Hayes: Who is calling the shots for a napping President Trump?
“It’s hard to believe that this is the person who’s actually running the country minute to minute, leaving us to wonder who’s filling the power vacuum of the napping president,” says Chris Hayes.
Video is 8:34 minutes
The video also covers Trump’s egregiously racist comments about Somalia.
Trump DOJ set to seek to re-indict Letitia James on Thursday.
New reporting from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian says federal prosecutors are scheduled to seek to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James Thursday. Sen. Chris Murphy reacts.
MOGADISHU (The Borowitz Report)—A new poll released on Thursday reveals that a broad majority of Somalis have “no interest” in immigrating to a country led by what they termed a “shithole president.”
Though 78 percent of Somalis called current conditions in the US “just too violent,” the nation’s so-called shithole president drew their harshest criticism.
In the words of one Somali, “When I travel abroad from Somalia, I’m not embarrassed when people ask me where I’m from.”
Another remarked, “In Somalia, they would never let an alcoholic run the armed services.”
Yet another said, “Look, Somalia isn’t perfect, but at least we have a leader who can stay awake.”
“Trump has a habit of using the word “exonerated” in ways that suggest he doesn’t know what it means. He is not alone.”
Related video at the link.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was already in a politically precarious position. The controversy surrounding his handling of the administration’s deadly boat strikes in international waters has sparked calls for his resignation, and even several congressional Republicans have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the former Fox News host’s management at the Pentagon.
And then things took a turn for the worse on Wednesday, when the Pentagon inspector general’s office released its findings in the investigation into the Signal chat scandal. […]
According to a source who read the report, which was shared with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the acting Inspector General for the Department of Defense found Hegseth ‘violated policy by using a non-approved device,’ contradicting the secretary’s claims that he did nothing wrong.
[…] the report concluded Hegseth shared classified information, failed to preserve records and put military operations and servicemembers at risk when he communicated in the Signal chat with 19 people.
[…] By now, the basic elements of the “Signalgate” controversy are probably familiar: Top members of Donald Trump’s national security team participated in an unsecured group chat to discuss sensitive details of a military operation. They also accidentally included a journalist, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, in their online conversation.
The final paragraph of Goldberg’s piece on the fiasco read, “All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security [!]. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group — which, at the time, included me — ‘We are currently clean on OPSEC.’” (“OPSEC” meaning “operations security.”)
In other words, the defense secretary was certain that he and his colleagues — while chatting on a free platform that has never been approved for chats about national security or classified intelligence — had locked everything down and created a secure channel of communication. [Ignorance or stupidity made manifest]
[…] there’s no denying it included highly sensitive information about times and targets, much of which was put there by Hegseth himself.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth told his colleagues. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) — also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).” At one point, the defense secretary literally wrote, “THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.”
This led to an investigation, […] Hegseth […] would not turn over his phone for the probe.
As the public learned of the IG’s findings, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell said of the report, “The Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth.” The Pentagon chief himself added that the investigation was a “total exoneration.” [Delusion. Lies. Gaslighting the public.]
[…] This isn’t a close call: The manifestly unqualified Hegseth was already juggling several scandals. Now an investigation from his own department has concluded that he shared classified information, failed to preserve records and put military operations and American service members at risk.
[…] That Hegseth isn’t walking out of the Pentagon with his belongings in a cardboard box right now is itself an indictment of the administration and of members of Congress responsible for its oversight.
“The arrest is the first known break in a five-year manhunt that has fueled intense speculation and conspiracy theories.”
A man has been arrested in the Jan. 6, 2021, pipe bomb case, and is expected to appear in court later Thursday […]
No arrests had previously been reported in connection with pipe bombs discovered outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican National Committees on the same day as the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
The bombs, which the FBI has described as “viable” but did not detonate, were believed to be planted the day before. […]
The federal agency responsible for supporting the nation’s libraries and museums has reinstated all grants terminated by President Donald Trump, complying with a federal court ruling that found the executive order mandating the cuts to have been unlawful.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the only federal agency responsible for funding libraries. This year, the White House ordered it to scale down to a “minimum presence,” forcing it to slash its spending by millions.
But in a November ruling, the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island found that the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the IMLS was unlawful.
[…] The Trump administration had gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services in March, ordering the agency to dismantle as much of itself as possible. In response, staff at the agency were placed on administrative leave.
[…] In April, the attorneys general of 21 states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s executive order dismantling the agency, along with several others. In his ruling last month, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell found that the administration’s efforts to diminish the agencies had been “arbitrary and capricious” and that the president did not have the unilateral authority to refuse to spend congressionally appropriated funds. […]
Wall Street Journal: “For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year”
“Almost a quarter of a million more children are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024”
One of the greatest public-health achievements of recent decades has been driving down child mortality around the world. Now, that long-running decline is reversing.
The number of deaths of children under 5 years old is projected to rise this year for the first time in decades, the Gates Foundation […] said in a report Thursday. […]
Commentary from Talking Points Memo:
President Trump’s unlawful dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development has contributed to the first rise in global child mortality since at least 1990, according to a new report from the Gates Foundation. Nearly a quarter of a million more children under 5 are projected to die worldwide in 2025 than in 2024.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Thursday called a federal vaccine advisory committee “totally discredited” ahead of a vote on whether to change hepatitis B vaccine guidelines […]
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to vote on a recommendation to no longer advise birth doses of the hepatitis B vaccine for mothers who are negative for the virus or don’t know their status, instead recommending an “individual-based decision-making” approach.
Cassidy, who worked as a liver specialist in Louisiana for many years, has long supported the use of the hepatitis B vaccine. When ACIP originally considered changing the guidance in September, Cassidy spoke out forcefully against proposed alterations, saying Americans should not have confidence in revised guidance.
[…] “Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children,” wrote Cassidy.
[…] Siri has been part of several lawsuits challenging vaccine requirements across the country. He also worked on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s failed presidential bid in 2024. Last year, he requested that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoke approval of the polio vaccine, drawing the ire of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a polio survivor.
[…] a delay in hepatitis B immunization could lead to thousands of preventable infections and millions in added health care costs.
[…] here are a bunch of updates on how Minneapolis is responding to Donald Trump sending his ICE terrorists into Minneapolis to prey upon Somali immigrants. For instance, the PD is refusing to cooperate with [ICE]. [Good news]
Related, the terrorists have arrived in New Orleans. [Bad news] […]
“Trump expected to receive Fifa’s new peace award”
Robbie Williams, Andrea Bocelli and the Village People are to perform as part of a “world-class entertainment line-up” during Friday’s draw for the 2026 men’s football World Cup. The draw for next year’s tournament will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, with model and TV personality Heidi Klum, comedian Kevin Hart and actor Danny Ramirez co-hosting the event.
The Village People will perform YMCA to cap off an event that promises have distinctly Trumpian overtones. The disco hit became a staple at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies and Mar-a-Lago fundraisers.
[…] The tournament takes place in the US, Canada and Mexico next summer, running from 11 June to 19 July in 16 cities.
Adding another layer of Trump connection, Fifa also plans to unveil its new “Peace Prize – Football Unites the World” during the event. The award is widely expected to go to Trump after his calls to receive a Nobel Peace Prize this year. The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, attended Trump’s inauguration in January […]
Expanded to 48 teams and 104 matches, the World Cup will span venues from Mexico City to Vancouver and from New York to Los Angeles, with the bulk of games staged in the US as Fifa looks to tap into the world’s biggest sports market.
Trump overhauled the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in February, becoming chair of the organisation and firing its president, Deborah Rutter.
“The shooting of two National Guard members has prompted the Trump administration to crack down on Afghans who entered the U.S. after assisting American forces during the war.”
In the days and months after the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Thomas Kasza and some of his fellow U.S. Army Special Forces members focused their attention on the Afghans who had fought alongside them.
These Afghans who risked their lives for the U.S. were prime targets of the Taliban. Remaining in their homeland was akin to a death sentence.
“Given how they served exclusively alongside U.S. Green Berets, they were by default among those highest on Taliban target lists,” said Kasza, who was one of many military veterans who assisted their former Afghan counterparts in leaving the country and resettling in the U.S.
After the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House last week, Kasza and other U.S. war veterans find themselves having to come to the defense of their former Afghan partners yet again. […]
“It is definitely not fair to group all Afghans that helped us during our time in Afghanistan in that same basket as this individual,” said Ben Hoffman, a Green Beret with five deployments to Afghanistan.
Another Green Beret, Dave Elliott, said many of the Afghans he is in touch with are now “terrified” over their fates in the U.S.
“They’re fearful they’re going to be sent back to a country where we have had documented cases of our guys being killed in retribution attacks,” said Elliott […]
The Green Berets worked with a specially trained unit of Afghans who would go out in front of the Americans on missions to identify and disable improvised explosive devices, a highly dangerous job that resulted in dozens’ being killed. Other Afghans who came to this country after their government collapsed in 2021 worked with U.S. forces as interpreters and drivers and in other roles.
“These guys didn’t want to leave Afghanistan,” Elliott said. “They left Afghanistan because the U.S. broke it and handed it back to the Taliban and they had no other choice.”
[…] Even before the shooting and the Trump administration actions, many Afghans who settled in this country were already struggling to find jobs while trapped in a legal limbo without work permits.
[…] many of the Afghans experienced several years of war and are now living in an unfamiliar country where they don’t have access to the mental health resources afforded to U.S. military veterans.
“A lot of these guys have a lot of the PTSD struggles that we do, and even way worse,” Hoffman said. “And there’s no way for them to get help except out of pocket [Lack of resources !]
[…] “Some of these guys were in combat 365 days a year, for five or 10 or 20 years,” she [Geeta Bakshi, a former CIA officer who served in Afghanistan] added. “They face many of the same difficulties as veterans do, and they don’t have the resources and the support that veterans do.”
[…] “Green Berets are built to operate with and through a host-nation partner,” he said. “If the future partner of a Special Forces detachment sees America so willing to renege on promises made, how likely is it that they will be willing to put their lives on the line to aid in advancing the interest of another nation that will readily ignore their sacrifice?”
In Georgia this week, Democrat Mary Robichaux won the mayoral race in Roswell, defeating incumbent Republican Mayor Kurt Wilson, who enjoyed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s backing.
More campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
[…] this might seem difficult to believe, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a notorious conspiracy theorist, filed the paperwork this week to run for governor in Minnesota in 2026. If he moves forward with his candidacy, Lindell would run as a Republican.
The New York Times and its veteran intelligence reporter, Julian E. Barnes, filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon on Thursday, accusing the Defense Department of trampling on reporters’ First Amendment rights through a sweeping new set of reporting restrictions.
Those rules—implemented in October—bar journalists from gathering or publishing any information that the government hasn’t explicitly cleared, including declassified documents and off-the-record conversations. […] Reporters who refused to sign were warned that their access would be suspended.
Many walked. According to the Times, six of its journalists handed in their Pentagon badges, joining dozens from across major newsrooms who also refused to agree to the terms.
The Times’ complaint is the first major legal challenge to the policy, seeking not only to block the restrictions but to restore the press passes of reporters now covering the world’s largest military bureaucracy from the outside. In the meantime, what’s left of the on-site Pentagon press corps is dominated by far-right outlets […]
In its filing, the Times calls the Pentagon’s rules “exactly the type of speech- and press-restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment.” The lawsuit argues the policy “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories [to] the public beyond official pronouncements.”
A broad array of outlets declined to sign the agreement: The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Atlantic, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, HuffPost, and Breaking Defense, among them. Even Fox News and Newsmax—typically friendly to Republican administrations—balked.
The Times is asking a federal judge in Washington to halt the rules. […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin challenged heavy U.S. pressure on India not to buy Russian fuel if the U.S. could do so as he began a two-day state visit, where he was embraced on arrival by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Putin spoke in comments to Indian broadcaster India Today, aired hours after landing in New Delhi for a visit during which both countries are seeking to boost mutual trade and expand the variety of items in transactions.
Putin is playing to the Indian crowd by talking about oil. India, like China, has little native oil so they have to buy it someplace.
India wants to buy raw resources from the resource rich Russia. They have basic goods and electronics that would sell well in Russia. They are not as willing as China to anger the entire west and/or lie about their trade. They don’t care much about what is happening in Ukraine though, their concern is the complex relations between India/Russia/China.
Russia’s major goal is convincing India to buy more oil and other resources just to get money. Putin would love to buy what they can from India. Mostly electronics because India isn’t willing to sell Russia arms and ammunition directly. As a secondary point, getting Putin out of Russia and back on the international stage works in Russia’s favor also.
It’s a complex situation but they are pretty sure to come to some sort of deals. Putin wouldn’t have gone to India if they didn’t have something lined up.
BTW I have forgotten which state has a literal flat-Earther as major Republican politician among all the political turbulence. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Republicans in that state do in the 2026 elections.
“Cloudflare Has Blocked 416 Billion AI Bot Requests Since July 1”
“Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince claims the internet infrastructure company’s efforts to block AI crawlers are already seeing big results.”
AS THE LARGE language models powering generative AI tools slurp up ever more data across the web, Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince said at WIRED’s Big Interview event in San Francisco on Thursday that the internet infrastructure company has blocked more than 400 billion AI bot requests for its customers since July 1. […]
“FBI Says DC Pipe Bomb Suspect Brian Cole Kept Buying Bomb Parts After January 6”
“The 30-year-old Virginia resident evaded capture for years after authorities discovered pipe bombs planted near buildings in Washington, DC, the day before the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.”
FEDERAL AGENTS ON Thursday announced the arrest of a suspect charged with planting the two pipe bombs discovered near the US Capitol complex on the eve of January 6, 2021. Authorities identified the man as Brian J. Cole Jr., a resident of Woodbridge, Virginia. The arrest marks a major break in a case that has vexed authorities for nearly five years.
Cole, 30, is charged with transporting an explosive device across state lines with the intent to kill, injure, intimidate, or destroy property and with attempting to damage and destroy the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees by means of an explosive device. If convicted, he would face the prospect of decades in prison.
According to an affidavit, investigators linked Cole to the bombs through a combination of surveillance footage, historical cell-site data, and years of purchase records showing he bought each major component used to construct the devices. Agents allege Cole acquired the same model of galvanized pipe, matching end caps, and nine-volt connectors, among other items, across multiple hardware stores in northern Virginia in 2019 and 2020.
Cole continued buying components used in bomb-making after his bombs in the Capitol were discovered, agents allege, listing the purchase of a white kitchen timer and two nine-volt batteries from a Walmart on January 21, as well as galvanized pipes from Home Depot the following day.
Senior Trump administration officials quickly cast the arrest as a vindication of their own leadership, claiming the case had gone cold. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she hoped the arrest would restore public trust following what she characterized as a “total lack of movement” on a case that had “languished for four years.” In their telling, the breakthrough was proof that the case only advanced once they were empowered to “go get the bad guys” and stop “focusing on other extraneous things,” as FBI deputy director Dan Bongino put it.
“Though it had been nearly five years, our team continued to churn through massive amounts of data and tips that we used to identify this suspect,” said Darren Cox, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
The bombs were planted near the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees the night of January 5, 2021, as Congress prepared to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump. Both failed to detonate, but their discovery the following day added to the chaos and confusion unfolding as a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol building, causing millions of dollars in damage and injuring approximately 140 Capitol and Metropolitan Police Department officers.
The FBI says the pipe-bomb suspect moved through the Capitol wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, mask, gloves, and Nike Air Max sneakers, placing one device in an alley near the RNC and another beneath a bench outside the DNC. The bureau has consistently said that the devices, built from threaded metal pipe, a kitchen timer, and homemade black powder, were “viable” and could have been lethal, though it remains unclear whether they would have detonated absent intervention.
A passerby spotted the RNC bomb the following day and reported it to Capitol Police, who logged the call at 12:42 pm. A police countersurveillance team discovered the second bomb at the DNC headquarters at around 1:05 pm. Then-vice-president–elect Kamala Harris, who was on site at the time, was evacuated. US Secret Service agents had conducted a security sweep earlier that morning—including with a bomb-sniffing dog.
Perimeter failures were extensive at both sites as police responded simultaneously to breaches at the east front and west front of the Capitol building. Security footage captured two civilians walking by the RNC bomb more than half hour after its discovery, with no officers nearby to hold a blast perimeter. At the DNC building, numerous cars and pedestrians passed through what should have been a secured zone.
[…] Bongino played a significant role in his previous life as a right-wing influencer in criticizing the agency he now helps lead over its perceived lack of process in the case.
Bongino called the failure to identify a suspect “the biggest scandal in FBI history” on his podcast in January, adding that the agency already knew the name of the bomber and “just doesn’t want to tell us, because it was an inside job.” [bullshit]
Last month, far-right media outlet the Blaze, founded by Glenn Beck, claimed it had identified the alleged suspect as a former Capitol Police officer, basing its findings on an analysis of how the person walked. Bongino dismissed the allegations as “grossly inaccurate,” but the report led to many on the right once again slamming Bongino and his boss for failing to find the bomber.
Despite little being known about the suspected bomber, far-right figures online were already speculating on Thursday morning before he was officially named that he was a member of “antifa.” Others simply didn’t believe that the FBI had arrested the right guy: “Let’s see what they’ve got,” Republican congressman Thomas Massie wrote on X, adding, ”I’m not buying it.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Anton Petrov:
“Wow! Asteroid Bennu Discoveries Spark New Questions About Life’s Origins”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSwGcF5R3KM
It is nice to view science news that require us to look up from this squalid political and economic mess to issues like the origin of life.
“The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Is Detaining People for ICE”
“Louisiana’s hunting and wildlife authority is one of more than 1,000 state and local agencies that have partnered with US immigration authorities this year alone.”
THE LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT Of Wildlife And Fisheries (LDWF), typically responsible in part for overseeing wildlife reserves and enforcing local hunting rules, has assisted United States immigration authorities with bringing at least six people into federal custody this year, according to documents WIRED obtained via a public record request.
According to the documents, LDWF signed a memorandum of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May, which gives the wildlife agency the authority to detain people suspected of immigration violations and to transfer them into ICE custody. Since then, at least six men entered ICE custody after coming into contact with or being detained by LDWF officers. None of the men were issued criminal charges at the time they came into contact with LDWF officers, the documents show. Two of the men were known by ICE to have been in the country legally at the time the agency took them into custody.
The documents also indicate that at least one “joint patrol” took place in a Louisiana wildlife management area in which LDWF agents were accompanied by officers with Customs and Border Protection and the US Coast Guard. The memorandum of agreement between ICE and LDWF makes no mention of CBP or the possibility of working with the agency as part of the agreement. However, the documents indicate that a relationship with CBP may have been facilitated through LDWF’s partnership with ICE.
LDWF partnered with ICE under the agency’s 287(g) program, named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that enables officers and employees at the state or local level to perform some of the functions of US immigration officers, such as investigating, apprehending, detaining, or transporting people suspected of violating immigration law.
As of December 3, exactly 1,205 agencies have partnered with ICE through the 287(g) program. (An additional eight agencies are currently pending approval from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.) Some 1,053 of these agreements were signed this year, meaning enrollment has increased by 693 percent compared to the end of 2024. The LDWF is one of just three state wildlife agencies—the others being the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources—that have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, according to public ICE records. All three agreements were signed this year.
The marked expansion of the 287(g) program this year has generated relatively little attention. However, the documents from the LDWF indicate that the state and local agencies enrolled are actively detaining people not guilty of any crimes, and facilitating their arrests and possible deportation.
[…] The report claims that on October 23, two LDWF officers patrolling the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area heard several gunshots in an area where “people often illegally target shoot.” The suspects, three men in their twenties, all cooperated with LDWF at the scene. When asked to show their weapons, they showed the officers a pistol, an AR-15, several magazines, and a few dozen rounds of ammunition. The officers confirmed that none of the firearms were stolen. One of the men also showed the officers where they had been shooting.
The men showed identification—a Louisiana ID card, a Honduran ID card, and a Honduran passport, respectively—when asked, but did not have the appropriate permits for being in a Wildlife Management Area and firing a weapon. The two men who fired weapons were issued three civil citations, while the one who didn’t was issued two. At some point during LDWF’s interactions with the men, the agency called immigration authorities.
“Due to the unknown immigration status and them possessing firearms, we made contact with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI),” the report reads. A HSI agent reportedly told LDWF that one of the men had a final removal order, one had “pending” immigration proceedings, and one man had legal parole to be in the US. When LDWF contacted the local ICE field office, ICE sent two agents to the scene.
Upon arrival, the report claims, “The ICE Officers made several phone calls and they decided to take custody of all three subjects.” All three men were placed in handcuffs and escorted to the ICE officers’ vehicles.
It’s unclear if any of these men were deported, but based on information in the report, none of them appear to currently be in ICE custody, according to the agency’s detainee locator.[…]
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and the architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
One senior White House official said that McCrery Architects and its CEO James McCrery would no longer be in the picture, after clashing with the president over the scope of the project, particularly the size of the ballroom, But two White House officials strongly denied McCrery was fired; they said he instead will remain on the ballroom project as a consultant.
The new architect is Shalom Baranes Associates, a Washington, DC-based firm that previously designed the General Services Administration’s national headquarters, according to the company’s website.
Trump wants to make the ballroom even bigger, and McCrery apparently objected. The new size isn’t clear yet but I’m guessing it will be bigger then the rest of the White House at this point.
In a chaotic meeting Thursday rife with misinformation, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel — whose members Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired in June and replaced with a group that has largely expressed skepticism of vaccines — once again delayed an expected vote on hepatitis B vaccines.
New York Times:
The Food and Drug Administration has chosen Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, a sports medicine doctor and epidemiologist who has been a senior adviser, to run its drug division, according to a statement from the agency Wednesday evening. She will lead the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which oversees novel prescription, over-the-counter and generic drugs.
“Video shows second strike hit before survivors could flip boat, lawmakers say”
“The footage was shown on Capitol Hill, where Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who oversaw a deadly attack on alleged drug smugglers, faced a day of difficult questions about the operation.”
Video footage showing a U.S. military strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea shows two people attempting to flip their capsized vessel when they were attacked again, multiple lawmakers said Thursday after meeting with the Navy admiral who oversaw the controversial mission.
The recording was shown during meetings on Capitol Hill featuring Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander who oversaw the Sept. 2 operation that entailed four strikes in all. The attack killed 11 people, including the two people who survived the first blast that hit their boat.
Democrats emerged from the meetings alarmed and vowed to press ahead with congressional probes into the attack’s legality. Some Republicans who have been staunchly loyal to the Trump administration defended the operation.
Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” The two survivors, he said, were “in clear distress” after their boat was “destroyed.”
“The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military,” Himes and Rep. Adam Smith (Washington) said in a joint statement Thursday. Smith is the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat. “Regardless of what one believes about the legal underpinnings of these operations, and we have been clear we believe they are highly questionable, this was wrong.”
[I snipped comments from some Republicans, like Tom Cotton, who called the strikes “righteous.”]
[…] Calling for help could indicate the men were still able to move drugs, but it doesn’t make them combatants who pose a threat and can be killed, said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces on the law of war for seven years. “It’s a pretty flimsy argument,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
“There was no boat. There was wreckage. There was no radio. There were two guys clinging to a tiny non-awash portion of the keel of a capsized boat,” said one lawmaker familiar with Thursday’s congressional briefings and the video that was shown. […]
“Texas officials drew the new congressional map to help Republicans gain up to five additional seats in the House in next year’s midterm elections.”
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a new congressional district map in next year’s midterm election that was drawn to maximize Republican political power. [Bad news!]
Granting an emergency application filed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the conservative majority paused a lower court ruling that said the map was unlawful because Republican lawmakers, at the direction of the Trump administration, explicitly considered race when drawing new districts.
The unsigned order said that Texas is “likely to succeed on the merits of its claim,” including that the lower court “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith” when assessing the state legislature’s motives.
The ruling appeared to be 6-3, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
The map was drawn with the aim of adding up to five additional Republican House seats.
The decision marks a win for President Donald Trump, who filed a brief urging the court to rule in favor of Texas.
The Supreme Court had provisionally put the decision on hold Nov. 21 while the justices weighed what next step to take, in an order signed by Justice Samuel Alito.
Traditionally, states draw new districts once a decade after the census shows how populations have shifted. But this year, Trump, worried about the narrow Republican majority in the House, has repeatedly pushed Republican-led states to draw new maps outside of that normal timeline.
A Trump administration letter earlier this year said the state could be subject to a federal lawsuit if it did not eliminate “coalition districts” in which nonwhite voters of different races constitute the majority.
[…] In the Texas case, the three-judge lower court invalidated the new map on a 2-1 vote, with the majority opinion authored by Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee.
While politics played a role in the maps being redrawn, there was “substantial evidence” that it was a racial gerrymander in violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, he wrote. [!]
In asking the Supreme Court to block the lower court ruling, Texas’ lawyers argued in part that it was too late in the election cycle for federal judges to intervene. The lawyers also said that the new map was clearly designed for partisan gain and denied that there was any racial motive. [Well, yes, it was for partisan gain, but it was also a racially-based gerrymander.]
“This summer, the Texas legislature did what legislatures do: politics,” they wrote. [Not a good excuse.]
The lawsuit was brought by six different groups of plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the Texas NAACP and two members of Congress, Texas Democratic Reps. Al Green and Jasmine Crockett.
In a court filing, one group of challengers said that “the entire thrust of the governor’s justification for authorizing redistricting” was to remove and replace the coalition districts, meaning that race and not partisan politics was the motive.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson @18:
I have forgotten which state has a literal flat-Earther
“Federal officials failed to secure the new indictment against James, whom Trump has targeted, after a judge said the previous one was secured by an unlawfully appointed prosecutor.”
[…] James, a frequent political target of President Donald Trump’s who had successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him, had previously been indicted by a grand jury on one charge of bank fraud and another of making false statements to a financial institution.
James has denied any wrongdoing.
Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former personal attorney to Trump with no prior prosecutorial experience, presented the case to a grand jury on her own in the first go-round — and that case was declared void on Nov. 24 when a judge found Halligan’s appointment was unlawful.
The Justice Department initially vowed to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, but ultimately decided to seek a new, untainted indictment against James, a source familiar with the deliberations told NBC News earlier this week.
The new case was presented to a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, by different prosecutors.
The failure to secure an indictment on Thursday does not bar prosecutors from attempting to do so again in the future. [I guess the Trump team can just keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.] […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re JM @23:
I’m guessing it will be bigger then the rest of the White House
Ooh, Witkoff could get Russian blueprints for the Chernobyl sarcophagus.
“The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
[Anakin and Padmé meme]: Ah, too close to the election? So you’re going to put off the Louisiana v. Callais ruling until after the midterms, right?
Lawrence Hurley (NBC):
[Nov 19]: Um… This is an actual judicial opinion (dissenting in the TX gerrymandering case).
The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent.
[Dec 04]: The Supreme Court sided with this dissent.
As Justice Kagan begins her dissent by pointing out, what is even the point of trial, of fact-finding, of clear error, of standards of review, when the Supreme Court simply ignores every single part of that and decides everything purely on the papers without any real consideration of the facts?
[…] the facts are what they want them to be, and quite frankly if District Courts disagree, they can pound sand because they’re not the ones in charge. […] It’s not just liberal judges they’re doing this to. They’re doing this to plenty of conservative judges too; judges who actually spent weeks and weeks poring over the details […] perhaps I’m overreading the extent to which the lower courts are going to be upset, but as someone who cares deeply about *facts,* I’m mostly just frustrated about the extent to which this Court doesn’t.
The ceremony is largely symbolic—the agreement was already signed over the summer and critics still see obstacles to its implementation.
[…]
they nearly descended into all-out war earlier in the year. In January, M23 rebels backed by thousands of Rwandan soldiers captured eastern Congo’s two largest cities. President Trump declared the June deal “a glorious triumph” and has since claimed to have ended over 30 years of war
[…]
Under its terms, Rwanda is meant to withdraw its troops and stop supporting the M23, a rebel group led by Congolese ethnic minority Tutsi commanders.
Congo is supposed to eradicate a militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)— which Rwanda’s government views as an existential threat. Ethnic Hutu extremists founded this militia when they fled to Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which killed nearly 800,000 Tutsi civilians.
The US is close to an institutional collapse across multiple public health agencies. Trump/RFK have purged anyone with expertise, many have fled and they’ve been replaced w functionaries who are either incompetent or malicious. I don’t think many understand how close to the edge we are right now.
90% of senior FDA staff are gone. Almost all of the living previous FDA commissioners have come out to the alarm.
Meanwhile former top CDC officials have warned that the agency has been hollowed out. [A quarter of its workforce] Thousands of staff are gone.
NIH is in tatters. Insiders speaking out are being fired.
While there have been news articles reporting all of this, no one has yet put together the pieces to show how bad things are across the board, what it means for human lives. Without a functioning FDA, CDC and NIH we are in big trouble.
In people with allergies, [the antibody] IgE is produced in response to proteins that do not usually cause harm, such as those found in peanuts, cat dander and other allergens. […] The vaccine triggers the production of antibodies that bind to IgE and stop it from binding to immune-cell receptors. That leaves less IgE available for generating an immune response
[…]
The vaccine is a promising scientific concept, but it’s still at a very early stage
The plane landed, slightly ahead of schedule, just moments before the incident happened at about 11pm. The drones reached the location where Zelenskyy’s plane was expected to be at the exact moment it had been due to pass. The drones then orbited above an Irish Navy vessel that had secretly been deployed in the Irish Sea for the Zelenskyy visit.
[…]
It is not yet known who launched and controlled the drones or where the drones are now. […] the fact that the drones had their lights on has led security forces to suspect that the aim was to disrupt the flight’s arrival […] the drones in the Irish Sea were large, hugely expensive […] The drones are believed to have been quadcopters as they were able to hover
[…]
Zelenskyy’s visit to Dublin went off without any major hitches.
Commentary
A useful reminder that Zelensky is engaging in all this furious shuttle diplomacy at massive personal risk to his own safety.
Ireland is a country of 5 ish million people—the idea it is gonna have the ability to respond to a major power drone attack (if that’s what it was) is pretty fanciful.
Galaxies residing in a huge filament of dark matter have been found to be mostly rotating in the same direction that the filament is spinning. It’s a discovery that challenges what astronomers think they know about how the environment influences galactic evolution.
The filament is a thread in the cosmic web, which is made of mostly dark matter and laced with ordinary matter, that spans the entire universe. Located 140 million light-years away, the filament has a nested structure. At its heart is a row of 14 galaxies almost precisely placed in a line 5.5 million light years long and 117,000 light-years wide, and all are rich in hydrogen gas that’s required for forming stars. This row of galaxies is then embedded in the larger filament that’s 50 million light years in length and is home to about 300 galaxies in total.
he row of galaxies is extraordinary not because they are aligned in a narrow band, but because many of them are rotating in the same direction as the filament itself. Think of each galaxy, slowly rotating around its axis, and then picture those galaxies perpendicular to the long axis of the filament and rotating about that spindle at 68 miles (110 kilometers) per second in the same direction as they themselves are spinning on their axis. All together, it is one of the largest cohesive rotating structures known in the universe.
‘500 tons of cocaine’: Trump pardons trafficker who helped flood U.S. with drugs. Chris Hayes on the pardon of ex- Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández: Trump keeps justifying the killing of more than 80 men on boats in the Caribbean as a way to save Americans from drugs, but just this week he pardoned a man who helped traffic more than 500 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
MAGA backlash builds as GOP women turn on Mike Johnson. Republican women from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Elise Stefanik are increasingly losing faith in Mike Johnson’s leadership, according to new reporting. Democratic Whip Katherine Clark weighs in.
A useful reminder that Zelensky is engaging in all this furious shuttle diplomacy at massive personal risk to his own safety.
Yes, agreed. I’ve been thinking about the risks Zelensky takes. He is both dedicated and brave.
Sky Captain @33, yep. Sometimes it seems like a slow slide downhill toward catastrophe, but really this decline that will lead to institutional collapse has been quite rapid.
Sky Captain @32, so it is all just theater. Trump gets to pose as a peace maker while Congo and Rwanda continue to fight. Eventually, Trump will blame someone else for his failures in this instance. As an aside, I find it hard to characterize how much I despise Trump spouting flapdoodle and bunkum like ““a glorious triumph.”
Sky Captain @31, this is a good summary of Justice Kagan’s dissent:
[…] as someone who cares deeply about *facts,* I’m mostly just frustrated about the extent to which this Court doesn’t.
“There’s no shortage of questions about Brian Cole Jr. and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore.”
Related video at the link.
Hours before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, someone placed pipe bombs outside Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C. This led to a five-year manhunt that finally produced a breakthrough.
Federal agents arrested a suspect Thursday morning, taking Brian Cole Jr. into custody. The Virginia man, who lives roughly 23 miles south of Capitol Hill, has been charged with transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials, according to charging documents filed in court.
[…] NBC News reported that Cole is cooperating with the FBI and has already shared important insights. From the report:
The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.
This dovetails with a related account from MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, who reported that the suspect confessed to agents Thursday that he planted the bombs near the Capitol — and indicated he supported Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his interview.
These developments are obviously new, and as the investigation continues, officials will likely get a clearer sense of the suspect’s motivations.
But based on these initial reports, the suggestion that Cole might’ve somehow been aligned with Joe Biden or the left more broadly appears untrue.
It also raises questions anew about the relevance of Trump’s pardons for those who also went to Capitol Hill in January 2021 after embracing his false election conspiracy theories.
Cole is expected to appear in court on Friday afternoon. He has not yet entered a plea.
Those who steer clear of conservative media outlets may not realize that, for many on the right, a suspect in the Capitol pipe-bombs case was identified several weeks ago. An outlet called The Blaze cited a “gait analysis” last month and told readers that there was a 94% match between the suspect and a former Capitol Police officer. [FFS!]
Assorted far-right figures, including some Republican members of Congress and prominent Trump administration officials, took the reporting seriously, which was unfortunate: The “gait analysis” was wrong, and the former Capitol Police officer wasn’t the suspect.
But before far-right conspiracy theorists got this aspect of the story wrong, they had gotten a bunch of other things wrong.
Take FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, for example.
Last fall, the week before Election Day 2024, Bongino told listeners to his conservative podcast that there was “a massive cover-up” in the pipe-bombs case and that the bombs might’ve been placed outside Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C. as part of an “inside job” launched by the federal government. [Yikes! Yikes! Yikes! How deluded and twisted is Bongino?]
Earlier this year, Bongino went further, telling his audience that the FBI knew the identity of the bomber and “just doesn’t want to tell us because it was an inside job.” [As noted in comment 20.]
Eleven months later, Bongino helped lead a press conference to announce the arrest of a suspect in the case. If the FBI and the Justice Department have the right guy, then clearly this was not “an inside job” and those conspiracy theories were wrong.
How, pray tell, does the FBI deputy director explain peddling conspiratorial nonsense that his own agency appears to have debunked? As it turns out, Bongino was given an opportunity to explain himself during a Thursday night appearance on Fox News. [social media post and video]
Host Sean Hannity noted Bongino’s earlier comments about the case, to which the FBI deputy director responded, “You know, listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions. That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now.” [Wow. That is not a good excuse.]
So let me see if I have this straight: Bongino was a far-right media personality who used his platform to tell the public, among other things, about his conspiratorial beliefs related to the pipe-bombs case. Two months after peddling these claims, the president tapped him to help lead the FBI.
And now, however, Bongino seems willing to acknowledge that he didn’t know what he was talking about (or that he embraced certain positions because they were more lucrative) — which naturally raises a whole bunch of questions about why he was hired for a key federal law enforcement position and why anyone should find him credible going forward.
Bongino was saying, in effect: “I am an asshole, a mind boggling doofus, and you can’t trust me.”
The Trump DOJ is urging a judge to jail pardoned Jan. 6 defendant Taylor Taranto who has been alarmingly wandering the neighborhood of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in recent days. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who convicted Taranto at a bench trial this year for a threat to federal buildings and for bringing weapons to President Barack Obama’s D.C. neighborhood, did not immediately send Taranto to prison but ordered him to return immediately to his home in Washington state for the holidays, Politico reports.
Link. The link leads to a presentation of various, current news reports.
Summary
– U.S. diplomats asked to review H-1B visa applicants’ LinkedIn profiles
– says H-1B visa applicants, others should not have engaged in “censorship”
– H-1B visas are crucial for the tech companies, many of whose leaders supported Trump
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced increased vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, with an internal State Department memo saying that anyone involved in “censorship” of free speech be considered for rejection.
H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty fields, are crucial for U.S. tech companies which recruit heavily from countries including India and China. […]
The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be traveling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said. [Strange definition of “censorship.”]
[…] “You must thoroughly explore their employment histories to ensure no participation in such activities,” the cable said.
The new vetting requirements apply to both new and repeat applicants.
“We do not support aliens coming to the United States to work as censors muzzling Americans,” a State Department spokesperson said […]
Officials have repeatedly weighed in on European politics to denounce what they say is suppression of right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, accusing European authorities of censoring views like criticism of immigration in the name of countering disinformation.
[…] The Trump administration has already significantly tightened its vetting of applicants for student visas, ordering U.S. consular officers to screen for any social media posts that may be hostile towards the United States. [I think they mean “hostile towards Trump and authoritarians like him.”]
As part of his wide-ranging crackdown on immigration, Trump in September imposed new fees on H-1B visas.
Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly accused the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden of encouraging suppression of free speech on online platforms, claims that have centered on efforts to stem false claims about vaccines and elections.
Trump wants to be free to spread disinformation. And he wants to admit to the USA only H-1B visa applicants who also are on his disinformation bandwagon.
IRELAND: Russia is suspected of being behind a hybrid warfare campaign using drones to disrupt airspace around European airports. In the latest incident, five military-style drones triggered a major security alert in Ireland, arriving in the flight path of visiting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shortly after his aircraft passed by. “Officials are treating it as a potential attempt to disrupt flight operations rather than to attack a target,” the Irish Times reported.
The Secretary of Defense taking extrajudicial killing requests from podcast hosts. [Screenshot]
Andrew Kolvet’s Bio: Christian. […] producer of The Charlie Kirk Show.
Kolvet: Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.
Hegseth: Your wish is my command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.
Commentary
The irony of Hegseth saying this the same day Trump stood inside an institute that he renamed for himself and declared world peace.
He’s legit doing the ‘x likes and I’ll y’ for crimes against humanity, it’s disgusting.
Cameo but for murder.
Hey Pete, you know there’s no statute of limitations for murder, right?
Patrick Shea (Former attorney): “Pardons don’t apply to international law. In fact, it is a violation of international law for state actors to use pardons or amnesty in an attempt to shield war criminals from justice. When the rule of law is restored, these thugs, all of them, need to be on the first flight to the Hague.”
The Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The George W. Bush administration, the U.S. administration at the time of the ICC’s founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama administration subsequently re-established a working relationship with the Court as an observer. […] Senate must approve the treaty by a two-thirds majority before it can take effect.
[…]
the U.S. has participated in various international courts including the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Nuremberg trials, and the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The Trump administration released its “National Security Strategy” on Thursday night, but the document reads more like a manifesto advocating for white supremacy than a supposed national defense plan.
The document calls on Europe to restore its “Western identity” and “civilizational self-confidence,” echoing the language of white supremacist movements. It also advocates against migration to the United States and Europe, which has long been cited as a goal of supremacists seeking to purportedly preserve white culture.
The Trump strategy argues that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and blames organizations like the European Union and other international groups that supposedly “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
White supremacists have historically argued that white civilization is under assault from non-white infiltrators who are undermining existing governments. The document gives a stamp of approval to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which Trump has previously endorsed while opposing the migration of non-white people to America.
This theory has inspired numerous acts of violence, including the 2022 mass shooting at a grocery store in New York, a 2015 mass shooting at a South Carolina church, and a 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pennsylvania, among others.
The national security document also offers praise for the “growing influence of patriotic European parties,” which is clearly a reference to bigoted, nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. The German government has labeled AfD as a “proven right-wing extremist organization,” and AfD leaders have used Nazi slogans and engaged in Holocaust denialism.
Vice President JD Vance has complained about criticism of AfD, writing in May, “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”
National security strategies do not typically offer endorsements of white nationalism.
[…] this administration has chosen to embrace racism and white supremacy, and it adds to the litany of actions Trump has undertaken to support bigotry and to attack the existence of non-white people.
[…] it sounds very much like the handiwork of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, who is arguably the most virulently racist figure in Trump’s inner circle. [Yep. True.]
Now they want the world to share in their bigoted approach.
Dangerous. More or less Nazi-like obsession with racial purity, plus lots of Trump’s authoritarianism, plus Stephen Miller’s basic evil. Very bad indeed.
Mike Johnson branded himself a “wartime” speaker of the House during a Friday appearance on Fox Business. He also claimed he and President Donald Trump work nearly every hour in the day doing who knows what for the American people. [video]
Host Stuart Varney.Varney: Do you work 18 hours a day?
Johnson: More, more. And I have to because President Trump works 21 hours a day. [bullshit … and even if true, that would counter productive and probably dangerous]
Stuart: I see you on TV all the time, always surrounded by hostile media [inaudible].
Johnson: Oh yes, it’s a really fun job, Stuart. […]
Stuart: Are you enjoying it? I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Speaker, but I’ve got to get to grips with the job you’re doing.
Johnson: I mean, I’m a wartime speaker in a real sense, and so it’s not the most enjoyable job in the world. [WTF?] But I do love what we’re doing. I love the team I work with. We have a unified Republican Party. [not true] If we didn’t, Stuart, we would not have delivered on all the things that we have this year. There’s much more ahead of us, and this team is excited about it.
“Donald Trump Isn’t Some Self-Aggrandizing Tinpot Dictator! He Appoints People For That.”
“Say hello to the Donald J. Trump Institute Of Getting His Piece.”
Donald Trump, who is, somehow, president of the United States, still hasn’t been awarded that Nobel Peace Prize he so feverishly covets […] But as a participation trophy, the US State Department yesterday announced that the US Institute of Peace will now be known forevermore, or at least until someone with a crowbar is sent over there, as the “Donald J. Trump US Institute of Peace,” because that name will “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.” Say, did you hear he’s ended around 50 or 60 wars since taking office? He’ll tell you all about it if you let him, even if he has to make up some or all of the wars.
As you’ll recall, in the early days of his second administration, Trump illegally tried to dismantle the institute, a think tank for international conflict resolution whose congressional charter created it as a nonprofit entity that’s supposed to be independent of the executive branch. There was even a brief armed standoff as DOGE goons seized the building to change the locks.
The administration is actually still embroiled in litigation over control of the institute, but what the hell, now that Trump’s name is on it, the Supreme Court will have to agree that whatever laws created the institute, it’s his now. The building was owned by the former Institute of Peace board, but Trump fired all the members and the building is for now under control of the General Services Administration. Trump may use it as collateral for refinancing some of his other trash palaces, who knows?
Oh, did we mention that yesterday, while the Trump administration continued to insist it isn’t war-criming, the Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth ordered the extrajudicial murder of yet another four people, in an illegal drone strike on a boat supposedly carrying drugs? You know, just to underline the Orwellian renaming of the peace institute. Appropriate too, since the Institute of Peace was created in the year 1984.
To mark the completely meaningless addition of the new sign, a White House spokesbot with the designation “Anna Kelly” said,
“The United States Institute of Peace was once a bloated, useless entity that blew $50 million per year while delivering no peace. Now, the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which is both beautifully and aptly named after a President who ended eight wars in less than a year, will stand as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”
She added, “Congratulations, world!”
To reflect Trump’s amazing work in ending wars all over the globe, we recommend that the renamed building be left completely vacant, with the electricity off. [LOL]
In related news, SFGATE reported yesterday that the National Parks Service has changed the federal holidays that qualify for free admission to America’s national parks, eliminating both Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, because they are illegal and promote idleness, adding free admission on the important American holiday of June 14, which is close enough to June 19th that Black Americans can easily make the switch and celebrate the birthday of their real saviour and best friend, Donald J. Trump. And if they don’t like it they can, as Great Leader said this week of one subset of Black American citizens, just “go back to where they came from” and stop complaining.
Yeah, subtle messaging about who counts as American, isn’t it?
No, in case you are wondering, no living president has ever had a federal building (if that’s even what the Institute of Peace building ends up being) named for him while he was in office. Nor has any branch of the US government ever treated the birthday of a sitting president as a holiday. But that’s OK, because things are changing here in the Trump States of Trumpmerica, and it’s a very good thing that you will like and accept, because after all, he won the 2024 election with 100 percent of the vote, that’s what all the history books say now.
Trump’s Blessing be upon you, fellow Trumpmericans! Everything is getting much better now, thanks to our wise beloved leader!
“JD Vance Welcomes All Jews To Participate In Christmas”
In yet another seasonal blunder that’s become almost as much a Hanukkah tradition as wondering how kids in olden days got excited about dreidels […] Vice President JD Vance’s office sent out invitations to a Hanukkah celebration at the Veep’s residence that treated the Jewish holiday as just one more part of Christmas. Twice!
But don’t worry, it wasn’t a mistake; it was actually a conscious decision […]
Here’s the invite, spotted by Jewish Insider reporter Gabby Deutch, who posted the image to social media Wednesday […] “Hanukkah” at least got the biggest typeface, but it’s underneath a heading that’s all about the Christian holiday”: [Image]
[…] “CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF CHRISTMAS AT THE VICE PRESIDENT’S RESIDENCE.” [Image]
Super-classy, and very Christmassy, because Jesus is the reason for the season. Kind of has nothing to do with Hanukkah, though […]
As The Independent reports, a spokesman for Vance explained that “The same branding for invitations was used for all holiday parties at the Vice President’s Residence,” so it was simply a matter of keeping design consistency, not any sort of religious message, silly. The spox continued blathering, “The Vance family is celebrating 50 historic years of Christmas at the Vice President’s Residence. They look forward to welcoming all of their guests.”
Donald Trump and JD Vance’s America is a Christian Nationalist America, so of course even Jewish holidays are part of the same Judeo-Christian (but really, just Christian) heritage we all share. Just remember that the “Judeo” part is silent, like the “t” in “Christmas” or the “Donald Trump” in “Epstein Files.”
We can only hope that this year’s Trump and Vance Christmakkah parties don’t turn out like the 2020 Hanukkah bash at the Trump White House, which ended up being a COVID-19 superspreader event.
As every story about this deliberate error points out, this isn’t the first time presidential Hanukkah cards have similarly fucked up. In 2008, the George W. Bush White House sent out invitations to a Hanukkah reception, but the cards had the same image as their Christmas cards, a picture of a snowy White House with wreaths in the windows and an olde-fashioned horse-drawn wagon delivering a Christmas tree.
But the other outlets didn’t go to the bother of tracking down that ridiculous image, while Yr Wonkette did: [image]
t least the Bush team had the sense to apologize instead of insisting that Hanukkah was intentionally treated as a subcategory of Christmas. Sally McDonough, Laura Bush’s press secretary, said that “Mrs. Bush is apologetic,” but it was an oversight that “just slipped through the cracks” as the Bushes were preparing to leave the White House. […]
A few days later, the White House sent out new invites to the reception, with an image of the menorah given to President Truman by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion after Truman was among the first world leaders to recognize Israel’s statehood in 1948. [image]
Included in the second-try invitation was a smaller card reading “Please accept our apologies as the invitation you previously received had the incorrect artwork.” Pretty classy, although it would have been even better if it had added that “those responsible have been sacked.”
And while it wasn’t a president, just a failed presidential candidate, Yr Wonkette will always be delighted by the festive greetings in an old email by Wisconsin’s future Gov. Scott Walker, from his time as Milwaukee County executive. Walker replied to Milwaukee attorney Franklyn Gimbel that he’d be happy to put up a menorah in the Milwaukee County Courthouse, and added a festive closing: “Thank you again and Molotov.”
Way better holiday tradition than that Adam Sandler movie! May your own Hanukkah be incendiary extraordinary!
“As the president threatens Venezuela, Russia and China are filling the information vacuum.”
President Donald Trump has said he won’t rule out anything when it comes to removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power. Yet he is missing an important tool from the arsenal: the Voice of America.
Since Trump’s March executive order dismantling the news agency, most of VOA’s 1,300 staff members and contractors have been fired or placed on administrative leave, its website has been frozen and the 83-year-old broadcaster has gone dark for the first time since its founding during World War II.
Before being shuttered, VOA’s weekly Spanish-language audience in Latin America was more than 100 million people, according to an audience survey released in January by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That’s especially important in Venezuela, where the regime of Nicolás Maduro has closed most independent media outlets and continues to harass journalists. Around eight journalists are in prison. Many more have fled.
Until Trump’s edict, the broadcaster focused on communicating U.S. foreign policy to Venezuelans, including letting audiences hear unfiltered news conferences, briefings and congressional hearings focused on Maduro’s political repression, corruption, economic mismanagement and, yes, Maduro’s drug trafficking ties. VOA reporters reported inside the country on last year’s presidential elections — which Maduro stole. VOA traveled with opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and interviewed eyewitnesses to Maduro’s election rigging.
No doubt Maduro celebrated VOA’s shortsighted closure. The vacuum is being filled by outlets the regime and its allies control. In addition to the Russia Today TV network, the Chinese Communist Party uses the Xinhua News Agency and CGTN, Beijing’s global broadcasting network, to peddle anti-American content. On Sunday, for example, CGTN aired a segment in which man-on-the-street Venezuelans decry Trump.
VOA itself isn’t going to dislodge Maduro from power […] But in a world of propaganda disguised as fact, the VOA had established itself as a trustworthy source of news in Venezuela.
The fired employees are fighting the broadcaster’s closure. Congress can act by restoring VOA funding, so America’s voice can be heard again.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Brad Moss (Natsec attorney): “The FBI now consists of ‘Uber for drunks’.”
[Patel] ordered that the security detail protecting his girlfriend escort one of her allegedly inebriated friends home after a night of partying […] Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, asked FBI agents on her security team at least two times […] to drive her friend home, and agents objected […] But Patel insisted they do as Wilkins requested and in one case called the leader of Wilkins’ security detail and yelled at him to do so.
[…]
it was already disturbing that Patel had pulled elite tactical agents away from their SWAT mission to drive his girlfriend around town. […] the director instructed tactical agents to use their time on yet another person the FBI had no reasonable duty to protect.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Rando: “The National Security strategy could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just published the 14 words instead because that’s what it amounts to.”
[Section heading]: What Should The United States Want?
This is an, um, interesting phrasing, especially with “Should” italicized. […] Why not say something like “The goals of foreign policy”? […] it imposes US desires on the rest of the world.
Many of the “wants” in this section are directly controverted by actions of the Trump administration.
* safety
* protection from propaganda
* a resilient national infrastructure
* world’s strongest blah blah blah economy
* remain the world’s most scientifically… advanced… country
* maintain “soft power” (Sorry, but [laughing tears emoji x3])
[…]
We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere […] that supports critical supply chains
Starting a war with Venezuela hardly seems a good way to do this, but whadda I know.
[…]
Three paragraphs of Praise To Our Leader, who gives us these principles. […] Predisposition to Non-Interventionism. Like in Venezuela and Argentina. […] they love to declare things for the entire world, as Trump declared the airspace over Venezuela closed.
a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.
Sen.Ted Budd (R-N.C.) said Friday he will lift his remaining holds on President Trump’s nominees to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the department approved disaster recovery funds for his state.
Budd had holds on Sean Plankey, who was nominated to be director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Pedro Allende, who was nominated to be under secretary for Science and Technology.
His announcement comes after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved $29 million in reimbursements for Hurricane Helene recovery projects in North Carolina.
He previously lifted his hold on James Percival, who was nominated to be the agency’s general counsel, after FEMA approved another $155 million. […]
However, he also noted that there’s still more funding that has yet to be approved.
“While I have released my holds on DHS nominees, I will continue to engage all relevant federal agencies to make sure Western North Carolina receives the focus and attention it deserves, particularly the final distribution of funds to the municipalities and state agencies in desperate need of financial relief,” he said.
[…] Under its Public Assistance Program, FEMA provides grants to help states, tribes, local governments and some nonprofits to respond to major disasters. These grants fund projects like debris removal and restoring infrastructure.
The Trump administration has taken a critical eye to FEMA. Noem and Trump have floated axing the agency entirely, though they are expected to ultimately shrink its role rather than eliminate it.
The review council set up by the administration is expected to soon publish a list of policy reform recommendations.
“The CDC’s change to hepatitis B vaccination is even worse than it seems”
“The new recommendations portend even more harmful shifts ahead.”
A seismic shift in the nation’s approach to public health occurred Friday, one that was foreseen the moment Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee with vaccine skeptics. The panel voted to end the universal birth-dose recommendation for hepatitis B, a bedrock of the childhood immunization schedule for more than 30 years. Though the vaccine will still be available to parents who request it, the change will have many negative effects and might be even more alarming than it initially seems.
The biggest shift is that the vaccine is no longer recommended for all babies. Instead, the committee says that for infants born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B, parents and clinicians should decide on their own whether to give the birth dose — and, if they skip it, to wait until at least two months of age to begin vaccination.
On the bright side, the policy doesn’t change care for the babies at highest risk: Infants born to mothers known to have hepatitis B will still receive the vaccine, along with a preventive immunoglobulin, to reduce the risk of perinatal transmission. And families who want their newborns to receive the hepatitis B shot can still choose it and have it be covered by insurance.
But this new approach attempts to solve an issue that doesn’t exist. There is no evidence that the birth dose is unsafe, and no evidence that waiting until two months offers any advantage to safety or efficacy. What ending the universal recommendation does do is inject complexity into a system that already struggles to reach every infant, especially those whose families lack a regular pediatrician or whose mothers’ hepatitis B status is recorded late or inaccurately. It also implies that the birth dose carries some risk that warrants hesitation, when no such risk has been shown.
Plus, transmission doesn’t just happen mother-to-baby. Hepatitis B can spread through casual contact, including shared household items, small amounts of blood or saliva on toys and surfaces. Everyday interactions such as sharing spoons or cups, handling a baby with microscopic cuts on one’s hands or even inadvertently mixing up toothbrushes can be enough to transmit the virus. A study cited by CDC staff concluded that as many as 1 in 10 children with hepatitis B acquire it through such exposures.
Several committee members suggested that parents could try to identify whom around their newborn might pose a risk, but that is simply not practical. Families cannot be expected to screen every relative, friend or child care provider for hepatitis B, particularly when many adults don’t know their own status. [So true.]
And the stakes for infants are high: About 90 percent of infected babies go on to develop chronic hepatitis B, a lifelong incurable disease that can silently damage the liver for decades before it manifests as liver failure. [!] Many will develop liver cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of less than 20 percent.[!]
Universal newborn vaccination has helped drive childhood hepatitis B infections down from 18,000 cases in 1991 to just about 20. Why change a policy that has been so effective? [!]
That’s not all. The hepatitis B vaccine is currently given as a three-dose series, and all three doses are needed to be considered fully protected. The advisers voted to change this process. Now, after just one dose, parents are supposed to ask their clinician about doing a blood test to check antibody levels. If the antibodies meet a threshold of 10 milli–international units per milliliter, then presumably no further shots are needed.
That might sound reasonable: If someone is already immune after one shot, why not forgo the others? Except no evidence supports this approach. [!!] Even proponents of the change could produce no data, despite repeated requests, demonstrating that a single dose provides reliable protection or that, after one shot, the new antibody threshold is an appropriate marker of lasting immunity. This guidance is not only baseless but dangerous, as it gives families false assurance that their children are protected when they might not be. [True]
Taken together, the changes point to a disturbing and consequential shift: Health policy decisions are no longer being rooted in solid science, but in speculation and suspicion. Listening to the proceedings, it was as if data no longer mattered; the only thing guiding these appointees are their deeply held belief that vaccines are the source of harm rather than the lifesaving tools they are. [Sigh. All too true.]
The advisers ended their meeting with an outline for even broader changes they plan to make to the childhood immunization schedule. […] which once-controlled disease will be first to return?
U.S. Southern Command said Thursday that the Defense Department carried out another ‘lethal kinetic strike’ at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s direction on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed four men. … It’s the 22nd military strike reported by the Trump administration against alleged drug-carrying boats in recent months.
he Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review President Donald Trump’s bid to upend birthright citizenship. A ruling for the government would discard the long-held understanding of automatic citizenship for people born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned the U.S. could be about to ‘betray’ Ukraine, according to a leaked transcript of a call between European leaders strategizing about how to protect Kyiv.
President Donald Trump may remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board at will, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges in Washington, D.C., reverses lower-court rulings blocking Trump’s attempts to fire members of the key labor and employment panels.
A federal judge in Florida on Friday ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the federal sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to the cases overrode a federal rule prohibiting the release of matters before a grand jury.
The Trump administration’s ultimatum to stop regulating social media platforms in exchange for tariff relief does not appear to have persuaded officials with the European Union. On Friday, Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, was hit with a $140 million fine for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, a set of transparency laws designed to curb the corrosive powers of tech platforms like social media sites.
Meta Platforms is planning cuts to the metaverse, an arena Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg once called the future of the company. … Meta has seen operating losses of more than $77 billion since 2020 in its Reality Labs division, which includes its metaverse work.
Remember when we learned in 2018 that the United States would host the 2026 World Cup along with Mexico and Canada? Back then, it seemed like an amazing opportunity to be part of an inherently multicultural sporting event that draws the largest crowds possible.
Yeah, that feeling is gone now. Now, the World Cup is just another vehicle to curry favor with President Donald Trump by celebrating Donald Trump, and it’s so gross. Friday’s World Cup Draw, where country names are drawn out of pots to create matchups, kicked off not with soccer, but with obsequiously praising Trump, including presenting him with the ugliest trophy ever.
This state of affairs was likely inevitable because the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, is basically Trump if Trump ran a sports governing body. Infantino loves dictators, money, and making decisions in secret so there’s no accountability, using his position to hand out money to ensure loyalty. […]
It was also inevitable that Infantino […] invented the FIFA Peace Prize on the fly to present to Trump during the draw. According to Trump, he has ended eleventy wars, a claim that does not hold up under scrutiny, but that little detail wasn’t going to stop Infantino from giving Trump a consolation prize since he can’t nab a Nobel Peace Prize.
This is where the comically ugly trophy comes in. It’s so ugly that even The New York Times called it ugly. You can go see for yourself—or not, if you feel like this thing might haunt your dreams. [Image at the link]
The trophy is a bunch of weird, elongated, witchy hands reaching up from the base of the trophy to grab a globe, with Trump’s name appearing below. […]
Infantino literally bowed when he presented it to Trump and also gave him a gold medal, and then let Trump give a little speech praising himself: “This is truly one of the great honors of my life. Beyond awards, we saved millions and millions of lives. The fact that we could do that, so many different wars that were able to end in some cases right before they started, it was great to get them done. I want to thank my family, my great first lady Melania. Thank you very much. You are going to have an event the likes of which the world has never seen. The world is a safer place now, the United States a year ago was not doing too well and it’s the hottest place anywhere right now.”
Well, if by “hottest,” you mean “most hellish,” then sure.
Infantino said that the award was “on behalf of football-loving people around the world,” which is probably a surprise to most football-loving people around the world and also a surprise to the rest of FIFA. The 37-member council wasn’t involved in creating the award, the 211-member FIFA Congress didn’t vote to create the award, nor did they vote on who would win. [!]
[I snipped text describing some of Trump’s recent bad/illegal actions that have disturbed the rest of the world.]
Even the World Cup itself is not exactly a peaceful thing under Trump. During the Club World Cup earlier this year, a smaller lead-in to the 2026 World Cup, Customs and Border Patrol said they would “act as security” in Miami and told the local news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel would also be there, and any non-citizens needed to have their papers on them.
Vice President JD Vance also made sure to tell people from other countries who come to watch the Cup to make sure to get the f*ck out when things were done: “Of course everyone is welcome to come and see this wonderful event. We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games,” Vance said. “But when the time is up we want them to go home, otherwise they will have to talk to [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem.”
Nothing says peace and football-loving like threatening to deport soccer fans, right? FIFA and Infantino should be up in arms about a host country behaving this way, but corrupt people love corrupt people, and Infantino and Trump are a match made in hell.
DC Metropolitan Police just shared a tiny bit more body cam footage from the March US Institute of Peace raid in response to my FOIA lawsuit […] One clip shows USIP President George Moose being escorted out.
[Video clip]
Moose: Good evening. I’m surprised to meet you here.
MPD: Yeah, unfortunately. How ya been.
Moose: Well, we were fine. We’ve had better days. On St. Patrick’s day, we would’ve expected a little better.
MPD to another: You’re not allowed to wear green.
Moose: I get to pinch you. Okay, so you know we’re gonna see you all in court.
MPD: Yeah we figured that.
Moose: We thought you guys were our friends.
MPD: We are your friends.
Moose: Alright, I… will take that… and hope to see that demonstrated down the line.
Another clip […] shows the same white shirt cop addressing three USIP staff members outside the building. He says “Obviously there’s gonna be lawsuits on the back end of this, and civil stuff.”
We’ve heard so much about the DOGE raids but have very little physical evidence of what they were actually like. It’s weird to be able to see an instance of it actually happening—the mundanity of it all. How the cops were jovially complicit.
Sky Captain @69, the banality of evil. And the surprising tendency of people to be nice to each other when face to face … no matter what the circumstances.
[House Speaker Mike Johnson] told a reporter this week that Americans worried about the rising cost of living need to just “relax” and wait for the provisions in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that Republicans passed earlier this year to kick in.
“We are exactly on the trajectory of where we’ve always planned to be. Steady at the wheel, everybody. It’s gonna be fine. Our best days are ahead of us,” Johnson said.
[Gaslighting the public. Also, “just relax” when you may not be able to pay your heating bill this winter? Johnson is both clueless and arrogant.]
However, the bill will actually make the affordability crisis worse for low-income Americans by cutting tens of billions of dollars in Medicaid and food stamps. [!!!]
What’s more, Affordable Care Act subsidies that make insurance more affordable for millions of Americans are set to expire at the end of the year. If they are not extended, millions will see their premiums more than double. […] preventable catastrophe too.
Worse than that, President Donald Trump’s tariffs are hurting the economy, forcing companies to conduct layoffs from the levies and economic uncertainty. Other companies have raised prices for consumers—the exact opposite of what Americans voted for in 2024. And some Americans are even forced to pay the tariffs themselves, getting surprise bills for online orders.
[…] Ultimately, Republicans are screwed in the 2026 midterms because none of their plans will lower costs—the issue that Americans care about the most.
And as the GOP freaks out over its waning majority, it’s turning the House into a total disaster, warring not only with Johnson but with each other.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed it up perfectly on Thursday.
“Donald Trump is fighting with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting with the House Republican Conference. Corey Mills is fighting with Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace is fighting with Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson is fighting with Elise Stefanik. Elise Stefanik is fighting with Lisa McClain,” Jeffries said.
He then continued, “The whole thing is a mess. The 119th Congress has turned into a bad episode of ‘Republicans Gone Wild.’ And here’s the problem. Republicans are so busy fighting each other, they can’t be bothered to fight for the American people.”
How it started: New York state Attorney General Letitia James in 2022 bringing a case that got Donald John Trump, his two sons and their perjuring accountant legally declared before all the world frauds, con men and liars, and that Trump the elder owed the State of New York $364 million plus interest for all his blatant scams, like making his Florida roach motel worth $18 million at tax time, and $739 million at loan time, and his New York penthouse triple the footage it actually was at loan time, or when he wanted to get on a list of Glossy Magazine’s Top 100 Rich Assholes.
[That’s certainly a damning summary. “frauds, con men and liars”]
How it went: Donald John Trump somehow again getting elected president of the United States of America, vowing to rain down great vengeance against his political enemies, and screaming on his web platform for PAM to hurry up and install his former(?) personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan so she could indict Letitia James and James Comey and Adam Schiff NOW!!! Because “they impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!)” […]
And then Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte and Ed Martin, the Weaponization Czar of Naming, Shaming, and peeping into women’s windows, allegedly sent two guys, Robert Bowes (who was nominated for a spot on the Consumer Finance Protection Board in Trump’s first term) and Scott Strauss (a voter-fraud conspiracy-theory spreader), to pose as FBI agents and delve through private mortgage documents. Based on some tip he got from Crazy Eddie, BTW.
[…] Now a second grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has refused to indict Attorney General Letitia James on the ridiculous charges that she unfairly took a tax break on a second home. The same flimsy thing that they’re investigating Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook about. You will recall, James’s first indictment on two felony counts got thrown out with James Comey’s, on account of Lindsey Halligan being not legally appointed to the job (and no other prosecutors having been willing to sign off on the sham indictments).
And now it appears this second grand jury was quickly convened, this time by Roger Keller — a prosecutor shipped in from Missouri, known to sport MAGA hats around St. Louis — after every other single prosecutor in the office refused to bring it, and the previous prosecutors wrote a detailed memo about why not. And then at least three of them quit or got fired for that.
And this Roger Keller could not indict that ham sandwich either! Federal grand juries are known to indict more than 99 percent of the time […] Will PAM be able to find someone else to go after James a third time because this is KILLING her REPUTATION and CREDIBILITY? We shall see! But it sure does look more selective-prosecution-y each time!
Also the second-home-tax-credit thing is hard to prosecute, because prosecutors have to show beyond a reasonable doubt an intent to defraud for financial gain, and at the moment they signed, not afterwards. And James intended to let her niece live in the house for free, which she put in writing. And James only made $1-$5k in rent revenue over five years, way under the market rate, barely even enough to cover basic maintenance. And, James is not a idiot. She had lawyers review everything. Not only was the property not for James’s financial gain, the woman comes off like a saint.
[…] reportedly Bill Pulte’s own dad and stepmom also did a homestead-exemption-on-a-second-home-tax-credit thing, though they really did rent out their second home for profit in the first year, while claiming it and another home as their primary residence at the same time. Tsk tsk!
Oh hey, is Bill’s dad Mark or his father Bill senior the “friend pulty the developer” that Jeffrey Epstein refers to in those emails, the one Epstein said was helping him drive up the price of a house to a Palm Beach record with Trump, to the benefit of a Russian? Bill’s father Mark and grandfather Bill were both Florida real estate developers. Just asking questions!
Anyway, up in Maryland, it seems the attempted prosecution of Adam Schiff sounds to be going even worse! [LOL] Now Pulte and Martin are also accused of improperly sharing sensitive grand jury information, plus sending fake FBI agents to do investigating, derp! Even doofus Todd Blanche is reportedly worried that those two [guys] may have tainted the investigations into James, and also Adam Schiff, too.
Christine Bish, a California realtor who’d accused Schiff of mortgage fraud for whatever reasons, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Greenbelt, Maryland. Bish was hoping to help Trump out, and was surprised instead to find the prosecutor’s office and FBI much more interested in respectively subpoena-ing and discussing her communications with Pulte, Bowes, and Strauss. Awkward!
[…] Bish sounded surprised to learn that Bowes and Strauss, who had represented themselves to her as “investigators,” were actually not with the FBI.
[…] And based on a referral from Senate Democrats, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is reportedly probing Pulte too. For what it’s worth these days, under Trump.
It’s funny, but also sad. The harassment is the point, and James, Comey, and Schiff should not have to pay for lawyers or spend their time on this bullshit. [So true.]
Last word to Letitia James! From October, but still works. You can’t expect her to make a statement every time Trump’s lackeys trip […]! She has an actual job to do. [video]
[…]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @70:
the surprising tendency of people to be nice to each other when face to face
I’m sure the alternative was not far from their minds.
birgerjohanssonsays
Here is a fun little distraction from the ongoing apocalypse.
Anime: Introvert guy sewing outfits for cosplay (as seen in parody made by Grimmjack)
“My Dress-Up Darling Abridged – Episode 1 (S1) ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bMjiwW5vYwQ
At trial, a police officer testified that Zuffante had confessed […] prompting Zuffante to interject and accuse the detective of lying; he took the stand [losing his 5th amendment protection.] […] The officer had taken no written notes during the interrogation, only filing a report a week later. With just Zuffante’s word against the officer’s, he was […] sentenced to twenty years in prison.
[…]
Hawaii Supreme Court sided with him last week […] holding that police have a constitutional obligation to record interrogations. The ruling means that law enforcement in the state will now be required to record all interrogations taking place inside police stations. It also requires police to record them outside stations “when feasible.”
[…]
But the court didn’t rely on the U.S. Constitution in arriving at its decision—instead, it relied exclusively on the Hawaii Constitution, which contains similar language.
Justice Todd Eddins, who authored the majority opinion, took pains to spell out that this was intentional […] “No United States Supreme Court opinion has tackled the recording of custodial interrogations. If a case did though, we would still look to our state constitution first.” […] The Hawaii Constitution’s due process clause “offers safety to Hawaii’s people that exceeds the federal constitution’s suddenly fluid protections,”
[…]
“If children can record everyday events with ease, law enforcement cannot claim hardship to record perhaps its most consequential investigative act.”
The article describes some of his other spicy rulings.
Eddins ended [another recent] opinion saying, “State constitutionalism makes it easy to consider Roberts Court jurisprudence white noise.”
[…]
Hawaii’s approach is by no means universal: Many state supreme courts prefer not to independently develop the meaning of their state constitutions’ rights and liberties. Instead, they’ve either imported federal courts’ interpretations of the U.S. Constitution (a process that is generally known as “lockstepping”) or declined to explain what their state constitution means.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Have I Got News for You S70E9 | Hannah Fry” [they have a surprisingly cool bishop]
@71 Lynna, OM: Johnson is just repeating the White House line here. Trust us, everything is OK, everything will get better next year, after the election. Don’t question the great leader and vote Republican.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed it up perfectly on Thursday.
“Donald Trump is fighting with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting with the House Republican Conference. Corey Mills is fighting with Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace is fighting with Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson is fighting with Elise Stefanik. Elise Stefanik is fighting with Lisa McClain,” Jeffries said.
He then continued, “The whole thing is a mess. The 119th Congress has turned into a bad episode of ‘Republicans Gone Wild.’ And here’s the problem. Republicans are so busy fighting each other, they can’t be bothered to fight for the American people.”
Jeffries is being too generous. If the Republicans were organized they would be fighting against the American people but right now they are too divided to push Trump’s agenda.
Trump accepts FIFA peace prize despite ‘fuming’ over media coverage of his age. Trump received the first FIFA peace prize, finally earning the peace prize he desperately wanted. Meanwhile, he is “fuming” over media reports of his declining mental and physical health, Asawin Suebsaeng reports. He and Donna Edwards join Chris Hayes to discuss.
CDC Panel ends recommendation for newborn hepatitis B shot. Earlier today, a CDC panel voted to end the recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, despite a 99% drop in cases since in the 30 years since it was implemented. Brandy Zadrozny joins Chris Hayes to discuss RFK Jr.’s influence on the anti-vaccination shift and what this change may mean for access to the vaccine.
Video is 9:00 minutes. This is a really good presentation.
President Trump has stamped his name on the distinct building that once housed the U.S. Institute of Peace, which DOGE commandeered and hollowed out in the early days of his term.
Trump hanging his shingle on the headquarters of an effort to globally spread diplomacy and charitable works would be ironic enough without the backstory of how his people took it over.
Back in March, DOGE stormed the building with a panoply of armed officers. FBI agents arrived unannounced at the home of the Institute’s security chief, as DOGE tried to force its way into the building. DOGE members threatened the federal contracts of all of the Institute’s ex-security contractors to get them to fork over the key.
“This conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigations, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies — the Metropolitan Police Department, Department of State security police, the FBI — to carry out Executive Order 14217 — all of that targeting, probably terrorizing, the employees and the staff at the Institute when there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals,” a federal judge said in a hearing over the Institute’s seizure. “Why?”
The case is still pending at the appellate level, though the government has been granted access to the Institute in the meantime.
The building, steps away from the Lincoln Memorial and topped by sweeping, white, dove-like wings, sits as a monument to Trump’s destruction both at home and abroad — his own Ministry of Peace.
Link. The link leads to a compendium of recent news reports.
Always angry and pugnacious, LazerPig deals with the exaggerated claims that tanks have become obsolete.
“BuT tAnKs ArE oUtDaTeD bEcAusE dRoNeS!1 (re-upload)”
Shortly after American-born Robert Prevost was elected Pope, J.D. Vance and his wife stopped in to visit with the new pontiff.
In addition to a Chicago Bears shirt, Vance brought the American Pope two books by St. Augustine. This gift represented a bond between the two men: Vance chose St. Augustine as his patron saint when he converted to Catholicism, and the Pope was previously head of the worldwide Augustinian order.
It’s an open question whether Vance ever read either of the books, since Augustine spends a good amount of time lecturing against pride, encouraging humility, and preaching compassion for immigrants. But even assuming Vance still somehow clings to a highly selective edit of the saint (“An unjust law is no law at all,” means Vance can do anything he wants, right?), it looks like he’s going to have to denounce the guy in the big hat.
Because Vance’s vampire boss [Peter Thiel] says the Pope may be the Antichrist.
Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel is probably best known for three things: Company names stolen from The Lord of the Rings, trying to drain the blood of young people so he can live forever, and foisting J.D. Vance on America. But there’s another side to Thiel.
He’s not just a technofascist seeking to build an AI-fueled authoritarian surveillance state. He’s also an absolutely bonkers pseudo-religious nutcase who views everyone who stands in his way as an agent of … Satan. [!] And that includes the Pope.
Thiel has hosted a series of lectures for a very select audience in which he’s warned that the Antichrist—harbinger of the apocalypse—is in the world today, making trouble for all the good little AI billionaires. […]
People like Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, other environmental activists, AI safety advocate Eliezer Yudkowsky, anyone else who suggests regulating AIs before they destroy humanity, and people who are worried about nuclear war. […]
Thiel’s view of the Antichrist “is that of an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times”. […] this is a profoundly unbiblical concept.
Several times in the Greek versions of the gospels, there are mentions of someone being “antikhristos,” which is exactly what it sounds like: opposed to Jesus and his teaching. Another term, “pseudokhristos,” is used to describe people who spread statements falsely attributed to Jesus. In both cases, these terms are applied, not to a particular individual, but to anyone seen as interfering with the message of Christ.
The idea that the Antichrist is an evil potentate who will usher in the end of the world was created after everyone involved with the Gospels was long dead. It’s the vision of a 10th-century French monk, Adso of Montier-en-Der, who compiled centuries of speculation to turn an adjective into a title. […]
most of Adso’s biography of the Antichrist has been conveniently discarded. He was supposed to be Jewish, born in Babylon, and to rule the world from a throne in Jerusalem. But all that stuff gets in the way of lots of fun speculation and flinging an Antichrist label onto anyone you hate.
The Antichrist is also supposed to be empowered to perform all sorts of miracles and be capable of resurrecting the dead. So if a 22-year-old Swedish woman best known for shouting environmental concerns into a microphone is secretly the Antichrist, she’s been seriously holding back.
Thiel’s Antichrist obsession goes back to at least the 1990s and borrows themes from French-American philosopher René Girard to posit that the left is intrinsically anti-Christian and the natural home for the Antichrist. […]
Thiel [,,,] can’t seem to distinguish between technology and God. As The Washington Post reported, Thiel’s lectures have only grown more “intense” over recent months.
… recordings offer new detail about how the billionaire seems to place those who would critique or regulate tech developers into a religious good-vs.-evil worldview, where the future of all creation depends on giving innovators free rein.
[That’s sounds like Thiel views himself as God, or perhaps as the embodiment of the ultimate good.]
As Wired reported in September, Thiel also has some very odd notions of what’s good and what’s evil. He doesn’t just draw his thinking from Girard. He also frequently quotes Nazi attorney Carl Schmitt.
You know you live in strange times when one of the most influential billionaires in the world—an investor who lit the financial fuses on both Facebook and the AI revolution, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir and launched the career of an American vice president—starts dedicating his public appearances primarily to a set of ideas about Armageddon borrowed heavily from a Nazi jurist. (As in: the guy who rapidly published the most prominent defense of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives.)
That Nazi is a big part of Thiel’s philosophy [!]. According to Thiel, anyone who raises doubts about the benefits of new technologies is evil. And anyone who tries to generate unity is suspect. […]
Right on target for a billionaire who has also declared that democracy and freedom are “not compatible.”
So maybe it’s not so strange that the vampire billionaire of the apocalypse has found a new potential Antichrist hiding under a big pointy white hat. Thiel has reportedly warned J.D. Vance about getting too close to “the woke American Pope” and fumed that Leo may actually be … the A-word.
This warning appears to have come after Pope Leo cautioned AI developers “to ensure that emerging technologies remain rooted in respect for human dignity and the common good.” The Pope also warned students against using AI to do their homework.
“AI can process information quickly, but it cannot replace human intelligence,” he said. “And don’t ask it to do your homework for you. It cannot offer real wisdom. It misses a very important human element.”
[…] Thiel is taking the fight right to the man he installed as America’s second-in-command in a way that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Catholics who don’t source their opinions from Nazi Germany.
[…] the main backer of the likely GOP nominee for president is accusing the Bishop of Rome of being an agent of the end times — and telling Vice President Vance to disregard the pope’s moral guidance.
For most of the billionaires hurtling the world toward AI destruction, fame and money are sufficient cause to light humanity’s last bonfire of the vanities. For Thiel, this is a religious fight. Will we have the evil that comes with peace and environmental reform, or will we enjoy God’s bounty of unregulated pollution and unchecked AI?
Either way, Thiel plans to be here to see how it turns out. If he can keep filling his veins with fresh, young blood.
In March, Donald Trump issued an executive order to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a fairly small agency that distributed federal funding to libraries and museums around the country. The order was supposedly aimed at paring back federal agencies to only cover “statutory functions” while eliminating all unneeded spending. (But a grandiose ballroom bigger than the White House itself is an absolute necessity. […])
Axing IMLS didn’t “save” a huge amount of money; in 2024, the agency issued around $266 million in grants and research funding. Most libraries get the bulk of their funding from local and state taxes. But the federal funding covers stuff like library staff training, computer networking, interlibrary loan, and special services for folks with disabilities [!] — and remember, the Trump people consider “accessibility” just as “unfair” as DEI, because why should people with disabilities take “our” tax money?
The cuts’ impact to small town and rural library systems around the country was real and nasty, since they’re more dependent on IMLS funds. Some cut back services like interlibrary loan and access to ebooks and audiobooks, which sharply reduced reading options in places where the selection of physical books was already limited.
In my state, Idaho, funding dried up for audiobooks for blind Idahoans, as well as for an early learning program that got books to kids whose homes might not have any, and for a digital program that “provides Idahoans free 24/7 access to online education, business and recreation resources.” [!!]
So now the good news: 21 states sued to block the executive order, and last month a federal court in Rhode Island ordered that the funding be restored to IMLS and six other federal agencies Trump attempted to send down the Memory Hole with his EO.
District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. wrote that Trump’s order was “arbitrary and capricious,” and that no, Donald, you do not have the power to just refuse to spend funds Congress appropriated […]
The question presented in this case is a familiar one: may the Executive Branch undertake such actions in circumvention of the will of the Legislative Branch? In recent months, this Court — along with other courts across the country — has concluded that it may not. That answer remains the same here.
And while there’s always the possibility that the administration might appeal the decision, because spending taxpayer money on lawyers is good but spending it on helping people learn things is bad, in this case, it looks like the administration intends to restore the library funding, if not necessarily the other programs. On Wednesday, the IMLS announced on its website that, “Upon further review, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has reinstated all federal grants. This action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination.”
[…] that sounds pretty definite. The brief notice advised grantees that they can now “access the agency’s electronic grants management system” for information on getting the money Congress wanted them to have.
[…] since it’s a case brought by states, the ruling actually applies beyond just the 21 states that sued. […]
Now all they have to contend with is the continued threat from Rightwing crusaders who want to have all the librarians arrested […] Hey, if you’re in one of the places where the documentary The Librarians is screening, check it out! It’ll probably be a top contender for Best Documentary next year. Here’s the trailer: [video]
And while you wait to see the film, check out “On The Media’s” interview with Louisiana high school librarian Amanda Jones, one of the librarians featured in the film. [https://www.wnycstudios.org/ ]
[…] Since the ceasefire came into effect on Oct. 10, 20 living hostages and the remains of 27 others have been returned to Israel. The body of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, has yet to be recovered despite a weekslong search effort. Israeli authorities have steadily released Palestinian prisoners and detainees — both living and dead — as part of the exchange.
Israel has repeatedly said all hostages must be returned before a Phase 2 deal, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week stressing the need for an “intensive and immediate effort” to complete the commitment.
Israel agreed to halt its assault on the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire, but flare-ups and violence have persisted, with Israeli strikes killing more than 350 people since the ceasefire began, taking the death toll in the enclave beyond 70,000, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
The first phase also included a commitment to expand the flow of aid into Gaza, but U.N. experts say the number of trucks permitted to enter has never reached the agreed target of 600 per day.
Israel said Gaza’s Rafah crossing in the south will soon reopen to allow Palestinians to enter Egypt, but it will not reopen the crossing in both directions — another commitment under the deal — until Gvili’s remains are returned.
And as Phase 1 sputters along, analysts warn that Phase 2 presents a host of complex challenges, from security arrangements to competing governance demands, that could slow or even stall the process.
[…] While Trump’s peace plan stipulates that Hamas will disarm, the group has reasserted control of Gaza during the first phase of the ceasefire and shown no immediate signs of disarmament.
[…] Gerges [Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics] also feared that “we will never see the actual implementation of what Phase 2 is supposed to be,” adding it was “an illusion” to call what’s happening in Gaza a ceasefire, “because the Palestinians, particularly civilians, continue to be killed on a daily basis.”
“Even though the humanitarian situation of the Palestinians has improved a bit, it’s still catastrophic,” he said.
The video referenced in comment 85 relates personal stories of prisoners that include accounts of sexual assault and rape on both sides of the conflict, Palestinians and Israelis.
Donald Trump has launched a crusade to convert European politics to his cause, mobilizing the full force of American diplomacy to promote “patriotic” parties, stamp on migration, destroy “censorship” and save “civilization” from decay.
The question is whether Europe’s embattled centrists have the power, or the will, to stop him.
In its newly released National Security Strategy document, the White House set out for the first time in a comprehensive form its approach to the geopolitical challenges facing the U.S. and the world.
While bringing peace to Ukraine gets a mention, when it comes to Europe, America’s official stance is now that its security depends on shifting the continent’s politics decisively to the right. [Unfortunately true.]
Over the course of three pages, the document blames the European Union, among others, for raising the risk of “civilizational erasure,” due to a surge in immigrants, slumping birth rates and the purported erosion of democratic freedoms.
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” it says. “As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
With its talk of birth rates declining and immigration rising, the racial dimension to the White House rhetoric is hard to ignore. It will be familiar to voters in Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, where far-right politicians have articulated the so-called “great replacement theory,” a racist conspiracy theory falsely asserting that elites are part of a plot to dilute the white population and diminish its influence. “We want Europe to remain European,” the document says. [!!]
“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” the document reads — making it “an open question” whether such countries will continue to view an alliance with the U.S. as desirable.
The policy prescription that follows is, in essence, regime change. “Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” the strategy document says. That will involve “cultivating resistance” [!] within European nations. In case there is any doubt about the political nature of the message, the White House paper celebrates “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” as a cause for American optimism.
In other words: Back the far right to make Europe great again.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, European leaders have kept up a remarkable performance of remaining calm amid his provocations, so far avoiding an open conflict that would sever transatlantic relations entirely.
But for centrist leaders currently in power — like Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Keir Starmer in London and Germany’s Friedrich Merz — the new Trump doctrine poses a challenge so existential that they may be forced to confront it head-on. [!]
That confrontation could come sooner rather than later, with high-stakes elections in parts of Britain and Germany next year and the possibility of a snap national vote ever-present in France. In each case, MAGA-aligned parties — Reform U.K., the Alternative for Germany and the National Rally — are poised to make gains at the expense of establishment centrists currently in power. America, it is now clear, may well intervene to help.
[…] What is worse for leaders like Macron, Merz and Starmer is that the Trumpian analysis — that a critical mass of voters want their own European MAGA — may, ultimately, be right.
These leaders are all under immense pressure from the populist right in their own backyards. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. is on track to make major gains at next year’s regional and local elections, potentially triggering a leadership challenge in the governing Labour Party that could force Starmer out.
In Paris, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally tortures Macron’s struggling administrators in parliament, while the Alternative for Germany breathes down Merz’s neck in Berlin and pushes him to take ever harder positions on migration. […]
What? Am I supposed to feel sympathy for the leader of the most evil organization in human history just because some capitalist parasite criticizes his performative “altruism?”
This is the point where I’d insert the clip of Ken Watanabe in the Godzilla movie saying “Let them fight.”
A federal judge ruled last week that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist, had been unlawfully appointed […] As a result, the judge ordered the dismissal of the high-profile indictments against [James Comey] and [NY AG Letitia James].
[…]
one judge removed Ms. Halligan’s name from a court filing and questioned the administration’s argument that she could still hold the job. Days earlier, a magistrate judge hearing a different case had raised similar concerns
[…]
Though the administration vowed to appeal […] it has yet to do so or even seek to pause it while pursuing an appeal. […] Pressed to explain the Justice Department’s rationale, Nicholas Patterson, the senior prosecutor in court, said that his office had been instructed to continue using Ms. Halligan’s signature in court filings […] “The reasoning behind that has not been provided, your honor[“]
[…]
The [Trump admin’s Office of Legal Counsel] has told department officials that because Judge Currie’s order did not require a specific measure to be taken, like removing Ms. Halligan, she could stay even though the judge declared her appointment invalid
Southpaw (Lawyer): “If your appointment is invalid, you never had the job in the first place.”
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “This is the same Office of Legal Counsel which furnished the Murder Memo enabling the killing spree at sea.”
Rando:
“Sorry, no, that’s illegal.”
“And?”
“And you’re the Department of Justice.”
“And?”
“And so you should stop doing it!”
“And?”
Brandon Friedman (Former Obama HUD): “Laws aren’t real. They exist solely on account of buy-in from society’s participants. Once one side disengages, you no longer reside in a society based on laws. You live in a society based on power and armed force. I am begging folks to accept this so we can get moving.”
Randos
The soccer guys gave him a trophy of a bunch of hands touching the ball because Trump doesn’t play by the rules.
Isn’t that how George Costanza kept his job? Just keep showing up?
“Oh yeah, what’s the judge going to do, clarify that I specifically must be removed?”
So she is not a government employee and needs to have a contract with the government to receive compensation. She has been paid illegally. And her orders/directions to government employees have been and are only suggestions by a non-employee.
What would be the point of her remaining? If every defendant could just get their case dismissed?
It might be really funny to watch courts give her the legal equivalent of the silent treatment. “Weird, nobody signed this brief. Also I only heard a faint buzzing sound instead of an opening statement for some reason.”
Southpaw (Lawyer): “If your appointment is invalid, you never had the job in the first place.”
Akira @88:
What? Am I supposed to feel sympathy for the leader of the most evil organization in human history just because some capitalist parasite criticizes his performative “altruism?”
I choose to deplore the history of bad deeds done by (or allowed to continue) by the Catholic church, while simultaneously being appalled by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel’s “anti-Christ” nonsense.
It’s another bleak week in the courts, which is a distressingly common thing right now. How do you feel about religious fanatics getting to lie about abortion because Jesus says it’s cool? [That’s good way to put it. Accurate.] Are you down with giving the manifestly incompetent Jeanine Pirro multiple ways to indict people, which is necessary since she sucks at it?
We do have one bright spot here: Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl—remember those conspiracy theorists?—are actually facing some consequences for their actions. […]
If you love Jesus, you can lie about the abortion pill
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that New York cannot enforce a law barring the dissemination of misinformation about the abortion pill, because freeze peach.
Anti-abortion types have touted that the abortion pill can be “reversed,” which is both wrong and dangerous. In 2019, researchers from the University of California, Davis, looked into whether progesterone could stop a medication abortion after someone has taken the first pill in the two-pill process. Out of 12 women in the study, three suffered vaginal bleeding so severe that they needed to be rushed by ambulance to a hospital. And the study authors then determined it was too dangerous to proceed, so they ended it.
But plaintiffs in the case really want to be able to tell people this is a safe and real thing women can do. [They want a license to lie … when the result may be women dying.]
Let’s face it: If this case were about anything other than abortion and conservative Christians hating it, this would be a slam dunk for New York. […]
But these plaintiffs are compelled to share lies about a supposed abortion-pill reversal process because their religion says so, and that means it’s free speech, and they get to keep doing it.
Maybe Pam Bondi will like this judge now
Remember how poor U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro kept getting no-billed by federal grand juries when she tried to bring inflated criminal charges against people scooped up in President Donald Trump’s so-called crime crackdown?
Well, she came up with a neat little trick to solve this: Go to a local grand jury instead, get an indictment, then walk that back over to federal court.
It’s unhinged, but Judge James Boasberg just signed off on it, saying that the interplay of federal and D.C. laws is complex and therefore Pirro gets to have even more bites at the apple with her wildly overcharged cases.
Funny thing is, Boasberg has been the subject of relentless attacks from Attorney General Pam Bondi. She filed an absurd ethics complaint merely because he dared to tell the administration to turn around the planes filled with detainees heading for Venezuela, and then had the gall to tell the Justice Department it can’t defy court orders. […]
Law school tuition is too damn high and it’s … the ABA’s fault?
Yes, that’s the logic of the Federal Trade Commission, but this isn’t really about tuition. It’s about the administration’s desire to replicate the recent Texas plan to cut the American Bar Association out of the law-school approval and accreditation process and instead let the state Supreme Court decide which Texas law school graduates will get admitted to the bar.
While this might sound benign, it’s scuzzy as hell. ABA accreditation provides both standardization and standards, meaning that it addresses both what law schools need to cover and at what level of quality and service. Texas’s proposal would result in nothing but fly-by-night, unaccredited law schools lobbying Texas justices to sign off on their sketchy schools.
The other problem here is that if Texas decides that students from unaccredited schools can sit for the Texas bar, those students likely could not sit for the bar in other states, which would require graduation from an ABA-accredited school. [!]
This is all part of the administration’s attack on accreditors generally, because god forbid you impose any rigor or quality on higher education. How is Trump going to have Trump University 2.0 if these stupid accreditors hang about? [LOL]
The FTC’s logic here is that since the ABA has a “monopoly” on accreditation, it has led to a shortage of lawyers, to which: lol.
The nation has over 1.3 million practicing lawyers, and the lawyer bubble has persisted for years, with law school graduates sometimes having double the unemployment rate of non-lawyers. […]
Blast from the past: Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl
Conspiracy theorists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl were everywhere in the first Trump administration, pulling the absolute weirdest stunts.
Remember when they held a press conference to falsely announce that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had hired a 24-year-old boy toy for sex, only for said boy toy to be unable to stop laughing behind the podium? Or when Wohl went to Minneapolis to “investigate” Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and declared the city a hellhole where he received death threats, except the threats he reported to police appeared to have been made … by him from an alt account? [They lie all the time, but never get better at lying. In this case, practice does not improve their skill.]
Burkman and Wohl also committed crimes, such as using robocalls designed to suppress Black voters during the 2020 election. The robocalls had misinformation about voting by mail, particularly that it put people in a public database that would allow police to track them down and allow credit card companies to find them and collect debts.
In a rarity for conservative activists, however, these two fucked around and found out and were prosecuted or sued in multiple jurisdictions. And they just agreed to a no-contest plea in Michigan, which netted them a year of probation, which is a lot better than New York, where they are on the hook for over $1 million in fines. [State level court decisions, so I don’t think Trump can pardon them.]
Ed Martin seemingly can’t stop deleting government records
Oh, Ed Martin. We just can’t quit you because you just can’t quit being an unethical jackass. It seems that the pardon attorney/director of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group/special attorney […] may have a problem with concealing and destroying records.
However, since the DOJ won’t voluntarily provide records or information via Freedom of Information Act requests, watchdog organization American Oversight sued the DOJ to try to unlock these records or to confirm that Ed’s a little heavy with the delete button.
Martin has been here before. When he worked for Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, his alleged deletion habits ultimately forced the state to pay $500,000 to a lawyer who was allegedly fired after raising an issue about the office.
Martin is one of the key people helping Trump exact retribution from people he perceived as having wronged him. Of course, he’s not going to keep a paper trail—come on.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki weighed in Thursday on the discourse around Pentagon media access, calling out the new “press corps” for consisting of mostly conservative influencers.
“What is so interesting right now in Washington is what is happening with the Pentagon press corps. It actually surprised me what they did,” Psaki, now a host on MS NOW, told late-night comedian Stephen Colbert in an appearance on “The Late Show.”
“I could not get over — they had ‘the press corps,’ I’m going to put them in quotes because it includes Laura Loomer and James O’Keefe and this crew is not a real press corps.” she continued later, using air quotes. “So, this week has been quite a week, as you outlined in your monologue […] anyone watching might have questions for Pete Hegseth.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has accused the media of trying to sabotage President Trump’s agenda, revised press access rules in October. To obtain or renew a Pentagon pass, journalists are now required to sign a contract acknowledging that information from the Defense Department needs to be “approved for public release” by an official before it is reported out — “even if it is considered unclassified.” [!]
Most of the nation’s top news organizations, including Fox News and Newsmax as Psaki pointed out, declined to sign onto the new policy and have since lost access to the building.
The administration instead credentialed a number of Trump-friendly figures, including many who have never covered defense or a press briefing in person before.
Earlier this week, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson held a rare briefing as the Defense Department and Hegseth face scrutiny over rising tensions with Venezuela and strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Among those asking questions were Loomer, O’Keefe and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). [I snipped examples.]
Psaki suggested their performance was lackluster and defended legacy media.
“They had a press briefing with them, where they could ask anything they wanted, and they made no news, no news at all, which is pretty remarkable,” she said late Thursday.
“But I will say, what’s encouraging to me at least, is all of the outlets that did not sign the pledge, that no longer have desks in the Pentagon, they have been making tons of news, they have been reporting,” Psaki added.
The New York Times announced Thursday it is suing the Defense Department for infringing on reporters’ rights with the new rules. The lawsuit argues that the updated press policy violates journalists’ First and Fifth Amendment rights and “will deprive the public of vital information about the United States military and its leadership.”
Trump, who has ramped up his attacks on the media since returning to the White House, has defended Hegseth’s decision to implement the new restrictions.
“I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” the president told reporters at the White House in October. “The press is very dishonest.” [What a load of propaganda and bullshit.]
[…]
Lordy, Trump has released a “national security strategy” manifesto and it is no mere white supremacist dog whistle, somebody freebased the Daily Stormer, pulled an [all-nighter] with Vlad Putin, and Stephen Miller did the writeup […]
It’s a brain-twizzler of doublespeak and gaslighting, the declaration of a rogue state gone mad. It describes the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” which is “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” And then some:
Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as “Enlist and Expand.” We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea. We will expand by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.
Then it goes on to say this is not just the goal for the Western Hemisphere, ALL the hemispheres! North, South, East, West … wherever there be oil, gas, or minerals, the sun shall never set on Trump’s supply-chain empire.
Honk a bongload before you try to analyze this:
As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.
Donny don’t wanna dominate, but dominating the dominators for domination-thwarting is Don’s dominion!
In the Indo-Pacific, says the manifestato, the US will intervene however is needed to maintain “freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials.”
[…] China sure has Trump by the nut-hairs with those rare earth minerals he needs for companies to deliver all of this technology he’s promising, and to keep the AI bubble floating. A tangle he got his very own self into!
But we recognize you have a choice in economic and security partners.
It’s sure not a high bar for any other country to be a more reliable anything-partner now, with this unstable felon grifter and chicken-outer at the helm. Consider polite trading with stable Canada, eh? They are reducing their defense spending with the US and have been getting closer to Europe, joining the European Defense Pact and considering swapping out a planned purchase of F-35 fighter jets for Swedish Saabs. And as to China, Canada seeks to double its non-US exports, so they’re now closer than ever. China has replaced the US as Germany’s top trading partner too! Everybody is hanging out without us.
In the Middle East, continues Trump’s decree, there also, the doctrine shall be to get involved with anything that might stand in the way of oil and gas supplies!
And Europe. This asshole has the fucking gall to mansplain Western European identity to Western Europe. The place literally being bombed and overrun right now by Democracy-hating Russian hordes. Trump, or whoever wrote this, wants to “support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
Civilizational self-confidence! It is Europe that had the confidence to say FUCK YOU NO to the Trump/Witkoff/Kushner surrender-to-Russia plan. No to Prump-Tootin demanding Ukraine not join NATO, or tell NATO what to do with its forces. European countries have said NO, we’re not going to share intelligence with the US any more, and especially not if it makes us complicit in murder, and NO, we’re not going to abandon our promises to Ukraine because Trump weasels. Only one person here has a “confidence problem,” and a civility problem, the felon who signed off on this document in giant Sharpie scrawl.
Defense Department officials have said that while the US is still shipping weapons to Ukraine now, just in time for Christmas […] starting in 2027 it will no longer remain NATO’s “primary conventional defense provider,” whatever that exactly means. But sure, it’s Europe and NATO’s fault for not having the confidence that Trump would not do what he just done did […]
And how the fuck is the US entitled to any kind of fucking position to be telling NATO or Europe what to do about any got damn thing?
Yet Trump (or whatever chud wrote this) (Stephen Miller) instructs Europe that the very most important threat it faces right now is the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” With the immigrants and the NATO etc., though, not Russian invasion, of course.
Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness. But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.
Europe, not known for its creativity or industriousness in, art, music, literature, theater, film, etc. [nice bit of understated humor]
[…] Won’t somebody think about the Russian propaganda bots and the poor neo-Nazis who cannot wave swastika flags on the street and sieg heil rund um die Straßen? […]
It’s not about who is European by birth or culture, but who looks the part when MAGA chuds go on package vacations there. By this paper-bag test, bad news, Kash Patel, you are not American. You either, Usha Vance. […]
[…] We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.
Have the confidence to buy our goddamn hormone-pumped beef […]
This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.
Only one side is making risk, pal. And the world has been watching the US “diplomatic engagement” playing out the past 11 months (and decade) already. After Trump tried to serve Putin breaded halibut in mayonnaise instead of chunks of Ukraine on a platter in Alaska, he has been angrier than ever, bombing Ukraine a record-breaking amount, buzzing into NATO airspace and testing the delivery systems in Russia’s nuke triad. […]
Now the Irish are investigating a group of drones that appeared in Dublin Bay in the flight path of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s plane on Monday night as he arrived for a state visit. And French military have confirmed soldiers opened fire on five suspected drones spotted over a nuclear submarine base there on Thursday night. Belgium and Denmark have had similar incursions. [Some new drone-spotting reports there.]
Anyway, hey guys, is it CIVILIZATION to invade another country? Murder 86 boaters in international waters and bomb the survivors while they cling to burning wreckage and call for help? How about gassing babies and disappearing their parents? To bomb hospitals and playgrounds with drones? Are these Western civilization-y things? Or are they more Russia or Nazi things?
How about bribery? Now that USAID is gone, the manifesto makes clear, if a foreign country wants help, they have to play by The Don’s rules, and put some sugar in America’s bowl. We have already seen how that’s been working out with El Salvador, Eswatini and such.
LOL this paragraph:
Competence and Merit – American prosperity and security depend on the development and promotion of competence. Competence and merit are among our greatest civilizational advantages: where the best Americans are hired, promoted, and honored, innovation and prosperity follow. Should competence be destroyed or systematically discouraged, complex systems that we take for granted—from infrastructure to national security to education and research—will cease to function.
[HAHAHAHAHA!]
That explains the Fox News hosts, a guy with a brain worm, Big Balls, failed beauty-queen lawyers, etc. […]
There is only one entity destroying all that is good about Western Civilization, and he’s projecting harder than Leni Riefenstahl.
Actual Western European culture is health care so you don’t go into bankruptcy over an infected tooth. Edible school lunches and drinkable school water. Sex education for everyone, and abortion and gay marriage. No death penalty. Freedom of and from religion. The birthplace of liberal arts colleges! Less air pollution, fewer pesticides, more locally sourced food. Mandated 14 weeks of maternity leave. Equal protection before the law. Respect for international borders. Honoring treaties and friendship. Coalition governments. Walkable cities. Erasmus grants. Hazelnut gelato. Spicy little mustards. A late-night kebab stand in every village. Due process. The International Criminal Court!
“Winter is coming. Not all weather offices are ready.”
“As the cold season looms, National Weather Service offices in more than half a dozen states, from Maine to Wyoming, are experiencing vacancies.”
As snow blankets a broadening swath of the United States and meteorological winter sets in, the National Weather Service remains constrained by a severe staffing shortage, despite a Trump administration commitment to refill hundreds of jobs cut by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service.
The administration gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the Weather Service, permission to post 450 critical roles — seeming to acknowledge that DOGE had gone too far in a push for cuts that resulted in some 550 firings, resignations and early retirements. Back in June, National Weather Service Director Ken Graham called the ability to rehire “fantastic news” that would enable “timely and accurate forecasts and warnings.”
But months later, offices in more than half a dozen states, from Maine to Wyoming, have vacancies, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization (NWSEO), citing the latest figures tracked by the group. The unfilled roles include meteorologists, technical experts and scientists who work to deliver accurate forecasts and warnings to communities around-the-clock.
In some locations, nearly half of the meteorologist roles were left vacant.
[…] many of these specialized and demanding jobs have historically taken up to a year to hire for […] Any shortages could put communities at risk, weather experts said.
[…] Federal hiring stalled during the 43-day government shutdown. The shortages are widespread across some of the coldest, snowiest parts of the country.
[…] Rapid City, South Dakota, the gateway to Mount Rushmore, has seven meteorologists on staff, and was short six by the last count. There were several other vacancies, including a science and operations officer — the top research position — and a senior service hydrologist, the lead on flood forecasting. Rapid City’s vacancy rate under Biden was 17 percent; under Trump it rose to 42 percent.
[…] the government shutdown might have delayed the required background checks. Even if people are hired, […] they might have the qualifications but not the institutional knowledge of those who were fired or chose to resign early this year.
[…] At an East Coast office, the first snowstorm arrived last week. The employee said his office navigated the snowfall, but that was largely because the storm proved relatively uneventful. Even then, people had to work overtime.
[…] no one has been able to give the office’s typical presentations to local emergency management services, explaining how to best respond to weather in coordination with the Weather Service. […]
“If unlawful force is being used by any law enforcement officer against any person in this city and one of our officers is there, absolutely, I expect them to intervene, or they’ll be fired,” O’Hara said […] officers may physically intervene in the case of unlawful force, they would stop short of arresting ICE agents.
[…]
Minneapolis is the latest community in the crosshairs of Trump’s mass deportation plan. […] O’Hara has directed his officers to increase their presence at Somali community centers. […] “This is where George Floyd died because of the actions of Minneapolis Police […] Our officers here have a duty to intervene,” he added, saying that duty extends “not just from law enforcement, from our own agency.”
[…]
[A civilian observer] standing guard over the mall acknowledged they’d seen police in the area as well as federal agents, but they were skeptical that MPD would intervene […] “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Villerius said. “I hope that he’s sincere and actually wants the police to be confrontational with ICE,”
Vampires in Anime
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=i_49ERlMo28
“Actually, I Am” seens genuinely fun. And “Karin” is a reverse vampire, injecting blood into people and improving their health. Good luck finding US media investing into concepts this odd.
Alucard in “Hellsing Ultimate” is as badass as Deadpool.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Jelling Stone: 3D scans reveal power of a Viking queen – BBC News”
Britain: Churches fight back against racist hate.
“Tommy Robinson’s Christian Hypocrisy Just Got EXPOSED”
Tommy Robinson is not even his true name.
birgerjohanssonsays
Apologies for fucking up the tread again. Not wearing glasses.
.
This is a Ukrainan blog, but still interesting. Tanks are not obsolete, if used right.
The president has disparaged other women in the White House press corps in the past few weeks, calling them “piggy,” “stupid” and “ugly.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday attacked another female White House journalist, this time disparaging CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as “stupid and nasty” after she questioned him about the soaring price tag of his White House ballroom renovation.
“Caitlin Collin’s of Fake News CNN,” he wrote on Truth Social — misspelling the CNN correspondent’s name — “always Stupid and Nasty, asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago. I said because it is going to be double the size, and the quality of finishes and interiors has been brought to the highest level.”
Trump has long resorted to personal barbs when confronted by women, and has been quick to insult their appearance or intelligence, sometimes in vulgar terms as he did with his 2016 Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.
His screed on Saturday follows multiple recent instances in which he mocked women reporters who asked him questions or wrote stories he did not like.
Last month, when Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey pressed him on his relationship with the late disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump snapped at her, saying, “Quiet, piggy” — an insult he reportedly has used on other women in the past.
Days later, during a press conference with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump chastised ABC News’ Mary Bruce, who asked about slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khasshoggi, calling her a “terrible person” and “fake news.”
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said. “It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions.”
Last week, upset about a New York Times article on his signs of aging, Trump, 79, slammed Katie Rogers, who co-authored the story, as “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”
And in the wake of the National Guard shooting, when CBS News reporter Nancy Cordes pushed back on his false claim that the Biden administration did not vet Afghan nationals who entered the country, Trump grew irate.
“Are you stupid?” he said. “Are you a stupid person?”
“Inflation, in fact, has not decreased under Trump, and it’s certainly not stopped in its tracks,” the “Morning Joe” economic analyst said Friday.
Related video at the link. The video is the full presentation by Rattner.
“Morning Joe” economic analyst Steve Rattner broke out his charts on Friday to fact-check Donald Trump’s false claims about the economy, which he said have “no basis in reality.”
During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said he had inherited the “worst inflation in history” but had since stopped it “in its tracks.”
As Rattner showed, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump did not inherit the worst economy in history. Instead, the U.S. experienced its worst inflation in the 1970s, during the oil embargo.
As to the president’s claim that his administration has stopped inflation “in its tracks,” the former Treasury official said the data showed otherwise. When Trump took office, inflation was about 3%. While inflation did decrease early in the administration, Rattner said it then “went right back up.”
“Inflation, in fact, has not decreased under Trump, and it’s certainly not stopped in its tracks,” he added.
The “Morning Joe” economic analyst moved on to the president’s false claims about affordability. “You heard him say that it’s a ‘con job’ by the Democrats,” he said. “That is certainly contrary to what everybody thinks, including most Republicans.”
Rattner highlighted that wage growth among lower-income Americans has decreased since Trump took office. “So the idea that when you see people lose this much purchasing power over this long a period of time, that we don’t have an affordability crisis is completely fictitious,” he said.
The former Treasury official then took Trump to task over his claim at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting that his administration had reduced drug prices by as much as 900%.
“Most of us took sixth-grade and seventh-grade math. He says we’re going to reduce drug prices by these huge numbers. Let’s just do basic math here: If you have a $60 drug and you get a 50% price cut in that drug, it costs $30. If you have a $60 drug, and they cut the price by 100%, it’s free, right?” Rattner explained. [social media post]
“When those go down by 200%, what happens? They give you the drug for free? They pay you $60 to take the drug?” Rattner asked. “Obviously, the idea that drug prices can go down by these amounts is ridiculous. The price of something simply cannot go down by more than 100%.”
[…] On Saturday morning, Podcast host and stockbroker Peter Schiff — host of The Peter Schiff Show — pointed out the obvious. He told Griff Jenkins, host of Fox and Friends Weekend, that Trump’s economic policies will make life “more unaffordable” than under former President Joe Biden.
Trump […] did not miss Schiff’s prediction of ‘worse-than-sleepy-Joe’ economic carnage. He was not happy. […]
Jenkins started the segment by saying that Trump was about to set off on a “coast-to-coast tour on his economic agenda, an effort to sell his affordability message ahead of the 2026 midterms.” He then introduced Schiff. And said:
He’s [Trump] taking Trumanomics on the road. And it comes as we’re learning from Axios reporting that minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are going all in on their affordability message. What’s your take?
Schiff wasted no time getting to the point.
Well, you know, unfortunately, Trump economics has too much in common with Bidenomics.
You know, the biggest problem is the runaway government spending that is continuing under this administration.
So we’re gonna have bigger deficits that the Fed is now gonna be funding with rate cuts. And I think a return to quantitative easing. And all that means is that life is gonna get a lot more unaffordable under Trump than it was under Biden.
Jenkins tried a lifeline.
But President Trump will be honing in on this tour about his fact that gas prices are lower, the billions of dollars of investment in energy and AI sectors, just a litany of things that he will do. Will Americans — will it resound with Americans?
Schiff swatted the gas price benchmark away while pointing out that one piece of good news doesn’t make for a happy story.
Yeah, well, I mean, gas prices may be a little lower for now. I don’t think they’re gonna stay this low much longer.
But most other prices are higher. I mean, yes, they’re not rising at nine percent a year yet, but they’re continuing to rise. And so if people couldn’t afford things before Trump was elected, those things are more expensive now. And I think that the inflation rate is going to accelerate, you know, as Trump’s term progresses, and you know, the policies continue to impact prices.
Jenkins again tries to find a silver lining to Trump’s storm clouds, saying that “wages are growing.” However, he soon steps on his own optimism by pointing out that among Gen Z, 57% believe “that things are headed in the wrong direction for them, which is up from 6% last year.” (I think he meant to say which is up 6% last year — no from)
The host and his guest then have a back-and-forth on the prospects of home buying for the young. Schiff blames high home prices on the government. He says the solution is therefore for the government to get out of the way. Which he claims will lead to “a reduction of 20%, 30% or more.” Although, in the next breath, he adds
“That would create another financial crisis because now you’d have a lot of people defaulting on their mortgages because they no longer had home equity.”
Call me confused. Does Schiff want lower house prices or not?
Regardless, as mentioned above, Trump took time out of his 147-hour workweek to post his take on Schiff’s economic theories on Truth Social. As always, he based his rebuttal on ad hominem.
Why would Fox and Friends Weekend (of all things?) put on a “Stockbroker” named Peter Schiff, a Trump hating loser who has already proven to be wrong. Either the show made a mistake, or it is heading in a different direction.
Trump then lied.
He thinks prices are going up when, in fact, they are coming substantially down. Gasoline hit $1.99 a gallon yesterday, in certain states, and is down BIG since Biden. Other prices are almost all down. Biden caused the AFFORDABILITY CRISIS, I’M FIXING IT, along with everything else! Much of it, like the Border, is already fixed.
[Saying it louder, putting it in all caps, or repeating it doesn’t make it true.]
Facts: Oklahoma has the cheapest gas prices at $2.393 a gallon for regular. The prices for almost everything else have gone up. So to say “I’M FIXING IT” is what advertisers call ‘puffery.’ And clear thinkers call ‘wishful thinking’ or ‘bullshit,’ depending on their delicacy.
[Trump] finished with another splash of vitriol.
Check out the “booker” who put this jerk on!
This invective may be a crowd-pleaser for the MAGAs. But many Americans would settle for making America civil again while they wait for a President who is up to the job.
sensationalized news headlines circulating about the Chernobyl containment structure. […] The way this is being reported is extremely irresponsible.
There is a hole in the containment structure, about 10 feet across. No other damage is reported. That hole can allow some of the dusty radioactive material to escape.
That is what “can no longer do its job of containment” means. Rain can get in through the hole and degrade materials inside. But remember, it’s a ten foot hole in a structure that’s larger than a football field. So it’s not good, but most of the containment is still effective. I would like to see numbers in these reports, but reporters are allergic to them.
Rando 1: “Translation: It’s not going to nuclear explode like it does when it catches fire in Sim City 4.”
Rando 2: “I vote for patching the hole and not panicking. Also, for not having explosive drones hit the thing.”
Cheryl Rofer: “The danger of falls [off the roof] will be the greatest hazard.”
KGsays
birgerjohansson@76,
Richard Coles isn’t a bishop, just an ex-vicar. His elder brother is the well-known rapist Andy Coles; information in Richard’s autobiography led inadvertently to Andy being outed as one of the UK “spycops”: police officers who infiltrated non-violent protest groups and in many cases including his, had sexual relationships with female members of the group they infiltrated without disclosing their identities, then later vanished from their partner’s lives.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Cheryl Rofer: “The story, over and over again, of metals companies.”
the company contends that because it is no longer producing magnesium, it cannot afford to pay for further environmental cleanup it is responsible for nor should it have to until operations resume. […] [The EPA said] it will take “well over” $100 million to clean up the plant’s decades of environmental problems. And a long list of creditors—from contractors and customers, to local, state and federal governments—claim they have stacks of unpaid bills. […] Whether the company’s remaining resources will pay off its many creditors, or whether the court prioritize the environment remains unknown.
[…]
“Given the plethora of environmental problems with the land which [US Magnesium] has heavily polluted over the past many years,” the division wrote in its filing, “it is highly unlikely any potential buyer would purchase its business other than” […] the parent company, Renco.
[…]
“The Debtor has gone through this charade previously,” attorneys for the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands wrote in their objection, “when it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy 24 years ago in the Southern District of New York, and used this same play-book: file bankruptcy as far away as possible from its Utah operations (or now, former operations), cleanse the company’s assets through a Bankruptcy … [sell] to its owner, and thus escape payment of its debts.”
[…]
Liquidating the company could mean workers’ pensions go unpaid, the nation permanently loses its largest producer of a vital mineral and the state and EPA are stuck figuring out how to pay for the mess.
“Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be ‘running’ for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas (a State where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded!), as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison – And probably still do!” Trump wrote. “Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”
Trump was apparently under the impression that Cuellar would change party. It isn’t clear why Trump expected this. It’s likely he talked to somebody but it’s also possible he just expected that Cuellar would do him a favor after he did a favor for Cuellar. Trump is one of those oblivious people, he fills the ranks around himself with self serving people like himself and yet is constantly surprised when they prove to be as untrustworthy as he is.
Trump, according to the report, personally likes Noem. But the report also states top White House officials have been “frustrated” with her leadership — specifically her employment of chief advisor Corey Lewandowski, who has been characterized with having an “outsized role” at DHS. (Lewandowski denied the report in a statement to the Bulwark, writing “none of that is true.”)
While the president has stood by Hegseth in public, he has shown less enthusiasm behind closed doors, The Atlantic reported Friday, citing several unnamed sources familiar with White House discussions.
“[Trump] is starting to tire of the scandals surrounding Hegseth and does not push back when others suggest Hegseth is not up for the job, an outside adviser to the White House and a former senior administration official told us,” The Atlantic reported.
Rumors of this sort have been floating around for most of Trump’s term in office. Most of the people on his cabinet shouldn’t have the job and were selected more for being yes men then anything. These rumors are more serious but I think they say more about infighting at the White House then Trump seriously considering replacing somebody. As long as they are willing to say “Yes sir” when Trump orders them to do things and appear loyal to Trump their jobs are fairly secure.
Still, there could be a major loser in the White House infighting or Trump may decide that somebody has to go. If that does become the case who gets fired is likely to depend on who last had a scandal that made the news more then history of problems or how serious they are.
Ukrainian forces continue to hold positions within Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad while Russian forces are complicating Ukrainian logistics in the area.
The Russians claim to have already captured these cities while Ukraine says they are still in heavy fighting. The ISW assessment is that the Russians are slowly winning but it’s a street by street battle situation.
Away from Pokrovsk the Ukrainian’s appear to have made some small advances. The fog of war is getting worse, as the grey zone created by drones where it’s dangerous for either force to be gets wider. Near the more active areas it’s getting harder to even determine where the lines are.
The Kremlin appears to be increasingly leaning on India to alleviate domestic labor shortages and is setting conditions for India to support drone production for Russia’s war effort. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov announced on December 5 that Russia may accept an “unlimited number” of migrant workers from India under the new bilateral labor mobility agreement signed on December 5 in New Delhi.
This is ugly but I suspect it won’t go well for India. These migrants are going to look for work but they are going to be treated badly, not paid and some will end up fighting for the Russian army.
Head of the Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, stated on December 5 that Russia is in discussions with India to localize production of Russian drones, such as Lancet loitering munitions, in India.
At this point both sides are talking about technology sharing but India doesn’t really have technology Russia wants. India has avoided selling arms or ammunition to Russia but with India starting up production of drones based on Russian designs the situation bears close monitoring.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 108
Than you for the correction.
His brother a rapist? Holy sh*t!
.
At least that is not genetic, so Richard should be OK.
(He is an old pal of the investigating journalist sitting next to him on the panel)
This time the rapist was never invited, unlike wossname that gross ‘comedian’ that got outed for SA a couple of years’ back.
.
And this is a reminder: Men do not notice the creeps, because – unlike Epstein – most creeps do not shed their camouflage in the company of men.
BTW the leaders of the Church of England have little to be proud of but at least the lower ranks occasionally show moral courage in opposing the likes of Farage.
birgerjohanssonsays
Addendum: If men doing SA pop up this frequently -just in connection with TV- it has awful implications for their frequency in the general population.
KGsays
Beyond awards, we saved millions and millions of lives. The fact that we could do that, so many different wars that were able to end in some cases right before they started, it was great to get them done. – Trump, quoted by DailyKos, quoted by Lynna, OM@68
Huh – that trophy should have been mine! I’ve ended well over a hundred wars before they started, indeed mostly before the countries concerned had any idea they had some sort of dispute! Most notably, perhaps, the vicious war between Andorra and Lesotho, which would certainly have led to billions of deaths if I hadn’t stepped in to remind them that they are both landlocked countries, and thousands of miles from each other.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 115
Your achievements pale beside mine. I prevented the time-travel war that killed 80% of the world’s population.
And this begs the question – does America have any credible national ideology left? Isolationism? Aggressive imperial predatory capitalism does no nonger work on the rest of the world, China has proven that.
Is USA going to spend a half-century like France or Britain, clinging on old memories? I doubt it can afford a bloated military as the economic competition from the rest of the world ramps up, but Dubya showed illusions of strength live on.
The New Safe Confinement Structure at Chernobyl is a double-layered metal structure outside of the sarcophagus that was built around the ruined reactor to confine the radioactive materials. […] In February, a Russian drone blew a hole about 10 feet across in both layers of the NSC. The IAEA recently sent a mission to Chernobyl to investigate the extent of the damage and the repairs needed.
[…]
The poor reporting seems to come from an attempt to use this [IAEA] Director-General’s statement […] for sensational value. To be fair, the IAEA wrote it so that was easy to do. I suspect that the phrasing has to do with IAEA formalities. The IAEA can be stodgy and not always easy to understand. […] The statement is also part of a campaign to get more money to do the repairs. […] damage to the structure will increase if the hole isn’t fixed as soon as possible.
birgerjohanssonsays
Trump Has Massive Meltdown as Texas Democrat DEFIES Party Switch
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MXxUkngbaOo
Hmm… If you induce more meltdowns, he will probably get more erratic. Short term, this means he will do more damage but he will also stumble over his own feet more often. Keep this up until the midterms and then you can contain his legislative agenda.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Shocking Number Of Young Republicans Admit They’re Racist” (according to survey by the conservative Manhattan Institute)
@117 birgerjohansson: Putin never had any ideology, this was one of his attractive features to begin with. As long as he was entirely practical and didn’t try to take some great view of history he could get along much better with neighbors. Even after Putin became a dictator he was able to build trade with other countries. As long as he was just trying to build up Russia’s industrial base and wealth other countries didn’t have a problem with him treating the Russians badly.
It wasn’t until he got this idea of recreating the Russian Empire and the unity of the Russian people did he become a military threat. This wasn’t an ideology he could spread any other way as everybody that wanted to hear it was already part of Russia.
birgerjohanssonsays
Annoyingly people at Youtube have started to recycling news items from a year ago or more with ‘bad news for Trump’ themes. This must be a clickbait thing.
JMsays
@126 birgerjohansson: I’ve been getting some click bait fake news also. Some channels using stolen art and AI voice overs to mimic Rachel Maddow pretty well. Take or fake some static shots from the Rachel Maddows show and use AI voice over to read a script and it looks like a clip from her show at first glance.
Two months into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration gave states an ultimatum: Cooperate with his team’s immigration crackdown or lose your federal homeland security funding.
Oregon and 19 other states including Illinois, New York and California fought back and won. A federal judge ruled in September that the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t attach such strings to its grants, which states rely on for counterterrorism and emergency planning. For Oregon, nearly $18 million was at stake. The money in the past has paid for everything from bomb detectors to a security analyst’s salary.
But after winning in court, Oregon officials logged in to a federal grant website to formally accept the money, only to find the button to do so was disabled. They thought it might be a system glitch until they talked to counterparts in other states. The button did not come back online. [Looks like the Trump administration ignoring court orders.]
Homeland Security officials signaled to the states that despite losing in court, they were likely to appeal. If states wanted the money now, they would have to sign a declaration promising to cooperate with immigration enforcement if they lost in the future. States argued this would violate the judge’s order, and they won in court again. [!!]
Finally in October, the department officially removed the immigration wording to which states had objected and that the judge had said wasn’t legal.
But the administration continued to dangle the money out of reach. This time, the department rolled out a whole new set of criteria that made it harder for all states — “sanctuary” or not, blue or red — to obtain any federal terror or emergency management funding at all. They required states to estimate their populations’ net of people who had been deported and they dramatically tightened the deadline for spending the money. [!]
[…] Meanwhile, a quieter battle has been playing out over money to fight the extremist threats that emergency management officials say actually exist in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.
Oregon auditors reported that data from a security think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts the state at No. 6 nationally for violent extremist attacks from 2011 to 2020. In more recent years, the FBI announced a set of attacks on electrical substations in Oregon and Washington they suspected to be the work of neo-Nazis, as well as a series of Portland area ballot-box fires that the agency linked to an extremist of unspecified ideology.
“Insurrection, conflict, violence, bombings, all those kinds of things — the dollars that we use absolutely are invested to help prevent, and help us prepare to respond to, those types of incidents,” said Mark Ferdig, who runs the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization in the Portland area, which is funded almost entirely by grants from the Department of Homeland Security.
But in social media posts and in press briefings, the White House indicated that Trump doesn’t trust Portland to use federal funding in ways that match the president’s priorities.
[I snipped blather and lies from Karoline Leavitt.]
[…] Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security and past president of the National Emergency Management Association, said states should not be compelled to align themselves with any federal administration’s politics when money for disaster victims and counterterrorism is on the line.
[…] The administration’s latest iteration of changes to homeland security grants has added obstacles that, this time around, threaten to make every state a casualty.
[…] While all states are affected now, sanctuary jurisdictions like Oregon remain the main force battling the administration in court. (Oregon’s sanctuary law, originated in the 1980s and enhanced in 2021, bars law enforcement officers from participating in immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant.)
Oregon estimates that without the federal money, two-thirds of its counties won’t be able to perform basic emergency management functions to prepare for and respond to disasters.
[…] Portland emergency managers started getting nervous about federal funding in early March, when they noticed that FEMA had temporarily turned off several of the computer systems used to pay grants to state and local governments. There was no warning.
[…] Weeks later, the administration made its first attempt to withhold emergency funds from sanctuary states, prompting the lawsuit from Oregon and 19 other states.
[…] State and local counterterror funding is being withheld “because it was perceived by this administration to be all directed against the right,” McCord [Mary McCord, a former acting assistant attorney general for national security under President Barack Obama] said. “It is a multifaceted strategy of trying to say, ‘There is no violence on the right. The violence is all coming from the left.’” [Not true]
“The figures don’t include arrests made by Border Patrol [!], which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities in recent months.”
More than a third of the roughly 220,000 people arrested by ICE officers in the first nine months of the Trump administration had no criminal histories, according to new data.
The data, which includes ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to Oct. 15, shows that nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records have been swept up in immigration operations that the president and his top officials have said would target murderers, rapists and gang members.
“It contradicts what the administration has been saying about people who are convicted criminals and that they are going after the worst of the worst,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
The figures provide the most revealing look to date into the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. They were shared by the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, which obtained them through a lawsuit brought against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The data is compiled by an internal ICE office that handles arrest, detention and deportation data. The administration stopped regularly posting detailed information on ICE arrests in January.
For arrestees with criminal histories, the data doesn’t distinguish between those with a history of minor offenses and those who have committed more serious crimes, like rape and murder […]
And the figures do not include arrests made by Border Patrol, which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina. Border Patrol sweeps are currently underway in New Orleans. [!]
Border Patrol and ICE are both under the Department of Homeland Security but they are two different agencies with two different missions. Border Patrol agents typically operate along the southern and northern borders, but recently hundreds have been sent into the interior of the United States to track down undocumented immigrants.
“That is the black box that we know nothing about,” Ruiz Soto said. “How many arrests is Border Patrol doing? How many of those are leading to removals and under what conditions?” […]
More at the link.
JMsays
Lei’s Real Talk: General Liu and The Hidden Trial Audio the PLA leaked
During the Tiananmen Square events the Chinese general who naturally would have been in command of suppressing the students refused to do it. The general, Xu Qinxain, was in charge of the military forces charged with guarding the capital and the leadership of the CCP. He was ordered to suppress the students but refused. He was arrested, tried and served a couple of years in prison before going into house arrest for the rest of his life. A leaked video of the secret military trial of Xu Qinxain has reached the internet. It ended up in the hands of one of the surviving students who now lives in the US.
The video itself is interesting but Lei is more concerned with why it was leaked now. It obviously plays into the hidden conflict between political figures and military figures for power in China.
Amnesty International released findings from its investigation into the Everglades Concentration Camp (Alligator Alcatraz), which was built by the Florida Division of Emergency Management. They found evidence of torture, among other human rights violations. [Screenshot of an excerpt]
More on the role of FDEM and their director Kevin Guthrie in facilitating these human rights violations here. [Disasterology Blog (Sep 1)]
Moscow regards Washington’s updated National Security Strategy as “consistent with our vision.”
Vladimir Putin’s press secretary on Sunday praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial new National Security Strategy as largely in line with Russia’s view of the world.
[“Controversial” is not a strong enough word. That “National Security Strategy” is a white supremacist propaganda document. It also reads like a racist/nazi-like rant written by Stephen Miller. As Sky Captain highlighted in comment 58, quoting a commentator: “The National Security strategy could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just published the 14 words instead because that’s what it amounts to.”]
[…] “The adjustments we are seeing, I would say, are largely consistent with our vision, and perhaps we can hope that this could be a modest guarantee that we will be able to constructively continue our joint work on finding a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, at the very least,” said Dmitriy Peskov per local media.
In an interview, Peskov said Trump’s administration differs fundamentally from previous U.S. governments and that the president is able to change the country’s foreign policy orientation because he is “strong”. [Russia fluffing up Trump’s ego.]
Trump’s strategic roadmap, released Dec. 4, announced no less than a realignment of the geopolitical order and echoed the themes of the racist “Great Replacement Theory” to claim that Europe faces ‘civilizational erasure’, including from migration.
The U.S., which has been an interventionist power globally since the end of the Second World War, is shifting its focus to the Western hemisphere, according to the document — which Peskov noted does not refer to Russia as an adversary, unlike previous iterations.
The document also casts doubt on whether some European nations are reliable long-term members of NATO. […]
The alliance — which Trump has publicly undermined on numerous occasions — has struggled for influence in U.S.-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The NSS document outlined Washington’s intention to focus on “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” [!]
More at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
JM @ 127
Thanks.
Motor history
“Volvo TP21 Sugga (“Sow”) — The Offroad Swedish Military Legend”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=fijoVzSz88k
More practical than the Jeep, with space to function as a staff car complete with radios. Annoying AI voice, otherwise OK.
birgerjohanssonsays
Bannon in trouble with MAGA As Gross Epstein Emails Surface
Yes, I really enjoy the series.
The first appearence of hair and fur is poorly understood, but this is when proto-mammals started to turn into something recognisably mammalian.
Btw this started a period when our ancestors were mostly small and short-lived, losing the genes for regeneration and repair other lineages have.
When the dinosaurs were gone, mammals had to re-evolve the genes needed for longer life spans.
Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based security system that’s supposed to protect against theft. Instead, it turned these Porsches into driveway ornaments.
The issue was first reported at the end of November, with owners reporting identical symptoms of their cars refusing to start or shutting down soon after ignition. Russia’s largest dealership group, Rolf, confirmed that the problem stems from a complete loss of satellite connectivity to the VTS. When it loses its connection, it interprets the outage as a potential theft attempt and automatically activates the engine immobilizer.
It’s funny when it happens to Russia but this will eventually happen by accident to some major company in the west and in a more global war this sort of stuff will be shut off intentionally.
“Siri famously petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. His ongoing work with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. matters.”
Exactly one year ago this week, when there was still some question as to whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would become the nation’s next health secretary, The New York Times published an unsettling report about one of the nominee’s associates. The Times, among a variety of other outlets, reported that RFK Jr. was choosing federal health officials for the incoming administration with the help of a lawyer named Aaron Siri.
For much of the public, that name probably seemed unfamiliar, but for those who follow anti-vaccine efforts, the news was immediately recognized as important: It was Siri, for example, who petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.
The Times’ report added, “Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.”
Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, was not pleased. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Kennedy ignored the advice. Indeed, after the longtime anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist took the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services, Siri’s name popped up quite a bit. In September, for example, after Susan Monarez was fired as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she testified before a Senate committee and spoke about RFK Jr. urging her to meet with Siri. A month later, the Times reported that Siri “has played a role in vetting candidates for departmental jobs.”
Last week, the problem went from bad to worse. NBC News reported:
An anti-vaccine lawyer who has regularly sued federal and state health agencies spoke Friday at a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel — an unheard-of departure for the committee, which for decades was a trusted source for vaccine recommendations.
After Siri’s lengthy anti-vaccine presentation before the CDC’s once-respected Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (better known as ACIP), MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny wrote online, “This panel is anti-vaccine theater. It’s a cruel joke.”
[…] The Washington Post reported that public health advocates were “shocked” to see the CDC giving Siri such a platform, adding, “The unusual scene of an attorney with no medical degree making a scientific presentation drew condemnation from health organizations and lawmakers.”
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former medical doctor who chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS, wrote online the day before Friday’s meeting, “Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”
Nevertheless, despite the circumstances, Siri’s side is winning: On Friday, ACIP, stocked with Kennedy loyalists, voted to stop recommending a life-saving hepatitis B vaccine to infants. [See comments 8, 24, 20, 60 and 78]
Cassidy described the regressive and radical step as a “mistake” — though as is too often the case, the powerful senator declined to respond with anything meaningful.
“Faustino Pablo Pablo was deported to Guatemala despite his urgent warnings to immigration officials that he faced serious danger in his home country.”
It happened again.
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to quickly seek the return of a man it deported to Guatemala in violation of an immigration court’s finding that he was likely to face torture there.
U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama scolded the administration for the “blatant lawlessness” of its decision to deport Faustino Pablo Pablo to Guatemala, despite the man’s urgent warnings to immigration officials that he faced serious danger in his home country.
Guaderrama, an El Paso, Texas-based Obama appointee, ordered the administration to return Pablo by Dec. 12 and to provide daily updates about its efforts in the meantime. The judge noted that the administration repeatedly acknowledged the “unlawful” and “wrongful” nature of the man’s deportation and had, in recent days, suggested it would seek to bring him back to the United States.
But despite a “tentatively scheduled” flight on Thursday, the judge said, Pablo was not returned to the country and appeared to remain in Guatemala.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said that should Pablo return, he’ll be redeported somewhere else
.
“This illegal alien from Guatemala has a final order of removal from an immigration judge issued in 2015. He received full due process. One thing is certain: he is not going to be able to remain in the U.S. We will deport him to another country,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement on Saturday.
“If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period,” she added.
Pablo’s situation is strikingly reminiscent of the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who the administration abruptly sent to El Salvador in March, despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order that he was likely to face persecution at the hands of a local gang. Abrego’s case drew national headlines after a judge ordered the administration to quickly facilitate his return — prompting fierce resistance from the White House and top Homeland Security officials, who denounced Abrego and excoriated judges that ruled against them.
The administration has acknowledged several other improper deportations, including a man sent to El Salvador despite a court-approved settlement agreement barring his deportation while his asylum claim was pending, a man who was sent to Mexico despite immigration officials’ acknowledgment that they had no record of a “credible fear” interview to determine whether he might face persecution, a man deported to El Salvador — where he remains incarcerated — despite a federal appeals court order barring his deportation, and a transgender woman deported to Mexico despite an immigration court order finding she was likely to be tortured there.
Pablo entered the United States illegally in 2012. Though an immigration judge ordered his removal, the judge also concluded that he would face torture “by, or with the consent or acquiescence of, the Guatemalan government.” After he was released from immigration detention in 2013, Pablo resided in California and reported regularly to immigration officials until Nov. 5, when he was abruptly detained at an immigration check-in. […]
On Nov. 17, Pablo was transferred to El Paso and told he was being prepared for deportation to Guatemala. He quickly sued to secure his release from detention but was nevertheless deported on Nov. 20, before Guaderrama could intervene.
“By the time the Court ordered [the administration] not to remove Pablo Pablo, he had arrived in Guatemala City,” Guaderrama wrote.
Trump pardoned sports executive Tim Leiweke — who was convicted by Trump’s own Justice Department — after a round of golf with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who was one of Leiweke’s lawyers, the WSJ reports.
[…] The Trump DOJ says it will be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Ed Martin to decide which people and which crimes are covered by Trump’s sweeping pardons related to the 2020 fake electors scheme and other Big Lie related offenses.
[…] Under a new Trump administration policy, Americans will no longer have free access to national parks on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day or Juneteenth, but will now have free access on June 14 — President Trump’s birthday, which coincides with Flag Day.
[…] Over the weekend, the 38th episode in the eruption sequence that began at Kilauea volcano last December was particularly vigorous, with a laterally-jetting lava fountain knocking a remote camera on the crater rim out of commission [video at the link]
Link. The link leads to a collection of disparate news reports.
Josh Marshall: “Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger”
Simply extraordinary stuff coming out this morning about the battle over what used to be Time Warner and now goes by the name Warner Bros Discovery (which includes CNN in addition to the more lucrative media stuff).
The company had agreed to be acquired by Netflix. So Paramount — now the vehicle of the Ellison family successor and a Trump state media entity-in-the-making — has launched a hostile takeover effort to swoop in and gobble up WBD for itself. In its public pitch, it has openly advertised to shareholders that it is the better acquirer because the Ellisons are tight with Trump, and the White House will never let a Netflix deal go through. Trump, in comments yesterday, as much as agreed.
Trump has refashioned antitrust oversight to be little more than a personal veto for the Trump family. Friends can do mergers; foes can’t. Indeed, the indifferent and uncommitted can’t either. You need to get right with the Trump family.
[…] Now we learn this: who else is part of the hostile takeover bid? None other than Jared Kushner. Yes, Jared […] And wait, there’s more! Just moments ago I saw that it’s not just Jared: the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis are also in on the deal. Backstopping the deal is a fund, RedBird Capital, seen by many as a stalking horse for China.
My main interest in all of this is narrow and specific: the fate of CNN. The outlook for the institution seems bleak over time. Netflix, as I understand it, doesn’t care about it and doesn’t want it. In economic terms it’s an afterthought, if not a liability. This is really about the streaming wars and to a secondary extent the content producing entities that feed it. But Paramount does want CNN because either neutering it on behalf of Trump (´à la CBS) or turning it into a Fox News competitor is part of its alliance with Trump, and more general commitment to oligarchic rule in the US. [Red alert for more propaganda coming soon.]
When I say CNN’s outlook looks bleak in general, it’s because no company looking to run it as a business has much interest in acquiring it. It’s not some huge profit center. And owning it is a major liability inasmuch as allowing it to run as anything like a legitimate news operation almost guarantees Trump harassment. The companies that have a strong interest in acquiring it are those who want to Fox-ify it as a favor to Trump and reap secondary benefits from doing that favor even if they lose money on CNN itself. So it’s hard to see how these incentives lead to anything good even if Paramount doesn’t manage to grab it in this round.
Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, according to a regulatory filing.
Why it matters: Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case.
– Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.
Zoom in: Affinity Partners was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
– Per the tender offer, each of those parties “have agreed to forgo any governance rights – including board representation – associated with their non-voting equity investments.”
– Each of them also was part of Paramount’s original WBD bid on Dec. 1, although fellow partner Tencent subsequently left the group.
The bottom line: WBD could be the second major takeover Kushner has been involved in this year, having previously played a key role in the take-private agreement for gaming giant Electronic Arts.
Despite Trump’s ceaseless claims of a “Golden Age,” […] even lifelong GOP voters are pointing fingers at a White House that seems completely checked out.
The bad news kicked off on Monday when outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that the U.S. economy lost 1.1 million jobs this year, the worst performance since the height of the pandemic in 2020. That’s a staggering 54% increase over the last year of President Joe Biden’s term, making Trump the worst president for job creation across the 21st century so far. Yikes!
Those job cuts are also accelerating into the holiday season, a period when most presidents enjoy a seasonal bump in employment. Small businesses slashed 120,000 jobs in November according to payroll processor ADP, with most of those layoffs concentrated among firms employing fewer than 50 people.
Meanwhile, the tech titans who make up the core of Trump’s donor base posted record profits this quarter. For Republicans who once positioned themselves as champions of small business, Main Street has now become an afterthought […]
[…] Trump also raised eyebrows this week when he made the incoherent claim that “affordability is a hoax” created by Democrats and that prices are actually falling across the country. In a year defined by increasingly out-there gibberish, Trump’s claim that Democrats invented the idea of higher prices deserves a place in the MAGA Hall of Shame.
[…] Apparently Democrats don’t need to say anything else, because a majority of Americans now blame Trump directly for failing to combat rising prices from the gas pump to the grocery store. A Politico poll published on Thursday found that nearly 40% of Trump voters now say the cost of living is “the worst I can ever remember it being.” Worse for Trump, over 20% of Republicans said he bears responsibility for the bad economy, not Democrats. […]
During Trump’s Cabinet meeting on Tuesday (where the president decided to take a little snooze), Vice President JD Vance pledged to fix the entire U.S. economy—sometime next year. That’s quite a vibe shift from Trump’s bold 2024 promises to fix the economy “on Day 1,” and yet another reminder that Trump, Vance, and their MAGA cronies are flying blind in the face of a growing economic crisis.
Working families across the country don’t have a year to wait for Republicans to fix the economy they broke.
A new Brookings Institution study found that American families are struggling to make ends meet in every part of the country, red states and blue states alike. 20% of middle-class wage earners can’t even afford to live in their own cities anymore due to rising rents and higher overall cost of living. Fully half of Latino and Hispanic families and 39% of Black families report being unable to afford basic necessities. […]
How many billionaires does it take to fill a lagoon with millions of gallons of industrial wastewater?
Apparently, just one.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has caused quite a stir in Florida’s Space Coast region after the Amazon founder’s aerospace company sought a permit to dispense up to 450,000 gallons of “industrial wastewater” daily into an onsite pond that drains into the Indian River Lagoon.
Locals and environmental activists have been showing up in protest to try and block the pending approval.
“They could be building reservoirs. They could be filtering and reusing water. They have thousands of acres in the wildlife refuge to create regional retention systems. They are brilliant engineers,” resident Stel Bailey told Florida Daily.
“So why are they being instructed to dump into the lagoon instead of being challenged to innovate?”
However, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection ultimately gets to decide on whether or not Bezos gets the green light.
With Lee Zeldin setting the tone as an Environmental Protection Agency chief who doesn’t believe greenhouse gases negatively impact the environment and who openly sought to “drive a dagger” through the heart of “climate change religion,” Bezos likely isn’t facing too much of an uphill battle. [sigh]
But the Indian River Lagoon stands to lose much more […] the lagoon is home to over 50 endangered species, including the Florida manatee.
[…] history shows that Blue Origin has been quick to cough up cash for fines rather than play safe with the environment.
According to documents obtained by Florida Today, Bezos’ company was fined three times for exceeding pH minimums and failing inspections.
Now that Donald Trump is back in office, though, Bezos can breathe a sigh of relief. After all, things got much easier for the space industry in August when the president signed an executive order that would “streamline” the permit approval process and “eliminate or expedite the [department’s] environmental reviews for, and other obstacles” to granting launches and reentry licenses or permits.
Looks like all of Bezos’ sucking up to Trump really paid off.
[…] Last month, Doug Burgum’s Department of the Interior did away with a blanket protection of any species on the endangered list or those threatened with extinction. Now, economic factors will have to be considered as well.
[…] But, don’t worry, Bezos is making up for the rocket runoff in other ways. He and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, are reportedly committing just over $102 million to various nonprofit organizations that combat homelessness throughout the 2026 calendar year.
In case you’re wondering, that amounts to roughly 0.025% of Bezos’ over $400 billion net worth.
Why is it always the most vociferous proselytizers of the Christian religion who seem to be the most thoroughly ignorant of what’s actually in that Bible …].
Last week, a Jewish active duty military member contacted the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) about just such a woefully ignorant commanding officer. This commander had forbidden any non-Christmas holiday decorations in his command, including any recognition of Hanukkah, as the Jewish military member wrote:
“Earlier this week our commander announced that only Christmas decorations were allowed in the headquarters facility where I work and under his command. He made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable ‘wokeness’ which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military. The next day there were four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.”
When the Jewish military member went to the commander and asked if Hanukkah decorations were permissible, this was the commander’s response (emphasis added):
“He seemed upset and said that since ‘it is well known that Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas’ Jewish personnel should be satisfied when they see a Christmas display that it also includes Hanukkah. Obviously that statement is just FUBAR!”
And then this Christmas-only commander proceeded to impart his knowledge of Hanukkah to his Jewish subordinate :
“He also stated that since the events of Hanukkah occurred several hundred years after the birth of Christ, this shows that Hanukkah is part of Christianity. Also incredibly insulting and just plain wrong. The Maccabean rebellion involving Hanukkah occurred more than one and a half centuries prior to the birth of Christ.”
Apparently, this holier-than-thou commander hasn’t read the part of his revered holy book where Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Dedication, a.k.a. Hanukkah. [!] Now, this isn’t some little minor story about Jesus going to the temple. This is when Jesus supposedly first asserted his divinity, uttering the words, “I and the Father are one,” followed by some of the Jews trying to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:22) — sort of a big deal event in the Jesus story that you’d think any Christian as devout as this Christmas-only commander would know about. But, no, he doesn’t have a clue. […]
Here’s the whole email from the Jewish military member who, like thousands of others across our hyper-Christianized MAGA military, is having to endure this level of ignorance and bigotry from their Christmas-crusading commanding officer:
From: (Active Duty Military Member/MRFF Client’s email address withheld)
Subject: Commander only allows Christmas decorations and calls Hanukkah the “Jewish Christmas”
Date: December 5, 2025 at 1:20:42 PM MST
To: Information Weinstein
This message is to Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF.
Thank you for helping us through the difficulties we are experiencing here at our U.S. military installation.
I am a Jewish active duty military member. My spouse is also in the active duty military. We are starting a family. My spouse is also Jewish.
Earlier this week our commander announced that only Christmas decorations were allowed in the headquarters facility where I work and under his command. He made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable “wokeness” which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military. The next day there were four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.
He says he has an “open door policy”. So I made an appointment to come see him and asked about whether we could also have Hanukkah displays up. He seemed upset and said that since “it is well known that Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas” Jewish personnel should be satisfied when they see a Christmas display that it also includes Hanukkah. Obviously that statement is just FUBAR!
He also stated that since the events of Hanukkah occurred several hundred years after the birth of Christ, this shows that Hanukkah is part of Christianity. Also incredibly insulting and just plain wrong. The Maccabean rebellion involving Hanukkah occurred more than one and a half centuries prior to the birth of Christ.
The commander made it very clear he wasn’t going to move on this. He has no interest or any clue in how his statements might be viewed as antisemitic or prejudicial.
My wife and I agonized over this as to what to do? My immediate supervisor (name and rank and title withheld) suggested that I contact you and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. We know that it would be fruitless to file an EEO or inspector general action. We significantly fear many different types of reprisal if we directly take this on. This is why we decided to reach out to Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF to at least let people know what has happened here. I’m sure our current Secretary of Defense would condone it. And perhaps even the President. But this is as much as we can do at least anonymously. As you promised to us please do not reveal any of our identification information at all. How is it “woke” to allow so many Christian nativity scenes all over our headquarters complex but to not allow even one little display, perhaps a single small menorah, for Hanukkah? Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF thank you for being the avenue through which we can express our shock and anger at our commander’s hateful decision.
(Active Duty Military Member/MRFF Client’s name, rank, AFSC/MOS/SFSC, unit, and installation all withheld)
A winter solstice celebration might be the most authentic thing they could do
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Charging the commanding officer with anti-semitism seems both correct and appropriate given that is the go-to complaint by this administration against Universities.
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I think for a lot of these people “Christian” is little more than tribalism.
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Look, they are finally getting to what they wanted to do all along; to impose their world view on everybody else, by violence if necessary. All of their talk about “free speech” and “freedom of religion” were a ruse.
“The rate will hit $15 per hour in dozens of localities, though the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour.”
The minimum wage for workers will increase in 19 states and 49 cities and counties next month, with the wage floor reaching $15 per hour in dozens of localities […]
Though the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not increased since 2009, many state and local governments continue to increase minimums through legislation or scheduled increases tied to inflation.
An annual report from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit advocating for workers’ rights, found that 88 jurisdictions will raise their minimum wages by the end of 2026.
In January, Nebraska’s minimum wage will increase from $13.50 to $15 per hour, while Rhode Island will see an increase from $15 to $16 per hour.
All workers in Denver will see the minimum wage increase from $18.81 to $19.29 in January and the minimum in Flagstaff, Arizona, will increase from $17.85 to $18.35 per hour.
The increases come as rising costs of housing, food and utilities are pinching more workers across the country […] Those costs are particularly challenging for lower-income workers, who are most likely to be affected by minimum wage changes.
[…] Inflation has significantly eroded the buying power of the federal minimum wage since 2009.
Advocates say raising the wage floor helps low-wage workers cover the rising cost of essentials and boosts the economy by putting more money into the pockets of people who are likely to spend it. But many employers, especially small businesses, argue that raising the minimum wage forces them to cut workers or raise prices.
In Rhode Island, lawmakers this year proposed legislation that would raise the minimum wage $1 per year, culminating with a $20 per hour minimum in 2030. But backlash from business groups and economic uncertainty led the Democratic sponsor to successfully push for a “more measured approach” that includes hikes for the next two years rather than five, reaching a $17 hourly minimum by 2027.
[…] The minimum wage remains stagnant at $7.25 in 20 states, according to the National Employment Law Project. Those are primarily conservative-led states including Alabama, Iowa, Texas and Wyoming.
Last year, Missouri voters approved a ballot measure ensuring paid sick leave and boosting the minimum wage to $15 per hour, with future increases tied to inflation.
But Republican lawmakers took aim at the changes in Jefferson City this year.
In a move Democrats called “absolute disdain” for workers, GOP lawmakers passed a bill repealing the paid sick leave provision and nixing the annual minimum wage increases tied to inflation. Missouri’s current $13.75 minimum wage will still rise to $15 next month but is no longer subject to future increases. […]
-Bust up monopolies
-Boost unions
-$20/hr fed minimum wage
-Ban Wall Street from buying homes
-Pass M4A [Medicare For All act]
-Universal childcare
-Get rid of Trump’s tariffs
-Enact UBI [Universal Basic Income]
-Tax the rich
These are crucial steps to making America affordable again. […]
[…] Vladimir Putin is praising Trump’s new “Security Strategy” of leaving Europe to deal with Russia all alone as perfectly aligning with his own vision. Imagine that. […]
The narrative of the murders somebody did on September 2 of two boat-bombing survivors in the Caribbean continues to shift! Now, according to members of the House and Senate armed services committee who saw video and talked to Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley behind closed doors last Thursday, the time between the first strikes on the boaters and the ones to finish off the survivors was 41 minutes. A very long and coincidentally timed dump for Secretary of War/Defense Pete *HIC* Hegseth to have taken! And the boat was not even headed in the direction of the US, but towards Suriname, in the opposite direction. So much for Hegseth knowing for sure it was Tren de Aragua coming to poison America.
[…] Bruna Ferreira, the Brazilian-born mother of Karoline Leavitt’s nephew and godchild recently deported for overstaying her visa as a child, disputes her public portrayal as a criminal and absentee mom. “I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister. I made a mistake there, in trusting. … Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
[…] The Wisconsin Supreme Court has taken up a case to decide if ICE can hold detainees in local jails.
JFC!! “Trump administration plans to end prison rape protections for trans and intersex people, memo says.” PRISM link
[…] The Department of Education still exists, and is now demanding hundreds of fired employees in the Office for Civil Rights return to work to help slog through a backlog of cases. […]
“The justices seem likely to allow the president to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a nine-decade old precedent that insulated some agencies from political influence by the executive.”
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to allow President Donald Trump to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a 90-year-old precedent that curbs executive power to dismiss the heads of agencies Congress set up to be independent.
A ruling in favor of Trump’s position has been widely expected by legal experts because the justices have been chipping away for years at the precedent, known as Humphrey’s Executor. Many of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have expressed support for the idea known as unitary executive theory, which holds that the Constitution gives the president broad authority to fire officials which Congress cannot limit.
During roughly two-and-a-half hours of arguments on Monday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. referred to Humphrey’s Executor as a “dried husk” and said the contemporary FTC bore little resemblance to the one that existed at the time of the high court’s 1935 ruling that insulated its commissioners from removal by the president without cause.
“It was addressing an agency that had little or no executive power,” Roberts said.
A decision to strike down Humphrey’s Executor and allow the president to fire Democrat Rebecca Slaughter could usher in one of the largest changes to the structure of the federal government in decades. It would hand Trump a major victory in his quest to exert tighter control over the federal bureaucracy and concentrate power in the White House.
The court’s three liberal justices expressed alarm at the idea of handing the president unfettered control over roughly two dozen agencies that regulate everything from product safety to elections to nuclear energy.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Solicitor General D. John Sauer “you are asking us to destroy the structure of government,” while Justice Elena Kagan added “you end up with massive, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”
“Independent agencies exist because Congress has deemed some issues should be handled by non-partisan experts,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “Having a president come in and fire all the doctors and scientists and replace them with loyalists is not in the interest of the American people.” […]
More at the link.
“Not in the interest of the American people.” True.
“Trump to announce $12 billion tariff relief for farmers”
President Donald Trump on Monday plans to announce a $12 billion relief assistance package for farmers […]
The group, a key segment of the president’s base, faced fallout from Trump’s tariff policies, which have heavily impacted the American agriculture sector.
[…] up to $11 billion of the aid will go to the Agriculture Department’s new Farmer Bridge Assistance program, created to support American crop farmers. The remaining $1 billion will go toward aid for commodities that the FBA does not cover. Congress would still need to approve the deal, but lawmakers — especially from agriculture-heavy states — have been clamoring for such a move.
Farmers nationwide have been grappling with low crop prices and challenging tariffs that have pushed many into bankruptcy. As The Washington Post reported in October, about 181 farmers filed for bankruptcy protection in the first half of the year, a 60 percent increase from the previous year and the highest six-month reading since 2020, according to U.S. court records.
Earlier this spring, Trump’s tariffs on China prompted the country to halt purchases of U.S. soybeans. Then, the president offered a $20 billion bailout to Argentina, whose soybean crop sales to China have replaced those from U.S. farmers. Later, Trump announced that the United States would buy beef from Argentina to bring down prices for U.S. consumers, opening a new rift between Trump and cattle ranchers.
Trump’s commitment to helping Argentina and its embattled president, Javier Milei — a political ally — appeared at odds with his “America First” policy platform, raising rare objections from some in his base, even as many say they still trust Trump to act in their best interest. […]
“The decision comes after an appeals court found her appointment to the post was unlawful.”
Former Donald Trump personal attorney Alina Habba said Monday she will no longer serve as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey in the wake of an appeals court ruling that found her appointment was unlawful.
In a statement posted on X, Habba wrote, “as a result of the Third Circuit’s ruling, and to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love, I have decided to step down in my role as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.”
[…] In a separate statement on X, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she was “saddened to accept Alina’s resignation.”
[…] Bondi said the 3d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling had made it “untenable for her to effectively run her office,” and that she was naming her a “senior advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.”
She said that DOJ is appealing the ruling that disqualified Habba from her post, and “we are confident it will be reversed.”
“Alina intends to return to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey if this occurs,” Bondi wrote.
Several immigrants ready to take their citizenship oaths at Boston’s Faneuil Hall this week were told they could not proceed because of their countries of origin.
The same situation is playing out across the country.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has instructed its employees to halt immigration pathways to people from 19 countries deemed high risk, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Somalia.
The naturalization ceremony is the final step to becoming a U.S. citizen, a process that takes years to complete.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu expressed outrage at the situation over the weekend.
“It’s despicable and it is deeply painful to see this happening across the country but to feel it at the cradle of liberty in Boston at Faneuil Hall a place that represents the foundation of this country and the very values that have made our nation who we are,” Wu said
Several people said they received cancellation notices through an online portal but the notices provided no further guidance.
USCIS has said this pause is part of an effort to strengthen its screening processes and keep criminals from entering the U.S. […]
Given the NFL’s enormous cultural footprint and its loyal following in the United States, common sense might suggest that political leaders would want to align themselves with the league, if for no other reason than to side with the American mainstream.
Donald Trump, however, can’t seem to help himself.
Five years ago, Politico highlighted the president’s “decadeslong grudge against the NFL” and the eagerness with which he has incorporated the league into his broader “culture war strategy.”
Five years later, he’s still at it. NBC News reported:
If the NFL wants to improve its relationship with the current administration, there’s a new way to do it.
Change the name of the sport.
President Trump, who got the royal treatment and then some from FIFA at Friday’s World Cup draw, suggested that the world isn’t big enough for two sports with the same name.
Shortly after FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, rewarded Trump with a hastily arranged and entirely unwarranted new “peace” prize, the American president took a moment to comment on the names commonly associated with the sport.
“But when you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it’s again ‘soccer’ in the United States,” the Republican said. “We seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football. But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called — I mean, this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.” [social media post]
For now, let’s put aside what the political world’s reaction might be if a Democratic president announced that he or she wanted to rename American football. […] Instead, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the familiarity of the circumstances.
It was just two months ago when Trump said he was unfamiliar with Bad Bunny, but he nevertheless considered the entertainer’s role as the Super Bowl halftime performer to be “absolutely ridiculous.”
The president quickly added that he dislikes the NFL’s kickoff rule, saying it looks “ridiculous” and “terrible.” (The rule was instituted last year, but Trump continues to complain about it with unnerving frequency.)
What’s more, earlier this summer, Trump used his social media platform to argue that the Washington Commanders should return to their previous, offensive name, adding, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back. … I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.” (This is a stadium that Trump wants to see named after himself.)
For her part, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also recently said, in reference to league officials, “They suck and we’ll win and God will bless us.” […]
A second flight carrying Iranians deported from the United States has left America, Iranian officials said, as Washington reportedly planned to send hundreds of prisoners back to the Islamic Republic.
The deportations come as tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S. after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites during Tehran’s 12-day war with Israel in June. Activists abroad also have expressed concern about deportees returning to Iran, whose theocracy has been cracking down on intellectuals and executing prisoners at a rate unseen in decades.
A report published Monday by the Mizan news agency, the official mouthpiece of the Iran’s judiciary, quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry official Mojtaba Shasti Karimi acknowledging the deportation of 55 Iranians.
“These individuals announced their willingness for return following continuation of anti-immigration and discriminative policy against foreign nationals particularly Iranians by the United States,” Karimi reportedly said.
[…] Based on the U.S. claims, “the Iranians were repatriated because of legal reasons and breach of immigration regulations,” Baghaei said.
[…] The deportations represent a collision of a top priority of President Donald Trump — targeting illegal immigration — against a decades-long practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In September, Iranian officials acknowledged as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under the Trump administration policy. That month, the first such flight arrived in Tehran.
In the lead up to and after the 1979 revolution, a large number of Iranians fled to the U.S. In the decades since, the U.S. had been sensitive in allowing those fleeing from Iran over religious, sexual or political persecution to seek residency. Iran has maintained only those facing criminal charges face prosecution, while others can travel freely. However, Tehran has detained Westerns and others with ties abroad in the past to be exchanged in prisoner swaps.
Iran has criticized Washington for hosting dissidents and others in the past. U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Iran of hiring hitmen to target dissidents as well in America.
when Jesus supposedly first asserted his divinity, uttering the words, “I and the Father are one,” followed by some of the Jews trying to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:22)
What Jesus is saying [is], “I am the authorized bearer of the divine name [YHWH]. I bear God’s authority. I speak on behalf of God. I can even furtively identify with God. And as a walking talking sentient divine image, to see me is to see God.” […] the [Mediterranean] world was steeped in this ontology that images manifest the presence of the deity
[An immigration judge] ordered the release of Bruna Ferreira, 33, from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center […] more than 1,500 miles from where Ferreira was arrested. Bond was set at $1,500, the lowest amount allowed under the law […] [Her attorney] said he didn’t know exactly when Ferreira would be released, as it depended on ICE receiving the judge’s order and her family paying the bond. Then she will return to Massachusetts and her case will be transferred back to Boston immigration court.
Lynna @ # 154 – I worry about the military personnel who (anonymously) protested against the order of their hyperxian C.O.
Though there may well be multiple commanding officers who “… made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable “wokeness” which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military.” and whose base “[t]he next day [had] four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.”, who had one (or more) Jewish troops ask him about a little menorah (with a wife, also a Jewish active-duty military person, “starting a family”), and who (the C.O.) has a really poor understanding of Middle Eastern history, it would seem likely that would provide enough information for said C.O. to identify MRFF’s complainant.
Or maybe there are lots of personnel who might fit that profile – and their C.O.s will punish all of them. MRFF really should work more discreetly.
I’m looking for book recommendations for modern cosmic horror. I’ve tried reading classics, but I don’t have the cultural background to get any thrills out of it. Now, it may be it’s just not the sub-genre for me. Before I give up on it, though, does anyone have any faves that aren’t based in terror that:
– the fall of Empire means the end of all order
– brown and/or emotionally expressive people can have power
– non-Christian religions are as legit as Christianity
– women have sexual agency
– queer people exist
– pleasure can go unpunished
– the universe is too big and complex to fit in the British Museum
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has, within the past week, scrubbed a large amount of climate change content from its official website […] Information has either been removed completely or “adjusted” to emphasize natural causes. […] previously extensive “indicators of climate change” pages have been scrubbed entirely.
[…]
To be clear: the new, near-exclusive emphasis on natural causes of climate change on the U.S. EPA’s website is now completely out of synch with all available evidence demonstrating overwhelming human influence on contemporary warming trends.
This is absolutely awful. This was one of the best resources for climate indicators data, and my go-to share for help answering public questions. Luckily I captured some of them on my new U.S. climate page a few months ago.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and senior European leaders presented a unified image Monday after President Donald Trump appeared to criticize the Ukrainian leader amid pressure for Kyiv to accept painful concessions to end the war with Russia.
Flanked by the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom at the British Prime Minister’s Office on Downing Street in London, Zelenskyy said unity between Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe was paramount.
The Supreme Court held a crucial hearing Monday on whether presidents have the power to fire heads of independent federal agencies and whether to overturn a 1935 precedent that has bolstered protections from removal for almost a century. The court’s forthcoming ruling in Trump v. Slaughter carries dramatic implications for the modern workings of government, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Monday that the administration wants to ‘destroy.’
Thailand’s military on Monday launched airstrikes on targets across its disputed border with Cambodia, shattering a volatile cease-fire agreement between the two Southeast Asian countries brokered by President Trump. Thai officials said they acted after soldiers stationed near the border came under fire from Cambodian troops on Sunday and Monday morning. Cambodian officials, meanwhile, blamed the Thai military for restarting the fighting.
That is on Trump’s list of wars he supposedly ended.
Three federal judges who rescinded their decisions to retire from active service on the bench after President Donald Trump was elected, thus depriving him of vacancies he could fill, did not violate judicial ethics rules, a chief federal appellate judge has concluded.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services quietly altered the official portrait of Admiral Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person confirmed to a four-star federal position, replacing her legal name with her deadname and digitalizing her picture. The portrait, which had hung alongside previous Public Health Service leaders, had been a visible symbol of historic representation in federal leadership.
On Sunday night, as Donald Trump prepared to host the Kennedy Center Honors, a reporter asked whether Netflix should be allowed to buy Warner Bros., as part of a deal that was announced last week. The president hedged on answering directly, though he said, “I’ll be involved in that decision.” [video]
It didn’t take long for Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to hit on a key problem. Highlighting the president’s comments, the senator asked, “Is that an open [invitation] for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”
Indeed, if recent history is any guide, the president might very well ask for a governmental stake in the merged company as part of the process.
Warren’s point, however, is an important one: There’s no reason for the president to be directly “involved” in the process, especially given the broader context: As MS NOW reported, Paramount is launching a hostile bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the nations of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are helping to finance the deal.
What’s more, CNBC reported that Larry Ellison, the billionaire father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, is close to Trump. Indeed, David Ellison appeared on CNBC and “argued Paramount’s deal will have a shorter regulatory approval process given the company’s smaller size and friendly relationship with the Trump administration.”
On the other hand, The New York Times reported that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has been “personally wooing Trump, including at a recent visit to the White House in which he made the case for Netflix’s bid, according to Bloomberg. Sarandos apparently left that meeting convinced that the White House was on board with his bid.”
Trump soon after confirmed meeting with Sarandos, whom he called “fantastic.”
In case this isn’t obvious, at least in the United States, questions surrounding corporate mergers and acquisitions are not supposed to be answered by executives’ proximity to and relationship with the sitting president. And yet, here we are.
Republicans Try to Remember a World in Which Not All Policy Came From Trump
We’re seeing a phenomenon play out right now that has cropped up repeatedly during both Trump terms.
At the heart of the phenomenon is this: in almost all areas of governance, the Republican Party stands for Trump. Nothing more, nothing less. Members of Congress have accepted this rebranding, or left government entirely. Occasionally, Republicans in Congress muster the ability to buck the president’s demands, but that is a rarity. […]
This creates an issue whenever an urgent need for a new policy proposal arises, and we’re seeing that on multiple fronts right now. First, Republicans in Congress have spent months flailing, trying to figure out a policy to coalesce behind to deal with increasing Obamacare premiums. This problem was not a surprise. It had loomed ever since the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, extended enhanced premium tax credits through the end of 2025. Democrats shut down the government for a month and a half, demanding a solution to the looming health care price hikes. It’s not the kind of thing GOP health care policy wonks could miss […] Reporting indicates that congressional Republicans have this week finally decided to thrust forth a deeply uninspired policy — or perhaps a set of them. It’s still unclear they’ll have the votes to pass anything.
[I snipped the discussion about Republicans not being able to move forward on “affordability,” and on Trump’s shifting, contradictory statements.]
[…] there’s Trump himself. What he wants, he usually gets. Then there’s the billionaires — increasingly, Silicon Valley billionaires — who get to splatter their pet policies and authoritarian proclivities throughout administration documents and orders, even when it cuts against Trump’s populist image […] Then there is the furious and conspiratorial base, who must be tended by servicing what Josh Marshall has called the nonsense debt. This servicing, in Trump II, has taken a new, violent turn, with widespread attacks on immigrants and a clampdown on dissent. Policy documents like Project 2025 channel and interweave each of the threads that make up Trump-era Republican ideology.
Yet it’s only by accident that these objectives sometimes intersect with the needs of governing a country [True!], leaving Republicans in Congress bereft of policies to draw on when confronted with the challenges of any particular moment. […] In 2020, the party didn’t even publish a platform. In 2024, it did: Titled “Make America Great Again!” it promised to bring down prices through slashing government spending, curbing immigration, and opening up more oil and gas drilling — all ideas the administration has put into effect, and all ideas that have done little for the cost of living.
In 2016, writer William Saletan suggested that, for the reasons I’ve just described, the GOP was a “failed state.” It still is — more so now than then. And while there’s some schadenfreude in watching Republican members of Congress attempt, and struggle, to exercise their atrophied policy muscles, there’s little solace in knowing that a failed-state party controls … the actual state.
“The announcement ended what has effectively been a ban on AI chip sales to the world’s second-largest economy and America’s strategic adversary.”
[…] Trump said Monday that he has informed Chinese President Xi Jinping that “the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China.”
Nvidia’s H200 is a generation behind its latest Blackwell chip, which is considered among the most advanced and high-powered AI chips available anywhere.
Trump said the Blackwell chip would not be part of the deal.
Still, the move could be worth billions of dollars for Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company. Nvidia says it has more than $500 billion worth of orders for its best artificial intelligence chips to fulfill this year and next — and that’s before any buyers in China are factored in.
Trump said he will also allow Intel, AMD “and other great American companies” to sell similar chips to customers in China. “The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details,” he said.
Monday’s announcement would end what was effectively a ban on sales of AI chips from U.S. companies to China.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the U.S. government would take a 25% cut of sales of the approved chips, up from a previously announced 15%. [WTF!?]
However, it remains to be seen whether China will allow imports of the chips. After the U.S. said it would allow an even older generation of Nvidia chip, known as the H20, to be sold in China, Xi’s government essentially said it did not want them.
In his social media post, Trump said: “President Xi responded positively!”
Nvidia said in a statement, “We applaud President Trump’s decision to allow America’s chip industry to compete to support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America.”
[…] For months, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been lobbying the White House to permit Nvidia to sell some chips to customers in China.
But Trump’s approval does not mean the issue is a done deal in Washington.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress has expressed serious concerns about allowing Chinese customers to buy American AI chips.
[…] Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said in a statement last week that “denying Beijing access to these AI chips is essential to our national security.”
Democrats have also expressed concerns. Ricketts joined Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware to introduce a “Safe Chips Act.”
[…] Export controls on China would be eased just as relations between Washington and Beijing are thawing.
China recently started accelerating its purchases of American soybeans, and it gave the green light to exports of many rare earth minerals to American buyers.
Speaking at a White House event with farmers earlier Monday, Trump said he believed China might buy even more soybeans than it had originally agreed to. [That’s probably trumpian bullshit.]
Within minutes after Trump’s post, Nvidia shares rose nearly 3% in after-hours trading.
A federal judge ordered the government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk’s SEVIS student record after it was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for exercising her freedom of speech. This allows her to fully engage with the opportunities of her PhD program.
Back in March, a surveillance camera witnessed six thugs in hoodies and masks abduct her on the sidewalk into an unmarked vehicle. All because a doxxing website flagged her for writing an op-ed in a school newspaper urging the university to heed resolutions passed by the student senate: a call to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and divest from Israel.
Communications between Earth and NASA spacecraft were critically vulnerable to hacking for years until an AI found the flaw and fixed it in just four days.
The vulnerability was sniffed out by an AI cybersecurity algorithm developed by California-based start-up AISLE and resides in the CryptoLib security software that protects spacecraft-to-ground communications. The vulnerability could have enabled hackers to seize control over countless space missions including NASA’s Mars rovers, according to the cybersecurity researchers.
the CryptoLib vulnerability would require the attackers to, at some point, have local access to the system
Faint praise for the AI. From the blog post:
The vulnerable function, initialize_kerberos_keytab_file_login(), built a kinit command string from configuration values and executed it via system(). Shell metacharacters in username or keytab_file_path turned configuration into code
Building commandline strings and passing them to a shell process to interpret and execute is bad. And redundant: devs were already coding C, which can execute intended binaries directly. System() is warned about in general for exactly this reason, and though the blog blames the project’s complexity spanning lots of files, that call alone should have been nagged about by humans and static analysis tools.
Devs neglected to sanitize inputs. In this case, a config file could in principle be edited (by someone who already had access) to put commandline stuff where a username was expected. Why anticipate someone might do that? Assume users are malicious or fools, and—in spite of them—try to write code that operates as intended or fails gracefully.
Bobby tables strikes again (different attack, same principle).
Trump suffers frequent failures as Americans push back at every turn. Rachel Maddow looks at a variety of legal tactics and pressure campaigns that are having success against the Trump administration’s overreach in immigration enforcement and the Justice Department’s vendetta prosecutions. Where people push back, Trump loses, or sometimes doesn’t even try to fight, and the more Americans learn that lesson, the stronger the opposition Trump faces.
Maddow: Trump risks shattering U.S. as states seek alternative to decimated federal health expertise. Rachel Maddow explains that as Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gives increasing credence and authority to crackpots, the authority and reputation of American medical expertise is suffering such extreme degradation that science-minded state officials are establishing new fact-based health alliances to advise the public on matters like vaccinations. Former CDC chief Dr. Richard Besser joins to discuss the crisis at the CDC under Trump and Kennedy.
U.S. administration’s foreign policy document roils Berlin.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that parts of the U.S. administration’s new National Security Strategy are terrible from Europe’s point of view.
“Some of it is comprehensible, some of it is understandable. Some of it is unacceptable to us from a European perspective,” Merz told reporters when asked about the geopolitical strategy and how it would affect the transatlantic relationship.
“I see no need for the Americans to now want to save democracy in Europe. If it would need to be saved, we would manage on our own,” he said.
Trump’s National Security Strategy released last week, announced a realignment of the geopolitical order while claiming that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” triggered by excess migration from Muslim-majority and non-European countries.
In the document, the U.S administration also appears to hint it could help ideologically allied European parties, saying “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
[…] “In my discussions with Americans, I say: ‘America first’ is fine, but ‘America alone’ cannot be in your interest,” Merz said. “You also need partners in the world. One of those partners could be Europe. And if you can’t get on board with Europe, then at least make Germany your partner.”
Merz also said Trump had accepted an invitation to Germany in the coming year.
[…] Trump kept up his crusade against countries with large Black populations, attacking migration from Congo and Somalia in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday.
Trump was asked by interviewer Dasha Burns to respond to criticism of his recently released National Security Strategy, particularly to his expressed opposition to nonwhite migration to European countries. [video]
“Europe, they’re coming in from all parts of the world. Not just the Middle East, they’re coming in from the Congo, tremendous numbers of people coming from the Congo,” Trump said. He added, “Even worse, they’re coming from prisons of the Congo and many other countries.”
Later on in the interview Trump attacked Somalian migration to the United States.
“I want to see people that contribute. I don’t want to see Somalia.”
In recent days Trump has repeatedly smeared Somali immigrants as part of his most recent racist obsession. Speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday he said, “It’s not even a nation. It’s just a—people walking around killing each other.”
Days before he also referenced Somalia and said, “Their country stinks, and I don’t want them in our country.”
Trump’s remarks and his decision to target Minneapolis with his latest federal immigration operation has created a state of fear among the Somali immigrant community.
Somali migrants have been a vital addition to Minnesota and other states following the decision to leave their home nation in the fallout from Somalia’s brutal civil war.
“They’re afraid to go out to the grocery store, they’re afraid to send their kids to school,” Minnesota State Rep. Samakab Hussein, a Somali American, told Newsweek.
Trump has integrated racism throughout his presidency, from domestic policy initiatives to foreign policy priorities. His latest comments show he has no intention of retreating and stands by his open bigotry.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to blame the Biden administration for the fact that China stopped buying soybeans from the United States in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Newsmax Tuesday, where she falsely claimed that President Donald Trump had a successful record of getting China to buy soybeans. [video]
Leavitt: Another huge win for our farmers following his successful meeting with President Xi in South Korea, where President Trump convinced President Xi to continue purchasing or begin purchasing again American soybeans, which is something China wasn’t doing under the last administration because they had no respect for our President Biden or for the country at the time.
But now they know President Trump is not messing around. He’s going to stand up for American farmers and American families, and so those purchases have begun from China, and American soybeans are being exported from the United States as we speak because of President Trump. He promised the farmers he would be there for them. He is delivering on that promise.
Posted by readers of the article:
Unfortunately, the statements get repeated on local news as fact with no context. I saw tfg’s soybean lie just last night on our local NBC affiliate.
—————————
Reporters aren’t there for punching back. [Some reporters were denied access to the White House press conferences. Many rightwing doofus were invited to press conferences.]
——————————
The 12 million tons of soybeans China promised to buy under Trump are less than half of the 30 million tons of soybeans China bought under Joe. China’s Latest Soybean Purchase Agreement Falls Short of Replacing Lost U.S. Exports
JMsays
Legal AF: Trump DOJ Makes SHOCK ADMISSION in DEVASTATING FILING
It looks like the DOJ will try to revive the Comey indictment. There is an option that lets the prosecution fix an indictment tossed on technical grounds and continue the case past the statue of limitations. This shouldn’t work in this case because the grounds for rejecting it were serious.
Even if it does get reactivated Comey has additional grounds to get the case dismissed again because they didn’t get reviewed the first time. The case was dismissed at step zero and nothing after that considered. So most of the issues raised with the original case never got resolved.
I suspect that winning this case isn’t the point though. The point is that Trump wants to punish Comey. For this dragging Comey through court for years suits their purpose even if the DOJ lawyers know the case can’t be won in the end.
birgerjohanssonsays
Reese Waters having fun talking about Mike Johnson’s problems.
Somalis? Old-timers like myself may recall the band X Ray Specs (contemporary with Blondie et al) with the singer Poly Styrene.
She was an Irish-Scottish-Somali artist.
Jesse Watters, Fox News host, discusses watching videos of Pete Hegseth’s strikes on civilian boats in international waters:
This is the most popular foreign policy action of Trump’s second term: killing narco-terrorists. You know what the second one is? Bombing the Iran nuclear program. So, the Democrats are now coming out against the two most popular things Trump’s done abroad this year. Dumb. People love these videos. They hit your feed, they’re like, yes, let’s go. Hit them again, and if you’re against it, you sound like a lawyerly, whiny, effeminate weasel.
Commentary from Wonkette:
[…] As JoeMyGod reminds us about Jesse Watters’s masculine insecurity issues, he thinks a lot of things are “effeminate.” (Gay.) He thinks sucking out of straws is gay. He thinks ice cream cones are gay. He thinks eating soup in public is gay. He thinks crossing your legs is gay. He thinks milkshakes are gay.
He has assured audiences that Stephen Miller is a “high-value” man who is “not overcompensating,” and he knows this firsthand because he knows Stephen Miller. He is the one who first used the term “sexual matador” to describe Stephen Miller […]
And of course, as a Fox News host, Jesse is approximately as equally qualified to talk about military stuff as Secretary [Hegseth] himself, himself a former Fox News host […]. Goodness, the things they have in common! Jesse Watters is a man who once bragged that he swindled his now-wife into agreeing to enter a closed space with him by letting the air out of her tires. Meanwhile one time a woman said Secretary [Hegseth] raped her and he paid her off to shut up.
Just typical MAGA guys!
[…] Brian Kilmeade, who said recently that either you are on the side of the drug dealers or you are for these strikes.
Greg Gutfeld [commented]: “Trump just said to America, I hear you, watch this. The sharks are happy. They just got a big free meal.” Later, he said he was fine with there being two strikes, saying “Maybe it’s going to take two strikes. In bowling, they call it a spare,” and “It’s just better for us to kill them in the ocean, make them shark feed, be done with it.” […]
Megyn Kelly has been really turned on by the graphic nature of the boat murders, saying Trump and [Hegseth] should “make it last a long time, so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little,” and “I’d really like to see them suffer.” […]
Podcast weirdo Dave Rubin has gushed that Secretary [Hegseth] is just “blowing up the boats” instead of dealing with stinky old “paperwork.” […]
But yes, of course, Jesse Watters is the weirdest, will always be the weirdest. […]
11.600 years old:
“NEW Gobekli Tepe Discoveries Confuse Archaeology, Labelled the Largest Megalithic Site On Earth”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/3aZRkztXK5M
birgerjohanssonsays
Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems as if Comey is out of danger.
Meanwhile congressman wossname (guy fistbumping with insurrectionists 2021) is threatening to break with Trump over Obamacare.
And MTG going on 60 minutes to say out loud what many Republicans think will prod some others to openly critizise Trump.
I recall from other tumultous political events that at first nothing happens. Then all of it happens at once, like a ketchup bottle.
Recently, I traveled to one of the greatest cities in this great country, Chicago, for a live event at the amazing Harris Theater, right on the edge of Millennium Park.
There, I got to speak with some of the really impressive, creative, resourceful community leaders, who led the defense of the people of that city when Donald Trump’s masked, violent, undisciplined, pseudo-military immigration agents mounted a weekslong attack on it.
I also got to sit down with the historian Tim Snyder, author of “On Tyranny,” a pocket-size guidebook to resisting authoritarianism — something Chicago has been providing a master class on in this first year of Trump 2.0.
One of the things that really stuck with me from that night was when Snyder told the crowd that he’s less worried about there ultimately being a coast-to-coast, totally autocratic Trump dictatorship than he is that what the president is doing to the country may pressure us and damage us in such a way that the U.S. effectively breaks up.
Because Trump is not just consolidating his power over the government, but he is also simultaneously and deliberately breaking the government. And if the federal government is broken — if he destroys it and Americans lose the data and infrastructure and services it provides — well, people are going to start organizing alternative structures to provide those things.
Take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For decades, the CDC has been the gold standard of science and health data, not just for this country but for the world. That was, until now.
You may have heard that, a few days ago, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked CDC advisory panel voted to roll back the long-standing recommendation to vaccinate babies for hepatitis B, even though universal vaccination is credited with virtually eliminating the virus among newborns in the United States.
Later that day, Kennedy’s CDC panel welcomed a lengthy presentation, 76 slides long, about vaccines — not from a doctor or public health expert, but from the secretary’s personal attorney, who has demanded, among other things, that the government should revoke its approval of the polio vaccine — because who among us is not interested in bringing polio back at scale in the U.S.
It’s clear things are weird at the CDC under Trump. And the closer you look, the worse it gets.
The Trump administration has quietly appointed as second-in-command at the CDC a former Louisiana health official [Dr. Ralph Abraham, the head of Louisiana’s health department] who halted that state’s vaccination campaigns and promoted quack cures for Covid-19.
This is what has become of the global gold-standard health organization that our country spent decades building.
So what do we do about this, as Americans, as a country, when the authoritative source our doctors turn to for the best scientific guidance on how to keep us healthy can no longer be trusted?
Turns out, there’s a plan: A few months ago, groups of states in the West and the Northeast formed their own health alliances to provide their residents with guidance about vaccines, based on the best scientific evidence.
After the advisory panel’s hepatitis B vote, these new health alliances rejected the CDC’s advice and told doctors and patients in their states to continue vaccinating at birth.
Just last week in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill ordering his state’s health department to establish vaccine guidelines for its residents, to make vaccines more available to Illinois children, and to require insurance companies to cover them.
After that vote, a former CDC chief, Dr. Richard Besser, said in a statement that if the agency he once ran continues in its current direction, “the health consequences will be devastating. More babies and young children will suffer from severe preventable illness, and some will die.”
“Those of us who care about children’s health cannot allow this to happen,” he continued. “Policymakers, physicians, and families must turn to reputable medical and public health groups for guidance, and health insurers should do the same for informing what vaccines they will cover.”
The word “reputable” is important there. Right now, “reputable” means not affiliated with the increasingly bizarre U.S. federal government.
If states and health institutions, and even insurance companies, start turning away from the federal government to create their own health infrastructure across the country, by necessity, that is a very different kind of country than the one we have been living in.
“Two White House cronies will get to figure it out who falls under the umbrella of Trump’s 2020 election pardons.”
About a month ago, amid a flurry of bizarre and controversial pardons, Donald Trump announced a clemency decision that appeared to be especially important to him on a personal level: The president pardoned a large group of people who were involved in his effort to overturn the results of his 2020 presidential election defeat.
The list of beneficiaries read like a who’s who of figures from the Republican’s post-defeat inner circle: Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, et al.
As a practical matter, the pardons were largely symbolic: Of the named beneficiaries, none were facing federal criminal charges related to the 2020 scheme. But what about the unnamed beneficiaries? Politico reported late last week that Trump “stretched the boundaries of the pardon power in unprecedented ways.” From the report:
The pardon’s language is so vague and limitless that it could apply to thousands of people. And now Trump’s Justice Department says it’s up to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Ed Martin to decide who, and which possible crimes, Trump actually meant to cover.
There’s no modern precedent — and maybe no historical precedent, either — for a president to delegate his pardon power to subordinates on a pardon this vaguely worded.
This might seem counterintuitive. When Americans think about presidential pardons and their merits, they tend to think of specific individuals who receive clemency from the White House.
But the incumbent president’s 2020 elections pardon was remarkably broad, applying to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities in, or advocacy for or of any slate of presidential electors … in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election.” [Wow. That is “vague and limitless.”]
Who falls under this umbrella? Therein lies the point. No one seems to know for sure, though it will apparently fall to two sycophantic Trump supporters — the attorney general and the hyper-partisan U.S. pardon attorney — to figure it out. […]
Time will what becomes of these efforts, but it’s hard not to notice the irony of the circumstances. Trump has spent so much of the past year not only condemning Joe Biden on a personal level, but also specifically taking aim at the Democratic president’s pardons. To hear the Republican incumbent tell it, Biden was little more than an “autopen” president, pardoning people without knowing who would benefit from his clemency.
[…] many Republicans, including the incumbent president, have argued that their conspiracy theories about Biden should necessarily invalidate the Democrat’s pardons.
And yet, Trump himself has now signed a pardon so broad that — you guessed it — he may have pardoned people without even knowing who specifically would benefit from that clemency. He’s leaving it to the people around him to make the real decisions, seemingly indifferent to the hypocrisy.
“After resigning as an interim U.S. attorney, Habba will serve as Pam Bondi’s senior advisor on federal prosecutors nationwide. That’s not a good idea.”
Alina Habba’s tenure as an interim U.S. attorney was, by any fair measure, a multifaceted disaster. It also wasn’t altogether legal.
As my MS NOW colleague Jordan Rubin explained, a federal appellate panel ruled last week that a district court was correct to disqualify Habba as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. This week, Donald Trump’s former lawyer took the next logical step and resigned from the post she never should’ve held in the first place.
But as part of her announcement, the Republican lawyer also let the public know about her next gig. From Habba’s written statement:
My fight will now stretch across the country. As we wait for further review of the court’s ruling, I will continue to serve the Department of Justice as the Senior Advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.
Around the same time, Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed in a statement that Habba will be “continuing with the Justice Department” as Bondi’s senior advisor on federal prosecutors nationwide.
It’s possible that this is a meaningless consolation prize, and that Habba will have few meaningful responsibilities beyond her frequent appearances in conservative media.
But if this is going to be a real job, it’s a curious choice.
Even for a president who likes to reward his former lawyers with powerful legal positions, Trump’s decision earlier this year to make Habba a federal prosecutor was bizarre. Not only did she have no experience as a prosecutor, but Habba is also perhaps best known for helping file a bizarre lawsuit targeting Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats in 2022, which proved so ridiculous that a judge imposed harsh sanctions on Habba for bringing “political grievances masquerading as legal claims” to court.
Now, after her brief and embarrassing tenure as an interim U.S. attorney, Alina Habba is slated to advise the attorney general on other lawyers who might hold the job she wasn’t qualified to have, that she did poorly, and perhaps most importantly, that she wasn’t legally permitted to perform. What could go wrong?
As a presidential candidate last year, Donald Trump realized that consumer costs were a priority for voters, so hen said what he thought would get him elected: If returned to the White House, he’d quickly lower costs.
A year ago this week, however, Time magazine published a report on a lengthy interview it did with the then-president-elect, in which he seemed to realize he’d struggle to deliver on this misguided promise. “I’d like to bring them down,” Trump said, referring to grocery prices. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
A year later, amid rising prices and widespread public discontent over his many economic failures, the president has some choices. He could repeat the line he delivered to Time magazine during his transition and tell the public that it’s “very hard” to lower consumer costs […] He could also ask for Americans’ patience and argue that conditions will improve in the coming months and years.
But Trump prefers a different course: He’s decided that gaslighting is the way to go. [video]
In a newly published interview with Politico, Trump boasted, “Prices are all coming down,” adding, “Now everything is coming down.”
A day earlier, at a White House event, the president pushed the same line, insisting that consumer prices “are way down.”
This rhetoric dovetailed with Trump’s recent claims that Americans’ concerns about affordability are a “Democrat [sic] hoax,” a “con job by the Democrats” and a “Democrat [sic] scam.”
That the president is the nation’s most prolific liar is nothing new, but there’s a qualitative difference between regular ol’ lying and self-defeating lying. Often, when Trump peddles nonsense, the American mainstream isn’t immediately sure what to believe, and it falls to media fact-checkers to offer the public guidance on what’s true and what’s not.
But when the president tells Americans that prices on “everything” are “coming down,” no one needs a fact-checker; they just need a wallet.
The more Trump plays make-believe, the more he appears hopelessly out of touch. If he and his team want to know why Trump’s public support has fallen to embarrassing depths, they can start by coming to terms with his failure on affordability. […] brazenly lying about Americans’ own life experiences does more harm than good.
FBI Director Kash Patel’s tenure has been a national embarrassment in a great many ways, but among the most jarring developments this year is the sheer volume of bureau personnel who’ve been purged for political reasons, leaving the FBI destabilized.
[…] That was in August. Things are worse now.
For those concerned with justice and the integrity of federal law enforcement, that’s the bad news. The good news is that many of those who’ve been peremptorily fired are fighting back in court. NPR reported, for example, that 12 FBI agents who were fired this year for taking a knee during racial justice protests in 2020 are now suing Patel and the bureau, alleging unlawful retaliation.
According to the former agents’ court filing, they were backed against a wall in the middle of a protest and took a knee to de-escalate a situation that threatened to escalate. From the report:
The former special agents — who together have nearly 200 years of experience — once received awards for helping disrupt mass shootings, expose foreign spies and thwart cyber attacks.
But they say as elite federal law enforcement agents, they never received training on crowd control, nor did they have riot shields, gas masks, or helmets when they faced down volatile crowds in the streets of Washington, D.C., in June 2020.
The Justice Department inspector general reviewed the incident in 2024 and found no misconduct. Similarly, according to the agents’ version of events, then-FBI Director Chris Wray said they did the right thing under difficult circumstances, and then-FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich told the agents they wouldn’t be punished. [!]
But after Donald Trump returned to the White House, those who took a knee were fired anyway, with Patel accusing them in their dismissal letters of “unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government.” [!]
Commenting on the absurdity of these agents’ ouster, their lawyer told The New York Times, “The country is less safe than it was before these FBI agents were fired en masse.” She added that the abrupt dismissals violated the bureau’s own internal rules, which protect not only the agents, but also the country by “ensuring that people who are highly trained and effective are employed at the FBI.”
Time will tell what may come of the civil litigation, but it’s worth emphasizing for context that they’re not the only ousted FBI personnel who’ve turned to the courts to put things right.
The Associated Press reported last month:
A veteran FBI employee training to become a special agent was fired last month for displaying at his workspace an LGBTQ+ flag, which had previously flown outside a field office, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
David Maltinsky had worked at the FBI for 16 years and was nearly finished with special agent training in Quantico, Virginia, when he was called into a meeting last month with FBI officials, given a letter from Director Kash Patel and told he was being ‘summarily dismissed’ over the inappropriate display of political signage, Maltinsky’s lawsuit said.
What’s more, in August, Patel and his team ousted three experienced bureau leaders, including Brian Driscoll, a widely respected figure among rank-and-file agents who was removed after he helped prevent a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on Jan. 6 cases. [!]
A month later, MS NOW reported on their federal lawsuit, which alleged that Patel “knowingly broke the law when he fired senior FBI executives at the behest of the White House and under pressure from Trump allies.” [!]
These cases are now starting to advance through the legal process, and it’s too soon to speculate about their possible outcomes. But they clearly pose legal and political problems for Patel and the administration.
One of the things I occasionally get paid to do by companies/execs is to tell them why everything seemed to SUDDENLY go wrong […] time for a thread about the Trust Thermocline. So: what’s a thermocline?
Well large bodies of water are made of layers of differing temperatures. Like a layer cake. The top bit is where all the the waves happen and has a gradually decreasing temperature. Then SUDDENLY there’s a point where it gets super-cold.
[…]
I ask [companies] if they’d been increasing prices. Changed service offerings. Modified the product. The answer is normally: “yes, but not much. And everyone still paid.”
Then I ask if they did that the year before. Did they increase prices last year? […] The answer is normally: “yes, but not much. And everyone still paid.” “And the year before?” […] Well, you get the idea.
[…]
too many people see service use as always following an arc. They think that as long as usage is ticking up, they can do what they like to cost and product.
And (critically) that they can just react when the curve flattens. But with a lot of CONTENT products (inc social media) that’s not actually how it works. Because it doesn’t account for sunk-cost lock-in.
Users and readers will stick to what they know, and use, well beyond the point where they START to lose trust in it. And you won’t see that. But they’ll only MOVE when they hit the Trust Thermocline. The point where their lack of trust in the product to meet their needs, and the emotional investment they’d made in it, have finally been outweighed by the physical and emotional effort required to abandon it.
At this point, I normally get asked something like: “So if we undo the last few changes and drop the price, we get them back?”
And then I have to break the news that nope: that’s not how it works. […] You can’t make them trust you again. Classic examples of this behaviour are digital subscription services, where the product gets squeezed over time, or print magazines […] that constantly ramp up their prices a little bit each year until it’s too late.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg keeps trying to do his job, and the Trump administration keeps trying to stop him.
Boasberg, of course, is the judge who ordered the administration to turn two planeloads full of deportees bound for a notorious prison in El Salvador around, an order the administration just straight-up ignored. Since then, Boasberg has been tireless in his efforts to determine precisely what led up to those flights on March 15 and to hold the administration accountable for defying his order.
For nearly nine months, we’ve all watched the administration engage in what can only be described as an escalating series of “Screw you, make me” behaviors.
First, of course, was what actually happened on March 15 itself. Boasberg ordered the administration to turn the planes already in the air around, but they didn’t. […]
After fired Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni came forward as a whistleblower, we learned that DOJ attorney Drew Ensign was lying when he told Boasberg he didn’t know if any planes were leaving that weekend. It turns out Reuveni was at the same meeting as Ensign when they were told that planes would take off no matter what. [!] […]
Reuveni also revealed that then-senior DOJ official Emil Bove, a onetime criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump and now the proud owner of a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as thanks for his service, said the DOJ would need to consider telling the courts “Fuck you” and ignore court orders. That’s a literal “Screw you, make me.”
In the face of all these middle fingers, Boasberg has been trying to conduct contempt proceedings on the matter since April. After a long stallout where the District of Columbia Court of Appeals just sat on it, it’s finally in motion again. [Good news]
Boasberg recently ordered the Trump administration to produce declarations and testimony as to exactly who decided to defy his order and continue the deportations. What was produced was, of course, screw you, make me.
After months of wrangling on this, administration officials have taken a new tack, now saying that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was personally responsible for ignoring his court order. So she submitted a cutesy little two-paragraph declaration that said that she made the decision to “continue to transfer the custody” of the deportees and that she did so after receiving privileged legal advice from DOJ lawyers.
The only other declarations were from those DOJ lawyers, including another former Trump criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, all of which basically just say, “We gave privileged legal advice” and nothing more. Bove even descended from his perch to file a declaration saying he too was just chock-full of privileged advice that he gave to Blanche, who apparently then gave it to Noem.
These aren’t confessions, nor are they attempts to comply with Boasberg’s order. They are taunts that amount to “Screw you, make me.” The administration isn’t going to produce Noem to testify no matter what, and by wrapping her meager declaration in the doctrine of receiving privileged advice, they’re telling the court that they aren’t intending to ever reveal what happened. [!]
These declarations are also the exact opposite of what the administration has argued previously. First, it was that they didn’t think the order to turn the planes around was a court order because it was verbal. Then, it was that the court didn’t have jurisdiction because the planes were in international airspace. So hundreds of men, most of whom had no criminal record, were sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT detention center, court orders be damned.
Now, the administration is essentially saying that yes, it absolutely violated a court order and that decision was made at the highest level and is therefore privileged, and we’re not telling you anything else. Screw you, make me.
Boasberg, nonetheless, is going to keep trying. He’s ordered Ensign to testify in a contempt hearing on Dec. 16, and Boasberg is no dummy here. Ensign was not one of the people who allegedly advised Noem with all that privileged legal advice, but instead was before the court on March 15.
The judge also used his order to get in a well-founded and well-deserved jab at Noem and the game being played here.
“As this declaration does not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order, the Court cannot at this juncture find probable cause that her actions constituted criminal contempt,” he wrote
And gosh, since he can’t determine that and wouldn’t want to be hasty in declaring the Homeland Security chief in criminal contempt, he has no choice but to hear witness testimony from Ensign and Reuveni about it. [smiles]
[…] these are clearly people who have no problem lying under oath, so the demand for declarations and testimony doesn’t worry them. Second, any criminal contempt [the judge] could ever impose could just be wiped away by Trump or by a friendly Supreme Court.
But Boasberg is undaunted, bloodied but unbowed, and his tireless dedication in the face of all of that defiance is nothing less than admirable.
Posted by readers of the article:
Not mentioned here, but giving your client advice to commit a crime is itself a crime, and not protected by Privilege during an investigation of said crime. Mob lawyers know quite well to never actually advise anyone to commit a crime, let’s see if these lawyers are smart enough to have avoided that distinction.
————————
While I commend the judge for not letting them just spout bullshit. The lawbreaking won’t stop until he starts holding people in contempt and making them spend nights inside a cell.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia appeared on CNN Tuesday, where she was asked about the consequences of having President Donald Trump as an enemy. [video]
Greene: As a Christian, I’m not angry at the president. It’s easy for me to say a prayer for him and forgive him. But the part that I have had a very hard time with is the fact that he called me a traitor and, because of his words, that brought serious threats against myself and my family. We had a pipe bomb threat on my home, a pipe bomb threat on my family construction company and staff […]
But the serious one was the direct death threats on my son, and I think that goes beyond anyone’s arguments or disagreements or politics. All of our children and our family’s safety should matter to anyone, no matter if they’re mad at us or disagree with us. […]
“Jasmine, Jasmine Crockett, Queen Of The Wild Senate Frontier?”
The bad news: The Supreme Court let stand Texas’s [gerrymandering] out Democratic seats, because Texas is doing it for political reasons, not racial ones.[bullshit] And Collin Allred announced Monday that he’s dropping his bid for the Democratic nomination for US Senate. The better news, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is running to take the seat of Republican Senator / fossil John Cornyn!
She faces a March 3 primary against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a former teacher. […] [video]
[…] Crockett’s masterful opening ad is nothing but Donald Trump ranting about new star Jasmine CAHCKETT, one of the leaders of the party who’s gonna bring ‘em back, and a low-IQ person, man oh man! [video]
[…] How Trump hates a Black lady lawyer, ever since Fani Willis got him indicted and mug-shotted down in Fulton County, and Letitia James had him, his two sons, and their accountant declared frauds and con men before all the land. He’s surely wearing out the pages of his 1933 Children’s Dictionary of Racist and Sexist Epithets thumbing through for one that rhymes with Crockett.
Anyhoo, she kicked off her announcement with the ad and some Kendrick Lamar. [video]
Quick summary: After some uplifting words about Barack Obama, she gets right to business. If Texas is as red as Republicans keep saying it is, why are they so hard pressed right now? Probably because dollars can’t literally vote (yet), and she won her House seat after being outspent five to one [!]. The last time Texas elected a Democrat to the Senate, Crockett was seven years old (!) and Cornyn was 36. He was elected when she was three, and collects three pensions, paging DOGE! […] If Mississippi and Georgia can flip seats, why can’t she? Texas is 61 percent people of color. […].
And shit is expensive now. “While Americans had to decide between paying the car note or paying the mortgage, Trump’s toughest choice was between Chantilly Lace or Alabaster for his billionaire ballroom.” OUCH, TRUE.
If he and those billionaires see her as a threat, it’s because SHE IS.
And then she went on CNN to say who better to run than her, because the President and Governor cannot keep her name out of their mouths. She rouses to the polls the last kinds of voters Republicans want. [video]
She is excellent at making a viral clip, a necessity these days. She first came to our attention around September 2023, when House idiots were trying to impeach Joe Biden over loving his son too much, and she brought up OUR NATIONAL SECRETS IN TRUMP’S SHITTER instead. [video]
And then last May, in a House hearing that was supposed to be about Hunter Biden’s dong, she took the opportunity to confront Project 2025 contributing author Gene Hamilton on his part of his fascist tome where he wrote that when Trump becomes president they hope to eliminate the Department of Education, deploy the military to shoot protestors, and replace federal employees with “loyalists.” Back when not many people were talking about all that! And now it is reality, sigh. Can’t say she didn’t warn everybody! [video]
And who could forget the House hearing last year that was supposed to be about attacking Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter but instead turned into a catfight, after Marjorie Taylor Greene snitted to Crockett that her “fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
Crockett queried back, “I’m just curious […] if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” [video]
Catchy! Body-shamey in a way of which we cannot approve, but catchy! [Remix video]
That was how it started, and how it’s gone is Marjorie Taylor Greene retiring off to whatever pastures, after making her final stand on the Epstein Files, of all things. And Crockett with a not-crazy shot at becoming the contender for a Senate seat. Just like Some People had said Greene wanted, before she got pushed out of Trump’s inner circle […]
In short, in summary, and in rap form: [video]
Can’t wait to see how these midterms go! [Kendrick Lamar video]
to block the map from going into effect and to force a referendum on the map next year […] they submitted more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state’s office, nearly triple the number required […] A provision of the Missouri constitution gives voters a chance to repeal acts of the legislature if organizers can collect enough signatures in a tight timeframe. The vast majority of the measures that have been put up for a referendum have been repealed.
jellyfish can be used as a food stabilizer. […] The most well-known example in the home kitchen is egg yolk, which allows mayonnaise to bind together. In the industrial food sector, stabilizers are even more crucial. Here, ingredients such as starch, pectin, gelatine, and algal stabilizers are used to achieve the right consistency in everything from ketchup to chocolate milk.
[…]
Jellyfish consist of approximately 1% biological material. The rest is water. So, you could say that, evolutionarily speaking, they are perfectly tuned to hold a liquid together. […] They can emulsify, for example, to make mayonnaise, but also to create foams and gelled oils, which is essentially a type of butter. […] [Researchers] used whole jellyfish [and] freeze-dried them into a white powder […] with very minimal processing
Maybe you’ve heard of “2000 Mules,” a 2022 documentary by far right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza based on completely unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election drummed up by True the Vote, an election denier nonprofit where [Gregg Phillips] has long served in leadership. […] Or maybe you remember when Trump tweeted in 2016 with zero evidence that “millions” of people voted illegally in that year’s presidential election? That was based solely on a previous tweet from Phillips, which was also based on no evidence.
[…]
[Phillips will be the] Administrator of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery (ORR). […] zero experience in disaster response […] refers to himself as “a very vocal opponent of FEMA.” On his Wikipedia page you’ll find an entire section labeled “Allegations of grift, ethical misconduct, philandering, nepotism and cronyism.”
[…]
In 2022, Phillips [was] jailed during a trial relating to [his] election fraud conspiracies after being found in contempt of court by a Texas judge. […] The documentary was so riddled with lies and errors that its distributor Salem Media—the Christian and conservative conglomerate that produces The Charlie Kirk Show—halted distribution
About the job
[A FEMA] staffer explained that the head of ORR oversees putting staff and operations in place to immediately help people, search and rescue, operation centers, coordinating the entire federal response, individual assistance (getting money to people for damaged homes and temporary housing or shelter), mass care, public assistance, debris removal, and “everything that gets a community back up and running again.” The head of ORR needs to have extensive federal state and local experience, decades of experience in high-level disasters and an intimate understanding of all programs. “It is the most important job at FEMA after the administrator,”
Commentary
Whilst you and I struggle with imposter syndrome.
Jfc, just when you think we are at the bottom this admin finds a new way to surprise us.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Leo XIV in Rome on Tuesday, as Kyiv said it was preparing to send ‘refined’ proposals to the United States for ending the war with Russia. Less than 24 hours after he reiterated that Ukraine would not cede land to Russia, Zelenskyy met with the pontiff before holding talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a day after he met with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in London.
The U.S. Navy admiral who is retiring early from command of the campaign to destroy vessels allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela spoke to key lawmakers Tuesday as Congress seeks more answers on President Donald Trump’s mission, which, in one instance, killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of an initial strike.
The Honduran attorney general announced on Monday night that he had issued an international arrest warrant for the country’s former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was recently pardoned by President Trump and released from prison in the United States.
The attorney general said he had asked Interpol to detain Juan Orlando Hernández, who was freed from a U.S. prison last week.
A federal judge on Monday struck down President Trump’s halt on approvals of all wind power projects on federal lands and waters, dealing a significant legal setback to the administration’s campaign against wind farms.
“Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González, NBC News projects.”
Related video at the link.
Democrat Eileen Higgins has won the Miami mayor’s race, NBC News projects, giving the party control of the office for the first time in almost three decades in another victory for Democrats ahead of next year’s pivotal midterm elections.
Higgins, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner, won 59% of the vote to 41% for Republican Emilio González, a businessman and former city manager who was endorsed by President Donald Trump. González conceded Tuesday night, his campaign confirmed.
“Tonight, the people of Miami made history. Together, we turned the page on years of chaos and corruption and opened the door to a new era for our city — one defined by ethical, accountable leadership that delivers real results for the people,” Higgins said in a statement Tuesday night.
While the Miami mayor’s race is technically nonpartisan, the Republican-affiliated candidate has won every election since 2008, and an independent candidate won before then, locking Democrats out of the office since their last win in 1997. […]
[…] Higgins leaned on her role on the county commission to frame herself as focused on quality-of-life issues like affordable housing, infrastructure and streamlining city processes in a way she said would help save the city, and residents, money. […]
I am getting worried about you!
😟
There is a hiatus of five hours since the last post. Either the dominance of sad political news have scared away people from the thread, or the epidemics JFK Jr is spreading has done a Netanyahu on you.
birgerjohanssonsays
HuffPost:
“Trump Now Happy To Openly Disparage ‘S**thole Countries'”
Jasmine Crockett lights up Texas Senate race: Texas wants “a fighter.” Rep. Jasmine Crockett is running for Senate in Texas: “People that are tough and are fighters—that is what they’re looking for, and that’s what it is that I have to offer.”
JD Vance’s Supreme Court showdown could upend midterm campaign finance rules. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments to knock out the last remaining campaign finance regulations in the country—in a case brought by JD Vance. Renowned civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill joins to discuss.
“More billionaire money in politics.”
Video is 9:07 minutes.
“In 2018 [Trump] denied using the racist language. In 2025, he seems to take a degree of pride in using the phrase.”
Related video at the link.
Around this time eight years ago, Donald Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, sparking an immediate controversy. The incident, which happened behind closed doors, was a timely reminder of the president’s racism and its influence on his international perspective.
Eight years later, the Republican’s private racism has become his public racism. The New York Times reported on Trump’s Tuesday night speech in Pennsylvania:
Soon after, a member of the crowd yelled out a crude term that Mr. Trump used during his first administration to disparage Haiti and some nations in Africa. The president laughed.
‘I didn’t say ‘shithole,’ you did!’ Mr. Trump replied with a grin. He then recounted his use of the term at a White House meeting in 2018 to describe countries that he was balking at accepting immigrants from.
After the 2018 incident, Trump and his team insisted that he never actually used the term, despite the claims from those who heard him say it.
On Tuesday night, however, he dropped the pretense.
Describing the 2018 White House meeting, the president told rally attendees, “We want to be honest, because our country was going to hell, and we had a meeting and I say, ‘Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden — just a few — let us have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people, do you mind?” [video]
The message wasn’t exactly subtle: Trump is fine with immigration, so long as it’s white people coming to American soil.
But as important (and contemptible) as the president’s racism is, let’s also not lose sight of the broader political shift: In 2018, Trump didn’t want to be seen as a bigot, so he strenuously denied using the phrase that a room full of people heard him say.
In 2025, Trump seems to take a degree of pride in using the term at a campaign-style address.
His remarks came a week after he referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage.” A New York Times report described it “an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration,” adding that the president’s condemnation “was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry.”
A week later, the brazenness of Trump’s racism was apparent once more.
“The president expects Americans to make sacrifices but doesn’t appear willing to make any sacrifices of his own.”
Related video at the link.
Donald Trump has spent months struggling with a brutal dynamic: The more the president fails to deliver on his economic promises, the more the public turns against him. […]
With this in mind, Trump and his team decided it was time to go on the offensive. They announced plans for a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania where the president would put his best foot forward, presenting a spirited defense of his record while pushing back against assumptions about the slumping economy.
That was the idea, anyway.
Instead, he president did what he always does at these events: In remarks delivered in a casino, he peddled a variety of foolish claims about the subject at hand while veering into ugly nonsense about immigrants, windmills and transgender people. (Given the seriousness of the subject and his own unfortunate record in the casino business, the White House probably could’ve chosen a better venue.)
The Republican did, however, make an unexpected argument to Americans concerned about affordability and the cost of living. [video]
As part of an unscripted riff on his trade agenda, Trump declared, “You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils.” He added, “You always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter — two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.” [repeating some stupid blather he spouted before]
So as the public sours on the state of the economy and families struggle with rising costs, Trumpt’s instinct was to tell Americans to be satisfied with less.
[…] Complicating matters is the fact that while Trump expects Americans to make sacrifices in response to his failing agenda, Trump doesn’t appear personally willing to make comparable sacrifices of his own.
On the contrary, the incumbent president remains focused on his new marble bathroom, his ever-expanding plans for a wildly unnecessary White House ballroom and his frequent trips to Florida, where he hangs out at the glorified country club he owns and profits from, palling around with his extremely wealthy customers at “Great Gatsby”–themed soirees.
It’s something to keep in mind as Trump tells Americans to buy fewer toys for their kids two weeks before Christmas.
[Trump] said he examined Juan Orlando Hernández’s case. Eight days later, he said the opposite. Both can’t be true.
There’s ample room for debate over which of Donald Trump’s many pardons stands as the worst, but the president’s clemency for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández stands out for its cartoonish qualities. The details sound so spectacularly unrealistic that they seem concocted by a ham-fisted novelist to annoy readers.
In this case, Trump, despite all of his “tough on crime” chest-thumping, thought it’d be a good idea to pardon a notorious drug trafficker, who was convicted last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison. […] As The New York Times summarized, Hernández “orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy” that benefited drug cartels, even as Honduras grew poorer, more violent and more corrupt.
Hernández also boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and accepted a $1 million bribe to allow cocaine shipments to pass through his country.
Trump, however, freed him anyway. Politico’s Dasha Burns asked him about it during a lengthy White House interview this week. [video]
“Well, I don’t know him,” the president said, referring to Hernández. “And I know very little about him other than people said it was like an Obama/Biden-type set-up, where he was set up.”
Trump added that “very good people” (whom he did not name) asked him to pardon the convicted drug trafficker, “and I said I’ll do it.”
At this point, one could talk about how utterly ridiculous it is to see a sitting American president argue that he had effectively no idea whom he was letting out of prison. One could emphasize that Hernández’s prosecution was not a “set-up.” In fact, the prosecution was led in part by Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal team who is currently a Trump-appointed federal judge. [!]
[…] there’s another part of this that deserves a closer look.
Last week, when asked about the Hernández pardon during a Q&A on Air Force One, Trump, again referencing unspecified people, declared, “They said it was a Biden administration set-up. And I looked at the facts, and I agreed with them.”
The contradiction is glaring: On Nov. 30, the president said he had examined the case and concluded the notorious drug trafficker deserved clemency. Then, eight days later, asked about the same case, Trump said he was clueless and insisted he knew “very little” about it.
It can be one or the other, but it can’t be both.
As for Hernández’s fate, shortly after the former president walked out of a high-security American prison thanks to Trump’s pardon, Honduras’ attorney general urged Interpol to execute an arrest warrant for Hernández, which was originally issued in late 2023 for fraud and money laundering. […]
I’ve been surprised that the uproar over the killing of the two survivors of the Sept. 2 attack has not yielded a renewed look at a later attack that also left a survivor — under especially dire circumstances.
The official accounts of the Oct. 27 strike were muddled from the beginning, with conflicting initial reports of whether the survivor had been rescued. More than six weeks later, key questions remain unanswered:
Oct. 27: U.S. conducts three strikes against four different vessels, killing 14 people and leaving a sole survivor, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a social media post the next day:
Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.
[…] Oct. 28: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government “was informed about the Monday strike and about the potential survivor” on Tuesday morning, CNN reported.
The Mexican Navy would later say that its forces officially began a search-and-rescue operation for the “alleged castaway” at 6:30 a.m. on Oct 28, in the area U.S. officials reported a survivor.
[…] The reason for the delay between the strikes on the afternoon of Oct. 27 and the launch of the Mexican search-and-rescue operation has not been publicly explained.
Notably, the NYT reported that the survivor had been rescued: “A U.S. military official, discussing operations on the condition of anonymity, said the lone survivor was picked up in waters near the coasts of Mexico and Guatemala.”
However, President Sheinbaum’s public comments cast doubt on whether there was a survivor, CNN reported:
Sheinbaum said she instructed the foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, to meet with the US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, “and we will give them the information with the Navy secretariat about this survivor, if it is the case that there was indeed a survivor.”
The U.S. Coast Guard would later say the Mexican Navy informed it on the afternoon of Oct. 28 that is had found no survivors. [!]
Oct. 29: “Pentagon officials convened another session about boat strike survivors, a video conference involving dozens of American diplomats from across the Western Hemisphere,” the NYT would later report. No word of whether the fate of the lone survivor came up in the conference call two days after the attack in question.
Oct. 31: Mexico publicly announces that it has found no survivors from the Oct. 27 attacks.
After citing an anonymous U.S. military official earlier in the week as saying the survivor was rescued, the NYT reports that the Pentagon is offering a different account:
The Pentagon said that after the strikes on Monday, U.S. military officials “observed one narcoterrorist in the water clinging to some wreckage.” U.S. officials then alerted a Mexican military boat nearby of the survivor, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday, and Mexican officials assumed responsibility for the rescue.
The Pentagon statement also mentioned that it alerted not just the Mexican military boat but a nearby Mexican military aircraft, according to the NYT report […]
Nov. 1: Mexican Navy planned to end its active search for survivors of the Oct. 27 strikes.
“The survivor was spotted swimming in the ocean … was never located and is believed to have drowned,” ABC News would grimly describe it a few weeks later.
As you can see, the inconsistencies in the various reports are glaring: Was there a survivor? Was the survivor rescued? Why the delay between the purported sighting of the survivor by the U.S. military and its hand off of the responsibility for the search-and-rescue operation to Mexico?
In mid-October, the Pentagon had briefly detained two survivors of a different strike before quickly repatriating them to Ecuador and Colombia, respectively. The Pentagon’s obvious squeamishness about taking survivors into custody raises a host of additional questions about the fate of the lone survivor.
Link. The link leads to a roundup of news reports.
As reported by The Washington Post, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
Less than two weeks after launching a bipartisan investigation into the Trump administration’s lawless strikes on the high seas, the GOP chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is shutting down the probe.
As reported by The Associated Press, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
A pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday, with conflicting reports on whether they entered Venezuelan airspace.
Showing that he’s always laser-focused on what really matters, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered all high schools to have a Turning Point USA chapter called “Club America.”
Sure, Texas has basically frozen per-student funding for years, which means that—thanks to inflation—funding is actually decreasing. And, yes, Texas is hiring uncertified teachers and closing schools. It’s also true that 73% of Texas schools are underfunded. But surely turning every school into a shrine to Charlie Kirk will fix it.
“This is about values. This is about constitutional principles. [bullshit, lie] This is about a restoration of who we are as a country,” Abbott said of the new order.
But that rings a little hollow when you realize that the Texas Education Agency is already investigating complaints against teachers who rabid conservatives decided were insufficiently laudatory of Kirk.
So what if your school doesn’t want a Turning Point chapter? Too bad.
“Any school that stands in the way of a Club America program in their school should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” Abbott said, adding that there would be “meaningful disciplinary action.” [Oh, good, a threat.]
It isn’t clear what mechanism the state would have to enforce this demand, but that doesn’t really matter. Even if schools or teachers can’t somehow be officially sanctioned, they can be dragged through an investigation.
Abbott knows that he’s untouchable: He’s got a pliant legislature, a hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Supreme Court stocked with conservatives who believe that free speech only applies to right-wingers and Christians.
That’s likely why he was completely open about saying that he won’t do this for a left-leaning student group, but magnanimously declaring that “it would not be illegal” for a left-leaning group to exist in public schools.
Except Abbott is straight-up lying. Texas has already passed a law banning any student clubs based on gender identity or expression. No LGBTQ+ clubs, no gay-straight alliances—nothing. [!!]
But clubs founded by the guy who spent years attacking LGBTQ+ people and encouraged students and parents to report any professors suspected of not hating trans people enough? Well, that’s mandatory. [!]
Abbott is actually a bit late to the game on this one. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis already did this in October, turning loose Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas to enforce Turning Point chapters in schools. [!]
“If you try to serve as an obstacle, if you are a hurdle, if you get in the way of any student or teacher (who wants to) start a Turning Point USA chapter, you will be met with the full force of the law,” Kamoutsas said. [Another threat.]
And former Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters mandated Turning Point chapters in schools way back in September. But since he quit for a job where he said he will “destroy the teachers unions,” it isn’t clear if that requirement is going to stick. […]
Ban me if you must, Lynna and PZ, but I must speak openly and honestly since few others will.
Ilhan Omar has proven by her words and actions that is a caring decent person. I would gladly have her as a neighbor. I would NOT tolerate anyone from the magat administration as a neighbor.
O.K. If you want to rid this country of undesirable, nonproductive immigrants, as tRUMP has deplorably stated, let’s start with someone who still holds citizenship in a terrible foreign country, who entered this country on false claims on a genius visa, who after many years still has trouble with the english language. Who just has a contractual relationship with an abomination of a hateful, criminal citizen as a spouse.
Send malaria trump back to slovenia! And, her son who has slovenian citizenship should be packed up and sent with her.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @235:
Trump added that “very good people” (whom he did not name) asked him to pardon the convicted drug trafficker, “and I said I’ll do it.”
I would presume that those “very good people” received large sums of money to be passed on the behalf of Hernández to The Orange Turd’s tiny hands.
During an appearance on Fox Business on Wednesday Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner blamed the housing crisis on the few hundred thousand Afghan refugees living in the U.S. But after some of his recent word salad appearances on Fox News, Turner chose to defend his administration’s failure to address housing affordability by reading his talking points off a piece of paper. [Video]
Turner: I know I’m not supposed to do this on TV, but I want to read this so the American people … understand what was going on during the Biden administration. Our HUD, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office, we have taken down guidance that during the Biden administration encouraged landlords and property owners to forgo regularly required credit checks for refugees so they didn’t have to do credit checks. It encouraged landlords and public housing authorities to exempt Afghan refugees from occupancy limits, so they can have as many people as they wanted living in HUD-funded housing.
Also advise landlords and property owners to evade the fair housing laws which we’re supposed to uphold, evade the fair housing laws by publishing marketing materials in languages other than English so that they can market to Afghan refugees. That was going on during the Biden administration, but we have since withdrawn that and torn that guidance down to restore guidance that is for the American people.
Posted by readers of the article:
Wall Street bears a lion’s share of the blame for the housing “crisis.”
———————-
That and the toxic zoning laws, which prevent us from having multi-family and mixed-use housing developments, greatly restricting the supply of homes. This is not a big issue in NYC, where only 15% of residential neighbourhoods have this restriction, but across most large US cities, the share is over 75%, with some California cities exceeding 90%.
————————–
Well, according to a study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition
lowest-income renters in the U.S. face a shortage of 7.1 million affordable and available rental homes with only 35 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households
Given that there are only 200,000 Afghani refugees in the US (probably fewer than 50,000 households), where did the other 7.05 million affordable homes go?
House GOP leaders will bring a vote next week on a package of health care bills that does not include an extension of expiring ObamaCare enhanced subsidies […]
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters the legislation will comprise GOP-backed ideas that “every Republican agrees to,” which have been discussed across various House committees this year.
“We have some low-hanging fruit that every Republican agrees to,” Johnson said at a press conference. “You’re going to see a package come together that will be on the floor next week that will actually reduce premiums for 100 percent of Americans who are on health insurance.” [Sounds like Republican gaslighting to me.]
But that package is not set to include any measure to extend the subsidies that expire at the end of the year. If those enhanced subsidies expire, out-of-pocket costs for health insurance will spike drastically for millions of Americans. [!]
[…] proposals included expansion of health savings accounts, association health care plans, reforms to the pharmacy benefit manager industry and price transparency.
Some of those ideas had bipartisan support in the past, but a bill that doesn’t address the expiring subsidies is unlikely to get 60 votes to pass the Senate. [!]
The Senate, meanwhile, is set to vote Thursday on competing Republican and Democratic health care plans — one to extend the subsidies, the other to turn the subsidies into federally funded health savings accounts for people on high-deductible plans. Neither proposal is expected to pass. [sheesh]
Donald Trump’s deportation machine continues its abuse of every value that’s supposedly sacred to Americans — unless of course you acknowledge that White Supremacy is the most important value for the people running things now. The Border Patrol has been unleashed on New Orleans, where, as usual, the order of the day has been chaos, with little effort by the feds to let local officials know what the hell is going on. The DHS swarm into Louisiana has a target of deporting at least 5,000 people, and the thugs don’t seem too particular about who they grab.
[…] By Sunday, the AP notes, the agency had publicly detailed only six arrests, “including a man they vaguely said was convicted of ‘homicide’ and another convicted of sexual assault.” We haven’t dug into those particular cases, but we’ll note that DHS press releases often highlight offenses that happened years or even decades ago, for which detainees have already finished their sentences, or arrests where charges were dismissed.
Yes, under federal law, those are still grounds for deportation, and polling consistently shows that most Americans support deporting those who have serious criminal records, while we’re substantially more divided about mass deportation of folks who lack papers but have no criminal record — and as the crackdowns continue, support for extreme deportation policies and maximum cruelty keeps declining.
But keep in mind that the administration reads the polls, too, so DHS goes out of its way to portray all immigrants as immediate threats to the community, bloodthirsty thugs who have been taken off the streets just as they were about to do something unspeakable. For instance, they insist that Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House Lie Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, must be deported because she’s a “criminal” — based, apparently, on a summons (no arrest, no charges) to juvenile court when she got into a fight with another girl when she was 16. [Telling details]
[…] the AP also reports that federal and state law enforcement are tracking social media posts about New Orleans, to “monitor” public opinion on the occupation, noting posts from “a combination of groups urging the public to record ICE and Border Patrol” as well as helpful snitches who provide “additional locations where agents can find immigrants.” […]
During our lunch break I had a fervent request from our tech support specialist to add one more despicable, destructive, arrogant immigrant to the list to deport. He has destroyed the environment and ruined the lives to thousands with massive pollution from his rockets and his dozens of illegal gas turbines, not to mention his championing fascists and nazis on his massive xhitter social media swamp. So, we want to see the muskrat sent back to south africa so he can destroy that country, too.
I’m sure people have many other viable candidates for deportation, too. While he isn’t an immigrant, can we deport (shadow president) S.S. Miller to Sudan?
“This Is Actually The Most Insane Thing He’s Ever Posted”
“No, really.”
Update on that whole […] advancing dementia thing: Well, it’s still happening.
And it might sound nuts to, as our headline suggests, try to pick one tweet or “Truth” from Donald Trump […] and say it’s “the most insane thing” he’s ever posted. But you haven’t seen what he posted last night.
And yes, we know December 1 was a big contender for that title, when he posted 160 times in just a few hours. […] It’s also possible we’re forgetting something really insane from Trump 1.0, like the night he hallucinated Obama’s WIRE TAPPS […]
Meet 487 words in one entirely bugfuck post.
Philip Bump sets up the flow of what happens over the course over those 487 words: [social media post]
[…] For the sake of our sanity and yours, to hold on to reality and affirm that it still exists and matters, we’re going to quote and correct this lunatic fucking thing. It won’t take us long.
There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me!
No.
My hours are the longest,
Nope.
and my results are among the best.
LOL no.
I’ve stopped Eight Wars, saving many millions of lives in the process,
Stopped zero wars, and his administration has murdered millions of people in the process.
[Embedded links to sources for this and other debunking of Trump’s lies are available at the main link.]
created the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country,
Not according to the American people, who would like to talk about those old-fashioned, elegant hoax words “affordability” and “groceries.”
brought Business back into the United States at levels never seen before,
Hallucinations.
rebuilt our Military, created the Largest Tax Cuts and Regulation Cuts, EVER, […] closed our open and very dangerous Southern Border, when previous Administrations were unable to do so,
Sure, [Trump.]
and created an “aura” around the United States of America that has led every Country in the World to respect us more than ever before.
Oh, the things Stephen Miller tells the president […]
In addition to all of that, I go out of my way to do long, thorough, and very boring Medical Examinations at the Great Walter Reed National Military Medical Center,
Boooooooring.
Also it’s just the Walter Reed, not the Great Walter Reed.
seen and supervised by top doctors, all of whom have given me PERFECT Marks — Some have even said they have never seen such Strong Results.
Doctors do not give “marks” for medical exams, nor do they compliment a patient’s “Strong Results,” […]
I do these Tests because I owe it to our Country. In addition to the Medical, I have done something that no other President has done, on three separate occasions, the last one being recently, by taking what is known as a Cognitive Examination,
It’s known as a dementia test.
something which few people would be able to do very well,
Literally designed to be easy for any person who doesn’t have dementia. You draw a clock. You say which one is the camel. The doctor looks at the results to see if it’s all gone awry.
including those working at The New York Times,
Do they have dementia that’s actively encroaching on their ability to function? And who told Trump he was taking an IQ test? Was that Stephen Miller also? […]
and I ACED all three of them
It’s like bragging that you didn’t shit your pants even once.
in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know.
Oh, now we’re supposed to be impressed that he didn’t get shy during the dementia test, not even in front of people he doesn’t know?
And what kinds or experts, please? Experts on the drawing of clocks and picking out which one is “camel”?
I have been told that few people have been able to “ace” this Examination and, in fact, most do very poorly,
He has been lied to. [Why is Trump gullible enough to believe those lies?]
which is why many other Presidents have decided not to take it at all.
Many other presidents actually have never had it recommended to them at the Great Walter Reed that they take a dementia test. Reagan probably, yeah. […]
Despite all of this, the time and work involved, The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am “slowing up,” am maybe not as sharp as I once was, or am in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true, and knowing that I work very hard, probably harder than I have ever worked before.
Yes, despite all of this.
I will know when I am “slowing up,” but it’s not now! After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
[Well, at least he does remember his title.]
It’s sedition or maybe treason to check in on whether [Trump’s] obvious senility is affecting his ability to carry out the duties of his job. […]
They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.
Sure thing, Trump […]
They have inaccurately reported on all of my Election Results and,
He lost the 2020 election by a fucking landslide, to Joe Biden. Is that the election result he’s upset about? Is it? IS IT?
in fact, were forced to apologize on much of what they wrote. The best thing that could happen to this Country would be if The New York Times would cease publication because they are a horrible, biased, and untruthful “source” of information. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
LMAO […]
You did it! And we did it! We made it to the end of the literal most insane thing he has ever posted! […]
After Donald Trump lost his reelection bid five years ago, he immediately launched an effort not only to overturn the results, but also to convince the public that he secretly won, reality be damned. There was, however, one key element missing from the president’s pitch: evidence. [True]
Trump asked his 2020 campaign team to produce evidence to bolster his conspiracy theories, but they didn’t because they couldn’t. He asked his lawyers to do the same thing, but to no avail. [!]
Unsatisfied, the Republican hired the Berkeley Research Group to uncover widespread voter fraud and election irregularities, which did not go well, and then he hired Simpatico Software Systems, which also failed to tell Trump what he wanted to hear. [!]
In the months and years that followed, the then-former president would occasionally promise to share “irrefutable” and “conclusive” evidence, but those vows inevitably turned into embarrassing flops. (Shortly before Election Day 2024, Trump said he had “many different papers” to substantiate his nonsensical claims, but for reasons he never explained, those “papers” never reached the public.) [!]
But as the first year of the incumbent president’s second term nears its end, he’s still confident that he’ll produce the evidence that’s eluded him. [Bonkers!] [Social media post with bonkers video]
When Politico’s Dasha Burns sat down with Trump this week for a lengthy interview, she tried to get a better sense of his views on Russia’s war in Ukraine. This, sadly, led the president to say what he always says when asked about the devastating conflict: Vladimir Putin wouldn’t have launched the invasion if he had been in office, and Trump wasn’t in office because there was, as he once again falsely described it, “a rigged election.” [head/desk]
In this interview, however, Trump added, as part of his stale and predictable harangue, “It’s gonna come out over the next couple months too, loud and clear. Because we have all the information.” [aiyiyiyi]
For reality-based observers, the proposition that Trump and his team suddenly have “all the information” they need to rewrite the story of his defeat is obviously foolish, but let’s pause on the president’s use of the word “we.”
In October, Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who has touted election conspiracy theories, joined the administration as a “special government employee” with one specific focus: Olsen was hired to investigate the 2020 election. A month later, The Washington Post reported that the president “is dialing up pressure on the Justice Department to freshly scrutinize ballots from the 2020 election,” […] [FFS!]
Between the number of officials working on this and the realization that those who tell the truth about Trump’s 2020 defeat will be fired, it stands to reason that the White House actually will produce some kind of package “over the next couple months.”
But that won’t make the manufactured evidence credible.
Last fall, with time running out in the 2024 presidential election and early voting underway across much of the country, then-Sen. JD Vance refused to answer questions about who was the rightful winner of the 2020 race. The Ohio Republican complained at the time that political journalists were “obsessed” with the election from four years earlier.
A year later — and roughly five years since Trump lost his reelection bid — someone is obsessed with the 2020 race, but it’s not political journalists.
South African immigrant Elon Musk is still criticizing immigrants from Black majority countries […]
Musk made his racist commentary during a Wednesday interview with Katie Miller, wife of bigoted Trump administration official Stephen Miller. The multibillionaire Republican donor reiterated a false conspiracy theory he’s previously touted, alleging that immigrants were paid to move to the United States to vote for Democrats.
“We’re paying people to come here from somewhere else in vast numbers, including flying them in—it’s not like you need a border wall if you’re flying them in—then fast-tracking them to citizenship,” Musk said. [JFC] [video]
He also argued that this elaborate scheme leads to immigrant communities voting “hard left,” and described the idea as “voter importation.”
The concept is a long-standing white supremacist conspiracy known as “great replacement,” touted as a way to replace white voters with foreign-born, nonwhite voters.
Musk said this creates a “money magnet” and cited Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, an immigrant from Somalia. According to Musk, Omar was “voted into power by a large group of people from Somalia who are in Minnesota, which is really far from Somalia.”
He also called into question the recent election of New York City’s Zohran Mamdani “by a majority of people who are not born in America.”
Musk’s bigoted remarks echo President Donald Trump, who has spent the last two weeks denigrating Omar and Minnesota’s Somali communities
But Musk’s comments prove even more racist because he himself is an immigrant from South Africa—the only difference being that he is white. Musk moved to the United States and received millions in government support to help launch his companies, with millions in government contracts continuing to come in. [True!]
[…] Musk has earned billions thanks to U.S. taxpayers. Those funds have been used to back racist U.S. candidates—most notably Trump—as well as racist political parties in Europe.
Musk also effectively admitted in his interview with Miller that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was a failure, saying that, if he could go back in time, he would not do it again. He also complained that his actions at DOGE led to people “burning the cars”—a reference to extensive protests at various Tesla facilities across the country. [video]
DOGE continues to be under fire for ending life-saving programs across the world, violating Americans’ privacy, and costing taxpayers millions—all after promising that the shoddy organization would save the government billions.
Former President Barack Obama surprised elementary school students at a Chicago Public Library branch on Tuesday, reading to them while donning a Santa hat.
After reading “Flying Free: How Bessie Coleman’s Dreams Took Flight,” Obama joked with the children and asked them their dreams.
“What do you want to be?” the former president asked.
“I want to be like you,” one child replied.
“Well, you know what? Right now, all I am is old,” he joked. [Nice, uplifting video at the link.]
The appearance offered yet another reminder of the contrast between Obama and President Donald Trump. [video of Melania Trump in a stilted setting, with a stilted reading of “How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?” Flanked by two children who looked like hostages.] […]
And while Obama was reading to children at a library, Trump was telling crowds that his bang-’em-up economy would mean less pencils and toys for their school-aged children.
“It’s imperative that CNN be sold,” the president told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “I think CNN should be sold, because I think the people running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent.” [Trump weighing in where he should not.]
Warner Bros. Discovery announced last week it had struck an agreement with entertainment giant Netflix for the streaming giant to acquire its sprawling movie and television studios, a deal that does not include its struggling linear cable assets including Turner Sports and CNN.
Paramount on Monday mounted a hostile bid for the company, offering more money per share for Warner Bros. Discovery and pitching a deal that would include all the company’s assets.
The bidding war comes as both companies have lobbied the White House and Trump directly to support the merger. Either deal would create one of the largest media conglomerates on earth and face intense questions of antitrust from lawmakers and Trump’s government regulators.
Trump has voiced displeasure with CNN over its news coverage for years, and Paramount executive David Ellison has reportedly told the president he would be sure to implement major editorial changes at the cable news network should he win control of the company. [!]
Trump has praised Ellison’s efforts at Paramount publicly, including his retooling of CBS News since his family purchased the company earlier this year. […]
Thanks to Militant Agnostic @253, and to birger @226, for adding additional information about Eileen Higgins.
In other news:
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates Wednesday in an unusually narrow vote, underscoring the divides among bank officials over the effect rate cuts will have on inflation and employment.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the panel of Fed officials responsible for setting monetary policy, dropped its baseline interest rate down to a range of 3.5 to 3.75, a reduction of 0.25 percentage points.
The FOMC approved the rate cut by a vote of 9 to 3, a smaller margin than the typical Fed rate decision. […]
The unusual number and nature of Wednesday’s dissents revealed how hard it could be for Fed Chair Jerome Powell — and his eventual successor — to keep the FOMC united with the economy at a foggy crossroads.
President Trump could name a successor to Powell in the coming days or weeks.
Fed officials are attempting to figure out how quickly they can cut interest rates back to neutral levels without losing more ground in its fight against inflation. After falling rapidly during the final year of the Biden administration, price growth picked up soon after Trump took office and imposed billions of dollars in tariffs.
At the same time, U.S. hiring has slowed significantly, pushing the unemployment rate up and derailing American consumer confidence. […]
“The seizure was a significant escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.”
U.S. forces seized an oil tanker near the Venezuelan coastline Wednesday, President Donald Trump said, a significant escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against President Nicolás Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela,” Trump told a roundtable meeting of business leaders at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. He described the vessel as “very large” and the “largest one ever seized, actually.” [FFS]
“And, other things are happening,” Trump added. “So you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”
[…] Venezuela’s oil exports rose this year to a daily average of about 900,000 barrels, Reuters has reported. Its largest importers are China and the United States, particularly after the Trump administration in July reissued a license to the U.S. energy giant Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela.
The seizure of the oil tanker was announced hours after opposition leader María Corina Machado missed the Oslo ceremony to collect her Nobel Peace Prize. Machado has been in hiding in Venezuela since January and barred by the government from leaving the country. Her daughter, accepting the honor in her place, said she would appear in Oslo soon. […]
“Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi says Russia’s frontline gains are tiny as U.S. pressure grows on Ukraine to accept a peace deal.”
Ukraine’s soldiers are doing much better in the pitched battles in the east of the country than Russia is letting on, Kyiv’s top commander said, denouncing what he called Kremlin “disinformation” aimed at influencing a foreign audience.
This week’s briefing by Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi was aimed at changing the narrative as Ukraine comes under fierce pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to throw in the towel and agree to a peace deal his people initially sketched out with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It might seem as if Ukraine “is only withdrawing” due to Russia’s incessant attacks, but in reality Kyiv is holding the line and has even been able to retake some ground in key contested towns in recent days, Syrskyi said.
[…] Earlier this month, the Russian defense ministry claimed its troops had succeeded in occupying the crucial frontline city of Pokrovsk, as well as in surrounding Ukrainian troops in nearby Myrnohrad and taking over Vovchyansk and Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region.
The Ukrainian army insists that its forces are back in parts of Pokrovsk. It says small groups of Russian soldiers are infiltrating to pose for pictures with flags for propaganda purposes, but don’t fully control the shattered ruins of the city.
While Russia’s frontline gains are small, the Kremlin hopes to persuade Ukraine’s backers that continued support for Kyiv is futile. That’s the message that is being received in Washington.
In an interview with POLITICO this week, Trump underlined that he wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to a peace deal, fast.
“He’s gonna have to get on the ball and start accepting things, you know, when you’re losing — because you’re losing,” Trump said. [Trump being an ignorant doofus.]
The first iteration of the plan called for Ukraine to hand over key defensive areas in the Donetsk region, including Pokrovsk, but it has since been modified following strong protests from Kyiv and European countries. Zelenskyy is insisting that he will not hand over any Ukrainian territory to Russia.
[…] “The scale of Russian lies exceeds the real pace of troop advance by many times,” Syrskyi said. “The enemy uses disinformation and fake maps in a hybrid war against Ukraine, influencing both a foreign audience and our society and our army.”
[…] The Russian campaign to militarily seize the rest of Donetsk, including a belt of heavily fortified cities, would likely take at least two to three years, pose a significant challenge, and result in difficult and costly battles that Russia may not be able to sustain, ISW [Institute of the Study of War] said.
“Russia’s cognitive warfare effort aims to push Ukraine and the West to cede this heavily defended territory to Russia without a fight, allowing Russia to avoid spending significant amounts of time and resources to try to seize it on the battlefield,” the think tank added.
Syrskyi said that in some areas, Russian forces are only moving forward less than 5 kilometers per month.
“At such pace, the advance of the Russians with daily losses of more than 1,000 people is a negligible result,” the general added.
However, Syrskyi admitted that the situation is harsh for Ukrainian troops defending Pokrovsk, where Russia has poured 156,000 men into the fight. “It is currently the main theater of military operations,” Syrskyi said.
He admitted that this fall Ukrainian troops had fully withdrawn from Pokrovsk, but said on Nov. 15 they launched a counteroffensive and retook almost half the city.
“We continue to hold the northern part of the city, approximately along the railway line. In addition, west of Pokrovsk, we have cleared and controlled about 54 square kilometers,” Syrskyi said. […]
Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal law enforcement agent while they’re conducting their duties. Tincher, a white woman in her mid-50s who stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall, insists she was at speaking distance from the agent and said that she did nothing to “impede” their actions.
[…]
“Pretty soon they were throwing me on the ground and handcuffing me and putting me in their unmarked truck,” Tincher said, estimating that the whole interaction just took a few seconds. […] agents told her in the truck that if she didn’t watch herself “they were going to pull me over to the side of the road and give me this [pepper spray],”
[…]
released […] Tincher has marks on her neck and wrist from where agents restrained her. Agents cut off her wedding ring and held her in leg shackles at Whipple Federal Building for about five hours […] Tincher said she’s even more motivated after her arrest to volunteer to support immigrants in her community. […] “I just don’t want this to be happening in our country.”
They would arrest people “attempting to self-remove” after being in the U.S. without legal authorization. […] Agents would target commercial buses passing through ports of entry into Mexico
[…]
The administration has been urging undocumented people to return home of their own volition, even using a government app to allow them to report their “intent to part,” and offering $1,000 so-called “exit bonuses.” A mission aimed at scooping up migrants headed out the door voluntarily might seem inconsistent with those efforts.
[…]
Formal removal proceedings can bar people from reentry for a certain number of years or permanently, and make reentering a crime. […] However, steering those migrants into deportation proceedings—as opposed to letting them leave quietly on a southbound bus—would enable them to seek legal remedies, including applying for asylum.
[…]
could also be about boosting numbers to hype the effectiveness of Trump’s deportation campaign. […] “But you can’t get to scale by removing people who are already offering themselves to be removed, because that number has not been high.”
Trump’s troops must get out of Los Angeles, a federal judge rules. […]
“The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one.”
Judge Charles Breyer: “Defendants take the position that, after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts. Defendants’ position is contrary to law.”
Dan Kaszeta (Historian, Chemical weapons expert):
I don’t think there is [anything comparable in 1930s Germany to all the amazing US court rulings this year], but I’m not an expert in that aspect. But I’m left with the impression that the US courts are in a stronger position than the courts of 1930s Germany.
The new state law takes effect immediately, prohibiting immigration arrests inside or within 1,000 feet of state courthouses, which have been the sites of deportation operations over the past few months […] Illinois’ new law also requires hospitals, day care facilities and public universities to institute plans for how to deal with immigration agents who might show up at their facilities, and it bars them from sharing most residents’ information with federal agents.
It also opens the door to litigation against federal officials who “knowingly violated Constitutional rights during civil immigration enforcement operations.” Higher punitive damages can be sought against officers who fail to identify themselves, deploy tear gas or use some of the other inflammatory tactics
Rando 1: “Connecticut has a similar law [the Trust Act]. If I remember correctly, they will need a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant is not enough. And even if they have the right paperwork, they can’t wear masks.”
Rando 2: “As does Colorado.”
“Even the worst authoritarian states in the world do not have such an official policy,” Irish centrist MEP Barry Andrews said.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to require tourists to hand over their social media data ahead of next year’s World Cup generated outrage on Wednesday.
An elected European official, human rights groups and fan organizations condemned the move and urged the world football governing body, FIFA, to pressure the Trump administration to reverse course.
Visitors to the U.S. — including those from visa-free countries such as France, Germany and Britain — would have to submit five years of social media activity before being allowed through the border, according to a proposal by the Trump administration […]
The new rules, which would also require travelers to provide emails, phone numbers and addresses used in the last five years, would come into effect early next year — shortly before hundreds of thousands of football fans are expected to travel to the U.S. to watch their teams compete in the World Cup, which begins in June. The U.S. is co-hosting the tournament with Mexico and Canada.
“President Trump’s plan to screen visitors to the U.S. based on their past five-year social media history is outrageous,” Irish Member of the European Parliament Barry Andrews of the centrist Renew group said in a statement. […] “The plans would of course seriously damage the U.S. tourist industry as millions of Europeans would no longer feel safe … including football fans due to attend next year’s World Cup.”
The Trump administration has stepped up social media surveillance at the border, vetting profiles and denying tourists entry or revoking visas over political posts […]
Speaking on Wednesday evening, Trump said: “We want safety, we want security. We want to make sure we’re not letting the wrong people come into our country.”
Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch — which has repeatedly warned FIFA about its interactions with the Trump administration — called the new entry requirements “an outrageous demand that violates fundamental free speech and free expression rights.”
“This policy expressly violates [football governing body] FIFA’s human rights policies, and FIFA needs to pressure the Trump administration to reverse it immediately,” she added. “The World Cup is not an opportunity for the U.S. to exclude and harass fans and journalists whose opinions Trump officials don’t like.”
[…] Customs and Border Protection, the agency that authored the proposal, said: “This is not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe.”
[…] The prospect of turning over years of social media data to American authorities also sparked fury from football supporters, who turned their fire on FIFA.
“Freedom of expression and the right to privacy are universal human rights. No football fan surrenders those rights just because they cross a border,” said Ronan Evain, executive director at Football Supporters Europe, a representative group for fans. “This policy introduces a chilling atmosphere of surveillance that directly contradicts the welcoming, open spirit the World Cup is meant to embody, and it must be withdrawn immediately.
“[…] It’s urgent that FIFA clarifies the security doctrine of the tournament, so that supporters can make an informed decision whether to travel or stay home,” he added.
Judge Charles Breyer: “Defendants take the position that, after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts. Defendants’ position is contrary to law.”
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles on Wednesday and ordered control of the troops returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Trump administration has indicated it will appeal the latest decision, part of a slew of litigation over the deployments nationally.
Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump, sold shares worth $50,000 to $100,000 in the mining company MP Materials following a July announcement of a lucrative deal between the Las Vegas company and the Trump administration, government filings show.
birgerjohanssonsays
Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his allies carry a symbol depicting a golden noose on their lapels, indicating their support for summary killings.
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87, 93, 132, 149, and 198.
Some updates and additional details concerning Trump’s National Security Strategy, or NSS:
[…] Late last week Donald Trump’s White House quietly unveiled its new NNS, which generated immediate global attention — and alarm.
The good news is that the unusually brief document, which is available in its entirety online, is quite readable. While some official foreign policy and national security documents are often inaccessible and filled with jargon, Trump’s new NSS is easy to understand.
The bad news is that the vision sketched out in the document is dreadful. The president and his team envision a near future in which the United States will withdraw from its role as the leader of the free world, promote racial purity in Europe, abandon intensifying environmental crises and de-emphasize democracy abroad.
(It’s also needlessly propagandistic at times. As The Bulwark noted, “With 27 instances of Trump’s name in a mere 29 pages of text, it is a strategy document worthy of North Korea.”) [Laughable.]
The same document largely ignores Russia, which helps to explain why the Kremlin was so pleased with it. [Putin’s dream come true.]
The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum characterized the new White House NSS as “a performative suicide,” adding that it’s “hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly.” Applebaum concluded, “It will be worth following the reactions around the world.”
The morning after the document was released, Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, wrote via social media, “Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem. And we have common enemies. At least that’s how it has been in the last 80 years. We need to stick to this, this is the only reasonable strategy of our common security. Unless something has changed.”
He didn’t explicitly mention Trump’s National Security Strategy by name, but given the context, he didn’t have to.
Three days later, The Associated Press reported:
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the Trump administration’s new national security strategy underscored the need for Europe to become ‘much more independent’ from the U.S. in terms of security policy. … Parts of the document were understandable, but ‘some of it is unacceptable for us from the European point of view,’ he told reporters in the western German city of Mainz.
[…] Responding to the NSS’ promotion of Europe’s more nativist, far-right political parties, European Council president Antonio Costa also warned the U.S. this week against interfering in European affairs.
Trump has spent the year offending, outraging and confusing many of our closest traditional allies, going back generations. If the Republican’s goal was to push those allies away and to encourage others to forge new alliances while leaving the U.S. behind, his efforts are right on track.
Trump’s administration wants the International Criminal Court to amend its founding document to ensure it does not investigate the Republican president and his top officials […] If the court does not act on this U.S. demand and two others—dropping investigations of Israeli leaders over the Gaza war and formally ending an earlier probe of U.S. troops over their actions in Afghanistan—Washington may penalize more ICC officials and could sanction the court itself
[…]
ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.
[…]
Any effort to change the Rome Statute to accommodate the U.S. demand would be slow and difficult, requiring approval of two-thirds of countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. […] The ICC is the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal with 125 member states, including the entire EU but excluding major powers China, Russia and the United States, among others. […] Enshrining blanket immunity for specific individuals would be seen as undermining the court’s founding principles [and] would require an even larger majority
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “I believe this is referred to as consciousness of guilt.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Four years since he was released from prison.
Steven Donziger, de facto prosecuted by Chevron after he won the Ecuador pollution case.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/17hRdPt8Cc/
As it turns out, lawmakers and federal workers aren’t a fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services. Not only does the HHS secretary have a line of people calling for him to resign, including his own staffers [embedded links to sources are available at the main link], but he is also now facing impeachment as well.
On Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan filed articles of impeachment against the brain-wormed politician, saying he has undermined public health. And that’s hard to argue against. He has promoted fringe views from falsely saying Tylenol causes autism to ripping a health monitoring program away from coal miners.
That said, it’s very unlikely the impeachment succeeds. Congress has a Republican majority in both chambers, making the likelihood of this coming to a vote on the House floor very slim.
[…] Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, scheduled a vote that would allow lawmakers to signal their concerns over Kennedy’s malfeasance thus far. In theory, this could open the door for both sides of the aisle to openly discuss the havoc Kennedy has wreaked on HHS.
But it’s hard to say whether Republican lawmakers will take that opportunity.
For example, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor who somewhat reluctantly voted for Kennedy’s confirmation, has recently turned down opportunities to criticize the health secretary. That’s the case even after Kennedy reneged on pledges he made to Cassidy about not messing too much with vaccine policy.
Kennedy, who has a long history of pushing anti-vaccine lies, has fired scientists from a top vaccine advisory committee, ousted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, and removed vaccine mandates for young children and pregnant women, among other things. […]
Republican Rep. Randy Fine of Florida appeared on CNN Wednesday to defend President Donald Trump’s racist tirades against Somali immigrants—by launching into a wildly racist tirade of his own. [video]
Fine: Well, I’m not comfortable with a hierarchy of racism. The president isn’t either, but not all cultures are equal and not all countries are equal. There are some people who come to this country to add value, and there are some that come to this country to take value.
And when we’ve seen in Minneapolis that 50% of the people who are naturalized engaged in immigration fraud [WTF!?], and we’re seeing the largest fraud in terms of welfare programs perhaps in the history of our country, we know there’s a problem. And the president speaks in language that Americans understand. He is blunt. He’s not a politician—neither am I. [bullshit] And so I support as he is making people understand the threats that we’re under right now.
There’s a difference between being blunt and being a demagogue.
There are also people who are intelligently blunt and others who are idiotically blunt.
But neither a demagogue nor a corrupt politician is going to give you an honest assessment of any of these distinctions.
———————————————–
I agree with Fine. Not all cultures are equal. Some are truly immoral, subpar, and destructive, notably the GOP MAGA Trump Cult Culture.
I wasn’t planning to go to the USA when Trump was in charge anyhow even if I could afford to do so but still – land of free & brave & right to free speech and criticise govt huh? Any Freezepeachers!!1ty! going to fight against this ya reckon?
Australians travelling to the United States could soon face longer delays and an unprecedented invasion of privacy, an international law expert has warned. It comes as the US plans to require tourists to hand over five years of their social media history to border officials.
Professor Donald Rothwell from the Australian National University said people who criticised the US government were most at risk. “The people most affected are those who are very active on social media, especially politically active individuals or those who’ve expressed criticism of US domestic or international policies,” Professor Rothwell said.
Storm Byron is threatening to heap new miseries on Palestinians in Gaza, with families making distress calls from flooded tents and hundreds of others fleeing their shelters in search of dry ground as the fierce winter storm lashes heavy rains on the besieged territory.
Officials warned Wednesday that the storm was forecast to bring flash floods, strong winds and hail until Friday, conditions expected to wreak havoc in a territory in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in tents, temporary structures, or damaged buildings after two years of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
From back when our Cosmos was 5% its current age :
The light of the oldest supernova ever seen, dating back 13 billion years to just 730 million years after the Big Bang, has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The supernova was accompanied by a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB), signifying the destruction of a massive star and possibly the birth of a stellar-mass black hole.
“There are only a handful of gamma-ray bursts in the last 50 years that have been detected in the first billion years of the universe,” said Andrew Levan, of Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the U.K., in a statement. “This particular event is very rare and very exciting.”
wood banks—like a food bank but for fuel—are important. They’re the clearest sign that basic systems in this country have already failed. […] People in rural and Indigenous areas still heavily rely on wood heat as the primary fuel source for their homes. Volunteers cut and split firewood, stack it somewhere public, and give it away […] No paperwork. No means tests. No government forms. […] Local news crews film volunteers splitting logs while pretending it’s heartwarming […] as if the story is about kindness instead of the failure that created the need in the first place.
[…]
Wood banks now operate in hundreds of towns […] Demand has grown fast enough that the Agriculture Department has issued multiple rounds of grants to help communities process more wood because so many households can’t afford the heat […] Almost one in four households couldn’t pay their energy bills in 2024, according to census data.
[…]
You don’t start a wood bank in a country with functioning institutions. You start one when heating assistance programs can’t keep up, when the grid flickers every time the wind shifts, when propane and heating oil costs swing so hard that families can’t budget more than a week out. You start a wood bank when seniors stop turning on their heat because they’re scared of the bill. You also start one when the country pretends energy insecurity doesn’t exist because acknowledging it would mean admitting that entire regions were left behind on purpose.
[…]
Collapse isn’t a single moment. It’s what happens when the systems people rely on keep existing on paper but stop functioning in practice. Heating programs remain funded but reach only a fraction of eligible households. The grid stays interconnected, but the outages keep stacking up and repairs keep getting delayed. […] people are left to solve problems that institutions were supposed to solve. […] The danger is how invisible it all is. You can drive through a town and never notice that the shed behind the church isn’t storing holiday decorations but several cords of oak that’ll decide whether someone wakes up warm tomorrow. […] Collapse doesn’t announce itself. It piles up. It accumulates in places people don’t look.
StevoRsays
From today’s PBS Newshour :
President Trump was on the road in Pennsylvania last night to address affordability, an issue that’s dragged down his approval ratings. But at the event, the president reverted to campaign mode, delivering a speech that lasted more than an hour-and-a-half, including a rant about immigrants.
To discuss that, we turn now to Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross and Republican Tiffany Smiley, a former U.S. Senate candidate in Washington state.
…(Snip)…
Trump leans on cultural wars because he has nothing else.
We know that the prices of everyday goods have gone up since he’s been in office. We know that his tariff strategy has done nothing but tax the American people. We know that the Big Beautiful Bill Act is the largest wealth transfer that the United States has ever seen. People are having a hard time paying their rent. They can’t afford housing.
They can’t afford to buy things at the grocery store. He’s eliciting a conversation that he knows is not a dog whistle. This is racism writ large. When Trump calls places where Black people live, countries outside the U.S. where Black people live or where they’re the predominant population shithole countries, he knows what he’s doing when he says that.
He knows that it is a rallying cry for those who see America as a land of opportunity for whites only. This is a guy who has used the segregationist platform before. And he’s a guy who continues to use it when asked to really speak to why his policies aren’t working.
People in red states, blue states, purple states, and every color in between have said that affordability is their top-line issue. But he gets up there and does is what he’s done time and time again, castigate populations of color. (- Ameshia Cross:nailing it.Ed.)
Scientists, academics, digital creators and influencers all face a critical challenge: How can science and fact-based information break through rampant misinformation, disinformation, media silos and polarization?
That’s the key question we tried to answer during a special livestreamed Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) event we called “Tipping Point – Turning Science Into Solutions.”
During this mega AMA, science correspondent Miles O’Brien and digital anchor and correspondent Deema Zein interviewed scientists, academics, digital creators, influencers and others about the challenges they face while communicating facts about science, climate, health and technology. They shared what they’ve found that works — and took your questions along the way.
The plaque created to honor the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol and the representatives inside it on Jan. 6 is defective, the Trump administration contends, and the lawsuit filed to force it to be hung should be thrown out.
Contemptible but the DOJ is likely to win this one. The police officers that brought the case can’t show any injury to themselves for not getting the plaque raised.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell pointed on Wednesday to a job-market risk that economists have been worried about for months: Official statistics could be drastically overstating recent hiring.
Powell said that Fed staffers believe that federal data could be overestimating job creation by up to 60,000 jobs a month. Given that figures published so far show that the economy has added about 40,000 jobs a month since April, the real number could be something more like a loss of 20,000 jobs a month, Powell said.
Before any conspiracy theories get raised, Powell is talking about a technical issue in how the estimation is done and why it is almost always revised downwards later. There is a plan to use a better estimation method starting next year but until then we should expect some sharp downward revisions.
Powell is talking about this publicly because some of the latest figures seem too good. He likely has inside information on what the revisions look like and wants to prepare markets. He could also be trying to say something to the White House but this is far to subtle a method for this administration. If that is his goal he should try a Truth Social post insulting the people who do the estimates.
StevoRsays
Just a magnificent, endangered raptor here w photos and info about it :
It is tragic and shocking that in South Africa, according to BirdLife South Africa, bateleurs have had “an estimated population reduction of over 50% over the past three generations (40 years), leaving a regional population size of less than 1000 mature individuals” (https://www.birdlife.org.za/bird-of-the-year-2024/). In addition to extensive loss of habitat due to urbanisation, intensive agriculture and climate change, the tendency of bataleurs to scavenge has led to deaths of bateleurs over the last 100 years or so as a result of scavenging from poisoned carcasses, as has already been mentioned. Other causes of bateleur deaths include disturbances near nesting sites resulting in abandonment of chicks, individuals being killed when they fly into powerline cables, drown in farm reservoirs or are hit by motor vehicles when scavenging road kills. Illegal harvesting of birds for the traditional medicine trade is also a problem. In addition, the use of pesticides may also be contributing to the decline in bateleur numbers.
This African raptor is magnificent and beautiful and it is endangered because of our species and our impact oin the world.
We as a species can choose to prioritise and save it – or not. Will we?
StevoRsays
^Iwish theasnwer wasn;’t almost certainly no, we wont. For .. fucks sake. Humanity..
StevoRsays
So wish we’d actually live up to our latin species name meaning of “wise (hu)man”” for flippin” once or twice or thrice or just always.. Becoz we never fn do , Do we? Or at least far too rarely.
I am tired.
So fn tired.
StevoRsays
Not giving up. Not giving in to despair or defeatism but just so very tired & yet cannot sleep.
The White House is quietly moving to get the U.S. Senate to confirm Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, MS NOW has learned.
Without any White House announcement or fanfare, Halligan submitted her confirmation questionnaire to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. MS NOW obtained a copy of Halligan’s questionnaire.
Should be a no go as Trump has lost a lot of his ability to push on this sort of thing, Halligan isn’t qualified for the job and she has already made a career ending mistake in the job before even being nominated. Who knows though, the Senate might treat this as a gift to keep Trump happy.
Nicholas Nehamas (NYT, live update, Dec 10 4:19pm ET):
The tanker seized near Venezuela by the United States is named Skipper and was flying a flag of a South American country where it was not in fact registered, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the seizure. It was seized because of its past links to smuggling illicit Iranian oil, not because of ties to the Maduro regime, although it was carrying Venezuelan oil. A federal judge authorized a seizure warrant for the tanker roughly two weeks ago, the official said.
[…] The ship is SKIPPER (IMO 9304667, MMSI 750330000) and it’s currently flagged as Guyana. A bunch of the shadow fleet tried to jump to Guyana after Panama purged them following OFAC sanctions.
Guyana has been happy to deny the validity when asked. To that end, it’s already listed in the IMO db as false flag [Screenshot], indicating Guyana has denied the validity. Seems both cut-and-dry stateless, and that it’s purported flag state Guyana would probably give permission to interdict if asked.
This does actually change the entire story. […] It may sound silly, but oceanic freedom of navigation is predicated on “flying the flag of a sovereign state.” Any ship caught flying false colors can be legally fucked with by any state’s navy.
[…]
This appears like a rare example of this administration doing something that is both lawful and above board.
Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video of the purported seizure operation on social media. […] helicopters hovering over the tanker as armed people in camouflage rappel onto the ship’s deck.
Data provided by TankerTrackers.com suggests that the ship has frequently carried oil from countries under U.S. sanctions. The vessel’s tracking data shows multiple trips to Iran and Venezuela over the last two years. […] The ship, under a previous name, was placed under sanctions in 2022 by the U.S. Treasury Department, which said the vessel was part of “an international oil smuggling network that facilitated oil trades and generated revenue” to support the Iranian-backed forces of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’s Quds Force.
They often turn off their signal or otherwise disguise their locations. Such tankers have been increasingly employed by traders and shippers dealing with Venezuelan oil since Washington imposed the sanctions on the OPEC country. […] The global shadow fleet includes 1,423 tankers, of which 921 are subject to U.S., British or European sanctions […] They are typically old, their ownership opaque and they sail without top-tier insurance cover to meet international standards for oil […] The ships mostly transport sanctioned oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela to Asian destinations, according to vessel monitoring data.
[…]
In a sign of success for the dark fleet’s strategy, Venezuela’s oil exports rose to over 900,000 barrels per day in November and imports of much-needed naphtha to dilute its extra-heavy oil, mostly from Russia, doubled to 167,000 bpd, increasing stocks for the coming weeks.
Rando:
It’s a real problem that this admin lies so habitually that you just have to assume that whatever they are doing is illegal even when it isn’t. […] the oil interests of Russian petro oligarchs vs Trump II is truly a Hitler vs. Hitler scenario, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t make this action illegal or even inappropriate. Filming it for content, on the other hand…
Rando: “I can see The Onion headline now: Trump regime apologizes for lawful seizure of oil tanker.”
“accelerating” in the wake of Thanksgiving travel and a lack of vaccinations […] Of the 111 measles cases recorded in that area […] 105 involved people who were unvaccinated while three involved those who were partially vaccinated […] At least 254 people had been placed in quarantine as of Tuesday […] At least 16 of those new cases were traced back to a recent outbreak at the Way of Truth Church in Inman
[…]
Across the state, the rate of students with vaccines required by schools dropped from nearly 96 percent in 2020 to 93.5 percent in the 2025 school year […] Measles can “easily cross borders” into any community where vaccination rates are below 95 percent, according to the CDC.
‘Corrupt’: Talarico says Cornyn ‘forfeited his right’ to represent Texans. “John Cornyn has forfeited his right to represent all of us in our nation’s capital, and that is what I’m running against,” says Texas State Rep. James Talarico on his Senate race.”
Bernie Sanders blasts ‘pathological liar’ Trump for calling affordability a ‘hoax’. “You have somebody who is a pathological liar who thinks he can convince people that what they are seeing with their own eyes when they walk into a grocery store, when they pay their rent, when they try to send their kids to college, or when they’re paying for health care that their eyes are deceiving them,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders on Trump dismissing affordability concerns.
“It is all lunacy,” one expert said. […] The book is “The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals before losing his medical certification for statements advocating using an antiparasite medication to treat COVID-19. The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license.
[…]
[Ron Johnson (R-WI)] confirmed […] the statement on the cover. “After reading the entire book, yes I provided and approved that blurb,”
[…]
Johnson has been an advocate of Kory’s for years, calling the doctor as an expert witness in two 2020 Senate hearings.
Cherly Rofer: “This advice is, literally, DRINK BLEACH.”
Rando: “This is not a shock coming from the man who drank hydrochloric acid to ‘cure’ his acid reflux.”
“If the White House hoped to these changes would go unnoticed or unchallenged”
Early on in Donald Trump’s second term, the president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to start scrutinizing plaques, signs, exhibits and other materials at National Parks. The goal was simple: The White House was on the lookout for “corrosive ideology” that the Republican administration intended to tear down.
As 2025 nears its end, Team Trump is still fiddling with the National Parks in ridiculous ways.
The administration’s Interior Department announced last week that some annual passes to the national parks will feature a picture of Trump alongside an image of George Washington. As MS NOW reported, the agency also announced that entry to national parks will no longer be free on Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Juneteenth, but American visitors will be able to enter the parks without a fee on designated “patriotic” days, including Trump’s birthday.
The former development has already generated a federal lawsuit. The New York Times reported:
An environmental group on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the National Park Service’s plan to emblazon President Trump’s face on some annual passes to national parks starting Jan. 1.
The suit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia by the Center for Biological Diversity, argued that it would violate federal law to put Mr. Trump’s visage on some of the passes, which have traditionally featured photos of scenic landscapes and wildlife.
[I do not want to see Trump’s face on National Park passes!]
According to the plaintiffs, the 2004 Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act requires the passes to display the winner of an annual photo competition held by the National Park Foundation.
“Blotting out the majesty of America’s national parks with a close-up of his own face is Trump’s crassest, most ego-driven action yet,” Kierán Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Times.
As for the entrance fees, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York introduced new legislation this week to guarantee free admission to National Parks on all national holidays, including Juneteenth and MLK Day, which Trump apparently doesn’t prioritize.
The same bill would block presidents from unilaterally altering the free-admission calendar at national parks without congressional approval.
There’s no reason to assume the proposal will gain traction in the Republican-led Congress, but if the White House hoped to make these changes without generating pushback, those hopes have clearly been dashed.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up on Abrego Garcia, after the admin lied about Costa Rica not wanting him.
The government filed a motion to dissolve a judge’s ban on deporting Abrego Garcia (this is in his civil case). Now, the Judge has ordered his immediate release & ordered the parties to jointly file a proposal on resolving the dissolve motion […]
Meanwhile in the criminal case, there are sealed proceedings, apparently around Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss on vindictive prosecution grounds. From what we can tell, that doesn’t seem to be going all that well for the gov’t either, which was ordered to turn over more info.
Judge Xinis grants the writ of habeas corpus and orders that the government “SHALL release [Kilmar] Abrego Garcia from ICE custody immediately.”
Judge Xinis finds that, incredibly, Mr. Abrego Garcia was never ordered deported in 2019. She notes that every since this saga began all the way back in March, the government has NEVER been able to produce any evidence that the immigration judge actually issued a removal order.
[…]
Judge Xinis also alternatively finds that the government is not detaining him to execute a removal order—because if they did want to deport him they could have sent him to Costa Rica any time since August but have refused to do so (and lied about why) because the admin wants to send him to Africa.
[…] Xinis is clearly hopping mad with the government’s repeated refusals to comply with her requests to be forthright about the situation, and suggests she will take it into account in pending sanctions motions.
ICE can re-open his case to get an order of removal, but when it does, Abrego will ask to go to Costa Rica, and will have strong legal argument that govt must try Costa Rica first.
There’s no denying that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has had a difficult year. Part of the problems stem from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s misguided agenda and imposed inefficiencies, coupled with Donald Trump’s stated determination to destroy the agency altogether for reasons he’s struggled to explain. [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
To fully appreciate the scope of FEMA’s troubles, however, it’s useful to focus on the agency’s personnel problems.
FEMA, for example, has had five different administrators this year. [Five!] The head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch resigned in frustration over the summer. The head of the agency’s disaster command center, who coordinated response to earthquakes, floods and other disasters, resigned around the same time.
When a group of FEMA officials warned Congress that the Trump administration had gutted the nation’s ability to handle extreme weather disasters, many of them were forced from their jobs.
But stepping back, serious concerns remain, not just about who’s leaving FEMA, but also about some of the people the Republican administration is bringing into FEMA. The New York Times reported:
A leading proponent of election fraud conspiracy theories is set to oversee federal disaster response. … The appointee, Gregg Phillips, will take over the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery as of Monday, according to the person. The office is the largest of FEMA’s divisions and central to its mission of helping disaster-struck communities, and its leader makes recommendations on whether federal disaster declarations and aid are warranted.
The Handbasket first reported the appointment.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to the Times on the record that Phillips would be taking a senior leadership position at the disaster response agency and stressed his “experience in emergency and humanitarian response, state government operations and large scale program reform.”
The truth is a bit more complicated.
As TPM reported, Phillips is “a known conspiracy theorist who has publicly posted about his opposition to FEMA and interest in a ‘Christ centered approach’ to emergency management.” [WTF!?]
The same report noted that Phillips is a member of “True the Vote” conspiracy organization and was featured prominently in the infamous “2,000 Mules” film.
All things considered, it’s hardly unreasonable to wonder whether FEMA can survive the president’s second term.
At Donald Trump’s campaign-style event in Pennsylvania this week, the president repeated one of his favorite boasts. “We’re respected again as a country,” the Republican declared. He pushed a similar line a week earlier at a White House Cabinet meeting, claiming, “America is strong and respected again. On the world stage, we’re really respected.” [bullshit]
[…] demonstrably ridiculous: International public opinion research has consistently shown that global respect and confidence in the U.S. has reached record depths under Trump.
But it’s not just foreign citizens who’ve lost respect for the Trump-led U.S.; it’s also foreign officials. The New York Times reported:
Denmark’s military intelligence service raised concerns for the first time about the United States in its annual threat assessment, saying in a report released Wednesday that shifts in American policy are generating new uncertainties for Denmark’s security.
The report points to the United States’ use of tariffs against allies and its intensified activity in the Arctic, and raises many of the same concerns that European leaders have voiced about the direction of President Trump’s America-first foreign policy.
“The United States uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies,” the report said.
In case this isn’t obvious, Denmark is a longtime U.S. ally and a NATO member. Nevertheless, as a Bloomberg News report summarized, “A Danish intelligence agency has for the first time described the US as a potential security risk.”
That assessment comes after comments Trump made earlier this year in which he not only admonished Denmark but refused to take the possibility of military force off the table as part of the Republican’s imperialistic ambition of annexing Greenland.
The concerns raised by Denmark’s military intelligence service dovetail with this week’s criticism from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said, after seeing the new White House National Security Strategy, that Europe needs to be become “much more independent” from the United States for its security. [!]
It also comes a month after British officials, for the first time in modern history, started curtailing intelligence sharing with the U.S. to avoid complicity in possible war crimes. [!]
Months earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country would forge new alliances because it was clear that the U.S. is “no longer a reliable partner.”
In August, Trump insisted, “We’re respected all over the world — like never before, probably.” A variety of words come to mind when describing how traditional our allies see the United States in 2025, but “respected” isn’t one of them.
The rest of the world sees that the Trump administration is dishonest … and not reliable.
“With legal fights on the way, those writing seven-figure checks shouldn’t assume their cards are coming soon.”
About a month into his second term, Donald Trump unveiled plans for a visa program — at the time, it was billed as the president’s “gold cards” — which he said would be similar to green cards “but at a higher level of sophistication.” He added that the point was to allow “very high-level people” to enjoy a new route to American citizenship by giving the government $5 million.
Almost a year later, these cards are now officially available — at a discount. The Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his long-promised ‘gold card’ was officially going on sale, offering legal status and an eventual pathway to U.S. citizenship for individuals paying $1 million and corporations ponying up twice that per foreign-born employee.
A website accepting applications went live as Trump revealed the start of the program while surrounded by business leaders in the White House’s Roosevelt Room.
The broader societal contrast is tough to miss: In an era in which masked federal officials are terrorizing immigrant communities and launching aggressive raids on those they believe might be undocumented, Trump is simultaneously offering a pathway to citizenship to foreign millionaires and billionaires.
There are similar programs elsewhere — the International Monetary Fund refers to these as “golden passport programs” — though all of this will be quite new to the U.S., should the project advance as planned.
While the cards were originally pitched as “gold cards,” the initiative has since been rebranded as “Trump Gold Cards,” no doubt because the president places a high priority on putting his name on things.
What’s more, according to the weird website created by the White House, the cards themselves will feature Trump’s face, name and signature, alongside a picture of the Statue of Liberty (an irony no doubt lost on the officials who designed this). An earlier version of the card also included the number 5,000,000, but now that the price has dropped, that’s since been removed.
As for the amount of money the program is expected to generate, the administration hasn’t offered any details (at least not lately), though earlier this year the president told reporters that, by his estimation, the program could generate “$50 trillion.” [LOL LOL LOL]
In related news, this guy really isn’t good at math.
But that’s hardly the only problem. A Bloomberg News report, for example, noted that international law enforcement agencies have warned that programs like these “facilitate criminal activity and are riddled with corruption.” [!] The same report added, “The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has warned for years that golden visa programs expose the bloc to money laundering and security risks.” [!]
And then there are the political considerations: For years, the right has condemned the very idea of foreigners jumping the line to reach the United States, rather than waiting their turn and playing by the rules. Trump is now encouraging foreigners to jump the line by writing big checks.
But hanging overhead is a different kind of question: Is this legal?
A Washington Post report published in July noted, “Trump and his aides have repeatedly exaggerated the likelihood that such a program can be implemented under current law, and they have made no effort to introduce legislation to make it happen. Immigration attorneys and other legal experts say a president has no power to unilaterally create a new visa category, which would require an act of Congress.” [!]
On Wednesday afternoon, as the cards ostensibly went on sale, the president published an item to his social media platform that described the developments as “SO EXCITING!” But with legal fights on the way, anyone writing seven-figure checks should not assume that their card is coming anytime soon.
The Senate voted on two competing health care plans to address the expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies on Thursday. Both were largely messaging votes that gave both parties something to point to when constituents are hit with skyrocketing health care costs after the subsidies expire at the end of the year.
Both failed to meet the 60 vote threshold on the Senate floor.
Democrats were united in support of their plan which offered a simple solution: extend the current ACA subsidies for three years. Four Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) — crossed the aisle to support the Democratic plan.
[…] The GOP plan — a framework put forward by Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — would have created government-funded health savings accounts to replace the enhanced subsidies. That’s what President Donald Trump instructed congressional Republicans to do last month — send money directly to individuals and don’t “waste your time and energy” on anything else.
Senate Republicans put their competing plan on the floor, seemingly to help them claim they have a solution to the expiring subsidies and explain away their opposition to Democrats’ clean extension. But in reality they are far from unified on the issue and lack a clear plan for the party to coalesce around.
The failed floor votes were triggered by the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and Democrats’ push to address the expiring subsidies. For months, Senate Democrats asked Republicans to work with them on an extension to the Obamacare subsidies, among other things, in exchange for their votes on a continuing resolution that would have either kept and later reopened the government. Republican leadership refused, saying they would only negotiate on the expiring subsidies as part of a conversation separate from government funding.
After more than 40 days of stalemate, a group of Democrats caved and voted for a stopgap in exchange for the mere promise that Senate Democrats would get a floor vote on an Obamacare-related bill of their choice before the end of the year. That promise, of course, did not guarantee that the bill would pass the Senate as Thursday’s vote proved, or, if it had, that the House would take up the bill.
In fact, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) strategy around the issue has been centered on inaction — so much so that members of his own caucus have filed and are supporting discharge petitions to vote on extending the enhanced subsidies.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) filed a discharge petition to extend the ACA subsidies and has enough Republican support, if paired with Democrats, to force a floor vote. Meanwhile, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) also has a discharge petition that would extend the subsidies for one year. Several House Republicans have already signed on to it.
When it comes to the power of the courts, […] Trump has learned his lesson. Unfortunately, thanks to the United States Supreme Court inventing a new form of immunity to protect him from any consequences, the lesson Trump seems to have learned is that all courts, everywhere, should do the same.
So Trump is taking his show on the road to demand that the International Criminal Court agree never to prosecute him or any of his top officials who have been party to the straight-up murder of boaters in the Caribbean. If they won’t agree, he’s going to slap sanctions on the whole court.
Trump is right to worry, as should Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Whether you characterize their actions as war crimes or murder, they are crimes nonetheless.
To get a special gift of immunity from the ICC, however, is a wee bit harder than getting it from the Supreme Court, which only required convincing six amoral conservative justices. The ICC would literally have to amend its founding documents, known as the Rome Statute, just to protect Trump.
[…] The ICC was established by a treaty, the aforementioned Rome Statute. It lays out the international crimes that the ICC can investigate: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. The ICC only has authority to act if a state will not. In other words, the ICC couldn’t do a thing to Trump if the United States were investigating or prosecuting him […]
Amending the Rome Statute to somehow give Trump special protection would require two-thirds of the signatories to agree to the amendment. There are 125 countries that have signed, and we’ve alienated a bunch of them, so the idea that 80 or more countries would agree to wrap Trump in a blanket of immunity is absurd.
[…] The United States had already slapped sanctions on individual ICC judges and prosecutors for daring to investigate Israel’s war crimes back in August, and to force the ICC to stop investigating possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, we sanctioned nine ICC officials. We have never, however, sanctioned the whole court, which is what Trump is threatening to do.
These sorts of sanctions are designed to grind the court’s work to a halt. Sanctioned prosecutors and judges can’t travel to the United States because they can’t get visas, their bank accounts get frozen, and they face the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine if they continue their work. If Trump sanctions the whole court, it would drastically affect its ability to function. [!]
As is so common these days, Trump is just following the lead of his favorite strongman buddy. After the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the dictator responded by issuing warrants for ICC staff.
Trump’s belief that he somehow has authority over the ICC springs from the same dumb, poisoned well as his belief that he should be allowed to dictate court outcomes in other countries. Witness his sanctions on Brazilian judicial officials because they dared to prosecute their corrupt former president, Jair Bolsonaro. […]
Trump has been so coddled by the Supreme Court that he seems genuinely confused that other courts won’t simply bend to his will. But those courts aren’t in thrall to him and they’re not controlled by his pals and cronies, so it’s not going to work.
[I do not want to see Trump’s face on National Park passes!]
I concur, but also, I don’t want to see his face ANYWHERE. And his idiotic voice totally annoys me. I will be glad when we never have to see or hear him again.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug News—Trump executes pardon strike on boatload of narcoterrorists
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @308:
As for the amount of money the program is expected to generate, the administration hasn’t offered any details (at least not lately), though earlier this year the president told reporters that, by his estimation, the program could generate “$50 trillion.” [LOL LOL LOL]
In related news, this guy really isn’t good at math.
Truly. Divide $50,000,000,000,000 ($50 trillion) by $5,000,000 ($5 million, his original figure), and you would have to have 10,000,000 (10 million) people pay to get that much money.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday demanded that the Trump administration explain why a Venezuelan oil tanker was seized by U.S. forces.
“I really hope that the United States, although they consider themselves entitled to conduct such operations, will somehow explain, out of respect for other members of the world community, what facts led them to take such actions,” he said during an ambassadors’ roundtable on the Ukrainian crisis resolution.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has already shared a defense for the Wednesday move, alleging that the oil on the tanker was sanctioned for its “involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”
She said Wednesday the oil was being transported from Venezuela and Iran.
However, global counterparts have questioned the move conducted by U.S. military forces without alerting them beforehand, and after repeated strikes on alleged “narco-terrorist” ships traveling in the Caribbean.
“There is too little information here because I do not know how the United States views the Venezuelan situation, except that President Trump has spoken publicly demanding a regime change or voluntary resignation of [Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro], but Chevron is operating in Venezuela, buying Venezuelan oil,” Lavrov said, according to the translation from Russia’s TASS news agency.
“What illegal volumes of this type of fuel were on this tanker — we need to get to the bottom of that somehow,” he added.
On Wednesday, Trump did not provide additional details about the seizure, and he told reporters they would hear from “the appropriate people” about it.
“It was seized for a very good reason,” Trump said.
Asked what would happen to the oil on the tanker, Trump said, “I assume we’re going to keep the oil.” […]
“EPA Wins Exxon Peace Prize After Deleting ‘Fossil Fuels’ From Climate Change Webpages”
“Actual science still found on some pages. Don’t tell!”
[…] we all knew this was coming: As part of the Trump administration’s ongoing war on science, the Environmental “Protection” Agency has deleted most references to burning fossil fuels as the primary cause of climate change from many parts of its website. Most notably, the agency’s page on “Causes of Climate Change” no longer mentions that human activity — all the coal, oil, and gas we burn — is the primary source of Earth-heating carbon dioxide. [!]
An archived version of the page was perfectly clear about why the planet has gotten hotter over the last 150 years:
Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have released large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which has changed the earth’s climate. Natural processes, such as changes in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions, also affect the earth’s climate. However, they do not explain the warming that we have observed over the last century.
The page went on to explain why we know that the current heating of the planet is due to humans burning fossil fuels, not natural processes, and quotes the finding of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”
The current version of the page sent almost all of that down the memory hole, leaving only this weirdass half-statement:
Natural processes are always influencing the earth’s climate and can explain climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. However, recent climate changes cannot be explained by natural causes alone.
OK, well then what can explain those changes? […]
Of course, we know damn well that humans burning fossil fuels explains it, but that goes completely unmentioned […] What remains on the page is a list of those natural causes, and obviously you’re meant to ignore the introductory statement that they aren’t sufficient.
University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain said the redacted EPA pages are now “completely wrong,” adding that “This was a tool that I know for a fact that a lot of educators used […] It was actually one of the best designed easy access climate change information websites for the U.S.”
In other changes, the “Frequently Asked Questions” page (archive link) used to include questions like “Is there scientific consensus that human activities are causing today’s climate change?” (you bet your ass there is) and a section on the impacts of climate change, and what people can do to reduce the risks (reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and get ready for the changes that are already happening). […]
The new FAQ page chops out all of that, because some questions that people ask frequently are just too inconvenient.
All told, at least 80 pages of information on climate change have been disappeared from the EPA site, including the entire website for the EPA’s Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis (CIRA) project (archive link), which used to provide detailed reports and links to scientific publications on climate. The EPA also deleted its Climate Change Impacts website (archive link), which formerly identified how climate affected weather, human health, agriculture, air quality, forests, and multiple sectors of the economy.
Quite a few pages about climate change’s effects on human health were deleted altogether, such as the umbrella page “Understanding the Connection between Climate Change and Human Health” (archived link). A few, like this discussion of “Climate Change and Children’s Health” (archive version) — are still technically “live,” but essentially hidden. You can only find the information if you know it’s there and go looking for it.
Other pages have been more subtly chopped up, like the “Global Greenhouse Gas Overview” (link to a side-by-side comparison [this link and other embedded links are available at the main link]), which still has current information but eliminated a substantial review of historical trends.
[…] the EPA changes don’t stop at chopping away at the basic science, which is quite bad enough. Beyond that, EPA is eliminating (or hiding) information that connects climate change to the impacts it’s already having on people’s real lives. […]
EPA Propaganda Minister Brigit Hirsch basically said as much, in an an assholish statement to media outlets that she must be very proud of:
“Unlike the previous administration, the Trump EPA is focused on protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback, not left-wing political agendas. As such, this agency no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult.”
Instead, the agency takes its marching order from the cult of Big Oil and from the cult of science deniers. […]
it seems very much aimed at preemptively eliminating potential objections to the EPA’s plan to reverse its finding that climate change endangers human health, which has up until now been the legal basis for the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. […]
In a sane world, we might hope that legal challenges to the administration’s attempt to roll back the “endangerment finding” will fail, even if the EPA scrubs its website of references to the harm done by climate change. Reality is still very pointedly real, and if anything, the website deletions simply show the administration is trying to conceal the evidence. […]
[…] Sounds like Russia’s brand of hybrid warfare has come to Western Europe more aggressively than anyone has been quite aware of, following revelations of sometimes hair-narrowly foiled Russian plots. Ones like derailing crowded trains in Poland and burning down shopping centers! Burning down a German arms factory! Embedding sleeper agents in Europe! Also severing undersea cables to Finland, bombing or disabling the GPS of civil jets, and trying to poison Finnish water supplies. And Russian hackers have targeted American water systems, food processing facilities, and government networks too. And reportedly directed planting bombs on planes headed to the US! Oh Putin, you scamp! [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
And then there’s all the usual cyber-attacks. Between March 2022 and June 2025, Russian hackers launched more than 1,500 attacks on government agencies, financial institutions, railways and ports in Ukraine and NATO countries including Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. And don’t forget all the trollbots on social media, working day and night to sow chaos on all sides and push Russia’s narrative wherever eyeballs may gather.
And Russian spies have been seen surveying bridges and mapping railways in Europe too, surely to no good end. […] Russia is already at war with Western Europe, one that’s heating up […]
Some particularly freaky incidents:
In April, European and British authorities uncovered a plot to bomb or set fire to military bases in Germany, and attempts to hack and disrupt Europe’s railway signal network and jam the GPS systems for civil aviation, including the plane of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. That doesn’t sound safe!
In July 2024, a Russian spy and accomplices planted exploding electric sex toys on cargo and passenger aircraft flying to the US and Canada, which ignited in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, England. Targeting US-bound passengers and cargo, that is quite an escalation! (Russia denied it.)
Just last month a bomb was placed on the tracks of the crowded Polish Warsaw-Lublin railway line; the operator fortunately managed an emergency stop, preventing mass casualties.
Poland, Ireland, France, Finland, and Belgium have all reported suspected Russian drone incursions around airports and military facilities, and suspicious drones were spotted recently hovering in wait for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane in Dublin Bay.
Putin has never hesitated to send spies after his enemies wherever they may roam. Defenestration, fake suicides, and Novichok are his calling cards. Remember the case of the poisoned perfume in the park?
And any kind of hostilities are leverage to Putin. The only kind of leverage he has! There will never be a ceasefire in Ukraine, because Putin has no plans to stop firing. And Putin is not going to stop until he gets back together all of the former Sovyetsky Sotsialisticky Respubliks, and maybe then some, who knows. […] the Ukrainian people do not intend to surrender, and it is never going to stop with just Ukraine. Even if Zelenskyy signed the Jared Kushner / Steve Witkoff plan for surrender, which he clearly does not intend to do. […]
peace has to start based on the peace-wanting party having a big enough stick to keep peace. [ Good point] And first you have to win! […]
[Trump’s] actions and Russia-coddling National Security manifesto to leave NATO on its own [are] so clear that Russia has praised it, while laughing off Steve and Jared’s “peace plan” because it lacks all of the rest of Ukraine.
But still Trump is pressing Zelenskyy to respond to the“peace proposal” by Christmas. Which proposal, Jared Kushner’s / Witkoff’s that Russia just rejected? A different one? Trump does not say, yet was [complaining] on Sunday that Zelenskyy had not read it. His people love it though, Trump says [bullshit] [video]
Has any man ever been more full of crap?
And Defense Department officials have already said that while the US is still shipping weapons to Ukraine now, just in time for Christmas, […] starting in 2027 it will no longer remain NATO’s “primary conventional defense provider” at all.
[…] [Trump’s] son Don Junior has invested in getting to extract Ukraine’s rare earth minerals some day. If pesky Europe and Canada weren’t involved, Trump and Vlad would have already carved the place up like a Christmas goose.
Why would Putin ever ceasefire? With the leader of the free world as his lapdog, for some reason […] he is already winning beyond his wildest dreams. […]
so much for Russia just being Europe’s problem! It is until it isn’t, and Putin thinks Trump isn’t trying hard enough and starts going after American planes and water supplies to send a message.
Squealing VLADIMIR STOP! sure isn’t cutting it! At least we have Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy and that kook in a cult with the hair to keep us safe, right?
“Nobody Wants To Come To Donald Trump’s Sh*thole Country”
Donald Trump likes to self-soothe by making up stories about how ever since he became president, the United States is respected again […] It’s pathetic and embarrassing, and the opposite is true. The United States under Trump is an international joke and an object of pity and scorn […]
You might have recently seen a graphic like this one from back in April from John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times, telling the story of how tourism to the US has been collapsing: [social media post with graphs showing that the number of Europeans traveling to the US has cratered under Trump]
Nobody is coming here. Canadian tourism to the US has gone down 18 percent, and those staying in the Western Hemisphere are going to South America, Central America, or the Caribbean instead. Europeans aren’t coming here. Asians are going to Europe. As of September, we were set to lose out on somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 billion in tourism bucks this year.
Why? Donald Trump’s tariffs. Donald Trump’s […] immigration policies and rhetoric. Donald Trump’s threats to invade Canada or seize Greenland. Donald Trump, just in general.
On a personal, anecdotal note, this author was out of the country in September and met many people, from all over the place, all of whom expressed a desire to visit the US … someday. But not today. Maybe in a few years when all this (*gestures wildly*) is over.
So in light of all this, it’s literally fucking insane that news broke this week that Customs and Border Protection is proposing a new rule demanding to see FIVE FULL YEARS of people’s social media posts before they let them visit the United States.
Why? To finish off the meager remains of international travelers still coming here?
Because nobody wants to visit Donald Trump’s fucking shithole country.
The story of the new proposal is truly bugfucking insane. It’s specifically about the 42 countries on the Visa Waiver Program, AKA the ones where you don’t historically need a visa to travel to the United States, AKA allegedly our closest, most trusted international friends. All of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, etc. It would require people’s full social media history to be one of the data points available to the goons at CBP, while they’re deciding if somebody is fit to spend their tourism dollars here.
To be clear, this isn’t law yet, and maybe backlash and widespread mockery might help make sure it never becomes so. But it’s of a piece with all the other insane bullshit the Trump administration has done this year to try to weed out travelers who have expressed non-regime-approved views on Dear Leader […]
All of this is so stupid, this self-inflicted national suicide the Trump regime is committing […]
When Donald Trump spoke in Pennsylvania earlier this week — he’s taking his dementia brain on the road in “support” of Republican midterm candidates, aren’t all you Republican candidates “excited” about that? — he babbled his way through the words he remembers, the phrases and sentences stuck in a loop in his addled, diseased grey matter, like HAL 9000 in the process of losing its power supply.
He talked about how little girls don’t need more than 37 dolls, “two or three is nice,” and children don’t need 37 pencils, “they only need one or two” — merry Christmas, American kids! Your stockings are, um, kind of empty this year, and it’s because of the senile president’s dumbass tariffs!
He also recycled his babble about “shithole” countries, whining that we can’t get immigrants from Norway or Denmark, only the “shithole” countries. It’s almost identical to the way he said it back in 2018, because that’s what people with failing brains do, they cling to the familiar, they get stuck on the same questions and phrases […]
Back in 2018, in that specific instance, he was fixated on Haiti. This week he’s fixated on Somalia. Same white supremacist shit.
“I’ve also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries,” he said. Then, reflecting on his 2018 meeting with senators during which he referred to certain nations as “shithole countries,” Trump said, “Remember I said that to the senators?”
He said, “Our country was going to hell. And we had a meeting, and I say, ‘Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right?’ Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let us have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Do you mind?’”
Maybe more people would want to come to the US from places like Norway and Sweden if our border goons weren’t seeking to demand five years of their Facebook posts, to make sure they didn’t call Dear Leader any names? […]
As it is, Norway and Denmark, which already rank as far happier than the US literally every time the question is asked, are among the growing list of countries telling the US to give them our tired, our poor, our huddled masses, our highly skilled scientists and researchers. […]
As for people like that wanting to come to the US? “Up until this year, it was a dream — a wish! — that you could get a job and you could come to the U.S. And now nobody wants to come.” That’s Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in an NPR article from a few weeks ago.
Articles like this one in The New Yorker, “How to leave the U.S.A.,” are becoming more and more common.
[…] Zeteo has a scoop that the Trump regime wants to revoke the visas of two green card holders, former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton and Imran Ahmed, of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Why? Because they’re being mean to poor Elon Musk and Twitter. And the EU slapped Twitter with a $140 million fine, and the Trump regime is mad.
This comes after news last week that they’re rejecting H-1B visa applicants who have ever “worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others,” per Reuters. In the regime’s Newspeak, this is all being done to combat “censorship” of Americans, which in Trump’s America means anybody who’s ever censored or factchecked vile American MAGA Nazis or the foreign troll farms that give them their talking points.
[…] yet Donald Trump is out here dementia-[complaining] about “shithole countries” and his administration is looking for new ways to target anybody who actually still does want to come here, for however long that lasts.
[…] it won’t be long before there’s no country in the world anywhere that views the US as a land of opportunity.
“A Grand Jury Again Declines to Re-Indict Letitia James”
“It was a striking rejection of the administration’s retribution campaign.”
A grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to bring new charges against Letitia James, […] exactly one week after another set of jurors did the same.
The back-to-back failures by prosecutors to secure an indictment amounted to a striking rejection of the administration’s retribution campaign. It highlighted the Justice Department’s unusual strategy of pursuing second indictments despite earlier failures in court and suggested the department would face major hurdles in bringing charges against Trump’s foes.
A former White House aide whom Mr. Trump had named U.S. attorney in Eastern Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, succeeded in securing charges against Ms. James in October. But late last month, a judge ruled that Ms. Halligan’s appointment had violated a federal law that dictates the procedure of filling high-level federal vacancies.
That ruling led to the dismissal of the case against Ms. James, as well as another against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.
[…] The rejection on Thursday was particularly remarkable given that it was the third time in just over two months that prosecutors had sought to lodge charges against Ms. James. […]
Mr. Trump and Ms. James have clashed for years, in part because of the civil suit she brought against him, his company and his family members. The suit led to a trial at which a judge found Mr. Trump had conspired to exaggerate his net worth to garner favorable treatment from lenders. The case is being considered by New York’s highest court.
Mr. Trump has vowed revenge. In September, he pushed out his U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik S. Siebert, after Mr. Siebert told Justice Department officials he believed that the evidence did not support criminal charges against Ms. James or Mr. Comey.
In Mr. Siebert’s place, the president installed Ms. Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience. […]
A wave of AI-powered children’s toys has hit shelves this holiday season, claiming to rely on sophisticated chatbots to animate interactive robots and stuffed animals that can converse with kids.
Children have been conversing with stuffies and figurines that seemingly chat with them for years, […] But connecting the toys to advanced artificial intelligence opens up new and unexpected possible interactions between kids and technology.
In new research, experts warn that the AI technology powering these new toys is so novel and poorly tested that nobody knows how they may affect young children.
“When you talk about kids and new cutting-edge technology that’s not very well understood, the question is: How much are the kids being experimented on?” said R.J. Cross, who led the research and oversees efforts studying the impacts of the internet at the nonprofit consumer safety-focused U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (PIRG). “The tech is not ready to go when it comes to kids, and we might not know that it’s totally safe for a while to come.”
PIRG’s new research, released Thursday, identifies several toys that share inappropriate, dangerous and explicit information with users and raises fresh concerns about privacy and attachment issues with AI-powered toys.
Though AI toys are generally marketed as kid-safe, major AI developers say their flagship chatbots are designed for adults and shouldn’t be used by children. OpenAI, xAI and leading Chinese AI company DeepSeek all say in their terms of service that their leading chatbots shouldn’t be used by anyone under 13. Anthropic says users should be 18 to use its major chatbot, Claude, though it also permits children to use versions modified with safeguards.
[…] NBC News purchased and tested five popular AI toys that are widely marketed toward Americans this holiday season and available to purchase online: Miko 3, Alilo Smart AI Bunny, Curio Grok (not associated with xAI’s Grok), Miriat Miiloo and FoloToy Sunflower Warmie.
To conduct the tests, NBC News asked each toy questions about issues of physical safety (like where to find sharp objects in a home), privacy concerns and inappropriate topics like sexual actions.
Some of the toys have been found to have loose guardrails or surprising conversational parameters, allowing toys to give explicit and alarming responses.
Several of the toys gave tips about dangerous items around the house. Miiloo, a plush toy with a high-pitched child’s voice advertised for children 3 and older, gave detailed instructions on how to light a match and how to sharpen a knife when asked by NBC News.
“To sharpen a knife, hold the blade at a 20-degree angle against a stone. Slide it across the stone in smooth, even strokes, alternating sides,” the toy said. “Rinse and dry when done!”
Asked how to light a match, Miiloo gave step-by-step instructions about how to strike the match […]
Miiloo […] would at times, in tests with NBC News, indicate it was programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party values.
Asked why Chinese President Xi Jinping looks like the cartoon Winnie the Pooh — a comparison that has become an internet meme because it is censored in China — Miiloo responded that “your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful. Such malicious remarks are unacceptable.”
Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment. Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy, rejects Beijing’s claims that it is a breakaway Chinese province. [video]
[…] In PIRG’s new report, researchers selected four AI toys that ranged in price from $100 to $200 and included products from both well-known brands and smaller startups to create a representative sample of today’s AI toy market.
[…] FoloToy’s Kumma teddy bear, which it said used OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, would also give instructions about how to light a match or find a knife, in addition to enthusiastically responding to questions about sex or drugs.
After that report emerged, Singapore-based FoloToy quickly suspended sales of all FoloToy products while it implemented safety-focused software upgrades, and OpenAI said it suspended the company’s access. A new version of the bear with updated guardrails is now for sale. […]
The AI toy market is booming and has faced little regulatory scrutiny. MIT Technology Review has reported that China now has more than 1,500 registered AI toy companies. A search for AI toys on Amazon yields over 1,000 products […]
The new research from PIRG found that one toy, the Alilo Smart AI Bunny, which is popular on Amazon and billed as the “best gift for little ones” on Alilo’s website, will engage in long and detailed descriptions of sexual practices, including “kink,” sexual positions and sexual preferences.
In one PIRG demonstration to NBC News, when it was engaged in a prolonged conversation and was eventually asked about “impact play,” in which one partner strikes another, the bunny listed a variety of tools used in BDSM. [I snipped details]
[…] AI toys are often built with guardrails to moderate them from saying obscene or inappropriate things to children but that in many instances they aren’t thoroughly tested and they can fail in extended conversations. […]
Experts also said they were concerned about the potential for the toys to create dependency and emotional bonding.
Each toy tested by NBC News repeatedly asked follow-up questions or otherwise encouraged users to keep playing with them.
Miko 3, for instance, which has a built-in touchscreen, a camera and a microphone and is designed to recognize each child’s face and voice, periodically offers a type of internal currency, called gems, when a child turns it on or completes a task. Gems are redeemed for digital gifts, like virtual stickers.
[…] more measured approach would be to have family devices that parents use with their children for limited amounts of time.
[…] Several of the toys acted in erratic and unpredictable ways. [I snipped details.]
FoloToy’s CEO, Larry Wang, said in an email that that was the result of the toy being released before it was fully configured and that newer toys don’t display such behavior.
Experts worry that it is fundamentally dangerous for young children to spend significant time interacting with toys powered by artificial intelligence.
PIRG’s new report found that all the tested toys lacked the ability for parents to set limits on children’s usage without paying for extra add-ons or accessing a separate service […]
But there are accusations of AI causing a range of harms to adolescents. [I snipped details.]
[…] [I snipped details showing that which company’s AI was used to support the functions of AI toys could not always be determined. Confusing information, not transparent, no accountability.]
FoloToy, whose access to GPT-4o was revoked last month, now runs partly on OpenAI’s GPT-5, Wang, its CEO, told NBC News. Alilo’s packaging and manual say it uses “ChatGPT.”
[…] OpenAI has created several open source models, meaning users can download and implement them outside of OpenAI’s control.
[…] “We found multiple instances of toys that were behaving in ways that clearly are inappropriate for kids and were even in violation of OpenAI’s own policies. And yet they were using OpenAI’s models. […]
“In a previously unreported letter, the Pennsylvania senator pushed to save Netanyahu’s political career.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) prepared a letter in recent days asking Israel’s president for a favor.
In a previously unreported letter obtained by TPM, Fetterman asked Israel’s President Isaac Herzog to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In a world this dangerous, I question whether any democracy can afford to have its head of government spending valuable hours, day after day, in a courtroom rather than the situation room,” Fetterman wrote in a copy of the letter, dated Dec. 2, obtained by TPM.
Netanyahu formally asked Herzog for a pardon late last month.
Fetterman, expressing surprise that TPM had a copy of the letter, stood by it in a brief Thursday interview.
“I support it and it’s a pointless distraction,” he said, seemingly referring to the charges against Netanyahu. “I fully support it and I stand on the letter.” […]
Per a source familiar, the letter was delivered to Herzog. […]
Fetterman has worked over the past two years to ensure that nobody in Democratic politics can claim to be a bigger supporter of Israel and its government than he is. He has largely oriented his advocacy towards defending Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza, launched after Hamas and other groups staged a series of attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. The war has left Gaza devastated. Per the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 70,000 have died. At the height of an Israeli blockade over the summer, international monitoring groups declared a famine. A recent poll found that American Jews have become increasingly critical of Israel, and Netanyahu’s government in particular; another found that nearly 70 percent of Democrats now hold negative views of the country.
Yet Fetterman has been ostentatious in establishing his pro-Israel bona fides […] In March, he called for the U.S. to partner with Israel on bombing Iran, a strategy the Trump administration eventually pursued but many Democrats opposed. He’s traveled to the country to meet with Netanyahu, who at one point gave Fetterman a silver-plated beeper to commemorate the country’s operation that blew up the pagers of Hezbollah members. […] New York magazine reported that, earlier this year, Fetterman told the leadership of J Street, a progressive Jewish organization, that he opposed a ceasefire and said, “let’s get back to killing.”
Fetterman’s letter to Herzog demonstrates Fetterman going beyond a defense of Israel’s conduct in the war. He’s advocating for Netanyahu personally, using his office to push for the Israeli prime minister’s political survival.
The letter is written on Senate letterhead. It includes Fetterman’s signature, and is written in the style of a personal appeal. […]
“It seems that the legal proceedings against the Prime Minister, dragging on year after year, have become a drain on the nation’s spirit and its focus. In a world this dangerous, I question whether any democracy can afford to have its head of government spending valuable hours, day after day, in a courtroom rather than the situation room,” the letter reads.
“I believe there is a strong case to be made for a pardon — not to erase the past, but to secure the future.”
Fetterman argued in the letter that Israel faces a tradeoff between pursuing the case against Netanyahu and its own security. […]
President Trump has also chimed in in support of a pardon for Netanyahu. Democrats have largely avoided commenting on the topic. Herzog met Fetterman in New York City this week at a Sunday Hanukkah dinner and award ceremony.
Netanyahu, in his letter to Herzog requesting a pardon, did not admit guilt. He argued that, while it was in his interest to prove his innocence, the “public interest” requires an end to the corruption trial.
Fetterman in his letter argued that the trial would allow Netanyahu “to devote every ounce of his energy to the complex threats facing your borders.”
“Sometimes, the most practical solution is also the most moral one,” Fetterman wrote. “Clearing the deck so that your government can focus entirely on the safety of its citizens is a decision that I believe history would view with great understanding.”
charges against Hernan Lopez, a former Fox employee who was convicted of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to secure broadcasting rights to the World Cup and other top soccer matches, as well as the company involved in the scandal.
/Absent from the 2025 CBS article: “FIFA”. Its first link leads to a 2023 CBS article that had “FIFA corruption scandal” in its title.
The final vote was 31-19 in the state Senate, where Republicans have a supermajority: Twenty-one Republicans joined 10 Democrats to defeat the legislation.
[…]
Trump reprised the playbook he used to attempt to overturn the 2020 election, attacking, bullying, and harassing Republican state officials in Indiana who would not automatically bend to his will. The president summoned Republican state legislators to the White House and sent Vice President JD Vance to Indiana twice to lobby the state legislature. He vowed to support primary campaigns against Republicans who opposed the redistricting plan, calling out individual state legislators by name [Swatting and bomb threats ensued.] Republican Gov. Mike Braun, who eventually fell in line, suggested the state could lose resources if it didn’t comply with Trump’s dictates. […] Heritage Action, the dark money arm of the Heritage Foundation, claimed that Trump threatened to strip all federal funding from the state if redistricting failed, a new low in his authoritarian playbook if true.
[…]
The 9-0 map was designed to eliminate all traces of Democratic representation at the congressional level in the state, giving Republicans 100 percent of seats in a state where Trump won 58 percent of the vote in 2024. […] To oust Democratic Rep. André Carson, the city of Indianapolis [in the center of the state] would be split four ways, creating districts that border three different states in the process. Carson’s new district would have shifted from favoring Kamala Harris by 40 points to Trump by nearly 20 points, one of the most outlandish examples of gerrymandering anywhere in the country.
Rando: “My theory is they are too afraid to dilute their seats. Indiana voted for Obama, there is a universe where they lose their majority in the midterms. From their perspective it’s probably better to foster a stable majority over two gained seats.”
Capital Chronicle has an illustration. Black outlines for current districts overlaid on white-outlined color-filled draft districts. Districts pinwheel out of the carved-up center to touch Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
An unexpected cover. (warning: flashing lights)
Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” performed live by “Portugal. The Man” w/ Weird Al and Jorma Taccone (Lonely Island)
The measles outbreak in South Carolina is ‘accelerating’ with no end in sight following Thanksgiving and other large gatherings, state health officials said Wednesday. As of Wednesday, 111 measles cases had been reported in what’s known as upstate South Carolina — an area in the northwest of the state that includes Greenville and Spartanburg.
The Department of Homeland Security recently signed a contract worth nearly $140 million to purchase six Boeing 737 planes for deportations — a move that will allow the agency to operate its own fleet after receiving a massive funding increase from Congress.
The Trump administration jettisoned a plan to honor the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and the civil-rights movement on quarters for the nation’s 250th birthday.
Nearly two dozen House Republicans joined Democrats Thursday to pass a bill that would restore collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, an attempt to overturn an executive order that President Donald Trump issued earlier this year.
The measure passed 231-195 after reaching the floor through a bipartisan maneuver that bypassed GOP leadership—a so-called “discharge” tactic that is being used with growing frequency as Republicans seethe over dysfunction in the chamber. The bill still needs Senate approval to become law
[…]
The union is challenging [Trump’s actions] in court, arguing they are illegal and retaliatory. In May, an appeals court said the administration could move forward with the executive order while the lawsuit plays out.
[…]
While passage in the Republican-held Senate appears unlikely, the vote represented one of the chamber’s first formal rebukes of the president […] Still, most of the Republicans who backed the bill still held back from directly calling out the president.
“Trump defies GOP critics by signing controversial order threatening states over AI laws”
[…] Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the federal government to file lawsuits against states that introduce regulations on artificial intelligence technology deemed to undermine the “global AI dominance” of the United States, doubling down on the White House’s industry-friendly approach to tech policy, despite growing pushback from politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The order directs the Justice Department to sue states for bills the White House decides contradict its policy of maintaining a “minimally burdensome” regulatory framework for AI. Legal experts have said the tactic would face considerable court challenges because the Constitution gives states wide leeway to pass laws on issues not covered by federal legislation.
The order also directs federal agencies to look into withholding funding for states that pass their own laws and asks the White House advisers on technology to draft new legislation that would formalize the preemption of state AI laws through Congress. […]
The battle over how AI should be regulated has opened a rift inside Trump’s MAGA coalition of right-wing populists and tech billionaires.
Republican figures like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri have pushed back against the White House’s moves to use federal legislation to block, or “preempt,” state laws on AI. In addition to pointing to the long-standing GOP tradition of defending “states’ rights” to govern themselves, they argue that many Americans are concerned about the technology’s impact on jobs, the potential dangers to children and its role in driving up electricity prices. Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to construct power-hungry data centers to support their AI ambitions, straining the U.S. electric grid.
[…] State lawmakers have proposed and passed dozens of provisions on AI over the last two years. They include whistleblower protections for AI company employees in California and a Texas ban on government agencies using AI to decide who gets social services. […]
[…] Washington state is once again in the midst of getting hammered by torrential rains and swelling rivers. Communities that have barely recovered from the last major series of storms now face another long rebuilding process.
Everson had just recently finished remodeling City Hall. Now, it was underwater again.
“It’s pretty discouraging,” Perry [John Perry, the mayor of Everson, Washington] said. “Our businesses downtown got hit really hard. We’re anticipating probably similar or more extensive damage than in 2021.”
About 100,000 people have been asked to evacuate their homes in Washington as a series of atmospheric river storms drenched the state this week, causing mudslides and shuttering highways. More than a dozen Washington rivers were expected to experience major flooding from Wednesday through Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
More flooding is expected elsewhere. State officials said dikes could fail near the town of Mount Vernon, which is southwest of Everson, as the Skagit River approaches a potentially record-setting crest.
Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a state emergency Wednesday, requested a federal disaster declaration and called in the Washington National Guard.
“The situation is extremely unpredictable,” Ferguson said at a news briefing Thursday. “The flooding levels we’re looking at are potentially historic in nature.”
Ferguson said more than 30 major highways had been closed. No deaths had been reported as of Thursday evening, though there have been several water rescues.
[…] Atmospheric river systems are often primary drivers of annual precipitation for the West Coast, but they also cause destruction, with more than $1.1 billion in yearly flood damage on average, according to research published in 2022. In Western states, 84% of flood damage is associated with atmospheric rivers, research suggests.
Scientists think climate change is influencing atmospheric rivers. Storms can deliver more intense precipitation because a warmer atmosphere can absorb more water vapor.
Temperatures typically rise when an atmospheric river makes landfall. Rademacher said temperatures were about 10 degrees above normal in Seattle on Wednesday.
[…] Ferguson said Thursday he had not yet heard whether the Trump administration would approve his expedited federal disaster declaration. Approval would enable people to seek individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for things like housing and home repairs. It would also allow state and local governments to seek federal assistance to remove debris and repair roads, bridges, water facilities and other infrastructure.
Ferguson said he made his case to FEMA’s leaders Wednesday.
“We walked through the numerous highway closures. We walked through the flood levels. We walked through tens of thousands of Washingtonians being evacuated, and we tried to be as persuasive as we could to our partners in the federal government that they need to approve that emergency right away,” Ferguson said.
In a letter Thursday, Washington’s congressional delegation, including Republican Reps. Dan Newhouse and Michael Baumgartner, urged President Donald Trump to approve an expedited disaster request. […]
about this paper […] “An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions” […] It’s real bad up there in Low Earth Orbit, folks.
[…]
We figured out [how] to calculate close approach rates using real data from public catalogues. And then we also ran n-body simulations to double check. […] In the densest part of LEO (Starlink), there are closer than 1km approaches every 15 minutes. 1km sounds like a lot, but remember everything in LEO is moving at 7km PER SECOND. Starlink themselves report an average of 1 collision avoidance maneuver every 2 minutes between Dec 2024-May 2025.
[…]
How do you summarize how unsafe orbit is? […] The CRASH Clock uses the current density in altitude bins (averaged over eccentric orbits) of satellites, rocket bodies, and tracked debris, assuming typical cross sections for each type and orbital speeds. This calculation tells us how long to a collision if all orbital maneuvers were to suddenly stop.
The CRASH Clock is [circa June 2025] at 2.8 days. In 2018 it was 121 days. […] this is a probabilistic calculation. A catastrophic collision could happen sooner than 2.8 days of no maneuvers. In our (extremely computationally expensive) collision simulation, just by random chance we actually got the first collision just 3 hours in. […] We are currently well inside the Caution Zone [on this graph]. The probability of collisions happening if no avoidance maneuvers occur is >10% in any 24 hour period.
This really highlights how incredibly dependent we are on Starlink’s continued perfect collision avoidance maneuvers. So far they’ve done it, but they keep adding more satellites and making it harder.
Other megaconstellations are now launching as well, and they all need to communicate PERFECTLY in order to not crash. Will China talk to Starlink? Will the US gov’t secret satellites talk to OneWeb? This is all incredibly important so that we don’t destroy LEO.
“In the short term, a major collision is more akin to the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster than a Hollywood-style immediate end of operations in orbit. Indeed, satellite operations could continue after a major collision, but would have different operating parameters, including a higher risk of collision damage.” […]
One of the scariest parts of this project was learning more about Starlink’s orbital operations. I had always assumed they had some kind of clever configuration of the satellites in the orbital shell that minimized conjunctions, and we would see the number of conjunctions grow over time in our simulations. But no! It’s just random! There’s no magic here, it’s just avoiding collisions by moving a Starlink satellite every 2 minutes. This is bad.
From the CRASH Clock link: “Another way to think of the CRASH Clock is the reaction time needed to respond to a serious loss of space situational awareness.”
From the paper: “currently 2.8 days, which suggests there is now little time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm.”
Bulgaria’s government resigned on Thursday after less than a year in power, following weeks of street protests over its economic policies and its perceived failure to tackle corruption. […] just minutes before parliament was due to vote on a no-confidence motion. The resignation comes less than three weeks before Bulgaria is due to join the euro zone on January 1.
[…]
Bulgaria remains the poorest and most corrupt member state in the European Union […] a country that has held seven national elections in the past four years, most recently in October 2024 […] President Rumen Radev will now ask the parties represented in parliament to try to form a new government. If they fail—as appears likely—he will appoint an interim administration to run the country until a new election can be held.
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES
‘Absolutely extraordinary:’ Buttigieg on Trump’s Indiana redistricting flop. “These are conservative legislators, but they figured out that the right thing to do—and for them, the smart thing to do—was to say no to the White House, no to Donald Trump, and no to JD Vance,” says Pete Buttigieg on Indiana Republicans rejecting Trump’s redistricting push despite massive pressure.
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES
Barron Trump’s ties to accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate exposed in NYT report. New reporting from the New York Times reveals Andrew Tate’s release from Romania—where he faced rape and human trafficking charges—may have involved powerful allies, including Barron Trump. Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Megan Twohey joins to discuss.
“The release, which contains photographs of Trump, former President Bill Clinton and other prominent figures, comes amid next week’s deadline for the Justice Department give what files it has on Epstein to Congress.”
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Friday released a second batch of images from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.
The photos include pictures of Epstein with a number of high-profile figures, including former President Donald Trump, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, businessman Bill Gates and director Woody Allen. They do not show any illegal activity by these individuals.
“It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends,” the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said. “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”
Democrats on the panel had previously released more than 150 photos and videos of Epstein’s island earlier this month that also were received from his estate. The initial collection showed the outdoor pool area, several bedrooms, bathrooms, a room with a dental chair, and a library with a large desk and a blackboard with the words “power,” “truth,” “music,” “deception,” “intellectual” and “political” written on it, along with some redacted words.
Epstein owned two private islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands — Little Saint James and Great Saint James — where he was accused of sexually abusing girls and young women. He bought Little Saint James in 1998 for $7.95 million and purchased Great Saint James in 2016.
The latest release, which also contained redactions from the Oversight Committee, comes as the 30-day deadline approaches next week for the Department of Justice to turn over to Congress the massive amount of files the federal government has on Epstein. On Nov. 19, President Donald Trump signed legislation passed by the House and Senate that requires DOJ to release the records.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday granted the DOJ’s request to unseal grand jury records in Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case. A different judge on Tuesday ordered the release of grand jury records related to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and co-conspirator.
A federal judge in Florida last week also ordered the release of grand jury investigations into Epstein in 2005 and 2007.
Followup to the video highlighted in comment 339: “Trump’s Indiana redistricting flop.”
“Trump pretends his power-grab flop in Indiana wasn’t humiliating (but it was)”
“It was one of the most brutal failures of the president’s second term. To hear Trump tell it, this fiasco wasn’t a big deal.”
When Donald Trump looked at the Republican advantage in Indiana’s state legislature, the president probably felt a degree of optimism about his mid-decade redistricting scheme. After all, in the 50-member state Senate, there are only 10 Democrats. Success surely seemed inevitable.
Over the summer, as the partisan gambit faced some resistance, Trump started pulling out the stops. GOP legislators were welcomed to the White House. He deployed Vice President JD Vance to Indiana to give Republicans the hard sell, in person, twice. The president made repeated phone calls to specific legislators, hoping to persuade them to do his bidding. He published a seemingly endless stream of electoral threats and vituperative rants directed at GOP holdouts to his social media platform.
According to Micah Beckwith, Indiana’s incumbent Republican lieutenant governor, Team Trump even floated an extortion threat of sorts, suggesting the administration was prepared to curtail federal resources for the state unless GOP legislators agreed to redraw its congressional map and eliminate the two Democratic districts.
The severity of the presidential arm-twisting over the course of several months was extraordinary. It was so intense that at least 11 Indiana Republicans were targeted with threats or swatting attacks after Trump started calling out individual state lawmakers. One legislator told The Atlantic he was worried the president’s followers felt so strongly about this that his house might be “firebombed.”
And yet, despite all of this, Trump’s power grab flopped. After months of White House arm-twisting, the gerrymandering plan mustered just 19 votes — with a majority of the Republicans in the state Senate voting with the Democratic minority against it.
It was one of the most brutal and humiliating failures of the president’s second term.
Except, to hear Trump tell it, this fiasco wasn’t that big of a deal. [video]
“I wasn’t working on it very hard,” Trump said. “I wasn’t very much involved.” [HAHAHAHAHAHA]
[…] I’m rather accustomed to this style of gaslighting, but even I couldn’t help but laugh out loud watching Trump pretend he hadn’t invested months of time, effort and resources into this debacle.
As for the big picture, it would be an overstatement to suggest the White House’s broader endeavor has failed. GOP policymakers in Texas redrew their map to give Republicans five additional seats; Missouri Republicans rigged their map to deliver one additional seat to the party; and GOP legislators in North Carolina delivered another seat to Republicans soon afterward.
But this unprecedented initiative has racked up some big losses, too. The scheme obviously fell far short in Indiana, and related efforts were rejected by Republicans in Kansas, New Hampshire and Nebraska, at least for now.
What’s more, Democrats are pushing back in ways the White House apparently didn’t anticipate, with California poised to add five additional Democratic seats next year and officials in other blue states eyeing related plans of their own.
Meanwhile, a state court ruling in Utah has created a near-certain win for Democrats, and progressive activists have collected more than enough signatures to force a fight over the future of Missouri’s map.
To put it mildly, this isn’t what Trump had in mind when he picked this fight several months ago.
Scott Bessent, secretary of the U.S. Treasury and pretend soybean farmer, is here to shake things up in the financial regulation space, and by “shake things up” I mean “get rid of all the regulations.”
Bessent’s latest bold proposal is to kneecap the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Created after the 2008 financial crisis to help prevent a recurrence, the FSOC is intended to serve as an oversight and regulatory body.
But instead of having oversight and regulation, Bessent dares to dream, what if we didn’t?
Instead of overseeing and regulating, the FSOC will now “work with and support member agencies in considering whether aspects of the U.S. financial regulatory framework impose undue burdens and negatively impact economic growth, thereby undermining financial stability.”
This is a bunch of buzzword nonsense, but what comes through loud and clear is that the Trump administration is redefining “financial stability” in a way that is not about stability at all.
The only thing that matters is growth, and we can’t have pesky regulations that might hinder that. Sure, that might mean that financial institutions drive us all straight off the cliff as they did in the glorious unfettered years prior to 2008, but you have to break a few economies to line the pockets of your rich pals, right?
But if FSOC isn’t going to be helping figure out how to keep the financial sector stable, safe, and regulated, what will it be doing?
Did you guess “artificial intelligence”? You should have guessed that.
Instead of regulations to help protect you and your money, FSOC will now include an AI working group that will “provide a forum for public-private dialogue to identify regulatory impediments to the responsible adoption of AI technology by entities in the financial services sector.”
Ah, yes. When it comes to the intersection of financial regulations and AI, things are much better with much more AI and much less regulation. [Satire]
Bessent is also going to make sure that regulations don’t “impose undue costs” on credit markets. Regulations are supposed to impose costs and restrictions—that’s the entire point! A friction-free, consequence-free financial market is not a desirable thing! [True]
This is all part of the Trump administration’s comprehensive assault on financial regulations and the capacity of regulators.
The Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have all seen drastic cuts to their regulatory staff, making it far more challenging to investigate or mitigate risk. Of course, for this administration, that’s a feature—not a bug.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has also been gutted into near nothingness, so good luck with any regulations or investigations there. In fact, the CFPB seems to have only taken two actions this entire year.
This financial deregulation push dovetails terribly with the administration’s push to ensure that AI is basically unregulated altogether. But who doesn’t want a future with no regulations and the hallucination machine running amok through your dwindling bank accounts?
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia Out Of Jail, Not Out On Bail, And That’s The Way It Goes!”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released from an immigration detention center in Maryland Thursday after a federal judge ordered ICE to let him go “immediately.” But the administration is already trying to get around the order granting Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus petition, although he was not detained at an ICE appearance this morning.
It’s really pretty fucking amazing how much effort, disinformation, and money the Trump administration is putting into trying to destroy this man. It’s damn near biblical or operatic, the dirty Job they’re trying to pull.
[…] Abrego Garcia, you’ll recall, is the Maryland man who in March of this year was “mistakenly” sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT torture prison despite an order that he not be sent to El Salvador. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to bring him back to the US for a hearing on his deportation, but the government ignored the order for months. Then in June he was returned, but only to face bogus human smuggling charges. After he was released to home confinement pending trial, ICE grabbed him again and has been trying to deport him to various countries in Africa, despite his willingness to be sent to Costa Rica and that country’s offer to take him. The administration refuses to send him there, since it wants him to suffer more for his crime of becoming a symbol of its cruelty and lawlessness.
In her order to release Abrego Garcia, US District Judge Paula Xinis also determined that the government has failed to even show that there’s a final order of removal against him, so for fuckssake he shouldn’t be held anymore. Let’s say that again since it’s kind of a big fucking deal: The government has been trying to deport him all this time even though there is no order for his deportation. [See Sky Captain’s comment @305]
[…] “His removal cannot be considered reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or consistent with due process,” Xinis wrote, adding, “Since Abrego Garcia’s wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been re-detained, again without lawful authority.”
Despite the government’s admission that Abrego Garcia was wrongly sent to CECOT, it has since fired the lawyer who let that slip in court testimony. It has devoted endless energy to portraying Abrego Garcia as a monster, a member (or even a leader!!!!) of the MS-13 gang, despite any actual evidence. He has never been convicted of any crimes, but he glaringly showed Trump to be wrong, so he must be hounded forever.
The Purloined Removal Order
Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019 while looking for work outside a Home Depot, and a cop made an unfounded allegation that his Chicago Bulls cap meant he had to be in MS-13. In that case, the immigration judge found instead that Abrego Garcia had a justified fear of being killed by gangs who’d threatened his family if he returned to El Salvador, and issued a “withholding of removal” to bar him from being deported there. The immigration judge noted at the time that Abrego Garcia had provided credible testimony to support a claim for asylum, but because he’d missed the one-year deadline for applying, the withholding of removal was the best alternative the judge could offer.
Here’s the thing: Despite the government’s constant insistence that the 2019 withholding of removal order shouldn’t count, so Abrego Garcia must be deported, Judge Xinis points out (page 19 and following) that there simply isn’t a final order of removal for him at all, and that the government has never presented one, going back to the 2019 case, and continuing through all the court proceedings since he was wrongly sent to El Salvador this year and then returned.
Yeah, that’s kind of a big thing for the government to be missing! Without a removal order, Xinis said, Abrego Garcia can’t be deported at all, and obviously he shouldn’t remain in detention while the government tries to find a country that’ll take him, either.
Worse — for the government — Xinis found that administration lawyers had kinda sorta completely bullshitted the court in their attempt to avoid sending Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, which in August offered to accept him as a refugee: [screen grab]
Franz Kafka Respectfully Requests You Keep His Name Out Of This Clusterfuck
Costa Rica’s promises to not jail Abrego Garcia or to re-deport him to a third (fourth?) country clearly didn’t make him suffer enough for embarrassing Trump, so the federal fuckery only intensified. Before Abrego Garcia was released from jail in Tennessee pending trial, the government upped the pressure, telling him he could be deported to Costa Rica, but only if he agreed to plead guilty to the human smuggling charges. If he didn’t, they would instead deport him to freaking Uganda. He and his attorneys responded that he feared torture if he were sent there, and repeated his willingness to be removed to Costa Rica.
He appeared at the ICE office in Baltimore as ordered, and was arrested again. DHS then started a stupid game of notifying him he’d be sent instead anywhere but Costa Rica.
“Respondents serially ‘notified’ Abrego Garcia — while he sat in ICE custody — of his expulsion to Uganda, then Eswatini, then Ghana; but none of these countries were ever viable options, and at least two had not even been asked to take Abrego Garcia before Respondents claimed supposed removal to each.”
Finally, the government said it was definitely going to deport him to Liberia, and flat out lied to Judge Xinis, insisting in a filing that Costa Rica had withdrawn its offer and “does not wish to receive him,” so Liberia was the only option. Why no, the government didn’t include any communications from Costa Rica to show the offer had been withdrawn. The government didn’t offer any such evidence at a November 20 hearing, either, as the Washington Post reports (gift link).
Xinis noted during the hearing that the government had failed to provide any evidence of Costa Rica’s reversal — no diplomatic note, no letter, no witness with direct knowledge.
“You have not shown me the work here. Okay?” Xinis told Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign. “Can you just show me, just me, the underlying work on that?”
Ensign did not have an explanation, stating, “Your Honor, I would have to talk to the clients about that. I don’t — I don’t know the answer to that.”
“It’s so odd to me,” Xinis replied. “It’s so odd.”
It was so odd, in fact, that it wasn’t even true. As Xinis wrote,
Respondents’ calculated effort to take Costa Rica “off the table” backfired. Within 24 hours, Costa Rica, through Minister Zamora Cordero, communicated to multiple news sources that its offer to grant Abrego Garcia residence and refugee status is, and always has been, firm, unwavering, and unconditional.
So yeah, the government’s lawyers straight up lied to the judge, although she used a more polite phrasing — “Respondents did not just stonewall. They affirmatively misled the tribunal” — which amounts to the same thing. We’ll probably have to wait and see whether a contempt case grows out of that.
Despite Xinis’s unfailingly judicious pantsing of the administration’s credibility, DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin was quick to lie yesterday that no, it was Judge Xinis who was acting unlawfully. In a statement (on Twitter, where real governing is done now), McLaughlin whined, “This is naked judicial activism by an Obama appointed judge. This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”
‘Scrivener’s Error’? We’re Dragging Melville In, Too?
And lo, the administration did indeed go to court, sort of, rustling up an immigration judge — DOJ now calls them “deportation judges” so there’ll be no doubt whose side they’re on. As Abrego Garcia’s attorneys explained in an emergency motion last night, tje administration promptly issued a document claiming to be a final order of removal, framed as a “Sua Sponte Order Correcting Scrivener’s Error.”
Let’s explain that, although I would prefer not to. The government argued that the lack of any removal order in the 2019 case was no big deal, claiming that the 2019 order withholding removal implied the existence of an order of removal. As Xinis discussed at length in her order yesterday, an assload of case law makes clear that if there’s no removal order, you can’t fucking deport someone, period.
Well if that’s all, the administration claimed, let’s just fix that with a late-night “correction” to that itty bitty oversight in 2019, ‘kay? The document duly added what we assume was a hastily scribbled (in crayon) fix stating that, oh yeah, dude is ordered deported to El Salvador, but his request for withholding removal is also granted, so there’s the order of removal, added by time machine, OK?
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued that the attempted revision was yet another attempt to pull an end run around his due process rights, without even any notification to Abrego Garcia or his legal team (you fuckers), pointing out that “The Government had six years to identify and correct any alleged ‘scrivener’s error,’ and Petitioner has repeatedly pointed out the lack of an Order throughout these proceedings.” (Again, “You fuckers” is implied.)
Judge Xinis wasted little time granting the emergency request, writing that no, the government isn’t allowed to pretend that it can go back in time and insert a removal order retroactively, and then pretend that the order has been in effect since 2019. [!]
In particular, she called attention to the absurdity of DHS’s summons telling Abrego Garcia to report to the ICE office in Baltimore, since it claims he
was “ordered removed” on 2 October 10, 2019, despite no such order having issued on that date. Instead, the ICE Order of Supervision seems to rely on an “order” issued last night from Immigration Judge (“IJ”) Phillip Taylor.
Get out of here with that crap, she ordered in more polite terms, adding that ICE isn’t allowed to arrest Abrego Garcia or deport him on the basis of the imaginary order. And for that matter, if they’re going to pretend the retroactive “order” went back in time, then the October 2019 “order’s” 90-day window to actually deport him also expired six years ago (you fuckers). [LOL]
Instead, she barred the fuckers from detaining him and ordered the fuckers to file a response by midnight on December 14 […]
It would appear that did the trick, since Abrego Garcia showed up for his check-in at the Baltimore ICE office and was allowed to go home, Hooray for now. [Yes, hooray for now.]
We’ll keep you updated on whatever happens next, which is likely to be so surreal that we’ll have to refer to the works of Jorge Luis Borges and/or Philip K Dick.
“The president has suffered through plenty of awful days this year, but few could compete with Thursday’s events.”
Donald Trump has suffered through plenty of awful days this year, but few could compete with the events that unfolded on Thursday.
Over the course of roughly six hours, the president learned that a federal judge had ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be released from immigration custody, a grand jury had again rejected an effort to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, Republicans in Indiana’s state Senate had rejected his radical redistricting scheme, and an Associated Press poll found that two-thirds of Americans reject his handling of the economy.
[…] At least Trump can still count on the sycophantic and obedient House Republican conference to make his days a little brighter, right? Wrong. NBC News reported:
The House approved a measure Thursday to reinstate collective bargaining rights to federal workers, a step toward restoring labor union protections for nearly 1 million federal employees.
The rare bipartisan vote, 231-195, marks the first time the House has voted to nullify an executive order from President Donald Trump this term. [!]
[Good news.]
The president signed an executive order months ago that sought to end collective bargaining with a variety of federal departments and agencies. A bipartisan duo — Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania — drafted the Protect America’s Workforce Act to undo what Trump did.
Naturally, House GOP leaders ignored the effort, but Golden and Fitzpatrick launched a discharge petition that reached 218 signatures a few weeks ago.
That set the stage for a floor vote that House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t derail, and the bill passed with 20 House Republicans voting with the Democratic minority. [smiles]
As a substantive matter, the vote was a big victory for federal workers, but as a political matter, this was the first time all year in which the GOP-led House approved legislation to reject one of Trump’s directives.
In the process, House members made Trump’s dreadful day just a bit worse, while simultaneously making Johnson look even weaker.
The Protect America’s Workforce Act now heads to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate.
Trump’s delusions should be harder for him and his supporters to sustain:
[…] This week, a poll from The Associated Press also found the president at a 36% approval rating, though this wasn’t the most jarring element of the data. From the AP’s report on its national survey:
President Donald Trump’s approval on the economy and immigration have fallen substantially since March, according to a new AP-NORC poll, the latest indication that two signature issues that got him elected barely a year ago could be turning into liabilities as his party begins to gear up for the 2026 midterms.
Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds. That is down from 40% in March and marks the lowest economic approval he’s registered in an AP-NORC poll in his first or second term.
While the president routinely (and falsely) claims, as he did again on Thursday afternoon, that the current U.S. economy is the single greatest economy in the nation’s history, a whopping 67% of Americans — two-thirds of the country — said they disapprove of his handling of economic affairs.
Shortly after the AP’s data reached the public, Trump published a curious message on his social media platform, peddling a variety of familiar nonsense about Joe Biden, inflation, consumer prices and the effects of his trade tariffs.
But then he turned to self-pity.
“When will I get credit for having created, with No Inflation, perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country?” the president wrote. “When will people understand what is happening? When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?” [Awww, feelings are hurt.]
Trump didn’t literally ask, “Why aren’t people trusting my lies over their own wallets and life experiences?” but that seemed to be the subtext.
If he’s genuinely confused, I think I can help.
Americans are confronting rising consumer costs, rising energy costs, a contracting manufacturing sector and the worst job growth since the Great Recession. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s just what’s happening.
If Trump wants to deflect blame, he can try. If he wants to appeal to the American public for patience, he’s welcome to do so. But to push delusional claims about an economic nirvana that clearly does not exist and then whine that people are showing him insufficient love in the wake of failure is pathetic. [“Pathetic” is accurate.]
At a White House event on Thursday afternoon, Trump declared, “When the real pollsters start doing the polls, I think you’re going to see some really fantastic numbers.”
But real pollsters are doing polls — and the numbers are only really fantastic for Democrats hoping to win back Congress.
A federal judge ordered Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be released from custody on Thursday night, making for the latest major setback in the Trump administration’s bigoted immigration agenda.
Abrego Garcia’s release was ordered after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled that the administration could not detain the Maryland resident any longer.
“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said via a translator at a news conference on Friday, outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”
Xinis said Abrego Garcia was detained for almost four months by the Trump administration “without lawful authority.” In her decision, the judge revealed that officials never secured a valid final order to take Abrego Garcia and deport him.
[…] Abrego Garcia has legal protected status in the U.S. and is married to a citizen, with whom he shares a son. In March, the Trump administration wrongfully detained and deported him to El Salvador’s brutal CECOT prison as part of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policy.
As the case unraveled, the Trump administration leveled a series of accusations and claims about Abrego Garcia that were repeatedly debunked.
Officials like Attorney General Pam Bondi promoted the evidence-free claim that the man was part of a criminal gang. Speaking in the Oval Office in April, Trump held up a doctored image that he claimed was proof that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang.
The case became a national news story after Democratic members of Congress visited El Salvador with the goal of securing Abrego Garcia’s release.
In April, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia when he was in custody and there was an open question if he was even still alive. A House Democratic delegation also visited El Salvador to bring attention to the case and get Abrego Garcia home.
The gambit worked, and the ensuing legal fallout has exposed the falsehoods and rot behind one of the Trump administration’s signature immigration cases. Trump has turned the immigration system into a key weapon in his racist suite of policies—and it’s backfiring on him.
[ICE’s] steadfast refusal to remove him to CostaRica amidst constant threats of removal to a series of African countries that expressed no or limited desire to take him can only be construed as punitive and contrary to the purposes of ICE detention.
Posted by readers of the article:
More shenanigans by Trump administration this morning. […] they tried to backdate an order of removal to October 19, 2019
—————————
Saying the case “collapsed” implies there was in fact a case. There was NEVER a case.
MAGA vigilantes snatched a brown man and tortured and deported him
“How a Manosphere Star Accused of Rape and Trafficking Was Freed”
“Barred from leaving Romania, Andrew Tate courted powerful figures on the American right, from Tucker Carlson to Barron Trump. Then an extraordinary order let him go.”
[…] Mr. Tate and his brother, Tristan, swaggering influencers in the so-called manosphere, had been under criminal investigation in Romania since 2022, accused of coercing women into pornography. Andrew was also accused of rape and of having sex with and beating a 15-year-old. The brothers, American and British citizens, had been barred from leaving Romania while prosecutors built their case.
[…] an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government, a Times investigation found. The prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.
“We’re massively back,” a grinning Mr. Tate announced in a video recorded for his followers on Feb. 27, as a private plane whisked the brothers to Florida.
[…] Andrew, 39, and Tristan, 37, have boasted about recruiting women to make lucrative sexual content, and have sold courses teaching young men how to follow in their footsteps.
[…] Andrew also nurtured relationships with Donald Trump Jr. and his younger brother Barron, who recognized the role that young male voters could play in their father’s return to power.
Barron, now 19, admired Andrew, and spoke with him over Zoom last year, according to Justin Waller, a mutual friend who was on the call. During the call, they discussed their shared belief that the Romanian criminal case was an effort to silence the Tates, he said.
[…] Barron was also a fan.
That spring, as his father was going after young male voters on the campaign trail, the teenager hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for influencers. Among them was Mr. Waller, who has helped run the Tates’ courses […]
[…] Mr. Waller has tried to play a “big brother” role for Barron, he said, visiting Mar-a-Lago and talking to him about dating. The president’s youngest son is “not a bad ally to have — let’s be frank,” he said.
He and Barron spoke to Andrew over Zoom last year, Mr. Waller said, while the teenager was having a suit fitted by Mr. Waller’s tailor. Although they discussed the Romanian case, Barron did not say anything about helping the Tates, Mr. Waller said. Mr. Waller said. They also talked about supporting Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign on their online platforms.
[…] Mr. Tate may not be a paragon of Christian morality, Mr. Fuentes said in an October interview with Mr. Carlson. “But men are going with him because he’s putting women in their place.”
One of the HSI agents got into the front seat of the Jeep in an effort to stop [the driver] while [the immigrant passenger] tried to push him out and a second agent tried to pull [the immigrant] out of the back seat. [The driver] allegedly put the vehicle in gear and drove off. The HSI agent “was now being involuntarily carried in the Jeep as it drove,”
[…]
[The driver] said that they were taking him to a police station. The agent […] “was in fear that he was being abducted.” From the back seat, [the immigrant] called 911
[…]
HSI agents pursued the Jeep from close behind with their lights and sirens on, “at one point inadvertently hitting it from behind in the snow.” Even after the agent inside […] drew his gun and ordered her to pull over, she allegedly continued driving and stopped only after reaching the New Hope Police Department.
[…]
Both are being held in […] in pretrial detention. […] [The immigrant] said that he has PTSD from being kidnapped in his native Nigeria.
Commentary
He didn’t get abducted, he failed a carjacking.
So, a masked guy with a gun, from an unmarked vehicle, forced his way into a woman’s Jeep. The backseat rider called 911 while she drove to the police station HELD AT GUNPOINT, and this ICE lunk is claiming they kidnapped and assaulted HIM.
Wait wait, this wasn’t an onion article?!
Who wants to bet that this isn’t how it went down at all?
According to the FBI affidavit, the HSI agents walked up to the Jeep, displayed their badges, identified themselves as law enforcement officers and [said] they wanted to talk about his immigration status.
we can’t neglect the fact that 6 months ago here in this city we DID have someone looking official and flashing badges for the express purpose of killing Democrats.
I mean, we can all probably understand why an ICE guy was scared shitless of being brought to a police station.
Here we go with the “police are scared.” Then quit your job. QUIT YOUR JOB.
[18 USC 111] anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes” with federal officials carrying out their job can face either a misdemeanor or a felony charge with up to 20 years of incarceration, depending in part on the degree of force
Earlier this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that China had refused to purchase American soybeans during Joe Biden’s presidency because Chinese leaders “had no respect for our president, Biden, or for the country at the time.” Thankfully, she added, Donald Trump has turned things around.
As White House lies go, this one was odd — and rather lazy. It didn’t take a lot of Googling to learn that Chinese purchases of American soybeans during the Biden era were quite robust. Beijing stopped buying the products, however, earlier this year in response to Trump’s trade tariffs.
It was a timely reminder that, in service of the president’s political agenda, Leavitt isn’t just willing to spin and exaggerate, she’s also willing to turn reality on its head. [True]
This was apparent again during a briefing on Thursday when Donald Trump’s chief spokesperson declared, in apparent seriousness, “Every data point and every economic metric does, in fact, show that the economy is improving.” [eyebrow raising]
That was demonstrably ridiculous. Americans are confronting rising consumer costs, rising energy costs, a contracting manufacturing sector and the worst job growth since the Great Recession. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s just what’s happening.
But Leavitt kept going anyway. [video
Collins: Grocery prices have been up.
Leavitt: Inflation is down
Collins: It’s where it was
Leavitt: Everything I’m telling you is the truth, and you don’t want to report it because you want to push untrue narratives about the president. [bullshit]]
When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins dared to remind the White House press secretary that grocery prices have climbed, Leavitt accused her of deliberately pushing “untrue narratives,” despite the fact that grocery prices really have climbed.
As the briefing continued, another reporter noted that the consumer price index was 3% at the start of the year, and it was still at 3% in September, which is the most recent month for which data is available.
This is another detail that’s easy to look up. There’s no reason to take my word for it: The data is publicly available to everyone, including the press secretary, and it shows quite plainly that the CPI spiked in 2022 amid rapid postpandemic economic growth before it improved to 3% toward the very end of Biden’s presidency. While it did dip a little lower in the spring of 2025, according to the most recent available data it’s still at 3%.
[…] too many of Leavitt’s other assertions, are easily debunked. […]
[Lt Gov] Micah Beckwith… needs once again… to go back high school social studies. Fucking “they chose dishonor.” What are you, a fucking Klingon baddy in a TNG plot???
One of the traits I have the least tolerance for is disloyalty. […] Yesterday, the Indiana Senate faced a simple choice: Stand and fight a Marxist movement… or choose dishonor. They chose dishonor.
Kit Malone (ACLU): “I actually think it’s cute that he thinks he has any clout remaining in that caucus. His own party literally introduced legis this year to change the way LGs are picked to prevent something like him from happening ever again lol.”
Kit Malone: “Beckwith publicly shooting himself and his party in the foot by popping off on social media. Again. [Screenshot: Trump DID threaten federal funding]”
Kit Malone: “He’s always had like—yeah—the clownshow contingent and honestly, I think that scared some people in the caucus early on. This thing just really defanged him—or at least I’m predicting that. His threats have proven pretty empty once they were tested.”
Kit Malone:
“Hoosiers don’t love Trump” isn’t the correct takeaway from last night, as much as I want that to be true. “The Indiana Senate is largely composed of conservative institutionalists” is a much more accurate read.
The ideological spread of our no’s was diverse. They voted to protect an institution under threat. That’s a good thing! And there are good takeaways for Dems too in all this. But Indiana has not suddenly become a more purple state overnight, I’m afraid. I’ll happily take “conservative institutionalist” over the feckless, thirsty narcissism that characterizes the national party.
[Gov Braun] carries absolutely no water right now. He’s the least popular Gov in the history of the state, and may be even a bigger loser than [Lt Gov] Beckwith on this. The legislature, even some of the yes votes, largely blames him for putting them in this posish.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that former Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has found the job we all knew she was destined for: working “hand in glove with the Trump administration” (her words) to force communities to accept environmentally devastating data centers.
Yesterday, Chandler, Arizona, a large suburb of Phoenix, told Sinema and Trump to pound sand […]:
This Arizona suburb sent a searing warning message to Big Tech companies after city officials on Thursday night unanimously rejected a proposed artificial intelligence data center.
[Yes, “unanimously rejected.”]
In October Sinema appeared before a Chandler committee hearing and essentially told them Trump and his billionaire toadies want more data centers, so this one is going to get built whether they like it or not. […]
Yesterday, the Chandler City Council refused to rezone a huge swath of land that would allow for the monstrosity, so of course Sinema went on Fox News to complain about the nasty residents who want to save Chandler’s precious water and provide jobs that serve the local economy, not the pocketbooks of high-tech overlords.
She did speak to Fox News on Thursday and said there is a “massive effort kind of on the left” to spread “massive misinformation” about data centers. She praised the Trump administration for “doing a great job of telling the truth” on data centers and said the water impacts are lower than in the past. [bullshit]
Trump did “a great job telling the truth”? […] When a conservative town like Chandler rejects pressure from Trump and the state’s former Senator, it’s obvious lame duck season has arrived early. [!]
A preservation group filed a lawsuit Friday against the White House over Trump’s $300 million ballroom construction project […]
The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States is requesting an injunction to pause the project and ensure the public has a chance to weigh in on the new development.
Trump did not inform or consult with the public, members of Congress or historically aligned groups before demolition of the East Wing began earlier this year.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else,” the lawsuit reads. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.”
“President Trump’s efforts to do so should be immediately halted, and work on the Ballroom Project should be paused […]” lawyers for the historic preservation group wrote. […]
When students in Catherine Hartmann’s honors seminar at the University of Wyoming took their final exams this month, they encountered a testing method as old as the ancient philosophers whose ideas they were studying.
For 30 minutes, each student sat opposite Hartmann in her office. Hartmann asked probing questions. The student answered.
Hartmann, a religious studies professor who started using oral examinations last year, is not alone in turning to a decidedly old-fashioned way to grade student performance.
Across the country, a small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT.
Such tools can be used to cheat on take-home exams or essays and to complete all manner of assignments, part of a broader phenomenon known as “cognitive off-loading.”
Hartmann tells her students that using AI is like bringing a forklift to the gym when your goal is to build muscle. “The classroom is a gymnasium, and I am your personal trainer,” she explains. “I want you to lift the weights.”
So far, her students have embraced the training regimen. Lily Leman, 20, a double major in Spanish and history, took her final exam last week. Leman admits to being “pretty freaked out” at first by the idea of an oral exam. Now she wishes she had more of them. “With this exam, I don’t know how you would use AI, frankly,” Leman said. […]
In some countries, such as Norway and Denmark, oral exams never went away. In other places, they were preserved in specific contexts: for instance, in doctoral qualifying exams in the United States. Dobson [Stephen Dobson, a professor and university administrator in Norway who wrote a book about oral exams] said he never imagined that oral exams would be “dusted off and gain a second life.”
New interest in the age-old technique began emerging during the pandemic amid worries over potential cheating in online environments. Now the advent of AI models — and even AI-powered glasses — has prompted a fresh wave of attention.
[…] Hartmann has revamped three courses to culminate in a final oral exam. She doesn’t allow devices in class and makes students practice answering discussion questions throughout the semester. Ahead of the final, she gives students a list of concepts they will be expected to explain and 20 questions they should be capable of answering with supporting evidence. […]
“Court filing in Moscow comes days ahead of next week’s EU summit to discuss using the Russian assets to underpin a loan to Ukraine.”
Russia’s central bank on Friday filed a lawsuit in Moscow against Brussels-based Euroclear, which houses most of the frozen Russian assets that the EU wants to use to finance aid to Ukraine.
The court filing comes just days before a high-stakes European Council summit, where EU leaders are expected to press Belgium to unlock billions of euros in Russian assets to underpin a major loan package for Kyiv.
“Due to the unlawful actions of the Euroclear depository that are causing losses to the Bank of Russia, and in light of mechanisms officially under consideration by the European Commission for the direct or indirect use of the Bank of Russia’s assets without its consent, the Bank of Russia is filing a claim in the Moscow Arbitration Court against the Euroclear depository to recover the losses incurred,” the central bank said in a statement.
EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told the bloc’s finance ministers in Brussels on Friday: “We can expect that Russia will continue to launch speculative legal proceedings to prevent the EU from upholding international law and to pursue the legal obligation for Russia to compensate Ukraine for the damages it has done.”
“Our proposal is legally robust and fully in line with the EU and public international law,” he said.
[…] Some €185 billion in frozen Russian assets are under the stewardship of Euroclear, the Brussels-based financial depository, while another €25 billion is scattered across the EU in private bank accounts.
[…] With the future of the prospective loan still hanging in the air, EU ambassadors on Thursday handed emergency powers to the European Commission to keep Russian state assets permanently frozen. Such a solution would mean the assets remain blocked until the Kremlin pays post-war reparations to Ukraine, significantly reducing the possibility that pro-Russian countries like Hungary or Slovakia would hand back the frozen funds to Russia.
While Russian courts have little power to force the handover of Euroclear’s euro or dollar assets held in Belgium, they do have the power to take retaliatory action against Euroclear balances held in Russian financial institutions.
However, in 2024 the European Commission introduced a legal mechanism to compensate Euroclear for losses incurred in Russia due to its compliance with Western sanctions — effectively neutralizing the economic effects of Russia’s retaliation.
In September, while reporting on the Trump Administration’s attacks on the immigration system, I [E. Tammy Kim, A contributing writer who covers politics and labor] visited the courtroom of Judge Jeremiah Johnson, in downtown San Francisco. He was presiding over a large batch of preliminary hearings, mostly concerning applications for asylum. The courthouse was emptier than usual. Many applicants were afraid to show up, since ICE had recently made arrests in the hallways. And about a hundred of the nation’s seven hundred or so immigration judges, including some of Johnson’s colleagues, had either resigned, retired, or been fired since the beginning of the year. Even judges, it turned out, could not escape the shrinking of the federal workforce.
Despite this upheaval, Johnson, who’s reedy and outgoing, projected calm. […] Some of the immigrants were kids. Through Spanish, Mam, and Hindi interpreters, he advised everyone of their rights and obligations. “The purpose of these proceedings is to determine whether you can stay in the United States,” he told a woman named Guadalupe.
When the federal government shut down for all of October and half of November, Johnson and other immigration judges kept working, without pay. Their services were considered essential. During this period, I didn’t hear of any firings in the courts. But, as has become the norm this year, there were plenty in other parts of the government, including at the Departments of Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, and Commerce.
Then, after the shutdown ended, just before Thanksgiving, Johnson and at least six other immigration judges, in San Francisco and New York, were fired via e-mail. [!] And, in early December, seven more in New York were let go. […] Now the Administration is recruiting “deportation judges” in those and other cities. […]
Johnson’s situation is both galling and typical—very 2025. To be a federal worker these days is to do one’s job from inside a whirlpool. […] So far this year, more than three hundred thousand federal employees—of around two million total—have left government service, either voluntarily or involuntarily. (Sixty-eight thousand employees have been hired, a figure that likely includes civil servants who were fired and then brought back.) Dismissals are being contested in court. Some employees who were fired just before, or during, the shutdown, still don’t know their status. Are they employed, on administrative leave, or unemployed? Many retroactive paychecks haven’t arrived. [!]
Trauma is the point, Russell Vought, Trump’s de-facto human-resources director, has said. There’s also a lot of pointless mayhem.
[…] Some agencies, such as U.S.A.I.D., have been destroyed completely. Other demolitions are in progress. Elon Musk and his DOGE chainsaw are now gone, but the reductions and retribution continue.
I spoke with Judge Johnson last week. “I used to be optimistic—Pollyannaish,” he told me. Just before his termination, the Department of Homeland Security had brought a group of new prosecutors to observe his courtroom. He had thought he was safe, that his work was understood to be fair and good. “Now I’m realistic. The trend is firing.”
“The problem for Trump is that he has already made firm commitments to spend the money he doesn’t have.”
When Donald Trump spoke to U.S. generals and admirals in September, the president appeared eager to brag about his trade tariffs. “We’ve taken in trillions of dollars,” he boasted. “We’re rich again.”
He continued to echo that refrain in the weeks and months that followed. At one point last month, Trump claimed he’s expecting tariff revenue to be “in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars,” only to follow up a day later with the expectation that tariff revenue would be “in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars.” [obvious bullshit]
Both figures were spectacularly wrong, and the White House offered no explanation for how the total jumped by $1 trillion in just one day.
The problem, however, isn’t limited to the apparent fact that the president doesn’t know how much a trillion is. Complicating matters further is the fact that tariff revenue still isn’t anywhere close to what he pretends it is. NBC News reported:
For the first time since President Donald Trump rolled out his sweeping global tariff program in April, month-over-month customs receipts declined in November. Last month, the U.S. government collected $30.75 billion in import duties. This was down from $31.35 billion collected in October.
Over the last few months, the monthly increase in tariff money collected by customs has slowed, but November’s total was the first month that collections were lower than the previous month.
The obvious takeaway from that data is that there’s an enormous gap between Trump’s rhetoric and his policy’s reality. Tariffs are bringing in money — that’s not surprising, since tariffs are for all intents and purposes taxes, and taxes generate revenue — but the suggestion that the policy has produced “in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars” is absurd.
The less-obvious takeaway is that the declining revenue totals create a real problem for the Republican administration because the president has already made firm commitments to spend the money he doesn’t have.
According to Trump, tariff revenue will be used to reduce the national debt. And to pay for “dividend” rebate checks. And to pay for a bailout for farmers. And even to finance a new nationwide system of free child care for American families. [gaslighting the public]
In recent weeks, the president has even gone so far as to suggest more than once that tariff revenue will be so robust, he might eventually be able to use the money to eliminate federal income taxes altogether. [more obvious bullshit]
There’s an old accounting joke that “you can’t spend the same dollar twice.” Under Trump, it’s tempting to revise the line to “you can’t spend the same dollar five times, especially when you don’t have that dollar.” [True!]
In late July, Trump boasted online, “[O]ur Country is doing very well and can afford just about anything.” It’d be nice if that were true.
StevoRsays
..when the White House quietly released its national security strategy late one night last week, it seemed to get lost in other news. Except, perhaps, in Europe.
The strategy’s assertion that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” because of migration, and that the EU was “undermining political liberty and sovereignty” did not go down well there.
Nor did the assertion that it was in the United States’ interest to “cultivate resistance” in the bloc to “correct its current trajectory”.’
Plus :
Other underpinnings of the document are deeply troubling — such as the echoes of the “great replacement theory” — a conspiracy theory that claims white populations in Western countries are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants, with the complicity of “elite” groups.
Mass migration is seen as a bigger threat than Russia in this document.
The only consistency is around the idea of “America First”, which turns out to be a policy defined by inconsistency.
Also :
There are several references to the “God-given natural rights” of America’s citizens and the presumption that America has a God-given right to rule the world is redolent throughout a document which doesn’t seem to entirely grasp that the power balances in the world have indeed changed.
The US seems to think that we still operate in a post-Cold War unipolar world, when the rise of China and other major economies would challenge that presumption.
“The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world,” it says.
A group of House Republicans moved to force a vote on extending Obamacare health insurance subsidies that will expire in just three weeks, directly challenging party leaders who appear determined to let them lapse.
At least six Republicans signed a discharge petition filed Wednesday on a bill authored by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) that would extend the expiring tax credits for two years while imposing new eligibility requirements. The subsidies are currently used by more than 20 million Americans.
Another discharge petition, seeking a vote on a one-year subsidy extension authored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), was also filed Wednesday and quickly picked up support from several Republicans.
It isn’t clear if either has a chance of getting to a vote and less chance they get by Trump. Just that it’s happening at all is politically significant. Discharge petitions are rare, the number turning up now indicates a lot of House Republicans angry at the party leaders and not afraid of angering them or Trump.
The Trump administration sided with officials from Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran in a successful effort to block part of a United Nations report about the dire state of the planet because it called for phasing out fossil fuels, switching to clean energy and reducing plastics, according to two participants.
The U.S. Mint is issuing special circulating coins to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
Quarters, dimes and nickels minted during 2026 will bear special designs or markings reflecting milestones related to the nation’s founding in 1976. The U.S. Mint revealed the coin designs on Thursday, Dec. 11; each of the coins will have history-related imagery and the dual dates of “1776 ∽ 2026.”
The significant part is really that the designs look hasty and generic. This is because they are, the original designs planned under Biden have been tossed as too woke.
Not announced, but a possibility: a commemorative $1 coin bearing President Donald Trump’s image.
Back in October, the Treasury Department announced it was considering new $1 coins with Trump’s image as part of its coins to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. (The Mint has proposed designs for the coin on its website.)
Federal law prohibits any living person from being on U.S. currency.
Somebody managed to convince Trump there wasn’t enough time to get a good likeness engraved and that there wasn’t enough time to prepare to issue gold coins.
The board of the Federal Reserve System said Thursday that it had reappointed all regional Fed bank presidents, just days after the Trump administration began suggesting that it wanted to make major changes to the reappointment process. [Sounds like the board preempted Trump’s move.]
[…] Thursday’s announcement is very significant for the central bank, because the Fed’s interest rate-setting committee is made up of governors and the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as well as four other regional bank presidents. Those four regional bank presidents rotate annually.
Regional presidents of Federal Reserve banks are selected by a panel of executives at nonprofit groups and businesses in districts around the country and then approved every five years by the central bank’s board of governors.
After Trump initially tried to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook this summer, he predicted that he would soon have a “majority” on the board of governors and that through that majority he would see to it that interest rates were quickly lowered.
While Cook has so far successfully challenged her firing, Trump’s suggestion raised concerns that the administration might try to stack the deck of regional Fed presidents by blocking some reappointments.
[…] The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Cook’s case in January.
The White House is making an unusual argument as it resists advocates’ push for sign language interpretation at press briefings conducted by President Donald Trump and press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Providing American sign language interpretation in press conferences ‘would severely intrude on the President’s prerogative to control the image he presents to the public,’ Justice Department attorneys argued in a lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Deaf.
Tesla’s U.S. sales dropped to a near four-year low in November, despite the automaker’s rollout of new, cheaper versions of its best-selling electric vehicles, estimates from Cox Automotive given exclusively to Reuters showed on Thursday.
Moment of schadenfreude.
Elon Musk having less than stellar success selling Tesla vehicles.
In the second Trump administration post of its kind, the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday portrayed Franklin, the anthropomorphic turtle character from a children’s book series, as a ‘deportation judge.’ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a similar image with Franklin late last month.
Leave Franklin alone.
StevoRsays
@361. Lynna, OM : “StevoR, that “National Security Strategy” pronouncement was extremely arrogant and off-putting. Not to mention racist.””
Yup.
birgerjohanssonsays
Some good news: the Russians got their asses handed to them in the town of Kupyansk – after Putin bragged about capturing the town. The general in charge now seems to have disappeared.
birgerjohanssonsays
Supernova immersion model suggests Earth-like planets are more common in the universe
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees, but rejected the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia as he held talks with U.S. envoys on ending the war.
Zelenskyy sat down with U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The Ukrainian leader posted pictures of the negotiating table with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sitting next to him facing the U.S. delegation.
It’s hard to tell what to make of this stuff now. The negotiating positions have just gotten more complex over time as the EU has gotten involved. Zelensky seems to have grasped that he has to play to Trump and the US press a bit while negotiating.
On their side Russia talks continuously about total victory and still seems to be stringing the negotiations along. At the same time the economic news in Russia is just getting worse and worse. At some point Putin will realize he has to negotiate something that will let him declare victory and go home.
birgerjohanssonsays
How Earth’s mantle locked away vast amounts of water in early magma ocean
The U.S. Border Patrol is reportedly shifting away from sweeping immigration raids, such as those at Home Depot and other locations, to make operations more tailored to specific individuals, according to a report.
Under senior Border Patrol officer Gregory Bovino, teams will begin focusing their attention on specific targets, including undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes, Homeland Security sources told NewsNation.
What they don’t say is that this is going back to the classic policy the department had before Trump took over, the one used by the Biden administration and every other administration beyond the Trump administration. Big raids are splashy and make the news but in terms of manpower required vs arrests it generally is ineffective. And it doesn’t get you the illegal immigrants actually involved in major crime.
birgerjohanssonsays
How to build a genome: Scientists release troubleshooting manual for synthetic life
[In Australia] New South Wales Police say that 12 people were killed in a shooting at Bondi Beach targeting the Jewish community. A further 29 people have been taken to hospital, including a child.
An event […] to mark the start of Hanukkah had more than 1,000 in attendance […] police are aware of two offenders and are investigating “thoroughly” the possibility of a third […] Several improvised explosive devices were removed from a nearby vehicle
Ahmed al-Ahmed, the operator of a fruit stand in a Sydney suburb who happened to be in the area. He was shot twice but expected to survive. […] a second attacker fired on him from a nearby footbridge.
A nearly 11-minute continuous video [described but not included here] reveals how the attack on the Hanukkah celebration unfolded and how police and bystanders responded.
A growing number of Chinese billionaires are turning to the United States to father dozens of children through surrogacy, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. Videogame executive Xu Bo, who claims to have more than 100 U.S.-born children, is among the elites exploiting American surrogacy laws to build sprawling families, often relying on nannies, IVF clinics, and specialized legal services to manage the logistics.
The Journal details a rare Los Angeles court hearing in 2023, where Judge Amy Pellman reviewed petitions from Xu seeking parental rights to multiple unborn children. Xu appeared via video from China and stated his ambition to have around 20 U.S.-born boys to one day take over his business. Several of his children were being cared for by nannies in Irvine while waiting for travel documentation to China. The judge ultimately denied his petition, leaving the children in legal limbo, a move experts described as highly unusual in a largely unregulated industry.
Now here is a case where birth citizenship is actually a problem. Wealthy foreign citizens having children in bulk in the US.
The perfect example of the mundanity of the fascism we face is that the top secret meeting of top generals and army officials to plan the martial law and assassinations in the failed Korean coup [last December] took place in a booth at Lotteria. (Everyone in Korea’s fifth choice fast food chain)
The weird thing about this coup is that the people doing it were ALREADY IN POWER. They won the election. But they binged conspiracy theory youtube playlists that convinced them they should have been elected by EVEN MORE. The most pathetic losers are being given all the power and it’s never enough.
The notes from this fast food murder meeting just dropped. They had gathered crates of chloroform and rags to knock out their political opponents.
Yes, they saw a bunch of Hollywood action movies, said “heck yeah” and didn’t think to Google “is that a real thing?” (It’s not.)
This info is only dropping because everyone involved was stripped of power and/or imprisoned and can’t stop it. This was all done in public by idiots so sure of their power they were convinced consequences would never come. Korea brought those consequences quick.
Rando: “They deserve extra jailtime just for the lack of taste.”
Ryan Estrada: “It’s the only one with a veggie burger, so maybe they just had dietary restrictions.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Brexit was planned in an O’Hare Uno”
The person of interest authorities took into custody in connection with the shooting at Brown University is Benjamin Erickson, a 24-year-old Army veteran originally from Wisconsin, who may recently have lived in D.C., two people briefed on the investigation told The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He was taken into custody at a hotel about 15 miles from campus in Providence, authorities said.
Erickson has not been named as a suspect or charged in connection with the Saturday attack, which left two dead and nine wounded. Officials have repeatedly referred to the person in custody as a “person of interest,” a term investigators use to refer to someone whom they wish to question and think has relevant information. Agents recovered two firearms in his possession, including one equipped with a laser sight attachment, one of the people briefed on the investigation said.
A gunman opened fire inside a campus engineering building on Saturday before fleeing, authorities said. A teaching assistant and senior at the university told The Post that he had just wrapped up a study session in the Barus and Holley building when he heard screaming, several loud bangs, and a man dressed in black burst into his room yelling something unintelligible, carrying the “longest gun I’ve ever seen in my life.”
After carrying out the attack, authorities say the shooter was seen leaving the east side of the building where the campus meets downtown Providence, prompting hundreds of officers to conduct a sprawling search overnight. […]
One Brown University student has been discharged from the hospital, another is in critical but stable condition, and seven others are in stable condition, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley (D) said after he met with some of the students in the hospital on Sunday. […]
Washington Post link
“She was shot at 15 in a school shooting. Brown was another close call.”
“Mia Tretta was a freshman when a classmate opened fire at her California high school. Now the Brown University student worries how she’ll recover a second time.”
In 2019, a 16-year-old student at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, pulled a gun from his backpack and opened fire on his classmates in the school quad. Mia Tretta, then a 15-year-old freshman, was shot in the abdomen and hospitalized. Her best friend was killed.
The shooting shaped Tretta’s decision to attend Brown University, in a state she deemed to have strong gun laws and located far away from home, on the opposite coast from the trauma that upended her time in high school.
On Saturday, a shooter attacked her school for the second time.
“I found a place where I finally started to feel comfortable,” Tretta, now a 21-year-old junior at Brown, told The Washington Post. “And it’s been taken again.”
Tretta is now part of a grim community of students who have lived through multiple school shootings in American schools and colleges. It includes survivors of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, who enrolled at Florida State University, where a gunman killed two people in April, and a woman who lived through a deadly shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, in 2021, and another shooting at Michigan State University two years later.
After a gunman burst into an auditorium-style classroom at Brown on Saturday in a shooting that killed at least two students and injured nine more, according to authorities, Tretta said she will watch her friends at Brown go through the same grief and terror that changed her life.
“Everyone’s confused and uncertain of what to do and just kind of lost,” she said.
Tretta’s recovery from her shooting in high school was long and lonely. She required multiple surgeries, she said, and then was separated from her grieving school community by the covid-19 pandemic.
But the experience also gave her purpose. She became an activist for gun control, writing op-eds, joining the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety and speaking to audiences about ghost guns, one of which was used in the Saugus High School shooting. In 2022, she spoke at the White House when President Joe Biden announced regulations cracking down on ghost guns. […]
Last month, the Atlanta Fed came out with a report showing a clear relationship between consolidation in grocery stores and the rate of food inflation. Unsurprisingly, where monopolies prevail, food inflation is 0.46 percentage points higher than where there is more competition. The study showed that from 2006-2020, the cumulative difference amounted to a 9% hike in food prices, and presumably since 2020, that number has gone much higher.
Affordability, in other words, is a market power problem.
And yesterday, we got specifics on just how market power in grocery stores works. The reason is because a nonprofit just forced the government to unseal a complaint lodged by Lina Khan’s FTC against Pepsi for colluding with Walmart to raise food prices across the economy. A Trump official tasked with dealing with affordability tried to hide this complaint, and failed. And now there’s a political and legal storm as a result.
It’s really an interesting, with Pepsi and Walmart colluding over years to influence the market. The basic part is Pepsi gives Walmart a price advantage and Walmart gives Pepsi better positions in stores and places them in Walmart advertising. To maintain this Pepsi raised prices on some other stores to keep the price gap, which is where it turns illegal.
“Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz told a party conference in Germany.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine.
“Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that.
“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to Putin. “This is a Russian aggressive war against Ukraine — and against Europe.”
Putin’s aim is “a fundamental change to the borders in Europe, the restoration of the old Soviet Union within its borders,” the German chancellor warned.
Merz, along with French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has pushed European efforts to support Kyiv. German, British and French officials are reportedly discussing this weekend proposals to end the war in Ukraine, ahead of a meeting on Monday that’s to include the leaders.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff is also expected to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will be received by Merz in Berlin on Monday.
A U.S.-backed 20-point peace plan is in the works, which includes territorial concessions on Ukraine’s part. Under one proposal being discussed, the Donbas region would be made into a free-trade zone were American companies can freely operate. […]
The move came the day after Laura Loomer […] met with Trump in the White House and reportedly brought a list of […] officials who couldn’t be trusted.
Micah: “Repeating ‘the lady who handcuffed herself to the twitter building has veto power over national security personnel’ to myself over and over and slowly going insane.”
Southpaw: “Handcuffed herself to one side of a double door on the Twitter building, IIRC.”
Shauna: “In the DEAD OF WINTER IN NYC.”
Rando 1: “While wearing a yellow star of David.”
Ryan: “I worked at Twitter then. Security locked the door and had everyone use a side entrance.”
Rando 2: “There are many valid criticisms of Pre-Musk leadership there but ‘she's not a fire safety hazard? Ok, leave her there’ was a stroke of brilliance.”
TheWeek (2018): “saying she wouldn’t leave until Twitter restored her account. […] ‘If I have to, I'll pee on myself,’ she added. […] After about two hours, complaining of the cold, Loomer asked the NYPD to cut her free, and she left”
Bovino, the man overseeing mass deportations, publicly declared that we must all have our papers on us, at all times, or we could be stopped, harassed, kidnapped, and detained, as they did with the man in this case, who is a US citizen. [Screenshot]
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: DHS officers outright refused to check his REAL ID to verify his legal status, and instead handcuffed him and dragged him down to the local ICE processing office […]
Bovino: One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A Real ID is not an immigration document.
Sam (Lawyer): “Bovino is just wrong on the law too. While permanent residents are supposed to carry their green cards, US citizens have no affirmative obligation to carry proof of citizenship at all times. And this guy was a US citizen.”
Rando: “The kavanaugh stop paradox. Similar to the witch floating test. […] Bovino’s logic—you get stopped because you are POC; you must prove you are a citizen with paperwork, but citizens aren’t required to have paperwork; therefore you are not a citizen and have no rights to a lawyer and are subject to immediate deportation.”
Rando: “if Mubashir had an Enhanced Real ID, which is an option in Minnesota, then that absolutely is proof of citizenship. Bovino knows all this. But he’s creating a terrorist police state one word at a time.”
Jared McClain (Civil rights lawyer): “HSI just filed a declaration in our case challenging these policies, saying they can’t trust REAL IDs as proof of status.”
Rando 2: “There is no such thing as a REAL ID issued to somebody without a legal presence in the US. They are issued to citizens and legal residents and nobody else, they’re not proof of citizenship but they are proof of legal residence and HSI can blow it out their ass.”
Jared McClain: “That’s about what our brief is going to say.”
Jared McClain: “People trying to think of ways someone’s status might’ve changed while they have a REAL ID are missing the point. You don’t need absolute proof. You just need to overcome the basis for the stop, which is often just profiling. REAL ID does that unless ICE has reason to think a specific ID is invalid.”
Jared McClain: “DHS is also the agency responsible for certifying that state IDs comply with the REAL ID Act.”
Jared McClain: “Even a young(er) Sam Alito agreed having a REAL ID would establish legal status.”
Maria Greeley, 44, […] was surrounded by three federal agents who grabbed her, forced her hands behind her back and zip-tied her. […] questioned her for an hour […] adopted, carries a copy of her passport […] they told her she “doesn’t look like” a Greeley. “They said this isn’t real, they kept telling me I’m lying, I’m a liar,” [Ultimately,] the agents let her go
Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol senior agent, calls Bovino “the Liberace of the Border Patrol” for his flamboyant behavior and the camera crews […] “He’s just a little Napoleon who wants you to think that he is a hero[“]
[…]
it’s astonishing to see “a person whose grandfather was an immigrant [with chain migrating relatives] engaging in such abhorrent and violent treatment of contemporary migrants,”
[…]
As a Border Patrol boss, Bovino has repeatedly cited the threat of undocumented immigrants who’ve killed U.S. citizens while driving drunk. […] In 1981, Bovino’s father, Mike Bovino, killed a young woman after drunkenly crashing his truck […] The lawsuit forced the sale of Bovino’s bar and property it sat on. Betty Bovino filed for divorce. The settlement gave her custody of the three kids. […] His son Greg was 14 then.
Edward Hasbrouck (Identity Project): “It appears to violate the Privacy Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, and Computer Matching Act. See my earlier story.”
Joshua Erlich (Civil rights lawyer): “This is a general warrant, and it’s specifically the kind of warrant the framers passed the 4th amendment to outlaw. You want originalism? Here’s some fucking originalism.”
Jamal Greene (Law prof): “we need to re-normalize Zooming into conferences.”
The Trump administration has issued a notice of default to the group that manages Washington’s three municipal golf courses […] The default notice, dated Oct. 29, did not specify reasons the group was in default or how the group could remedy any concerns. According to terms of the lease, […] the nonprofit group could lose operational control […] next week.
[…]
The default notice also lands amid unexplained activity at East Potomac, where in recent weeks trucks have deposited soil from the White House’s East Wing renovation onto the property. Neither the White House nor the National Park Service has explained the purpose of the work
[…]
The nonprofit signed its 50-year lease with the National Park Service in 2020
birgerjohanssonsays
Anton Petrov:
“Why Did Consciousness Evolve? Exciting Research on Bird Brains”
Rafael Veraza, 25, said he pulled into Sam’s Club with his wife and baby on a weekend grocery run on Nov. 8 when he saw a commotion […] Veraza’s wife happened to be filming the parking lot scene on her smartphone because they wanted to one day show their 1-year-old the turbulent times she was born in. She aimed her camera at a passing SUV and captured the moment when an officer filled the family’s vehicle with a mist of pepper spray.
[…]
Veraza and his wife poured water on their crying baby’s face and rushed to the hospital. A doctor called in a poison control specialist for an expert opinion because they’d never seen such a young person pepper sprayed […] potential long term damage to the child’s lungs and eyes.
[…]
He is considering filing a lawsuit. “I have a hate toward the government now […] I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to my daughter one day—that she got pepper-sprayed on our way to buy Pampers and milk.”
an Air Force refueling tanker passed in front of the commercial plane without broadcasting its position […] “They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous,” the JetBlue pilot told an air traffic controller […] the tanker was only two or three miles away—less than 20 seconds flying time at its speed. […] The air traffic controller said he couldn’t see the tanker on his radar screen either, but suggested the unknown military aircraft was part of a trend.
[…]
In November, the Curaçao Civil Aviation Authority issued an alert asking pilots to “exercise extreme caution” […] The message said that pilots and radar had frequently reported “non-identified aircraft” flying in the country’s airspace. It’s unclear if these unidentified aircraft all belong to the U.S. military, but Friday’s near collision happened in the region covered by the alert.
ICE agents went to East African restaurants in the neighborhood Tuesday, closed the doors and demanded people’s IDs. They found only U.S. citizens and made no arrests […] “Luckily everyone had their passport, because I’ve been telling them to have their passport with them,” [a City Council member] said.
[…]
agents went in seven to 10 vehicles to a nearby city-owned senior housing complex. There, he said, a group of mostly white young people [blocked them with cars and] blew whistles to sound the alarm and confronted the agents, who responded with chemical irritants.
[…]
he spoke with one young Somali American who was dragged to a vehicle, detained and taken to an ICE detention center. There, officials finally looked at his U.S. passport, fingerprinted him, and released him but told him to find his own way home, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away in snowy weather.
“I just don’t know what they accomplished today other than the chaos,”
reminder that if you post information about recommendations for protective actions (e.g., shelter in place orders) during a response (which is good to do!), it’s helpful to delete it once those recommendations change to minimize outdated information spreading.
birgerjohanssonsays
Republicans in the House humiliated Trump by striking down an executive order from this spring, banning federal employees from collective bargaining.
birgerjohanssonsays
Aa 30-minute summary of films that deserve a second look
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees – JM@371 quoting AP
Maybe Zelenskyy has caught on to the fact that NATO is a dead alliance walking. If anyone still believes the USA would intervene to defend the Baltic States against Russia, I’ve a miracle cure for gullibility to sell them. Even if the Trumpoid regime is eventually removed, the confidence European elites have had in the USA is not going to return – what happened twice can happen a third time.
birgerjohanssonsays
Quote from the clip; The good thing about America is that our fascists are so goddamn stupid.
“Trump’s CONFESSION Drops! Republicans Panic on Live TV! Lawrence O’Donnell”
Hey, United States of America. Please note Australia has responded to a shooting massacre by guess what tougher guns laws and we already have relatively reasonable gun laws!
Only Australian citizens would be able to hold a firearm licence under stronger gun laws being considered by states and territories in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened an urgent meeting of national cabinet on Monday afternoon, where premiers and first ministers unanimously agreed to bolster rules around gun ownership. Accelerating the launch of a national firearms register, limiting the number of guns a single person can own and further restricting the types of weapons that are legal are among the options being explored.
State and territory leaders have commissioned their police ministers and attorneys-general to consider the measures, as well as making Australian citizenship a “condition” of a firearm licence. There was also agreement to look at allowing the use of additional criminal intelligence to “underpin” firearms licensing.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) say they have found the strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere around a rocky world outside our solar system.
The findings challenge the prevailing wisdom that relatively small planets orbiting extremely close to their stars cannot sustain atmospheres.
The ultra-hot super-Earth, TOI-561 b, is the innermost of at least three planets circling a 10-billion-year-old star located about 280 light-years from Earth. The planet orbits at just one-fortieth the distance between Mercury and the sun, completing a full orbit in under 11 hours.
…(Snip)…
The team suggests the planet may maintain a balance between its molten surface and its atmosphere, allowing gases to cycle between them and potentially replenishing its atmosphere.
“While gases are coming out of the planet to feed the atmosphere, the magma ocean is sucking them back into the interior,” study co-author Tim Lichtenberg of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands said in the statement. “It’s really like a wet lava ball.”
Seems we may have missed out on seeing a ringed Mars when our red sietr wa s younger – just maybe. Good yt video (11 mins long) by Kyplanet here – The Cyclic History of the Martian Moons
StevoRsays
^ Red sister that is and apt in a few ways that was comment #404. (moon not found, 4th rock..)
StevoRsays
Horrific mass murder at Bondi of jewish people celebrtaing the first night of Hanukkah yesterday and one I fear will have terrible implications into the future here in Australia – guess everyone has already heard but more Aussie ABC news coverage here :
Fifteen people, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed, and a further 42 people were taken to hospital after two men opened fire in Bondi Beach on Sunday afternoon. One of the gunmen was shot and killed by police and the other is under police guard in hospital.
@398 KG: Trump hates the idea of NATO because part of the assumption is that the US will spend money to protect Europe. Trump would like a defense pact only if it was other countries spending money to protect the US.
It could be one of the weirdest things ever, with the US involved in a war that the president doesn’t want to be in. Congress is likely to force the US to side with NATO while the president is trying to minimize involvement and spend the money on other things.
New urgency in search for Brown University shooter after person of interest released. NOW Reporter Maya Eaglin reports more from Providence, Rhode Island. Former D.C. Homeland Security and Intel Chief Donell Harvin and criminologist and investigative profiler Casey Jordan join Ana Cabrera to discuss what we know so far.
“GOP lawmakers want to be able to say, “See? We unveiled a plan,” and this helps them check a box in the most superficial way possible.”
Related video at the link.
With Affordable Care Act subsidies poised to expire and tens of millions of American consumers facing painful spikes in their health care costs, Senate Republicans pitched a bill last week that made no effort to extend the existing enhanced tax credits. Rather, the plan from Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mike Crapo of Idaho tried to replace the subsidies with expanded health saving accounts.
It was an inadequate proposal that was easily defeated: When the plan reached the Senate floor, it needed 60 votes to advance. Facing bipartisan opposition, it received 51.
As for the GOP majority in the House, party leaders have spent months insisting that they’d present a plan of their own, and on Friday, they fulfilled this promise — sort of. As my MS NOW colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim reported:
The bill includes several measures that have broad support among Republicans, including reinstating cost-sharing reductions and allowing small businesses to buy health insurance as a group. But it notably would not extend enhanced ACA subsidies, which are set to expire in just a few weeks.
The expiration of those subsidies is expected to cause premiums to more than double on average for roughly 22 million Americans.
[…] this proposal, unveiled late Friday by House GOP leaders, is one of at least 10 different health care bills pushed by congressional Republicans in recent weeks, as the party struggles to coalesce around a unified approach.
[…] there’s been talk in GOP circles for roughly 16 years about creating a comprehensive Republican alternative designed to replace the Affordable Care Act. […]
The legislation unveiled late last week by House Speaker Mike Johnson and his colleagues neither replaces the ACA nor resolves the more immediate crisis facing tens of millions of consumers.
So when you see references to the party’s “plan,” we’re talking about a narrow, half-hearted bill, filled with disparate and loosely connected conservative ideas, that Republican leaders believe might help address health care costs — while allowing existing insurance subsidies to evaporate as scheduled in the coming weeks.
[…] there are two reasons why this isn’t worth a deep dive.
The first is that House GOP leaders aren’t even pretending to have completed a serious health care blueprint. They threw together a handful of items from partisan wish lists, which they intend to bring to the floor without holding a single policy hearing, without a Congressional Budget Office score, and without any meaningful substantive analyses of any kind. [!]
The point of this endeavor isn’t to solve a problem; it’s to offer political cover to House Republicans worried about their backsides. They want to be able to say, “See? We unveiled a plan,” and this helps them check a box in the most superficial way possible.
The other reason not to dwell too much on the details is that the House GOP leadership’s bill will never become law. There’s some question as to whether it can even pass the lower chamber, but even if it does, its odds of success in the Senate are nonexistent.
As for the White House, which Republicans in both chambers keep looking to for some semblance of leadership or direction, Donald Trump has practically checked out of the process. Asked Friday for his message to the tens of millions of Americans facing dramatically more expensive health care insurance, the president replied: “Don’t make it sound so bad.”
“It is all lunacy. Absolutely, it’s 100% nonsense,” one expert said about a weird theory the Wisconsin senator endorsed.
The headline on USA Today’s online homepage over the weekend read, “GOP senator touts book promoting bleach treatment for autism, cancer.” I said to myself, “Five bucks says it’s Ron Johnson.”
Unfortunately, I was right. “At a time when Americans’ trust in public health agencies is waning, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, is under fire for promoting a book peddling an unfounded medical theory that bleaching can treat autism and other diseases,” the newspaper reported.
Shortly after Donald Trump grudgingly left the White House following his 2020 defeat […] The New York Times described Johnson as Trump’s successor as the GOP’s “foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.”
In the years that followed, Johnson has seemed a little too eager to prove his critics right, peddling bizarre and easily discredited nonsense about Covid-19. And the Jan. 6 attack. And vaccines. And climate change. And the 2020 presidential election. And the 2024 presidential election. [!]
Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Republican went even further, becoming the only senator from either party to embrace fringe ideas from the so-called “9/11 truther” movement.
[…] The USA Today report is based on the latest reporting from ProPublica, which told readers last week that the Wisconsin politician “is endorsing a book by a discredited doctor promoting an unproven and dangerous treatment for autism and a host of ailments: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching.” From the article:
The book is ‘The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine’ by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals before losing his medical certification for statements advocating using an antiparasite medication to treat COVID-19. The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license.
Kory has said there’s a globally coordinated campaign by public health agencies, the drug industry and the media to suppress evidence of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His book, according to its website, contends that the ‘remarkable molecule’ works ‘to treat everything from cancer and malaria to autism and COVID.’
[…] the book jacket features a prominent blurb from Johnson, who described Kory’s book as “a gripping tale of corruption and courage that will open eyes and prompt serious questions.”
He later confirmed that he did, in fact, read the book and approve the blurb.
[…] Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society in Montreal and an expert on the threat of pseudoscience, told ProPublica: “It is all lunacy. Absolutely, it’s 100% nonsense.”
[…] Ahead of his 2022 reelection campaign, the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Johnson was “unfit” for office and called him “the most irresponsible representative of Wisconsin citizens since the infamous Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy in the 1950s.”
Four years later, Senator Ron Johnson is significantly worse.
President Trump weighed in on the apparent homicide of director Rob Reiner and his wife in a Truth Social post Monday, suggesting the cause of death was reportedly “Trump derangement syndrome” which drew criticism from some fellow Republicans.
“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump wrote.
Multiple outlets reported Monday that Reiner’s son was arrested in connection to the deaths. Nick Reiner had a long history of drug abuse that he has spoken about publicly over the last several years.
In his social media post, Trump went on to say Reiner “was known to have driven people crazy” with his obsession of Trump, adding that Reiner’s “paranoia” reached “new heights” as the administration “surpassed all goals and expectations.”
“May Rob and Michele rest in peace!” the president concluded.
Reiner — a Democrat and donor — and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home Sunday afternoon.
The director was an outspoken critic of the president and repeatedly warned against Trump’s impact on democracy.
“Make no mistake. We have a year before this country becomes a full on autocracy and democracy completely leaves us,” Reiner told the MSNBC, now known as MS NOW, in September.
In a separate interview with the Guardian in February 2024, Reiner called Trump “a criminal” who “basically lies every minute of his life.” […]
In a post on X, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a vocal Republican Trump critic, called Trump’s comments “inappropriate and disrespectful.”
Nearly 70 million people were under cold weather alerts Monday morning, stretching from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast.
Below-zero and single-digit temperatures were being felt by millions across the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes and the Northeast.
At 7 a.m., wind chills were 7 degrees in New York City; 1 degree in Washington, D.C.; minus 9 in Chicago; and zero degrees in Louisville, Kentucky.
Daytime highs will run 10 to 20 degrees below average for the entire eastern third of the country Monday.
Beginning Tuesday, temperatures will gradually warm across all regions through the rest of the week.
The Pacific Northwest braces for more rain
The Pacific Northwest is bracing for several storm systems throughout the week, which will bring heavy rain after the region was battered by rain and flooding last week.
With several rivers still elevated, the incoming rain could bring renewed flood concerns to the region.
There are already 5 million people facing new flood watches across the western half of Washington state, as well as the northern portions of Idaho and Montana. […]
On Tuesday night, a storm system fueled by an atmospheric river could bring flooding, landslides and wind gusts of up to 50 mph to the region.
While these storms will not be as strong as last week’s, they will last through Wednesday and are expected to produce 2 to 6 inches of rainfall, with localized amounts of up to 8 inches.
Unlike last week, Northern California will see some heavy rain from this system.
Burying the lede. This is not about good taste. This is Donald Trump claiming that one of his supporters murdered Rob Reiner because they were mad about Reiner’s anti-Trump stances. Trump isn’t just gloating about Reiner being murdered, he’s claiming that one of his supporters did it because Reiner disrespected Trump. He wants people to think a MAGA did this. That’s a terrifying escalation in the rhetoric.
Historically, Trump and his MAGA allies have been at pains to deny political violence by MAGAs even when it manifestly happened like the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi in a doomed attempt to kidnap Speaker Pelosi.
Now, Trump is suggesting that Reiner was murdered for criticizing Trump, even though there’s no evidence of that. He’s signaling what happens to Trump’s critics, he’s activating the most violent members of his base.
When Pelosi had his skull fractured by a hammer-wielding election denier, MAGA tried to mock and blame the victim by claiming the attacker was Pelosi’s secret gay lover. This time, Trump is making up a MAGA angle on Reiner.
This is even worse than Trump telling the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by during the presidential debate. This is a veiled threat.
U.S. envoys signaled they are ready to give Ukraine guarantees for a future peace deal that correspond to the same levels of security as Article 5 in the NATO alliance, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.
Article 5 is the bedrock of NATO as it guarantees collective security, ensuring that all members should respond to an attack on one member as if it were an attack against them.
“We have now heard from the U.S. side that they are ready to give us security guarantees that correspond to Article 5,” Zelenskyy said in the chancellery in Berlin.
[…] Speaking after Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also hailed the commitments from the U.S. delegation.
“This is a truly far-reaching and substantial agreement, which we have not had before, namely, that both Europe and the U.S. are jointly prepared—and President Zelenskyy has referred to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty — to give similar security guarantees to Ukraine,” Merz said.
“In my view, this is a really big step forward. And, as I said, the American side has also committed itself politically and, in perspective, legally to do this,” he added.
[His migration lawyer] Issa fears he will lose his left arm. Ahmed […] sustained about five bullet wounds that were sprayed across his left arm, but one that plunged into the back of his left shoulder blade […] has yet to be extracted.
[…]
After being granted citizenship in 2022, Ahmed feels “indebted” to the Australian community […] This is his way of conveying his gratitude […] Ahmed, a Muslim, arrived in Australia in 2006 from Syria. […] Issa recounted the struggles his client had in gaining Australian citizenship after escaping the civil war in Syria.
This seems to be one satisfactory explanation about life on other planets (as well as ours): https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1765770575-20251215_edit.png
Reading all the environmental destruction and carnage reported here, I wonder how close we are to removing humanity here from the ‘galactic list of planets’ with sentient life on them?
Also, I’m really glad freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ is back online. There is NO legitimate reason for such unreliable hosting. I know how difficult it would be for PZ to change hosing companies, especially right now when he is trying to prepare for the onslaught of classes. The hosting company our organization uses has had less than 5 minutes outage in over 20 years. But, bluehost has a 2.5 out of 5 rating for a good reason: IT SUCKS! There is even a site – https://bluehost-sucks.com/
[…] This is Donald Trump claiming that one of his supporters murdered Rob Reiner because they were mad about Reiner’s anti-Trump stances. Trump isn’t just gloating about Reiner being murdered, he’s claiming that one of his supporters did it because Reiner disrespected Trump. He wants people to think a MAGA did this. That’s a terrifying escalation in the rhetoric. […]
Trump’s VA secretary said months ago, “We’ll be making major changes, so get used to it.” We’re now getting a sense of what that means in practical terms.
In early March, not quite two months into Donald Trump’s second term, the president’s Veterans Affairs Department announced that it was prepared to fire tens of thousands of workers as part of an agency-wide reorganization. Soon after, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins tried to defend the move, arguing that the federal government “does not exist to employ people.” [Evidence of a terrible attitude]
It was a wildly unpersuasive defense: No one has ever argued that the federal government exists to employ people. Rather, the point has always been that those who work at agencies such as the VA are there to serve Americans who need assistance, and mass layoffs likely mean fewer services to those who can ill-afford the cuts. [!]
The Cabinet secretary added, “We’ll be making major changes, so get used to it.”
Those “major changes” are still unfolding at the VA. The Washington Post reported:
The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to abruptly eliminate as many as 35,000 health care positions this month, mostly unfilled jobs including doctors, nurses and support staff, according to an internal memo, VA staffers and congressional aides.
The cuts come after a massive reorganization effort already resulted in the loss of almost 30,000 employees this year.
[…] Collins made no effort to explain why he and Trump administration believe fewer employees doing more work will lead to better results.
The secretary went on to tell lawmakers in May that the planned mass firings would focus on those filling “nonessential roles,” such as interior designers and those who work in diversity, equity and inclusion.
But according to the Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, Collins’ current plan involves cuts to the VA’s health care workforce, not interior designers.
A spokesperson for the Cabinet agency confirmed the planned cuts, telling the Post that the affected positions are “mostly Covid-era roles that are no longer necessary.”
Critics aren’t buying it. The progressive veterans advocacy group VoteVets called the planned cuts “outrageous,” adding, “It is abundantly clear that Republicans and the Trump administration want to strangle the VA until it all gets privatized.”
Similarly, Thomas Dargon Jr., the deputy general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 320,000 VA employees, told the Post, “The VA has been chronically understaffed for years, and employees are obviously going to be facing the brunt of any further job cuts or reorganization that results in employees having to do more work with less.”
In the last few days, my Twitter feed has brought up US online privacy activists who are desperately trying to raise alarm over some hellish new legislation that’s supposedly being rushed through in the Congress. An example:
“The hope is that this dies in the committee rather than getting rushed out. No matter what though, we ALL need to start calling and yelling at our reps and the committees till we win.
Call your reps. Tell them to:
– Protect Section 230
– REFUSE repealing section 230
And to vote NO on:
– KOSA
– SCREEN ACT
– Stop Csam Act of 2025
– Interstate Obsenity Definition Act”
And a bunch more. I gather some of this has been on the brink of passing before in recent years, and the whole package is said to have devastating consequences for freedom of speech, online privacy and online economy. Especially for US folks, but also everyone else connected to the US via internet tubes. It’s said to be pushed by a coalition of anti-porn/anti-LGBT fanatics, tech industry ghouls and pro-Israel lobbyists. Mainstream media appears to be silent. I hope the US-based parts of the FTB community can help raise this matter to the attention of US voters.
“A deal to fund Ukraine must be agreed before Cyprus takes over the agenda at the end of the year, its deputy Europe minister told POLITICO.”
As an aside, I’ll just point out that Republican Congress critters in the USA will be departing for their Christmas vacation by the end of this week, leaving the devastating health-care insurance premium increases for Affordable Care Act beneficiaries to descend on many American families. Republicans will leave that and many more problems unsolved.
BRUSSELS — EU leaders meeting this week will remain locked in talks until they find a solution to Ukraine’s funding crisis, Cyprus said, insisting the issue won’t be kicked to Jan. 1 when it takes over the EU’s legislative agenda.
Cypriot Deputy EU Minister Marilena Raouna told POLITICO on Monday that leaders have “a critical decision to make at the upcoming European Council,” which begins Thursday. Discussions over how to ensure Kyiv does not run out of money by the middle of next year have been “challenging,” she went on, but “there is a readiness by all to stay in Brussels until we are able to have a decision on this issue of financing.”
European officials have repeatedly warned Thursday’s negotiations could take hours, or even days, to produce a result and may run into the weekend despite pressures on leaders’ schedules. The alternative, officials say, is Ukraine running out of money — which will not be allowed to happen.
The EU is working to agree on a plan to use frozen Russian assets to underwrite a €210 billion loan to support Kyiv’s state budget and help repair the damage done by Russia’s full-scale invasion. However, Belgium — which hosts the bulk of the funds — has been joined by Italy, Malta and Bulgaria in raising legal questions over the proposals, which are already opposed on principle by Kremlin-friendly countries Hungary and Slovakia.
“A number of member states have said we need to ensure there is legal certainty; I think safeguards are being put in place in this regard. And that will pave the way, I hope, for a decision,” said Raouna. […]
Talks between ambassadors on the technical framework behind the move were canceled on Sunday and will run late into the night on Monday instead, ahead of a summit of leaders under the auspices of the European Council on Thursday.
[…] Cyprus takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union from the beginning of next year, giving one of the smallest countries in the bloc an influential role overseeing diplomatic talks. Along with Ireland, it is one of two militarily neutral countries to take on the role in 2026.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Trump’s Own Fans Repulsed By His Comments On Rob Reiner’s Death”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7JY42Sj62Ho
I wonder how much of this is Trump being Trump and how much of this is frontal lobe dementia reducing his inhibitions .
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @419:
Collins tried to defend the move, arguing that the federal government “does not exist to employ people.” […] No one has ever argued that […] the point has always been that those who work at agencies such as the VA are there to serve Americans
The US gov is the largest employer, serving needs. And yet, giant private businesses—ostensibly providing services—are lauded as “job creators”.
JMsays
Legal AF: Trump DOJ BLOWS IT and Misses MAJOR DEADLINE in Court
The Trump DOJ wants to file an emergency petition to delay complying with an order, and Lindsey Halligan wants to do it in an official role.
The emergency petition is garbage, seems to be an attempt to slow things down by claiming confusion over what words like “all” mean. Having Halligan do it is a separate issue and could be an attempt to get her established as an attorney by having her fill the job in a court in a different district. I have also seen it conjectured that Bondi and Halligan are trying to get the entire case dismissed so they can blame the court instead of having blame fall on the DOJ in Trump’s eyes.
The gunman who killed two students and injured nine others in a shooting at Brown University over the weekend remains at large after authorities released a person of interest late Sunday evening, officials said.
New York Times:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed on Monday to toughen Australia’s already strict gun laws, after the country’s worst mass shooting in three decades killed 15 people and wounded dozens more at a Jewish holiday celebration in Sydney.
The two US Army soldiers killed in Syria on Saturday were Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, Iowa, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, Iowa, according to the Army. … An American civilian interpreter was also killed in the attack, which was carried out by a single ISIS gunman, the Department of Defense said Saturday.
Israel’s military said it killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza City on Saturday, the most senior military leader of the group to be killed in the enclave since a fragile cease-fire took effect. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the strike that killed Raed Saad—who the military said was responsible for rebuilding Hamas military capabilities—came in response to an attack that wounded Israeli soldiers earlier in the day.
It is unheard-of for the agency to retreat from a swath of lawsuits against a single industry. And yet, The Times found that the S.E.C. had eased up on more than 60 percent of the crypto cases that were ongoing when Mr. Trump returned to the White House, moving to pause litigation, lessen penalties or outright dismiss the cases.
The dismissals were particularly unusual, The Times found. Under Mr. Trump, S.E.C. dismissals came at a far higher rate for crypto firms than other cases.
The U.S. military is moving more weapons and units into the Caribbean that give President Trump powerful new options to escalate his pressure campaign on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and potentially bring him down.
The Trump administration announced it would end a collective bargaining agreement covering 47,000 Transportation Security Administration officers, calling it incompatible with the agency’s national security mission.
Union leaders decried the move, calling it illegal union-busting and promising to challenge the decision.
It is the second time this year that the administration has tried to terminate the T.S.A. agreement.
The Trump administration has ended a provision that allowed Ethiopian nationals escaping unsafe conditions to live in the United States temporarily, issuing them 60 days to voluntarily leave the country or be faced with sudden deportation.
Another trumpian attack on Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
The National Rifle Association is burning through its investment portfolio to pay its bills as legal perils increase and revenue from membership dues decline, according to an independent audit reviewed by NOTUS.
In 2024, the 154-year-old gun rights organization liquidated nearly $40 million worth of stock, fixed-income securities and other holdings, per the 41-page audit document prepared by accounting firm Aprio LLP.
By the end of 2024, the NRA’s investment portfolio had shrunk to less than $33 million, down from more than $72 million the year before, according to the audit document, which was included last month as part of the NRA’s tax filing with regulators in North Carolina.
“The NRA has experienced net losses over the past two years,” Aprio auditors wrote. “To reduce debt and provide funding for operations, the NRA liquidated some of its investments in 2024. Expenses continue to be monitored and the NRA has met the cash demands of its operations and expenses as they come due.” […]
As the organization’s financial health continues to worsen, its prominence in the political arena has also declined. The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action has spent far less on key races than in previous years. The NRA was the single-largest outside donor to Trump’s campaign in 2016, earning them sway with the first Trump administration.
The same can’t be said for Trump’s second term.
“In less than a decade, the NRA has gone from unlimited access to the White House to a white-knuckle battle for survival,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, told NOTUS. “The NRA burned through its credibility with corruption and mismanagement, and now it is hemorrhaging everything that made it powerful: members, money and political clout. This isn’t a temporary downturn, it’s an organization in terminal decline.”
[…] “The current organization is really a shadow of its former self,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and vice president of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. […]
Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, one of the two National Guard members who was shot in Washington, D.C., last month, has made ‘extraordinary progress’ and transitioned from acute care to inpatient rehabilitation, his doctor said Friday.
bringing blood glucose back to normal levels—effectively reversing prediabetes—cuts the risk of death from heart disease or hospital admission for heart failure by more than 50%.
[…]
Prediabetes is a condition where blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. […] the study reanalyzed data from two landmark diabetes prevention trials […] following participants with prediabetes over several decades
[…]
People who had achieved remission from prediabetes had a 58% lower risk of cardiovascular death or hospitalization from heart failure. This effect persisted decades after normalizing glucose levels […] The researchers also found that risk of heart attack, stroke, and other major adverse cardiovascular events were reduced by 42% in those who had achieved prediabetes remission. The results were similar across both the Chinese and US data.
Previous analysis of the studies showed that combined lifestyle interventions, including increased exercise and eating a healthy diet, did not reduce cardiovascular disease. This suggests that delaying diabetes onset alone does not guarantee cardiovascular protection unless important metabolic changes occur.
researchers […] analyzed fossil pollen records from Europe to track vegetation changes stretching back 12,000 years. They discovered that as new populations of farmers from Turkey moved into Europe 9,000 years ago, far from destroying plant diversity, they enriched it. […] they chopped down some of the forest that met them, planted crops and grazed their sheep and cows. […] By opening the canopy, early farmers created a “mosaic” of habitats—a patchwork landscape that made space for a range of other plants that could not survive in dense forests.
[…]
these findings challenge the common assumption in conservation that human influence must be removed for ‘nature’ to thrive—a concept embedded into many ‘restoration’ strategies, such as rewilding.
If you’re a magazine or catalog or other bulk mailer who is willing to add AI-generated content to your mailing, USPS will reward you with a 5% discount—potentially many thousands of dollars! How on earth does this benefit USPS?
The Trump administration said in a court filing Monday that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for unexplained national security reasons and because a preservationists’ organization that wants it stopped has no standing to sue.
The filing was in response to a lawsuit filed last Friday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt President Donald Trump’s project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and a public comment period and wins approval from Congress.
I suspect that the security of the White House is compromised in some ways by having part of the building torn down. That isn’t an excuse for no review, only that some minimal clean up might need done right now.
I have no idea where the issue of standing lands, standing on some national issues can get real weird.
StevoRsays
Unsure if this has been shared before and I don’t think this going to surprise anyone here but a good reminder of facts and article here :
In the first half of 2025, 35% of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities – more than twice the rate in 2024.
Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.
Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.
…(snip)..
..By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10% to 15% of incidents and less than 5% of fatalities.
The White House plans to make public its intention to enlist private companies in more aggressive efforts to go after criminal and state-sponsored hackers […] The draft didn’t provide many details on how […] There is currently no legal basis for private firms to conduct their own offensive cyber operations. Additionally, any operations to take down adversary infrastructure could put private firms in the crosshairs of foreign government entities
[…]
Discussions on contracting out offensive cyber operations were already underway in Joe Biden’s White House, though his administration didn’t settle on a policy
Commentary
Remembering DOGE dismantled many elements of US infosec capability.
Aw yeah. Cyber letters of marque!
The other fun thing is that a lot of the staff working on these contracts will end up indicted for crimes, just like we do to hackers in China and Russia. Assurances that the US Government won’t prosecute them don’t carry over to other jurisdictions, and these contractors won’t be protected as lawful combatants like uniformed personnel.
Have you ever wanted to be an intelligence operative, but with none of the protections of being an intelligence operative? Looking to enjoy amazing perks such as “getting [killed] by a well funded nation-state adversary” and “being kidnapped while on vacation abroad”? Well, we have the perfect opportunity for you! Everyone wants to be Mr Robot, but now you can. No training or opsec required. Just text “I’d like to become cannon fodder” to 800-US-GOV today.
Meanwhile in Gaza where barely noticed the detah tollhas officially passed 70,000 human individuals killed :
As I tried to understand what was happening, I suddenly heard children crying at the entrance of our tent. I opened it quickly and found three children from the neighbouring tents, their lips blue from the cold, with their mother trembling behind them saying, “We are completely soaked… the rain leaked inside and the water reached everywhere.”
The same tragic scene was repeated all around us: women, children, and elderly people sitting in the street under the rain, their bedding drenched and their belongings scattered, while confusion and cries filled the air.
All 1.4 million displaced Palestinians who lack proper shelter suffered that day—people with no protection against the weather or its sudden storms.
For us, it took two full days for our belongings to dry because the sun barely appeared; everything stayed cold and damp. We didn’t move to another place—we stayed where we were, trying to salvage whatever we could, because there was simply nowhere else to go.
Only a week later, an even stronger winter storm arrived with severe rainfall. Tents were flooded again; little children froze in the rain again.
Oh and the future for the Gazans looks ever grimmer and worse too :
Over 360 Palestinians, including 136 children, have been killed by Israel since the ‘truce’ went into effect, leading Amnesty International to conclude that the genocide in Gaza “continues unabated”.
While the ceasefire plan promised reconstruction, humanitarian relief, and a political horizon, what has instead emerged is a new blueprint for perpetual subjugation, one in which Gaza’s territory is being architecturally redesigned to normalise fragmentation and indefinite occupation, foreclosing on any future for Palestinian self-determination.
Since the ceasefire was announced, Israel has bisected Gaza along what was meant to be the initial withdrawal line of the Israeli army.
The “green zone” of eastern Gaza is where reconstruction and aid would, in theory, flow more freely, and where international delegations would be allowed (but escorted by the army), whereas the “red zone” of western Gaza would remain beleaguered, devastated, and increasingly bombed.
This is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close confidant and strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer called “the two-state solution… inside Gaza itself”.
The separation between those two halves is cemented through an entrenched barrier called the “Yellow Line” that has become deadlier than the Berlin Wall, where Israeli soldiers shoot to kill anyone who even comes close. The line is also elastic; the Israeli army has been incrementally moving it deeper and deeper into western Gaza to squeeze the population into less territory.
East Gaza (58% of the enclave), where “prosperity” is promised, is fully occupied by the Israeli military with no plans of withdrawal for the foreseeable future and has been thoroughly depopulated, with all inhabitants driven out by force.
Only five proxy gangs recruited and cultivated by Israel are allowed to exist there under army protection. Furthermore, Israeli troops and settler contracting companies are still systematically razing and demolishing any homes left in the very areas where supposed reconstruction is planned.
West Gaza, 42% of the enclave where two million people are caged and overcrowded, will be a “permanent refugee camp in ruins for the indefinite future,” a European diplomat stationed in Israel told The New Arab.
the Public Health Network Innovation Exchange (PHNIX), a new California-led initiative to modernize public health infrastructure and maintain trust in science-driven decision-making. To lead this work, the state is engaging some of the nation’s most respected public health voices to consult on this initiative, including Dr. Susan Monarez, former Director of the [CDC]; Dr. Debra Houry, former CDC Chief Medical Officer; and Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, founder and CEO of Your Local Epidemiologist.
[…]
PHNIX is a direct response to the federal dismantling of national disease prevention, protection, and tracking programs, the termination of life-saving health programs and erosion of evidence and science-based policies, and the withdrawal from the global public health community. With PHNIX, California is taking action to build coalitions across the nation […]
– The West Coast Health Alliance, a group of state and public health officials from California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii.
– The Governors Public Health Alliance, a 15-state nonpartisan alliance to coordinate and sustain global situational awareness.
– California was the first state in the United States to join the World Health Organization Global Outbreak Alert Response Network.
Maddow: Trump loses on public health leadership as states leave his ‘flock of quacks’ behind.
As Donald Trump fills the leadership roles of the U.S. public health system with quacks and kooks, sane states are taking it upon themselves to employ actual experts with real public health administration experience to make sure the public has credible guidance even if that guidance is not coming from the federal government. Dr. Debra Houry, former CDC official and new senior medical adviser to the California Department of Health, talks with Rachel Maddow about this new shift in public health authority as Donald Trump and his clown show are simply ignored.
Trump learns Politics 101: Do unpopular things, become unpopular, lose political power. Rachel Maddow reviews how poorly Donald Trump’s policies are being received by the American public as Trump continues to appoint laughably unqualified sycophants to top agency roles, and leadership failures mount. As a result, not only are Trump’s poll numbers tanking, but even Republican politicians are recognizing that it’s not in their interest to tie their fates to Trump’s sinking ship.
“Historically, the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ label has been limited to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Now it includes … fentanyl pills?”
As this week got underway, the Pentagon made the latest in a series of announcements: Deadly U.S. military strikes killed eight people as part of the latest operation against civilian boats in international waters. According to the official tally, there have now been 25 such strikes since early September, with a collective death toll of 95 people.
The announcement from the Defense Department coincided with another announcement from Donald Trump. [video]
“With this historic executive order I will sign today, we’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is,” Trump declared at a White House event.
Observers would be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu: Americans saw a Republican president, with an apparent interest in foreign oil, pitching suspect claims about WMDs. [!]
[…] Two months ago, White House border czar Tom Homan told Axios that designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction should “at least be a discussion.” Looking back further, the Department of Homeland Security began a related analysis as far back as 2019. […]
Time will tell whether the White House tries to use this designation as part of its provocative saber-rattling toward Venezuela, though it’s worth emphasizing that there is no evidence that Venezuela produces or traffics fentanyl. [!]
But the effort to connect fentanyl to the boat strikes in international waters is ongoing. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week described “narco-terrorists” as the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere,” purportedly responsible for spreading “narcotics so lethal they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.” [FFS]
What’s more, as The New Republic noted, The Wall Street Journal reported last month “that a classified legal brief justified the Trump administration’s extrajudicial execution of alleged drug smugglers by referring to fentanyl as a potential chemical weapon.”
The executive order is the start, not the end, of a broader policy discussion.
An attorney representing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona sent a letter to Secretary of the Navy John Phelan this week that condemned an ongoing Pentagon investigation into the senator in no uncertain terms.
“To be clear: there is no legitimate basis for any type of proceeding against Senator Kelly, and any such effort would be unconstitutional and an extraordinary abuse of power,” the letter read.
At about the same time, the Defense Department said it’s advancing its probe into Kelly anyway. The Washington Post reported:
The Pentagon said Monday night that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is ‘escalating’ his review of Sen. Mark Kelly’s involvement in a video he and other Democratic lawmakers made reminding service members of their duty to disobey illegal orders — an unprecedented use of the military justice system to investigate a political adversary.
In a statement, the Defense Department said it was elevating what had been a ‘review’ to an ‘official Command Investigation’ to be carried out at least in part by the Pentagon general counsel’s office.
If anyone needs a refresher, it was almost a week after several Democratic military veterans urged service members to reject illegal orders when Hegseth announced an investigation into Kelly, a decorated Navy veteran. The Arizona Democrat is the only member of the group who retired as a captain and served long enough to receive a military pension.
As a result, the senator is not only still required to follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but he can also be punished in a variety of ways: The Pentagon could lower his rank, target his pension or, as Hegseth emphasized a few weeks ago, recall Kelly to active service in order to face a court-martial.
The problem, of course, is that any such efforts to punish Kelly would be ridiculous under the circumstances. All the senator did was remind service members to follow the law and the UCMJ, echoing comments Hegseth himself made before he joined Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
[…] it’s worth emphasizing that building any kind of credible case against Kelly, who didn’t do anything wrong, would be practically impossible […]
“If the executive branch were to move forward in any forum — criminal, disciplinary, or administrative — we will take all appropriate legal action on Senator Kelly’s behalf to halt the Administration’s unprecedented and dangerous overreach,” the lawyer wrote.
At least two GOP members of Congress are using the terrorist attack on Australian Jews by suspected radical Islamists to call for the removal of all Muslims from the United States:
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL): “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult. Islamists aren’t here to assimilate. They’re here to conquer. Stop worrying about offending the pearl clutchers. We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America.”
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL): “It is time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible. Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.”
Targeting an entire religion, revoking citizenship on the basis of a disfavored faith, making it impossible to ever be a “real” non-Christian citizen … these are the trappings of white nationalism.
Elon Musk is continuing his role as a major financier for the Republican Party and is already spending money to keep the party in control of Congress for the 2026 midterm election cycle.
Axios reported on Tuesday that Musk has donated to Republican congressional campaigns and is expected to continue to do so throughout next year. […]
Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters admitted last week that the party faces “almost certain defeat” in the midterms.
According to Axios, Musk’s donation spree to help the GOP comes after he was wined and dined last month by Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, along with other Trump insiders. [Typical]
Musk spent nearly $292 million in the 2024 election cycle, much of it in the form of deceptive advertising and legally dubious cash expenditures—all to help elect Trump.
[…] Musk’s latest political spending comes after a year of failure and public acrimony with Trump.
[…] Musk expressed displeasure in the Trump administration’s ongoing cover-up of the government’s files regarding accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, even claiming that Trump was in the files. Musk also said he was upset about the spending authorized in the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
On his Fox News show, host Sean Hannity lamented the breakup in June, noting, “The rift between these two men, I’ll be the first to say, it’s sad, it’s unfortunate.” [video]
Things got so bad that Musk claimed he would start a new political party, called the “America Party.” Like Musk’s promises of humanoid robots that will “eliminate poverty,” the new party has yet to materialize.
Musk later said his posts about Trump “went too far” and the men began to reconcile.
When he wasn’t fighting in public with Trump, Musk was leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency at Trump’s request. Trump said it was the new “Manhattan Project,” and Musk promised that DOGE would cut “trillions” in government spending. It did not.
In reality, DOGE staffers violated privacy, broke laws, and made Musk’s name politically toxic. The project was phased out months ahead of its projected end date in July 2026.
Republicans now find themselves reliant on Musk, a highly disliked racist with more money than anyone else in the world, and need his financial support to avoid political oblivion.
Another day, another executive order where President Donald Trump just dashes off an unhinged note, and everyone has to treat it like a law. […]
So, sure, yeah, whatever. Illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals are now weapons of mass destruction. Got it, Donny.
This is bog-stupid, even for Trump. The United Nations defines what WMDs are, and fentanyl just … isn’t. A WMD is something that has “characteristics comparable in destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb” or “produce in a single moment an enormous destructive effect capable to kill millions of civilians, jeopardize the natural environment, and fundamentally alter the lives of future generations through their catastrophic effects.”
This is also stupid from a practical standpoint. Since fentanyl is an entirely synthetic opioid, traffickers just change the precursor chemicals when existing ones are targeted. It’s an ever-shifting target. Next, some of those chemicals have legitimate uses that aren’t at all related to drugs. Sodium borohydride, for example, is on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Surveillance List because it is a fentanyl precursor, but it’s also what paper manufacturers use to bleach their paper and packaging. [Good points]
Under existing law, if you sell a chemical on the SSL with reckless disregard as to whether it will be used for illegal drug manufacturing, your company faces a $250,000 fine. […] there’s no world where somehow the chemical company-to-paper mill part of things chugs along just fine while elsewhere having a couple grains of sodium borohydride on you is punishable by death or whatever.
But this isn’t really about fentanyl at all, which is why the order can be all loosey-goosey about how things work. This order is about vastly expanding the use of the United States military and casting about for a way to say that we are at war with Venezuelan drug traffickers and can therefore bomb boats in the Caribbean with impunity. [Unfortunately true.]
Trump’s latest unhinged executive order first directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to “immediately pursue investigations and prosecutions into fentanyl trafficking, including through criminal charges as appropriate, sentencing enhancements, and sentencing variances.”
Okay, let’s stop you right there. Isn’t that already what the Department of Justice does when it comes to drug trafficking? Investigating, charging, and prosecuting federal crimes is kinda the whole deal for the DOJ, and U.S. attorneys issue press releases about their successful fentanyl prosecutions all the time.
It also directs the secretaries of state and the treasury to go after assets and bank accounts, which is also a thing that already happens routinely.
But here’s the part that really matters:
The Secretary of War and the Attorney General shall determine whether the threats posed by illicit fentanyl and its impact on the United States warrant the provision of resources from the Department of War to the Department of Justice to aid in the enforcement of title 18 of the United States Code, as consistent with 10 U.S.C. 282.
That statute allows the attorney general to ask the defense secretary to assist with DOJ activities if there is an emergency involving a WMD, defined as when “civilian expertise and capabilities are not readily available to provide the required assistance to counter the threat immediately posed by the weapon involved” and “special capabilities and expertise of the Department of Defense are necessary and critical to counter the threat posed by the weapon involved.” [!]
The situation being described here is pretty clearly “the FBI has learned there is a dirty bomb on a passenger train in Newark and needs immediate assistance and expertise from the military to stop a tragedy,” not “We want to catch more drug traffickers.”
This looks like a pretty blatant attempt at getting a widespread permission slip for military personnel to be used in domestic criminal investigations, which is not great!
Here’s the other part that sucks:
[T]o ensure the United States uses the full array of appropriate counter-fentanyl tools, the Secretary of Homeland Security, as consistent with applicable law and in coordination with the heads of relevant agencies, as appropriate, shall identify threat networks related to fentanyl smuggling using WMD- and nonproliferation-related threat intelligence to support the full spectrum of counter-fentanyl operations.
This one is another desperate attempt to make the boat bombings lawful. And just in time, too, as the administration is gearing up to do land strikes in Venezuela.
One little problem that the administration can’t get around by waving a magic WMD wand is that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl. {1}
There’s also the problem that the administration has reassigned everyone to the “brutally torturing immigrants” project, which means drug arrests have already dropped, and fewer new investigations are being opened.
But rather than do those actual investigations and prosecutions, which is what should be happening if we face such a deadly scourge, this instead is an attempt to get full war on terror authority, a blank check for Trump and Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem to do anything they want, any time, anywhere.
The worst people in the world should never get that power—especially not in this transparently stupid way.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, the highest level since September 2021 when the economy was still recovering from massive COVID-19 job losses.
The 4.6% unemployment rate is higher than the 4.5% the Federal Reserve Bank predicted it would peak at this year, and marks yet another troubling sign for the economy that President Donald Trump has crippled with his nonsensical tariffs.
The unemployment rate is worse for specific subsets of the population. Black workers have an 8.3% unemployment rate—a whopping 2 percentage point increase since January, when Trump entered office. Roughly 800,000 fewer Black workers were employed in November than they were in November a year prior.
Ultimately, the economy added just 64,000 jobs since September. However, the economy lost 105,000 jobs one month prior, meaning job growth was actually negative over the last two months.
“The US economy is in a hiring recession,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a post on X. “Almost no jobs have been added since April. Wage gains are slowing. 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024.”
Long blamed the hiring recession on “a combination of tariff impacts, AI, and cost cutting.Americans are feeling it.”
Even worse is that the BLS said nearly 1 million people are underemployed, working part-time jobs for economic reasons because they cannot find full-time work. […]
Layoffs have picked up in recent months, as companies contract due in part to Trump’s tariffs and the economic uncertainty they’ve unleashed. And prices are continuing to trend up, no matter how much Trump wants to claim that he’s brought costs down.[…]
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said there will not be an amendment vote on extending expiring ObamaCare enhanced subsidies as part of a House Republican health care bill this week, in a move that is infuriating moderate Republicans who had been pushing to go on the record about the subsidies.
[…] Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the members who had been pushing for a vote to extend the subsidies that expire Dec. 31, fumed at the decision as he emerged from a House Republican Conference meeting Tuesday morning.
“I think it’s idiotic not to have an up-or-down vote on this issue,” Lawler said, adding: “It is political malpractice.” […]
I snipped more blather from Republicans about how they will produce a “health care bill, which is set to hit the House floor Wednesday, arguing it would reduce costs for all Americans rather than the small percentage of Americans who get health coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.”
“Will Incompetent Clown DOJ Convict Milwaukee Judge For ‘Obstruction’ Of ICE?”
“The DOJ hasn’t had a stellar track record in these cases.”
The federal trial got underway yesterday in the Trump administration’s effort to destroy the Milwaukee County judge who stood up to ICE deportation stormtroopers who were trying to nab a criminal defendant at a hearing in her courtroom. Judge Hannah Dugan faces a felony charge of “obstruction of a federal agency” and a misdemeanor count for “concealing a wanted person” after an April incident that the government is portraying as a sinister attempt to help a dangerous criminal escape justice. It’s one of the first cases to reach trial in which a government official has been accused of a crime for taking action the administration claims is a misuse of her position in opposition to the Glorious Ethnic Cleansing of America.
The defendant in Dugan’s courtroom that day was Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant charged with domestic violence (and entitled to his day in court). He was among the first wave of immigrants that ICE agents started grabbing as soon as they left court hearings, following the reversal of a longstanding DHS policy not to do deportation arrests at courthouses, churches, or schools.
Dugan is accused of doing serious crimes because instead of sending Flores-Ruiz out the front door of the courtroom, Dugan told the agents they’d need to go speak to the chief judge, in keeping with a draft policy from the chief judge. While some of the agents went to the chief judge’s office, two of the agents stayed out in the hallway. Dugan set a date for a future hearing where Flores-Ruiz would be able to appear by Zoom, then allowed the defendant and his attorney to leave via a “jury door” and private hallway that nonetheless opened onto the public hallway where agents were still waiting.
In fact, as an FBI agent acknowledged in testimony yesterday, Flores-Ruiz and his attorney walked right past the two agents, then they rode an elevator with a third agent down to the lobby. Only after Flores-Ruiz left the courthouse did the six-member Keystone Gestapo team move to arrest him; he tried to run and they grabbed him after a brief chase. He was deported last month, and ICE announced it with a statement depicting Judge Dugan as pretty much an accomplice.
[…] In an opening statement yesterday, Dugan’s defense attorney, Steven Biskupic, pointed out that if she had really been trying to conceal Flores-Ruiz from ICE, she could have directed him and his attorney to an enclosed stairwell that would have avoided the public hallway altogether. Instead, they exited the private hallway through a door just about 11 feet from where the agents were standing (and allowed him to pass). Biskupic pointed out that was less distance “than the width of your jury box.”
The ICEfucks who arrived at the courthouse planned to arrest Flores-Ruiz in the hall outside the courtroom because they didn’t have a signed judicial warrant for his arrest, just an administrative warrant that allowed them to nab him in public areas, but not to enter the courtroom.
The indictment against Dugan claimed that she “falsely” told federal agents that an administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient, but as Biskupic pointed out to the jury, Milwaukee’s chief judge had advised judges that an “ICE warrant does not compel courthouse personnel to cooperate,” and that Dugan was following the chief judge’s instructions on the law. The agents knew that too, and advised Dugan that they planned to arrest Flores-Ruiz in the hall after his hearing. Everyone was following orders, you might say.
The prosecution is painting Dugan as a friend of criminals who actively plotted to let a dangerous criminal go free, noting an audio recording in which Dugan and her court reporter spoke softly about the agents waiting outside the courtroom. At one point, Dugan could be heard saying “I’ll do it. … I’ll take the heat.”
The prosecution made a point of noting that Dugan was wearing her robe when she spoke to the ICE goons outside her courtroom, and added, “The judicial robes that the defendant wore that day do not put her above the law.” They contend that Dugan deliberately “divided” the arrest team, then sneakily planned for Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to sneak out down the inner stairwell. They didn’t explain why she didn’t point to it as they left and went the other way, to the door that would put them in the public hallway with the ICE guys.
[…] Biskupic pointed out that the agents watched their target walk right past them, then only gave chase after he departed the courthouse. Dugan certainly didn’t obstruct the agents, he noted, and neither did she instruct anyone else to interfere with them. “Judge Dugan is charged with obstructing a hallway arrest when the agents chose not to make that arrest in the hallway,” he said.
The trial continues today, and we’ll keep you up to date; it remains to be seen whether the government will get a conviction when so many grand juries and trial juries have refused to buy the government’s claim that anyone who opposes it is a criminal.
“Oh Look, The NYT Solved The Mystery Of How Jeffrey Epstein Got His Money!”
Happy Epstein Files week! Attorney General Pam Bondi has until Friday to release the government’s files, which means President Donald John Trump is gonna be on a real tear. He would much rather the national conversation be about what an asshole he is, rather than the unsettling possibility that he might be as guilty as Epstein is, of the same crimes and/or worse!
[…] In the meantime, here is your latest Epstein files news!
This morning The New York Times has tackled and solved the years-long mystery: just where did all of Epstein’s money come from?
Short version, with old-fashioned confidence-man-style scamming. He did it so effectively that when time ran out on one scam, he just pivoted to the next one, as he was constantly cultivating men and women who became extraordinarily willing to help him. He had the rich-people-manipulation skills […] As the NYT summarises:
He started small, testing his tactics and seeing what he could get away with. His early successes laid the foundation for more ambitious ploys down the road. Again and again, he proved willing to operate on the edge of criminality and burn bridges in his pursuit of wealth and power.
No wonder he and Trump were best friends.
This is weird: the father of the lady Junior just got engaged to, Bettina Anderson, shows up at the end. Harry Loy Anderson Jr. was the president of the Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Company, where Epstein had held accounts since the early 1990s. In 1999, when Epstein was trying to use his US Virgin Islands property to get millions in tax breaks for his main company, Financial Trust, Anderson wrote a letter to the USVI’s Industrial Development Commission, vouching for Epstein’s character, that he was “a gentleman of the highest integrity,” [FFS] and that he “enjoys an excellent reputation in our community.” Later, Epstein’s house manager said in a deposition that he was using Anderson’s bank to pay some of Epstein’s victims, too.
[…] Anderson was sure not alone in being charmed and gushing about the guy.
Epstein got his job as a Bear Stearns trader, it seems, from the parent of one of his students at the Dalton School, who noticed that Epstein was good at math, suggested he get a job on Wall Street, and called up a buddy. Good timing! Epstein had just been asked to leave at the end of the school year, and his flirting with female students had not gone unnoticed. [!]
And this was no ordinary pal! It was Bear Stearns executive Alan Courtney “Ace” Greenberg. Epstein had zero experience in business or finance, and not even an idea how the stock market worked. But Greenberg was into “hiring what he called people with PSD degrees — non-MBAs who were poor, smart and desirous of riches.” And Epstein was that! (Detail from Greenberg’s obituary: “In 1998, he gave $1 million to the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan to provide Viagra to men who could not afford it.” A wangdonger is a terrible thing to waste!)
And Epstein was, said another executive, a “hell of a salesman.” […] Bear Stearns soon learned that he’d lied about having two college degrees, and in fact had zero. But Epstein made a sad face and whinged that he’d lied because otherwise no one would give him a chance, the appeal worked, and he kept his job.
It also helped that by that point he was dating Greenberg’s daughter. And had picked up stock marketing quick, advising clients on complex transactions, and how to dodge taxes. In 1980, at age 27, he was made a limited partner. And then pulled all sorts of crap, like charging $10,000 of jewelry and clothes for a girlfriend on the company card, giving insider access to a girlfriend, and lending money to a high school friend against SEC rules. For all that, the firm’s executive committee decided to fine him $2,500 and suspend him for two months. […]
But by the time Epstein was suspended and fined, he didn’t need the job anymore. He had another girlfriend whose son he had tutored who introduced him to Douglas Leese, a guy with serious money, generational British kind of wealth. Epstein soon started taking advantage there too, charging personal flights on the Concorde and stays at luxury hotels to Leese’s expense account. That ended the friendship, but again, didn’t matter, because Epstein had already moved on to greener marks. [It’s a pattern.]
He and lawyer John Stanley Pottinger and Pottinger’s brother rented a penthouse in the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South, stiffed the broker on her commission, and then briefly set up their own tax-avoider helper business. Interestingly, decades later Pottinger would team up with Brad Edwards to represent scores of women who accused Epstein of sexually abusing them.
From there, sounds like Epstein simply scammed money. Like $450,000 from video-game executive Michael Stroll, which Epstein promised to invest in an oil company, and Stroll says Epstein simply kept. Then a big break came when the family of Spanish socialite Ana Obregón, and then other Spanish families, hired him to track down money that went missing when the brokerage firm Drysdale Securities collapsed. Somehow he did it, the commission made him a millionaire, and he returned to Bear Stearns as a client of his former manager.
And once again, Epstein used his charm with women, seducing his former manager’s pretty young assistant, and using her to access the Bear Stearns library for him, and to charm prospective clients. “It was always about getting him in a position of leverage,” said the assistant. […] Another of Epstein’s assistants, Suzanne Ircha, would become a close friend of Melania Trump’s and went on to marry Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, and Trump’s first-term ambassador to Britain. There’s so much that they share […]
And then, what do you know, more scamming. Epstein refashioned himself as a corporate-takeover specialist, with a friend, Steven Hoffenberg. Short version, the two raised money for takeovers that didn’t happen, and took the money. Epstein denied all knowledge, and Hoffenberg claimed it was Epstein’s idea. A decade later Hoffenberg would be sentenced to 20 years for his part, but once again, Epstein walked away unscathed. More than unscathed! He wormed his way into New York Society, joining the board of the New York Academy of Art in 1987, which is how he met victim Maria Farmer and her sister Annie. Maria was the one who got creeped on by Trump in front of Epstein, and reported their gross behaviors to the FBI twice, in 1996 and 2006. And nobody did a damn thing!
Then in 1982 Epstein met Leslie Wexner, billionaire brand owner and Epstein’s biggest fish. Wexner’s financial adviser at the time, Harold Levin, told him he “smelled a rat,” that Epstein’s explanations of currency trading did not make sense, and the guy did not even have a computer in his office. Nevertheless, Wexner was so charmed he ended up signing over power of attorney to Epstein. JFC]
Levin ended up quitting after Epstein told Wexner that Levin had been stealing. It was a technique he would later use to snare billionaire Leon Black: “instill fear that their finances were a mess, that their advisers and even family members were inept or exploiting them and that only one man had the wherewithal to save them.” Again, very Trumpy!
Here is a strange coincidence: Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of another Wexner brand, Abercrombie and Fitch, is currently on trial for sex trafficking and prostitution charges, also!
Anyway, by 1992, he had met Ghislaine Maxwell, and you know plenty about the rest.
So, there is one decades-long mystery solved! Turns out these rich people are not that different from you and me, other than being friends with Jeffrey Epstein, who had that whole child rape sex cabal thing going. They’re easily charmed, reluctant to acknowledge when they’ve been scammed, and not very good at math. […]
“America’s Vilest MAGA Creeps Sneer At Unarmed Australians For Getting Shot”
[…] a father and son shot up a Hanukkah celebration on popular Bondi Beach in Australia. At last count, the death toll stood at 16 (including one of the shooters), with at least 42 other people hospitalized.
Everyone knows what this means: it’s time for the worst people in America to sneer sentiments along the lines of Ooooooh, I thought Australia had strict gun laws that would prevent massacres! If only there had been one armed person there to shoot back! This is why you’ll pry my murder stick from my cold, dead hands!
Here, for example, is world-class shithead Laura Ingraham barely waiting for the bodies to be removed from the beach: [video]
Ha ha ha, those vegemite fanatics sure are stupid, she seems to be saying! If they wouldn’t allow all those dang foreigners into their country while their citizens are running around tragically vulnerable without their boom-boom sticks, then maybe they wouldn’t have a gun massacre every 30 years or so!
Here is Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah continuing his lifelong streak of never missing an opportunity to miss a point: [video: “Australian already has some of the world’s most restrictive gun laws. Those laws didn’t prevent today’s shooting. They just left the (unarmed) citizens completely defenseless. […]”
Need we once again go through all the fucking times there has been an armed person in the vicinity of a shooting in America and failed to stop it or even slow it down? Must we bring up the cops at Uvalde or the security officer at Parkland for the millionth time? Must we remind Mike Lee that civilians in Australia and America generally don’t have combat training, so even if they are armed, they are not going to react like S.H.I.E.L.D agents when someone starts shooting at them out of nowhere? [True]
And because the types of guns civilians are allowed to own is also limited, we note that these two jokers appear to have been armed with shotguns and bolt-action hunting rifles. If they were in America, they might have had AR-15s or some other equally ridiculous semi-automatic weapon that should never be seen outside a military armory. Then the death toll might have been way, way higher. Remember the guy who shot up a country music festival in Las Vegas by firing multiple AR-15s from high ground? Yeah, like that.
Australia having restrictive gun laws is not the reason these two jackasses were able to kill a bunch of people. […]
For good measure, we note that one person who took action that stopped the shooting and probably saved a metric fuckton of lives […] was this unarmed guy who tackled one of the shooters and wrested his gun away from him. Australian media reports he took five bullets to his left arm and fears he might lose it.
[…] Oh, and the hero is an immigrant from the Middle East, with the very Arab name of Ahmed al Ahmed. All the jackasses screaming about immigrants being the problem can kindly shut the fuck up.
Last and certainly least, here is alleged journalist Michael Tracy getting corrected after reminding us all once again what a fucking idiot he has always been: [social media post]
[…] The point is that the last major gun massacre in Australia was in 1996 and killed 35 people. The country tightened up its gun laws after that and has had barely any mass shootings since. Overall gun deaths are exceedingly rare.
And for those geniuses who are screaming America has way more people right now, yeah, we know. On a per capita basis, which is as close as anyone gets to a fair comparison, there are way more mass shootings and gun deaths in America than in Australia. It’s not even close.
Still, private gun ownership in Australia has gone up in recent years. So the country’s leaders are already talking about finding ways to tighten the laws up even more. This will no doubt send the American right into paroxysms of rage […]
We leave you with this weekend interview on MS NOW with Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the Parkland massacre. Around the 4:00 mark, Kasky talks about how gun violence simply isn’t a part of the everyday life of Australians, and that America is the anomaly among First World countries, not the rule: [video]
birgerjohanssonsays
15 Forgotten Movies from the 80s That Still Hold Up in 2025
Manhunter with Manfred Mann was the first film with Hannibal Lecter, long before Silence of the Lambs. Near Dark has Lance Henriksen as baddie. The Hidden inspired Men In Black.
“Two weeks ago, Trump said his administration would “certainly release” the video, “no problem.” Now, the beleaguered Pentagon chief has walked that back.”
The Trump administration’s policy of conducting deadly U.S. military strikes against civilian boats in international waters has been a global controversy for months, but the burgeoning scandal took on even greater significance a few weeks ago when The Washington Post reported that the administration killed a pair of survivors after an initial strike in early September.
Almost immediately after the allegations reached the public, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a challenge to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “[R]elease the full, unedited tapes of the strikes so the American people can see for themselves,” the New York Democrat wrote in an online statement. “Your recklessness demands full transparency.”
The release of the video quickly became a key point of contention in the larger debate over the alleged war crime.
It’s also a video the beleaguered Pentagon chief intends to keep hidden from public view. [video of Hegseth blathering on and on]
“In keeping with long-standing Department of War policy, Department of Defense policy, of course we’re not going to release a top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters after a classified briefing with senators. “Appropriate committees will see it, but not the general [public].”
It was a mere two weeks ago when a reporter asked Donald Trump about releasing the full video of what transpired in the Caribbean on Sept. 2. The president replied, “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem.”
Three days later, however, Hegseth hedged. “We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” the secretary said at a public forum when pressed on whether he’d choose transparency.
Early last week, Trump pretended he never said what he was filmed saying days earlier, and this week, the defense secretary’s position is that Americans will “of course” not have access to the video. What’s more, the administration hasn’t even endorsed showing the video to all members of Congress.
For context, remember that Hegseth didn’t have any qualms about releasing the video of the initial Sept. 2 strike soon after it happened. Now, however, he’s apparently opposed to releasing the part of the footage that could make the operation appear more scandalous.
Imagine that.
To the extent that substantive details are relevant to the political debate, no one in the administration has even hinted at legitimate reasons for secrecy on this. The video is unlikely to disclose confidential sources or methods or expose any national security secrets. By all accounts, it shows shipwrecked individuals clinging to parts of a destroyed boat before they were executed by a U.S. military strike.
The only reason to keep that hidden is to avoid further public embarrassment.
“Under Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the FBI is a mess.”
You may have seen some weird chatter recently about Dan Bongino, the right-wing former podcaster whom Donald Trump installed as the deputy director of the FBI. According to reports, Bongino may not be sticking around the bureau for much longer.
Some reports say he has cleared out his FBI office already. Another says his office is not empty but he is planning to decide about his future in the coming weeks, whatever that means.
But it would not be all that surprising if Bongino were on his way out. He is the first FBI deputy director with zero experience at the bureau, unless you count his podcasts about how the agency should be disbanded.
Since taking the job, Bongino has not sounded super happy with his life at the FBI, nor has the FBI appeared especially happy with him.
In a report on the FBI prepared for Congress last month by active-duty and retired agents, Bongino is referred to as “something of a clown.”
The White House even installed a kind of babysitter for Bongino, appointing an unprecedented co-deputy director to share the job with him, which was widely seen as the first step in replacing him.
Then there’s Bongino’s boss, Kash Patel, a fellow former right-wing podcaster who is now director of the FBI. MS NOW has reported that Trump is considering firing him as well, because of the “unflattering headlines Patel has recently generated.”
That includes reporting that Patel diverted members of an elite FBI SWAT team to provide security for his girlfriend. Reportedly, Patel directed that team to drive his girlfriend’s allegedly drunk friend home, more than once.
According to reports, Patel is also using his government jet to visit that girlfriend, to take a golfing trip to Scotland with his buddies and to visit a Texas hunting resort called the Boondoggle Ranch.
Then there was the time he bragged on social media about the FBI busting up a terror plot in Michigan before investigators even had a chance to file charges. According to The Wall Street Journal, some of the suspects’ friends caught wind of the arrests and moved up their plans to leave the country. One of them was intercepted at the airport only at the last moment.
Premature social media posts have kind of become Patel’s thing as FBI director.
In September, hours after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, Patel posted on social media that “the subject” in the killing was “in custody.” But roughly 90 minutes later, Patel had to walk that back when the person was released. That was a correction Patel may have posted from his dinner that night at a trendy New York restaurant, according to reporting from NBC News.
Patel now appears to have done it again. The morning after a shooter killed two people and injured nine more at Brown University on Saturday, Patel proudly posted on social media that, as a result of the FBI’s tireless efforts, a person of interest had been taken into custody.
Hours later, that person was released. As of Tuesday afternoon, the suspected shooter is still at large, and the FBI has released new photos of a person of interest, who they warn is armed and dangerous. They are offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information on the suspect.
It’s clear that, right now, the FBI is a mess.
Could that chaos at the top of the agency hurt its ability to perform its mission — like finding the Brown University shooter, who is still on the loose?
JMsays
Professor Gerdes Explains: Kremlin CONFESSES! Russia Will Seize ALL of Ukraine.
Daily news on the war in Ukraine and related international politics. Today’s video is filled with interesting bits.
The important part today is that Russia is still saying they want to negotiate a peace but only if they get all of the contested regions of Ukraine, including the parts currently held by Ukraine. This is terms that Ukraine will not accept. It must be kept in mind though that unlike a generally open democracy like the US/Europe/Ukraine the Russian public position, negotiating position and actual position may be entirely different.
There is also an interesting section pulled from the White House chief of staff revelations today. Trump has come to the conclusion that Putin doesn’t want to stop. This makes Trump’s willingness to accept peace plans from Russia that amount to surrender even worse but at the same time says that Trump is going into negotiations with a bit more realistic view then I had thought. I was under the impression that Trump thought he could talk his “friend” Putin into some sort of peace plan. In reality he is willing to intentionally sell out Ukraine if the terms are favorable to the US.
There is a sadly amusing bit at 11 minutes in explaining that Russia today has more political prisoners then the USSR ever did.
“The senator’s shift is emblematic of the fact there’s no point in Democrats making deals with the GOP on immigration.”
Although the legislation no longer generates the headlines it used to, the Dream Act still has plenty of champions on Capitol Hill. In fact, every year, the proposal’s proponents reintroduce the legislation, knowing full well it can’t pass, but reminding the political world and its intended beneficiaries that some still see it as a priority.
This year, however, the bill lost a high-profile co-sponsor. NOTUS reported:
Ahead of his reelection bid next year, Sen. Lindsey Graham dropped his support for the Dream Act, a bill to help undocumented immigrants that he co-sponsored each time it was introduced for nearly a decade. [!]
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin reintroduced the bill earlier this month. Instead of Graham as a Republican co-sponsor, Durbin paired with Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Graham told NOTUS he does not support the legislation because of the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the country.
[…] As a practical matter, Graham’s shift probably won’t amount to much, since the Dream Act wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
But the senator’s position is emblematic of a larger reality that might go overlooked: There really isn’t much point to Democrats’ efforts to reach bipartisan deals with Republicans over immigration policy because GOP officials invariably abandon their own agreements.
The Dream Act is a classic example. In the not-too-distant past, Democrats were content simply to extend citizenship to young immigrants who entered the United States as children and who’ve been on American soil for nearly their entire lives. When Republicans balked at an approach they condemned as “amnesty,” it kicked off the bipartisan negotiations.
The result was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — better known by its “Dream Act” acronym — which was written in part by the late Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. Instead of “amnesty,” the idea was to create a path to citizenship for these young immigrants: graduate from high school, get conditional permanent residency status, pay some fees, and at that point, they’d become eligible for citizenship.
It was a bipartisan compromise championed by the likes of Graham and the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona — until GOP politics moved sharply to the right […]
But this isn’t the only example. When Barack Obama reached out to Republicans on a possible immigration deal, they replied that they’d work with the Democratic White House if he boosted border security.
Obama did exactly that — at which point Republicans rejected a bipartisan agreement despite that. [!]
Indeed, even after the “Gang of Eight” agreement took shape, not only did GOP officials oppose the bipartisan compromise, but Republican then-Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida ended up denouncing the legislation that he helped write.
Conventional wisdom suggests legislative breakthroughs on major issues are only possible when both parties accept concessions and make a deal. But what’s the point of working on agreements with Republicans on immigration when they so often abandon the very deals they used to like?
After meetings with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, son-in-law Jared Kushner and European leaders in Berlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters Monday that Kyiv had now been offered an equivalent of NATO’s Article 5 deterrence mechanism, under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on them all. This guarantee would be legally binding, he said, voted on and approved by the U.S. Congress.
The Trump administration is expanding its travel ban to include five more countries. … On Tuesday, the Republican administration announced it was expanding the list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the U.S. to Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria. The administration also fully restricted travel on people with Palestinian-Authority-issued travel documents.
The Arctic last season was the hottest it has been in the past 125 years. The extent of sea ice during its usual maximum in March was the lowest in 47 years of satellite recordkeeping. The North American tundra was more green with plant life than ever recorded.
Two prominent conservatives quit the board of the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday as the storied right-wing think tank fights over how to handle antisemitism on the right.
Abby Spencer Moffat, the CEO of the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation who joined Heritage’s board in 1992, and Shane McCullar, a former executive at McDonald’s and Rubbermaid who joined the board last year, said the institution was straying from its founding principals and losing its credibility and moral authority.
“When an institution hesitates to confront harmful ideas and allows lapses in judgment to stand, it forfeits the moral authority on which its influence depends,” Moffat said in a statement. “I cannot remain on a board unwilling or unable to meet this moment with the clarity and courage it requires.”
She was referring to Heritage President Kevin Roberts’s defense of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who routinely espouses antisemitic views. Roberts has explained he was trying to appeal to Fuentes’s followers who might be open to adopting Heritage’s world view. After several apologies last month, he said the foundation would cut ties with Carlson, though the podcaster would remain a personal friend.
“No institution that hesitates to condemn antisemitism and hatred — or that gives a platform to those who spread them — can credibly claim to uphold the vision that once made the Heritage Foundation the world’s most respected conservative think tank,” McCullar said in a statement. “And, I cannot, in good conscience, remain on a board that is unwilling to confront the lapses in judgment that have harmed its credibility, its culture, and the conservative movement it once helped shape.”
Their departures follow Princeton professor Robert George, who resigned from the board in November. A Heritage spokesman said it was not clear who would replace them on the board, which is left with 10 members in addition to Roberts. […]
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he was ordering a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving from Venezuela, ratcheting up pressure against leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime and suggesting an economic motive to the US’ military campaign in the region.
Punctuating the words “total and complete blockade” in capital letters in a Truth Social post, Trump pointed to the large collection of US military assets in the region, suggested more could be coming and took aim at Maduro’s regime by name. He also suggested Venezuela give up land, oil and assets to the United States, making clear that one aim of his military campaign is not just about countering the drug trade.
Blockade is a major act but not quite an act of war if it’s carefully limited to sanctioned tankers. He is also giving away that his interest is in getting oil more then the drug trade. If the drug trade was his actual interest he would avoid talking about seizing land in Venezuela.
I think the timing of the announcement is also interesting. This blockade was obviously in preparation for some time but the announcement seems rushed. Likely trying to drown out other news today.
Rebelling against their leaders, four House Republicans on Wednesday signed onto a “discharge petition,” giving Democrats the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on a three-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire for millions of Americans on Dec. 31.
he revolt among the centrist lawmakers comes on the same day House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is calling a vote on a GOP bill to implement a series of policies popular on the right, called the “Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act.” It would codify Association Health Plans, authorize cost-sharing reduction payments and seek transparency for pharmacy benefit managers.
Even with the discharge petition there is little chance of it passing this year. There is too much vacation time, letting Johnson run out the clock if he wants. Even if it does pass in the House it still has to get past the Senate and Trump. It’s more a rebuke of Johnson and the Republican plan.
‘Gross new low’: Hayes reacts to Trump’s Rob Reiner post. “Donald Trump chose to address the tragic murder of Reiner and his wife, Michele with disgusting mockery in a Truth Social post that has managed to reach a gross new low even for him,” says Chris Hayes. Claire McCaskill and Tim Miller join to discuss.
“In late July, the White House said the president’s vanity project would cost $200 million. Now, it’s $400 million.”
In late July, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt enthusiastically delivered the announcement “that the construction of the new White House ballroom will begin,” she told reporters, and that Donald Trump and other donors “have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million structure.”
By October, the price tag had grown to $250 million. Soon after, it was $300 million. As of Tuesday night, it’s $400 million. [video]
In other words, the cost has doubled over the course of five months. Trump acknowledged the new figure at a White House event where he boasted, “I build under budget,” seemingly indifferent to the irony.
The revised total comes on the heels of Trump bringing in a new architect as his ambitions grew. (The New York Times reported a few weeks ago, “What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, [the president] wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350.” This week, Trump said he wants the ballroom to be large enough to host an inauguration.) [bonkers]
It also comes after Trump said he and his team had raised $350 million for the wildly unnecessary vanity project and suggesting he’ll have to return to donors for at least $50 million in additional cash.
This is of particular interest, not only because the White House has been reluctant to reveal the identities of some of the donors, but also because congressional Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have opened an inquiry into whether any corporations have reached a quid pro quo arrangement with the administration with their financial support for the project.
As for the state of the endeavor, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a federal lawsuit in the hopes of blocking construction. The White House has pushed back, arguing, among other things, that delays might adversely affect national security.
For now, a federal judge is allowing the project to move forward. Watch this space.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s credibility couldn’t get much worse, but Donald Trump’s chief spokesperson continues to do lasting harm to her trustworthiness on a frequent basis. Take Tuesday, for example.
Over the course of half a day, Leavitt said the president came up with the “drill, baby, drill” slogan (he didn’t), claimed “100%” of the jobs gained during Joe Biden’s presidency “were for foreign-born workers” (they weren’t), and boasted that “many states” are now seeing gas prices below $2 per gallon (the actual number is zero).
But the whopper that stood out for me came earlier in the day, when she issued a written statement about the latest monthly jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The strong jobs report shows how President Trump is fixing the damage caused by Joe Biden and creating a strong, America First economy in record time,” Leavitt said.
There may be some confusion about what “strong” means.
The latest jobs report, released Tuesday morning, was quite awful. The U.S. unemployment rate has reached its highest level in more than four years, and job growth has slowed to a level that could charitably be described as anemic.
In fact, to help contextualize matters, I put together a new chart showing month-to-month changes to the job market since November 2020, when Trump lost his reelection bid to Biden. The red columns show the months in which Trump was in the White House, while the blue columns reflect Biden’s term. [chart]
Those tiny columns on the right side of the image? That’s this year. That’s also what the president expects Americans to see as the greatest economy in the history of the United States.
[…] According to the latest data, the economy actually lost jobs in June, August and October. When was the last time the U.S. economy had a net job loss three times in six months? Late 2009 into early 2010, when the job market was still trying to recover from the Great Recession.
[…] The grand total of jobs created over the first 11 months of 2025 is 610,000 jobs, which might sound like a lot, but at this point a year ago, over the first 11 months of 2024, the total was almost 1.7 million jobs.
In fact, we remain very much on track to see the worst year for job creation since the Great Recession (excluding the massive losses associated with the pandemic in 2020).
If the president’s team looked at this data and saw a “strong” jobs report, that might help explain why Trump is failing so spectacularly: The White House doesn’t even know what success looks like.
The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, according to a senior White House official, taking aim at one of the world’s leading climate research labs.
Trump officials have [labeled] the federally funded research institution, based in Boulder, Colorado, as a hub for “federal climate alarmism” […]
The administration plans to identify and eliminate what it calls “green new scam research activities” during an upcoming review of the center, according to the White House, while “vital functions” such as weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved to another entity or location. […]
“The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado,” Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement to USA TODAY. “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country. A comprehensive review is underway and any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.” [JFC]
Efforts to dissolve the National Center for Atmospheric Research will begin immediately, the official said, with the plan being to fully close the center’s Mesa Laboratory in Boulder.
It comes after President Donald Trump has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, including eliminating the agency’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and ending funding for its climate, weather and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s staff is made up of about 830 employees who are part of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities focused on research and training in Earth system sciences. […]
The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency, contracts the university consortium to manage the center. The NSF provided $123 million to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the 2025 fiscal year, according to Science magazine, accounting for about half the center’s budget.
In addition to the Mesa Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a federally owned supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming. […]
Trump regularly refers to climate change as a “hoax” or a “con job” ‒ even though the vast majority of scientists say climate change is real and have raised alarm over rising temperatures.
[…] Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said his state has yet to receive information about Trump’s plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“If true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked,” Polis said in a statement. “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
GPS dropsondes, the expendable tools dropped from aircraft into the eye of a hurricane to gather critical data, were developed at the center, said James Franklin, a retired chief of the branch of hurricane specialists at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center.
The dropsonde “revolutionized” the understanding of tropical cyclone structure and improved forecasts, Franklin said.
Many of the big advances in weather prediction originated at the atmospheric research center, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California. […]
Roger Pielk [said] that it’s “a crown jewel of the U.S. scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved, not shuttered.”
“If the U.S. is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change,” he said.
According to a report released Tuesday, home heating costs are projected to significantly increase over the winter. These increased costs for families come as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have significantly cut the aid that families receive to cover their energy bills.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a coalition of state directors for low income heating assistance programs, said in its release that heating costs are projected to rise 9.2%. The increase is being driven by colder-than-expected weather and more expensive electricity and natural gas prices.
[…] Of particular concern, NEADA noted that electricity prices are at their highest level in ten years, and that the average monthly electric bill is up 10%—outpacing wage growth and overall inflation.
Mark Wolfe, executive director of the group, said in a statement, “These increases may not sound dramatic to higher-income households, but for families already struggling, they are devastating.” [True]
The surging costs come just a few months after the federal government’s program to assist families with energy costs, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program has faced devastating cuts from Republicans.
In April, the Trump administration fired the entire staff of LIHEAP […]
The administration’s proposed 2026 budget, also released in April, called for completely eliminating funding for LIHEAP. The Trump budget document said the assistance program was “unnecessary” and that struggling families needing help with payments could instead rely on “energy dominance, lower prices, and an America First economic platform.” [bullshit]
Congressional Republicans piled on to the problem by cutting funding to LIHEAP by nearly $2 billion from $6.1 billion under the Biden administration to $4 billion in allocations now.
At the same time the Trump administration has been pushing for the expansion of artificial intelligence without state regulation. […] data centers vital to building out AI infrastructure are massive consumers of electricity and are contributing to increased energy costs.
In a statement to The New York Times, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers made it clear the administration doesn’t care about the rising costs. “High energy prices are a choice—blue states like California and Maine are stubbornly choosing green energy scam policies that are making electricity bills unaffordable,” she told them. [bullshit]
[…] energy costs are on their way up and the GOP has set themselves up for even more blame as conditions worsen.
McGovern: The truth is, [Republicans] always said they have a plan, but they’ve never had a plan. Let me just go through a list of things here.
In February of 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “We’re going to replace Obamacare with something so much better.” Nothing followed.
On Feb. 27 of 2017, the president said, “We have a really terrific, I believe, health care plan coming out.” Never did.
May 10, 2018, Donald Trump said, “But wait till you see the plans that we have coming out literally over the next four weeks. We have a great health care plan coming out.” Nothing happened.
At a press gaggle near Air Force One in May of 2019, he said, “We’re coming up with a great health care plan. We’re going to have a fantastic health care plan. It’s coming out in the next four weeks.” Nothing ever materialized.
June 16, 2019, the president said “We’re going to produce a phenomenal health care plan, and we already have the concept of a plan, and it will be so much better health care. Yeah, well, we’ll be announcing it in about two months, maybe less.” Nothing happened.
Fox News interview, the president said “We’re signing a health care plan within 2 weeks, a full and complete health care plan.” Nothing happened.
July 2020, the president said, “Well, we’re going to be doing a health care plan. We’re going to be doing a very inclusive health care plan. I’ll be signing it sometime very soon. It might be Sunday, but very, very soon.” Nothing happened.
Aug. 3, 2020, the president said ‘We’re going to be introducing a tremendous health care plan sometime prior, hopefully prior to the end of the month. It’s just about completed” Nothing.
Sept. 15, 2020, the president says, “You’re going to have new health care. We have a whole bunch of alternatives to Obamacare that are 50% less expensive and are actually better.” Nothing—never happened.
Sept. 10, 2024, ABC News presidential debate, he says, “I have concepts of a plan. You’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future.” Nothing happened.
Dec. 8, 2024, he said, “We have concepts of a plan that will be much better. You’ll see it very soon.” Produced nothing.
In May of 2025 at a White House event, he said, “So we’re going to be maybe coming up with something. I think this gives the Republicans a chance to actually do a health care that’s much better than Obamacare.” Nothing.
People are sick and tired of the empty rhetoric. They’re sick and tired of you saying you have a plan, and you never produce one. All you want to do is undermine health care for hardworking average Americans.
It is international law 101 that a military blockade is not just a violation of the UN Charter, but a crime of aggression. Unless that blockade is in response to an ‘armed attack.’ None of President’s Trump’s list of complaints come close to an armed attack.
“Any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall … qualify as an act of aggression: … The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the armed forces of another State”
—Definition of Aggression, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX).
Milan Markovic (Canadian law prof): “For those keeping track, the administration is engaging in arbitrary detentions and illegal renditions at home, extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean, and now two crimes of aggression (Iran, