“This is what some people voted for…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m quite late. The intense heat and humidity have left New Orleans for the moment. I woke up at 9:30. It was 76°F. I immediately rolled over and went back to sleep. I’m just glad I didn’t get a glance at the headlines then. The chaos of what used to be our institutional protectors of the Constitution worsens. This Reuters headline is like a slap in the face of all democracy-loving people. It’s a good thing I subscribed to them last month because wow! This needs to be shared. “US Supreme Court backs Trump on aggressive immigration raids.” They’re inching closer to the Inquisition with each majority opinion. Andrew Cheung has the lede.
Donald Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration on Monday, letting federal agents proceed with raids in Southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language.
The court granted a Justice Department request to put on hold a federal judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally, by relying on race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent, among other factors.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision, directing pointed criticism at its conservative majority.
The administration “has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion.
“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor added.
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong found on July 11 that the Trump administration’s actions likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge’s order applied to her court’s jurisdiction, covering much of Southern California.
The Supreme Court’s order was brief and issued without any explanation, a common way it handles emergency matters, but one that has generated confusion in lower courts and criticism from some of the justices themselves. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Concurring with the decision on Monday, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be a “‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”
Kavanaugh added: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”
In a written filing, the Justice Department defended targeting people using a “reasonably broad profile” in a region where, according to the administration, about 10% of residents are in the country illegally
The administration’s request marked its latest trip to the Supreme Court seeking to proceed with policies that lower courts have impeded after casting doubt on their legality. The Supreme Court has backed Trump in most of these cases.
This part of the decision is rather stunning.
In other cases, the Supreme Court has allowed Trump to deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering a chance to show harms they may face and to revoke temporary legal status previously granted by the government on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.
So much for the Rule of Law and Due Process. This also violates international treaties and law. We are a nation led by a War Criminal.
The New York Times (article shared) also has an excellent analysis of the situation written by Adam Liptak.”Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops. A federal judge had ordered agents not to make indiscriminate stops relying on factors like a person’s ethnicity or that they speak Spanish.” This is white christian nationalism on full display.
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order prohibiting government agents from making indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area that challengers called “blatant racial profiling.”
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons. It is not the last word in the case, which is pending before a federal appeals court and may again reach the justices.
The court’s three liberal members dissented.
In the near term, it allows what critics say are roving patrols of masked agents routinely violating the Fourth Amendment and what supporters say is a vigorous but lawful effort to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
The lower courts had placed significant restrictions on President Trump’s efforts to ramp up immigrant arrests to achieve his pledge of mass deportations. Aggressive enforcement operations in Los Angeles — including encounters captured on video that appeared to be roundups of random Hispanic people by armed agents — have become a flashpoint, setting off protests and clashes in the area.
Civil rights groups and several individuals filed suit, accusing the administration of unconstitutional sweeps in which thousands of people had been arrested. They described the encounters in the suit as “indiscriminate immigration operations” that had swept up thousands of day laborers, carwash workers, farmworkers, caregivers and others.
“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force,” the complaint said, “and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.
One plaintiff, Jason Brian Gavidia, a U.S. citizen born in East Los Angeles, was stopped by a masked agent while he was working on his car outside a tow yard. The encounter was captured on video.
The agent asked whether Mr. Gavidia was American, and he said he was.
The agent then asked what hospital Mr. Gavidia had been born in, and he said he did not know. According to the lawsuit, the agent and a colleague proceeded to slam Mr. Gavidia against a metal gate, twist his arm and seize his phone.
“Fearing for his life, Gavidia offered to show the agents his ID,” the lawsuit said. “The agents took the ID, and about 20 minutes later, returned Gavidia’s phone and set him free. They never returned his ID.”
This is nothing but siding with grandiose racial profiling. The ACLU of Southern California has this to say on the subject. “U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay in L.A. Raids Case. Decision lifts temporary order barring DHS from unlawful stop practices .”
Today, the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request for a stay (or pause) of a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting federal agencies–including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)–from continuing their unlawful actions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties.
The court judgment reverses the judgement from two lower courts in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem that bars immigration agents from stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion and from relying solely on four factors – alone or in combination – including apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in a particular location like a bus stop, car wash, or agricultural site; or the type of work a person does.
Today’s unexplained order from the Supreme Court does not halt further proceedings in the case. On September 24, the federal district court will hear arguments on whether to issue a preliminary injunction based on additional evidence of the government’s unlawful tactics.
In response, the following statements were issued:
“When ICE grabbed me, they never showed a warrant or explained why. I was treated like I didn’t matter–locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay? That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge,” said Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, named plaintiff in the case. “I joined this case because what happened to me is happening to others everyday just for being brown, speaking Spanish, or standing on a corner looking for work. The system failed us today, but I’m not staying silent. We’ll keep fighting because our lives are important.”
“This decision is a devastating setback for our plaintiffs and communities who, for months, have been subjected to immigration stops because of the color of their skin, occupation, or the language they speak,” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “In running to the Supreme Court to request this stay, the government made clear that its enforcement operation in Southern California is driven by race. We will continue fighting the administration’s racist deportation scheme to ensure every person living in Southern California—regardless of race or status—is safe.”
“Today’s decision gives license to the Trump administration to resume racially discriminatory raids across Los Angeles, detaining people without evidence or due process simply because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the work they do,” said Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel. Our community has come together to confront this injustice with courage and determination, uncovering the truth and showing the nation these raids were never about public safety but about targeting immigrants and sowing fear. This fight is not over. We will continue pressing our case in court until every person in our communities can live free from fear, with their rights and dignity fully protected.
“The Supreme Court’s decision deals a devastating blow to communities reeling from the government’s racially discriminatory raids. Through the stroke of a pen, through its emergency shadow docket, the court has written off decades of Fourth Amendment law. But we always knew this was going to be a long fight, and we are already preparing for what comes next,” said Annie Lai, director of the Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic at the UC Irvine School of Law. “Our clients have faced the government with incredible bravery and will continue to do so. We will be right there alongside them.”
“Today’s SCOTUS ruling puts farm workers — and every Californian who looks or sounds like they might be an immigrant — in greater danger,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “This does not impact immigrants in a vacuum, it will affect all of us. We will continue to seek a preliminary injunction in this case, and we will keep fighting for farm workers and all immigrant communities across the USA.”
