TDAP), and Hepatitis B.” Fabrizio and Ward presented the findings during the meeting, the sources said.
In an email to NBC News, Ward confirmed the memo was authentic but declined to comment about the meeting. It’s unclear who commissioned the poll or arranged the meeting. A source close to the White House denied that the administration requested the poll.
Republican senators are sending clear signs of disapproval and unhappiness with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., making it plain to President Trump that they want the administration to address the chaos Kennedy has caused by trying to rewrite the nation’s vaccine policies.
GOP senators have stopped short of calling on Kennedy to resign and haven’t yet said they regret voting for him in February, but they want him to back off efforts to change vaccine policy recommendations without sound scientific backing as the administration faces a growing public backlash.
Kennedy received an unusual admonishment from Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon, when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
“I support vaccines. I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Barrasso, the Senate’s No. 2-ranking Republican leader.
“Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” he said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”
Barrasso pointed to a national measles outbreak, the sudden ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, and questions raised by the leadership of the National Institutes of Health over mRNA vaccines as raising troubling questions.
“Americans don’t know who to rely on,” he said. “If we’re going to make America healthy again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined.”
Here’s Elizabeth Warren shredding the Worm Guy.
Some smart aide to my Senator Bill Cassidy evidently suggested that he kiss up to Yam Tits while shredding Worm Guy. He’s not so popular down here for reelection. The MAGA crowd calls him a Rhino and hates that he actually voted to impeach Trump. That vote was one of the few things he’s ever shown a spine about.
The drama between the rest of the world and Orange Caligula continues. Here are some headlines, including one of those “praise dear leader” by the tech businesses.
Brian Barrett / Wired: Tech CEOs Praise Donald Trump at White House Dinner — At a White House dinner Thursday night, America’s tech executives put on an uncanny display of fealty to Donald Trump. — The camera zooms too close to the president’s face; the table at which the tech executives are seated seems far too long.
Tom Nichols / The Atlantic: The World No Longer Takes Trump Seriously — At parades and in the halls of global power, America has been sidelined. — The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are not good men. They preside over brutal autocracies replete with secret police and prison camps.
I’m still waiting for the latest on our new Department of War and our open hostilities with Venezuela. Feeling great and safe yet?
Here’s one last article about one of the major loonies in the Supreme Court. This is from NBC News. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett says country is not in a ‘constitutional crisis’. Speaking to Free Press founder Bari Weiss to promote her new book, the conservative justice said the American people should trust the Supreme Court.” The last group of people I would trust with anything are the so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Thursday she does not believe the United States is in a constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump seeks to unilaterally reshape the government and his administration frequently feuds with judges.
Barrett, a Trump appointee who is part of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, defended the Supreme Court as an institution and said Americans should have faith in its ability to address probing problems with integrity.
“I think the Constitution is alive and well,” Barrett said in an interview with Bari Weiss, hosted by the Free Press in New York, to promote her new book.
“I don’t know what a constitutional crisis would look like. I don’t think that we are currently in a constitutional crisis, however,” she added. “I think our country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts.”
A constitutional crisis would have arrived if “the rule of law crumbled,” Barrett said. But, she added, “that is not a place where we are.”
Lower courts have frequently blocked Trump’s executive actions as unlawful exercises of power, only for the Supreme Court in most cases to then rule in favor of the administration via brief orders that often include no reasoning.
And Weirdo Kavanaugh thinks shadow docket is too truthy and wants it renamed “interim docket”. This does not feel like the country I grew up in at all.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Trump’s new BLS leader has a disgusting past. This is from 
Disgusting.
Yam Tits and Miller know they have the District’s leaders over a barrel. Its
The 
The 
Yes, I saved the most disgusting for last. The RFK Jr. hearing yesterday was on a whole different level as the pathological liar and loony proved himself unfit again and again. There were some major players in the Senate Committee showing exactly how ignorant Worm Boy is of his own department and science. The one thing I found amazing was the number of Republicans giving him a difficult time. There are likely several reasons for this. 
Alexander Bolton from The Hill provides a similar analysis. 
I’m still waiting for the latest on our new Department of War and our open hostilities with Venezuela. Feeling great and safe yet?
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