“The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of racial profiling. A dark shadow has been cast over this country’s Constitution and its future,” said Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network (LAWCN). “This is a dangerous precedent for immigrant rights and civil liberties. The decision legitimizes the unconstitutional practice of targeting individuals based on their race, language, or neighborhood. It turns back the clock on decades of legal progress and reinforces a system where some communities are seen as suspect by default.”
I am ashamed of my country. As David Bowie puts it, “I’m afraid of Americans.” This decision jeopardizes the economy, the legal system, and our humanity. The Supreme Racists on the Court have gone mad with power, enabling Yam Tit’s Reign of Terror with abandon. Ari Berman, writing for Mother Jones, has this headline today. “Project 2026: Trump’s Plan to Rig the Next Election, From nationalizing voter suppression to flooding the streets with federal agents, the president and his allies are using all the tricks in the authoritarian playbook to tilt the midterms in their favor.”
On an April episode of the popular Politics War Room podcast, the veteran journalist Al Hunt posed an increasingly common question from listeners to Democratic strategist James Carville. “Is Trump looking to spark enough protest to justify declaring martial law in 2026, thus suspending the election?” Hunt asked.
“You’re so correct to be concerned about this,” Carville responded. “It’s getting worse by the day. It is not going to stop getting worse. And I would be—we ought to be—on high, high alert.”
Such chatter is widespread these days among Trump’s opponents—and with good reason. Trump is the most openly authoritarian president in US history and has already incited an insurrection in an attempt to remain in office.
The good news, according to experts, is that Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally cancel the midterms. The states, with oversight from Congress, run their elections. Voting will go forward whether Trump likes it or not.
But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the rapidly escalating threats to America’s election system. Given Trump’s extreme assertions of executive power, the autocratic nature of his second term, and the stacking of his administration with hardline loyalists, many of the outlandish schemes he considered to stay in power in 2020—such as using the military to seize voting machines in battleground states—don’t seem as far-fetched today. And his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in response to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, which was followed by a similar federal takeover of Washington, DC, has heightened fears about how far Trump will go to keep his party in control of Washington. “The California events really rattled a lot of people,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks. The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order. “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.”
But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the rapidly escalating threats to America’s election system. Given Trump’s extreme assertions of executive power, the autocratic nature of his second term, and the stacking of his administration with hardline loyalists, many of the outlandish schemes he considered to stay in power in 2020—such as using the military to seize voting machines in battleground states—don’t seem as far-fetched today. And his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in response to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, which was followed by a similar federal takeover of Washington, DC, has heightened fears about how far Trump will go to keep his party in control of Washington. “The California events really rattled a lot of people,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks. The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order. “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.”
What kind of President Declares war on an American City?
The article then lists 10 ways that Trump will interfere with the midterms and voting. Voter Suppression Tactics are at the top of the list, but the others are equally as devious. If you’re going to read just one thing today, please give the list a thorough read. It’s coming to a voting place near everyone.
ProPublica continues to be an enormously useful source of real journalism with real investigations. This is a must-read for those who will be or are dependent on Social Security. “The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security.” Eli Hager has the lede. I’m just going to use their “highlights” since the story is a narrative of everything that went on. It also has some interesting insight into Leland Dudek and his management of the process and gaffs.
Reporting Highlights
Missed Opportunity: Some Social Security officials said they welcomed DOGE — the agency needs a technological overhaul — only to see DOGE ignore them and prioritize quick (often empty) wins.
Internal Revolt: Leland Dudek, the agency’s then acting chief, helped DOGE at first, then tried to resist when he saw what it was doing, Dudek said in 15 hours of candid interviews.
DOGE Lives On: Multiple former DOGErs have taken permanent roles at the Social Security Administration, and Senate-confirmed Commissioner Frank Bisignano has embraced its approach.
Trump has started to move on to a “crime” agenda. As usual, it’s racist, full of lies and bias, and is designed to push buttons on the MAGA Cult. This is from AXIOS and is written by Marc Caputo. “Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message.”
MAGA influencers are drawing repeated attention to violent attacks to elevate the issue of urban crime — and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases.
Shocking video of the fatal Aug. 22 knife attack on 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail car in Charlotte, North Carolina, dominated weekend conversation on Trump-friendly social media.
The big picture: The rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including on Charlotte’s light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases.
The video is easily shared or leaked, and can instantly pollinate across social media — a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.
Driving the news: President Trump, asked about the Charlotte video by a reporter Sunday, said he wanted to find out more about the stabbing before commenting.
“I’ll know all about it by tomorrow morning,” Trump said.
A Trump adviser told Axios: “This is exactly what he’s talking about, and it’s going to be an issue he’s going to highlight. This is not just about North Carolina. Other campaigns will deal with this.”
Elon Musk repeatedly posted about the Charlotte case this weekend for his 225 million X followers.
North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley — a former chair of the national GOP — invoked the case to accuse his Democratic opponent, Gov. Roy Cooper, of being soft on crime.
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles called it a “heartbreaking attack.”
Zarutska recently arrived in Charlotte from Ukraine to escape the war there, The Charlotte Observer reports.
The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, was charged with first-degree murder. His criminal record includes charges of armed robbery, felony larceny, breaking and entering, and shoplifting, according to jail records cited by WBTV.
Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather, in an interview with Axios Charlotte last week, didn’t comment directly on the case but acknowledged the limitations and complexities of holding defendants with mental health issues accountable.
What they’re saying: Whatley wrote on X that in June 2020, “Cooper signed a soft-on-crime executive order, and just three months later, Brown was released from prison.”
The executive order established a “racial profiling task force” and sought to reduce “systemic” racism. But it didn’t call for the early release of suspects.
Cooper’s campaign accused Whatley of “lying,” and said: “Roy Cooper prosecuted violent criminals and drug dealers, increased the penalties for violence against law enforcement, and kept thousands of criminals off the streets and behind bars.”
Whatley spokesperson Danielle Alvarez countered that Brown was released from prison early, just as Cooper was spending more time talking about “fighting racism” and less about keeping “career criminals” like Brown locked up.
Between the lines: Influential conservative social media accounts accused major national news outlets of not covering the racial dynamics of the Charlotte killing — a white victim and a Black suspect — with the same intensity as they did in the case of Daniel Penny.
Penny, who is white, choked to death a homeless Black man who was threatening passengers on a subway car in Manhattan in 2023. A jury acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide.
You may read more about this at the link. I will close with this article concerning Yam Tits and the decimation of Science and Universities. It’s a New York Times (shared) Guest Op-Ed written by Stephanie Greenblatt, a Harvard Humanities Professor. “We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself.”
The Trump administration’s assault on America’s universities by cutting billions of dollars of federal support for scientific and medical research has called up from somewhere deep in my memory the phrase “duck and cover.” These were words drilled into American schoolchildren in the 1950s. We heard them on television, where they accompanied a cartoon about a wise turtle named Bert who withdrew into his shell at any sign of danger. In class, when our teachers gave the order, we were instructed to follow Bert’s example by diving under our desks and covering our necks. These actions were meant to protect us from the nuclear attack that could come, we were told, at any time. Though even in elementary school most of us intuited that there was something futile in these attempts to shield ourselves from destruction, we dutifully went through the motions. How else could we deal with the anxiety caused by the menace?
The anxiety greatly increased in October 1957, when Americans learned of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1. The vivid evidence of the technological superiority in rocketry of our Cold War enemy provoked a remarkably rapid response. In 1958, by a bipartisan vote, Congress passed and President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, one of the most consequential federal interventions in education in the nation’s history. Together with the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, it made America into the world’s undisputed leader in science and technology.
Nearly 70 years later, that leadership is in peril. According to the latest annual Nature Index, which tracks research institutions by their contributions to leading science journals, the single remaining U.S. institution among the top 10 is Harvard, in second place, far behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Trump’s war on science and academia is one of the most-sighted of all his ego-stroking projects. The pride that people like me felt about our Space Program and medical achievements was beyond the moon. As a cancer survivor of a rare cancer that has now become more curable since I had the disease, I just can’t believe this administration has such a fixation on killing people. But there it is.
There’s another Countrywide “No Kings” demonstration on October 18th, if you care to take part.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action lists?
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“Out with the old, a new franchise is born on State Controlled Media, redefining late-night television. Mass for shut-ins step aside.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Banana Republics look out! We’re on the road to attaining your status. Yam Tits has had it with all programming that doesn’t reflect his false narratives. There’s also that fake image he tries to project and sell. He’s after all forms of information providers, and just to prove he’s yanking a few chains, I’ve had a difficult time finding critiques in the usual places. So here are three unusual sources for my top reads today.
First up is the CBC. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is the Canadian Public broadcaster. It’s still in business. I grabbed this headline from its Entertainment division. John’s cartoon over there really hits the nail on the head today. FARTUS really doesn’t like the truth. “Trump vs. TV: A play-by-play of a wild week taking on the U.S. president’s naysayers. Mocking leaders isn’t new, but critics say political satire is now in the crosshairs.”
First he came for late-night TV, then a daytime talk show and a crude cartoon.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration are fighting battles on all fronts when it comes to mockery and criticism of the 47th commander-in-chief.
As speculation swirls that CBS might have turfed The Late Show with Stephen Colbert because of his recent criticism of parent company Paramount Global agreeing to a $16-million US settlement with the president over a 60 Minutes interview, the White House has also come out swinging this week against the animated series South Park and ABC’s The View.
South Park‘s 27th season premiere episode, which aired on Wednesday, lampooned the president and the CBS-Colbert drama and depicted a naked Trump climbing into bed with Satan. That same day, a co-host of The View accused Trump of being “jealous” of former president Barack Obama’s looks and marriage.
Even though he’s known for mocking a range of people he doesn’t like, Trump’s image, persona and brand are what made him a household name, and he doesn’t take it well when he senses attacks on any of them.
While he would largely take out his anger in a Twitter tirade during his first administration (what X was known as back then), there are concerns that Trump is using his power in his second term to influence corporate decision-making and settle grievances — especially when it comes to the news and entertainment industry.
But freedom of expression groups say the political satire and parody that are now under fire are art forms that are not only constitutionally protected but vital to public discourse.
“We have mocked presidents and leaders in this country since before this was a country,” Will Creeley, legal director of the Philadelphia-based advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told CBC News.
“If you can’t make fun of who’s running the country, then the First Amendment doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
So, I suppose using CBC for a source doesn’t surprise you. I probably will surprise you with this one. It’s from The Hill, which isn’t surprising, but the source of the story will be. “Fox News reporter: Trump FCC targeting ‘The View’ could impact network someday.” The way things are going, some day is not that far away. Dominick Mastrangelo has the headline.
Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna warned over the weekend that President Trump’s criticism of networks and shows such as ABC and “The View” could eventually hit conservative media outlets under a Democratic presidential administration.
“As much as it would be nice to think about, like, ‘Oh, “The View’s” gonna go away. Whew, that sounds nice,’ we also have to consider this isn’t the only administration that’s going to be there forever,” Acuna said during an appearance on “The Big Weekend Show”.
“A tool that can be used by this administration can very well be used by the next. And if they were able to do away with ‘The View,’ they could very well — the next administration that comes in that doesn’t like Fox could do the same.”
Trump has repeatedly ridiculed ABC News over its coverage of his administration and threatened to use the power of his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to scrutinize the network’s broadcast license.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr, during a recent interview on Fox, suggested “The View,” the network’s table talk news and debate program, could face “consequences” over panelists’ criticisms of Trump.
The Mediate article is worth reading.”Fox News Correspondent Warns Colleagues Not to Celebrate Trump’s FCC for Targeting The View: Next Administration ‘Could Do the Same’ to Fox.” This story comes from the desk of Joe DePaolo. You will notice that there is no shortage of political cartoonists weighing in on the topic. We are all South Park now.
A Fox News correspondent delivered a warning to colleagues celebrating President Donald Trump’s FCC for targeting The View: What goes around could well come around.
During a panel discussion Saturday night on The Big Weekend Show, Fox News senior correspondent Alicia Acuna cautioned her colleagues to be careful what they wish for when it comes to the fate of the ABC daytime talk show — which FCC chairman Brendan Carr recently said could face “consequences” following Joy Behar’s recent criticism of the president.
“As much as it would be nice to think about, like, ‘Oh, The View’s gonna go away. Whew, that sounds nice!’ We also have to consider this isn’t the only administration that’s going to be there forever,” Acuna said. “A tool that can be used by this administration can very well be used by the next. And if they were able to do away with The View they could very well — the next administration that comes in that doesn’t like Fox — could do the same.”
Fox News host Guy Benson concurred.
“I think that is a wise warning,” Benson said.
Carr — in a Thursday interview on Fox’s America’s Newsroom with anchor Bill Hemmer — said The View could have “issues.”
“Is The View now in the crosshairs of this administration?” Hemmer asked Carr.
“Look, it’s entirely possible that there’s issues over there,” Carr said. “I mean, again, stepping back, this broader dynamic, once President Trump has exposed these media gatekeepers and smashed this facade, there’s a lot of consequences. I think the consequences of that aren’t quite finished. And look, The View‘s got a lot challenges there. It wasn’t that long ago, I think, one episode, one show alone, they had to stop, interrupt the show, and read four separate legal notices to try to avoid legal liability. So I’m not surprised to hear people saying that their ratings are struggling.”
Now for my third source, Inside Radio. “Former FCC Chairs Warn of Troubling Shifts in Media Oversight, DEI Policy.”
Former Federal Communications Commission members are sounding the alarm — the nation’s media watchdog is being weaponized, its independence eroded, and decades-old norms tossed aside. At the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council’s annual Former FCC Chairs’ Symposium on Friday, they said the stakes for media — and democracy — have rarely been higher.
During a wide-ranging discussion in Washington, media policy took center stage early in the conversation. Former FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn issued a blunt assessment. “The Trump FCC 2.0 has abandoned its traditional role, and it has been unprecedented over, you know, when you look out over the 90-year history,” she said.
The former Chair under President Obama added that the Commission is now stepping into areas historically beyond its scope. “Traditionally, the FCC focused on communications-specific concerns, not general corporate employment practices. That’s the shift that we’re talking about here, and that is what I find problematic,” Clyburn said.
The panel then turned to a longstanding pillar of broadcast regulation — the public interest standard — and whether it still has a place in today’s competitive media environment.
Reed Hundt, who chaired the FCC during the Clinton administration, pointed out the inherent vagueness of the concept.
“The problem with the public interest standard is that you don’t know what it is when you see it, and you can’t define it,” Hundt said. “Every time the FCC has tried to write it down, the appellate court has thrown out their effort.” He suggested the Commission should consider eliminating the standard entirely. “It shouldn’t be a weapon that anybody can use. It should be a guideline for the industry that can be followed. But it isn’t,” Hundt said.
Clyburn reinforced the point by contrasting the Commission’s historical focus with its recent approach. “Traditionally, the FCC focused on communications-specific concerns, not general corporate employment practices,” she said. That is reference to the Trump administration’s push to get broadcasters and other industries regulated by the FCC to abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“Lawfare” uses laws and legislation to limit the press, whether that means bureaucratic licencing requirements for journalists and media houses or using defamation laws to intimidate critical voices. Defamation laws have manifested as anti-blasphemy laws in Pakistan; national security laws in Hong Kong; and through “fake news” laws with broad phrasing such as those that gained steam under the pretext of Covid-19 safety but have been used to control populations.
Even Nobel laureate Maria Ressa has been the target of multiple cyber libel charges, in addition to the harassment and threats incited towards her. The charges against her under these laws were also used as a threat to prevent her from traveling to Oslo to receive her Nobel peace prize before the courts eventually relented. Similarly, an increasing number of strategic lawsuits against public participation – known as SLAPPS – have been used by powerful figures around the world to intimidate critics who may not be able to withstand the financial or psychological toll of court cases.
Mass communication relies on complex networks: from the initial report until the audience receives the final story, access to information requires different physical and digital infrastructures.
It comes as no surprise, then, that autocrats would seek to control infrastructure as a way of repressing freedom of expression. It is easy to point to the extreme, physical destruction of infrastructure, such as the Israeli airstrikes hitting multiple Palestinian media houses – including IMS partner Filastinyat – or in 2022 the Russian bombing of the Kyiv TV Tower. But control of infrastructure is often more insidious.
There is a power play between governments and tech companies over who owns and controls our means of communication – and who has access to people’s data. It is not uncommon for telecoms companies to be owned by oligarchs who are friendly towards a regime. Even in cases such as the Norwegian mobile network Telenor, which left Myanmar rather than cooperating with the military, the infrastructure was sold to a company that was willing to cooperate with the military.
Big Tech allows much to happen on its watch. While social media platforms have been used to spark revolution, they have also been sources of hate speech and disinformation, leading to polarisation and violence. A lack of knowledge of the local contexts in which they operate allows mis- and disinformation to spread from government and unofficial sources. Without consistent policies on what they are willing to tolerate, Big Tech seems most motivated by protecting profits, leaving countries with oppressive governments only once they are forced to and not because of ethical considerations for populations.
Autocrats have a variety of tools at their disposal to supress and intimidate critical voices. The above four steps create fear or lead journalists to lose or leave their jobs, or – in extreme cases – costs journalists’ lives.
Subsequently, defending press freedom and freedom of expression cannot be managed by fighting on only one front. This has always been clear, and strongly underlined by events in 2021 (and the beginning of 2022). Interventions must come from legislative angles and from lobbying international tech companies that profit while looking away from undemocratic policies. And the international community needs to hold their focus on the struggles of journalists and populations under autocracies, not just when dramatic events grab the headlines, but in the day-to-day battle for people’s rights.
“Trump’s lawyers cite Murdoch’s advanced age to submit to questioning under oath earlier than would be normal, suggesting that Murdoch will either be too ill or dead to testify at trial.”
Trump’s lawyers cited Murdoch’s advanced age to submit to questioning under oath as a chief argument in their motion to compel him to testify earlier than would be normal in such a lawsuit, suggesting that Murdoch will either be too ill or dead to testify by the time the case goes to trial.
“Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares, and is presumed to live in New York, New York,” Trump’s lawyers said in their legal filing in Miami federal court.
“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” the lawyers wrote.
The attorneys also cited the fact that there is, as yet, no order scheduling the exchange of evidence and testimony in the case.
You’ll notice how this got a lot of ‘play’ in Scotland and the UK. This article appeared in The Guardian, and the film was all over Social Media. “Rough deal: Social media roasts Trump’s golf game after clip appears to show alleged cheating in Scotland. Trump has long been accused of cheating at golf and mixing politics and business on the course.” Josh Marcus has the story about the ball that went into the roughest of the rough only to be replaced on the green by his caddie.
In the video circulated by liberal commentators, a caddy appears to walk ahead of the golf-loving president in his golf cart and drop a ball behind him as the president approaches.
“Trump working hard to bring down grocery prices,” the caption says, making a satirical reference to the president’s campaign promises to tackle inflation and costs.
“For the morons that think Trump doesn’t cheat at golf and wins all those club championships fair and square….watch his caddie here,” another account wrote.
The phrase “commander in cheat” was soon trending on the social media site.
“The video of Trump’s caddy doing an Oddjob Slazenger drop isn’t a big deal; cheating at golf isn’t nearly the worst thing about Trump,” wrote The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols. “But watching the cult of personality try to explain it away is really some creepy North Korean level stuff.”
The Independent has requested comment from the White House.
The president has faced a long list of accusations that he doesn’t play fair from figures ranging from actor Samuel Jackson to LPGA player Suzann Pettersen.
Trump’s alleged cheating, which has always denied, is even the subject of a book: Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat.
“At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: Pele,” Reilly writes in the book.
The enticing Nichols quote can be found on X. Just letting you know, since I’m not going there or linking to it. If this little romp across the pond was supposed to highlight the strength of Orange Caligula, it failed. Although it was funny watching all the EU leaders head to Scotland to try to get TACO to just freaking make a decision on the tariffs. If he’s interested in bringing down inflation, tariffs would still not be in the headlines. Yammering about lower interest rates to the Fed Chair wouldn’t be in that policy either. He needs to find the closest community college to take Economics 101 and 102. He absolutely knows nothing about anything economics-related.
If this is really the best he can do to get the public attention off the Murdoch scandals, he’s surely failing. The Rapist-in-chief is now clearly in the box with Epstein’s enabler and partner in sexual assault and battery of children. This is from AXIOS. “Ghislaine Maxwell files Supreme Court brief appealing Epstein conviction.” There are at least two guys sitting on that court who have assaulted women. What does that say about justice and our country?
Ghislaine Maxwell pressed ahead with an appeal to the Supreme Court on Monday, seeking to overturn her conviction on the grounds that she was unlawfully prosecuted for sex trafficking minors with Jeffrey Epstein.
Why it matters: The filing by Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, comes just three days after she met with a top Justice Department official tapped to re-examine the Epstein case.
The Trump administration has faced weeks of bipartisan backlash after reneging on promises to release all files related to the now-deceased sex trafficker.
MAGA activists have suggested that Maxwell, a British former socialite, could be the key to exposing new information about the alleged elite pedophile ring at the heart of Epstein conspiracy theories.
Zoom in: Maxwell’s appeal revolves around a highly controversial 2007 plea agreement Epstein negotiated with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida.
“The United States,” the plea agreement stated, “agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to” four other suspects.
Maxwell was not listed as one of those suspects — but her lawyers argue she didn’t need to be.
Between the lines: Maxwell’s attorneys, the husband-wife team of Mona and David Oscar Markus contends that a plain reading of the deal protects unnamed co-conspirators as well, since it explicitly says it’s “not limited to” those listed.
Markus also argues that language in the deal — promising immunity from “the United States” — means Maxwell couldn’t be prosecuted for Epstein-related crimes anywhere in the country.
“The government’s argument, across the board, is essentially an appeal to what it wishes the agreement had said, rather than what it actually says,” Mona Markus wrote in the petition.
The other side: The Justice Department says former U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who negotiated the deal, didn’t have authority to bind other federal districts — including the Southern District of New York, where Maxwell was ultimately tried and convicted.
The intrigue: Federal appeals courts have split over the key question of whether a plea deal struck by one U.S. Attorney’s Office applies to the entire Justice Department.
The Justice Department acknowledged that divide in its own brief, but has urged the Supreme Court to reject Maxwell’s appeal.
“The government was not even aware of [Maxwell’s] role in Epstein’s scheme at that time,” DOJ argued, calling her “at most, an incidental third-party beneficiary of the agreement.”
Welcome to another Monday in Trumplandia.
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“No one knows immoral more.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today is the day that the Nation pays tribute to many Americans who gave their lives in wars to support our Country. That is, everyone but #FARTUS. He’s ranting about how much our country sucks. This is from Alternet. “‘This is a disgrace’: Trump ripped for ‘outrageous’ and ‘divisive’ Memorial Day diatribe.” This comes on the back of one of the most bizarre and uninspiring graduation speeches ever given to the graduating cadets at West Point. I cannot believe this deranged monster was elected President. It’s beyond embarrassing.
Trump, writing in all caps, posted, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THE BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTAO INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDERERS, AND RAPE AGAIN, PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”
But Trump, according to Mediaite, later deleted that post and replaced it with a much shorter post that read simply, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from Reuters. “Kremlin on Trump’s remark about Putin being ‘crazy’: there is some emotional overload.” Trump must be still pissed Obama got that Nobel Peace Prize when all he can get is a wink, wink, nod, nod of respect from Putin.
The Kremlin on Monday said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” might be due to emotional overload, but thanked the U.S. leader for his assistance in launching Ukraine peace negotiations.
Trump said Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by unleashing the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine and said he was weighing new sanctions on Moscow, though he also scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organising and launching this negotiation process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the Trump remarks about Putin.
“Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
The Federal Reserve just bought $43.6 billion in US treasuries in the span of a week, sparking concerns that a quiet quantitative easing operation is underway.
New documents show the Fed purchased $8.8 billion in 30-year bonds on May 8th via its System Open Market Account (SOMA) – a move that followed a $34.8 billion purchase earlier that same week.
The move has triggered allegations that “stealth QE” has arrived, with a MarketWatch op-ed by Charlie Garcia calling the move “monetary policy on tiptoes.”
The Fed has long stated such purchases are routine reinvestments of maturing securities to adjust the money supply and influence interest rates to meet its targets.
The Fed’s buying spree follows a major Treasury sell-off from China.
New numbers from the Treasury Department show China sold $18.9 billion in US bonds in March, while most other countries increased their holdings.
China now holds $765.4 billion in US Treasuries and is in third place behind the UK and Japan, which hold $779 billion and $1.13 trillion, respectively.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from CNN. “Trump delays 50% EU tariffs until July 9.” I guess he thinks blowing up the markets over the Independence Holiday may cause a silversmith to jump a horse and ride into the countryside. Looks better to do it after.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has agreed to delay a 50% tariff on European Union imports until July 9, the latest instance of Trump declaring an impending tariff and throwing markets into confusion only to later walk back the threatened levies.
Trump said he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had a “very nice call” that led to the delay.
“(Von der Leyen) said she wants to get down to serious negotiation,” Trump told reporters at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey. “July 9 would be the day, that was the date she requested. Could we move it from June 1 to July 9? I agreed to do that.”
“She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he added.
As recently as Friday, Trump said he was “not looking for a deal” with the EU, and that their tariff rate was set at 50% and would go into effect on June 1. That rate would have come after he had imposed a 20% reciprocal tariff on the EU in April — which itself was also delayed, as were other so-called reciprocal tariffs.
Minutes after speaking with reporters, Trump posted on Truth Social that “talks will begin rapidly.”
Earlier in the day, von der Leyen had posted on X that there was a “good call” with Trump.
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at Public Notice.
Last Thursday evening, the Supreme Court all but demolished the legal basis for the independent agencies that are part of the modern administrative state.
In a brisk four paragraphs, only two of which contained any attempt at legal reasoning, the Court’s six Republican justices allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in violation of federal law. The decision highlights the lawlessness of the Court and is likely to further embolden a president who is very keen to place himself above the law.
The Court’s order in Trump v. Wilcox allows the president to violate the federal laws that prohibited him from removing NLRB and MSPB members without cause for doing so. Laws that insulate the heads of multimember commissions such as the NLRB are a common feature of the administrative state. The Supreme Court upheld one such law almost a century ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. Federal Trade Commission, the case that now undergirds modern independent agencies.
It was therefore a little surprising to read the Supreme Court’s order in Wilcox, which permits the president’s statutorily prohibited removal of officers on multi-member commissions, and see no mention of Humphrey’s Executor, the decision upholding statutes that prohibited such removals. Humphrey’s didn’t appear until the dissent.
But this dismissal of important precedents structuring modern society and government has become a hallmark of the Roberts Court. In a decision few years ago, the Court confidently declared that an earlier precedent on the Establishment Clause had been “abandoned.” Did that mean overruled? Unclear, but it at least meant the Court didn’t have to follow it!
Last term, the Court formally overruled the Chevron doctrine that had allows agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes they administer, as the Republican Justices turned tail on a a precedent they had previously embraced. The year before that, the Court announced that the time had come to end affirmative action programs in higher education, as if it was just closing up shop on the precedents upholding such programs.
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is still hobbling its way through the Senate. Politico has this story on the man with the smallest gavel in the world. “Mike Johnson urges Senate not to make major changes to megabill. “We’ve got to deal within the realm of what’s possible,” the House speaker said Sunday.” After all, once you’ve blown up democracy, the Constitution, and the economy, what’s left but to hand the remainders over to the Kleptocracy?
House Speaker Mike Johnson is urging GOP senators to exercise caution in making changes to the sweeping megabill passed through the House last week.
“I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,” Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday on “State of the Union.” “But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. And it’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
But key senators are already looking to make modifications, with different factions holding that the bill goes too far in its approach to Medicaid and clean-energy tax credit cuts. Others, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), say it doesn’t move the ball far enough. Johnson wants to cut spending by roughly $6 trillion.
“This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,” Ron Johnson told Tapper, also on Sunday. “And again, I think you can do it in the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn’t even notice. But you have to do the work, which takes time.”
“The problem is the math doesn’t add up,” Paul told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion, the Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion.”
The speaker pointed to Republicans’ tiny majority in the House, with margins that may make sweeping changes unrealistic.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
So, I will close with that horrid West Point graduation speech. It’s really time for someone to question Trump’s mental health and send him to Walter Reed for a real test or 10. This is from US Today. James Powel has the analysis. “Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’ in commencement speech.” I’m not sure you’ve ever seen the average salary of a soldier, but I’m certain trophy wives and yachts are not likely to be in their future.
President Donald Trump told graduates to avoid “trophy wives” during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24.
“He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife,” Trump said, referring to real estate developer Bill Levitt. “But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t it work.”
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures (and) spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime and any place.”
The military academy shut down a slew of on-campus organizations, including the Corbin Forum, a leadership club for female cadets, and Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance, in February following an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government, according to Military.com.
“We’ve liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” Trump said. “There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto our brave men and women in uniform — or on anybody else for that matter, in this country.”
Trump, wearing his campaign’s red MAGA hat, also pulled a common campaign reference in the speech, saying, “I went through a very tough time with some very radicalized sick, people. I say I was investigated more than the great, late Alphonse Capone.”
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at Rolling Stone.
Following Donald Trump‘s bizarre speech to West Point graduates, where the president opined on topics ranging from yachts and trophy wives to drag shows and golf, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is calling on Republicans to “start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally.”
“I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander in chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking how he has so many investigations,” she said. “What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever.”
“It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally,” Crockett added. “We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”
Okay, so I know you have better things to do today than worry about the sanity of the President and the state of our democracy and economy. Please remember the people who died fighting for our democracy instead of the ones fighting to destroy it in your activities today.
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I’m still struggling to recover from the shock of the election results. At first I kept paying close attention to the news, but now I find that I just want to avoid the horror of current events. I wish there was some way I could regress to childhood and be blissfully free of the pain and anxiety that comes with greater knowledge of the outside world. Right now, I’m really having a great deal of resistance to reading the news, and watching it on TV is out of the question.
I forced myself to check current events today so I could write this post. Here are some stories that caught my attention. Trump is talking to foreign leaders on insecure phones. He is still naming stunningly inappropriate people to important government posts. He’s threatening neighboring countries with ridiculous tariffs. He’s threatening to end civil service protection for government employees. He has given Elon Musk free rein to create chaos. And he appears to have gotten away with all the crimes he was indicted for. Is it any wonder that I want to go back in time and escape real life?
Donald Trump had been the president-elect for just two days when he reportedly spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Nov. 7.
On the call, Trump advised the Russian president not to escalate the war with Ukraine and reminded him of the U.S.’s military presence in Europe, according to an account first published by The Washington Post, which cited multiple sources familiar with the conversation.
The Kremlin, however, denied that meeting had ever taken place. “Pure fiction,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted.
Normally, the U.S. would be able to document that the call had happened. But not this time.
That’s because the State Department, which traditionally helps coordinate phone calls between incoming presidents and world leaders, has been shut out of Trump’s calls with foreign dignitaries.
That means the conversations were not held over secure phone lines, no State Department staff were available to offer guidance on the nuances on foreign policy and no official interpreters were on hand to overcome language barriers that can sometimes lead to confusion or misunderstandings about exactly what was said.
For U.S. foreign policy analysts, Trump’s calls with Putin and other world leaders after his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election are cause for alarm.
“We’re entering a dangerous territory of telephone games, where Trump is going to have private chats with foreign leaders, and they’re going to tell their teams one thing, and Trump is going to tell our national security team another,” said Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who worked in the White House under President Barack Obama
Different interpretations of private conversations stemming from translation difficulties or misunderstandings could not only sow confusion, Bruen said, but also could trigger an international crisis.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions about why he has not involved the State Department in his calls with foreign leaders….
Historically, the State Department has helped coordinate phone calls between incoming presidents and foreign leaders because it’s important to ensure during the transition that the government is always speaking with one voice, particularly on matters of national security and foreign policy, according to the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition.
But since his first term as president, Trump has openly expressed suspicion and resentment of what he derisively calls “the Deep State,” the government bureaucrats who he argues worked secretly behind the scenes to sabotage his agenda.
By Kajsa Hallström
Read more details at the USA Today link. Trump is behaving like an enemy of the U.S., so why does he have the right to be president? This is so fucked up.
The Trump transition team said Tuesday it had reached an agreement with the Biden White House to start coordinating the handoff of federal agencies to the new administration.
But the Trump team is still refusing to accept several typical trappings of the presidential transition process,including federal funding, equipment and office space — as well as official government background and security checks for his transition staff. The agreement does not include an ethics pledge for the president-elect, required by the Presidential Transition Act, stating that Trump will avoid conflicts of interest while in office.
An ethics plan covering the transition staff was signed by the Trump team and posted on the website of the General Services Administration, which coordinates the handover of hundreds of agencies.
The agreement clears the way for Trump-appointed “landing teams” to start entering government offices to receive briefings from career staff about the operations of hundreds of federal agencies, a ritual of presidential transitions. By turning down about $7 million in federal funding for the transition, Trump will be able to raise unlimited privatedonations for his transition.
The long delay in signing the transition deal — which was signed by Vice President Kamala Harris before the election in September — does not mean that Trump’s transition will now conform to those of his predecessors. The president-elect refused to abide by key requirements aimed at transparency and security.
The limited agreement also reflects a deep distrust the president-elect holds toward the federal governmentfor stymieing his first-term agenda or in some cases bolstering legal cases against him. Trump and his political alliespledged during the campaign to radically downsize and restructure the federal workforce of 2.2 million.
Trump’s transition team has not signed a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department, for instance, that would allow the agency to conduct background checks and intensive reviews for the security clearances that many of Trump’s landing teams need for the Biden administration to legally share classified intelligence and national defense briefings. The briefings will only be given to Trump transition officials who have a proper security clearance and have signed a nondisclosure agreement, according to the White House.
Some ethics guardrails were put in place with the White House. Transition officials are prohibited, for instance, from using information they learn in their new roles for their personal benefit.
But the plan does not include language about the president-elect’s own ethical conduct during the transition, a new provision of the Presidential Transition Act added by Congress after ethical issues dogged the first Trump administration.
Again, why was this evil man even allowed to run for office? Read more excuses at the WaPo link.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice to lead the N.I.H.’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.
If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Bhattacharya would lead the world’s premier medical research agency, with a $48 billion budget and 27 separate institutes and centers, each with its own research agenda, focusing on different diseases like cancer and diabetes. Dr. Bhattacharya, who is not a practicing physician, has called for overhauling the N.I.H. and limiting the power of civil servants who, he believes, played too prominent a role in shaping federal policy during the pandemic.
He is the latest in a series of Trump health picks who came to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and who hold views on medicine and public health that are at times outside the mainstream. The president-elect’s health choices, experts agree, suggest a shake-up is coming to the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment.
Dr. Bhattacharya is one of three lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto issued in 2020 that contended that the virus should be allowed to spread among young healthy people who were “at minimal risk of death” and could thus develop natural immunity, while prevention efforts were targeted to older people and the vulnerable.
Through a connection with a Stanford colleague, Dr. Scott Atlas, who was advising Mr. Trump during his first term, Dr. Bhattacharya presented his views to Alex M. Azar II, Mr. Trump’s health secretary. The condemnation from the public health establishment was swift. Dr. Bhattacharya and his fellow authors were promptly dismissed as cranks whose “fringe” policy prescriptions would lead to millions of unnecessary deaths.
Read more about this awful person at the NYT link.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected businessman John Phelan as his nominee to lead the Navy, according to a statement released on Tuesday night.
“It is my great honor to announce John Phelan as our next United States Secretary of the Navy! John will be a tremendous force for our Naval Servicemembers, and a steadfast leader in advancing my America First vision,” Trump wrote. “He will put the business of the U.S. Navy above all else.”
Trump’s pick of Phelan, after choosing Army National Guard Veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department, is a sign that the incoming administration could prioritize disruptors coming into the agency instead of long-tenured bureaucrats. Trump is also eyeing businessman Steve Feinberg and defense investor Trae Stephens as the Pentagon’s No. 2, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Phelan, who leads the private investment firm Rugger Management and once handled Michael Dell’s investments, was a major donor to the Trump campaign and reportedly hosted the president-elect at his Aspen, Colorado, home this summer where Trump went on a profanity-laced tirade about immigration and warned that the election could be the last the United States ever had if Vice President Kamala Harris had won.
And get this: Phelan has no military experience. Trump also consider Ronny Jackson for the job!
Two Trump transition insiders, Cliff Sims and Kash Patel, are angling to be deputy director of the CIA — and angering others who feel they’re using their roles on the transition to undermine any would-be contenders, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The No. 2 position at the powerful spy agency is one of the most sought-after national security posts that remains unfilled. It does not require Senate confirmation — a concern for other roles, like FBI director, Patel is said to be interested in — but wields enormous influence inside the U.S. intelligence community.
The frustration toward Sims, the former White House and ODNI communications strategist, and Patel, the firebrand former House Intelligence Committee staffer and Pentagon official, stems from the fact that both are helping the transition interview candidates for the CIA role, said the three people, all of whom were granted anonymity to share details on the transition.
“The issue that a lot of us have is that these people are involved in staffing national security jobs, and at the same time they’re also promoting themselves for the same roles,” said one of the people.
There is also a concern that Patel in particular is fighting dirty. A second person said there was suspicion Patel was leaking damaging stories on Sims, citing a recent story on a blow-up Trump had after being reminded Sims wrote a tell-all memoir in 2019 after leaving the White House.
Trump has also put Elon Musk in a prominent position in his transition, and now we are hearing from Musk’s mother, who seems even stupider than her son.
Now they have a new fear: becoming the personal targets of the world’s richest man – and his legions of followers.
By Anna Matveeva
Last week, in the midst of the flurry of his daily missives, Musk reposted two X posts that revealed the names and titles of people holding four relatively obscure climate-related government positions. Each post has been viewed tens of millions of times, and the individuals named have been subjected to a barrage of negative attention. At least one of the four women named has deleted her social media accounts.
Although the information he posted on those government positions is available through public online databases, these posts target otherwise unknown government employees in roles that do not deal directly with the public.
Several current federal employees told CNN they’re afraid their lives will be forever changed – including physically threatened – as Musk makes behind-the-scenes bureaucrats into personal targets. Others told CNN that the threat of being in Musk’s crosshairs might even drive them from their jobs entirely – achieving Musk’s smaller government goals without so much as a proper review.
“These tactics are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees. “It’s intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up.”
This isn’t new behavior for Musk, who has often singled out individuals who he claims have made mistakes or stand in his way. One former federal employee, previously targeted by Musk, said she experienced something very similar.
“It’s his way of intimidating people to either quit or also send a signal to all the other agencies that ‘you’re next’,” said Mary “Missy” Cummings, an engineering and computer science professor at George Mason University, who drew Musk’s ire because of her criticisms of Tesla when she was at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The mother of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, stopped by Fox Business on Monday to scold those who call her son “wealthy,” claiming it was “degrading” and that she would prefer he be referred to as the “genius of the world.”
With her son now president-elect Donald Trump’s “First Buddy” and in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Maye Musk sat down with Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney to gush over her 53-year-old child’s accomplishments.
Besides talking about the younger Musk’s companies SpaceX, Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), she also dished on how well her son and Trump get along, especially since the election.
“I’ve seen them together, but very shortly. I live in New York, and they’re in Mar-a-Lago or at a SpaceX launch, and they just seem to be having fun. A lot of fun,” she declared, adding: “And it’s nice for both of them to have fun, and [Elon] really respects him a lot and is really happy that there’s a future for America now.”
She also claimed that it would be “very easy” for her son and DOGE co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy to slash the federal workforce and cut spending, citing Elon Musk’s severe and immediate layoffs when he purchased Twitter in 2022.
Seemingly parroting her son’s talking points, she absolutely trashed the press. “What they call mainstream media, but I call them dishonest Democrat media, they will be trying to break up the relationship. They will be hating everything,” she said. “And I told that to Elon, he said he expects that because they were dishonest before the election.”
Special counsel Jack Smith filed a motion with the trial court in the District of Columbia to dismiss the Jan. 6 election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, kicking up a flurry of questions — namely, why would the special counsel pull the plug? Smith later filed a motion with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the appeal of the government documents case against Trump. While Trump has vowed to fire Smith, why would the special counsel do something to make it easy for Trump, by dismissing the cases himself before Trump is sworn in to office in January? Is this simply an example of what historian Timothy Snyder calls “obeying” an authoritarian in advance?
Not at all. In fact, this move could be an effort to keep the cases alive in the long term. An interesting tell in each motion is Smith’s request to dismiss the cases “without prejudice.” That means that the cases can be filed again. By dismissing the cases now on his own terms, Smith blocks Trump’s attorney general from dismissing the cases for all time.
In addition, by filing his motions pre-emptively, Smith was able to explain his reasons for dismissing the case, rather than allowing Trump’s future AG to mischaracterize them. According to Smith, he was dismissing the case not because of the merits or strength of the cases, but because he had to. As Smith explains, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, whose opinions are “binding” on the special counsel, has concluded that a sitting president may not be indicted or criminally prosecuted under the Constitution. OLC reasoned that criminal charges would make it impossible for a president to carry out his constitutional duties in light of the distraction of preparing a criminal defense, the public stigma that would hamper his leadership role and the obstacles prison would impose on his ability to perform his duties.
But Smith was careful to note that this relief from criminal prosecution is “temporary,” and ends when the president leaves office. Smith cites OLC as concluding that this form of immunity for a sitting president “would generally result in the delay, but not the forbearance, of any criminal trial” That is, Trump gets a reprieve, but only during his term in office.
Of course, as in most criminal cases, the statute of limitations here is five years from the date of the last act alleged in the indictments. In the Jan. 6 case, the last alleged conduct occurred in January 2021, so the deadline for filing new charges would typically be January 2026. In the documents case, in which the last act occurred in August 2022, the statute will expire in August 2027. Both dates will arrive well before Trump’s term ends. But Smith’s brief contains another tell when he writes that OLC has “noted the possibility that a court might equitably toll the statute of limitations to permit proceeding against the President once out of office.” That is, a court could call a timeout, pausing it on Trump’s inauguration day on Jan. 21, 2025, and then restarting the clock when Trump leaves office in 2029. That would give prosecutors plenty of time to refile charges. Certainly, the tolling issue would be litigated, but by dismissing the case now, Smith preserves this issue for future prosecutors to argue.
Read the rest at MSNBC.
That’s it for me today. I don’t know how I even got through those articles. I’m going back into hibernation now.
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This part of the decision is rather stunning.
This is nothing but siding with grandiose racial profiling. The ACLU of Southern California has this to say on the subject. “U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay in L.A. Raids Case. Decision lifts temporary order barring DHS from unlawful stop practices .”
I am ashamed of my country. As David Bowie puts it, “I’m afraid of Americans.” This decision jeopardizes the economy, the legal system, and our humanity. The Supreme Racists on the Court have gone mad with power, enabling Yam Tit’s Reign of Terror with abandon. Ari Berman, writing for 
You may read more about this at the link. I will close with this article concerning Yam Tits and the decimation of Science and Universities. It’s a
So, I suppose using CBC for a source doesn’t surprise you. I probably will surprise you with this one. It’s from 
Now for my third source, 
It’s really a difficult period of American History if the rabbit hole I have to go down into is the country’s ongoing loss of First Amendment Rights. But killing a free press is the first strategy of a nascent dictator-wannabe. Give an old professor a break as she heads straight to the academic studies. IMS keeps track of Journalism around the world. I was particularly drawn to this piece. “
You’ll notice how this got a lot of ‘play’ in Scotland and the UK. 
The enticing Nichols quote can be found on X. Just letting you know, since I’m not going there or linking to it. If this little romp across the pond was supposed to highlight the strength of Orange Caligula, it failed. Although it was funny watching all the EU leaders head to Scotland to try to get TACO to just freaking make a decision on the tariffs. If he’s interested in bringing down inflation, tariffs would still not be in the headlines. Yammering about lower interest rates to the Fed Chair wouldn’t be in that policy either. He needs to find the closest community college to take Economics 101 and 102. He absolutely knows nothing about anything economics-related.
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from 
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at 
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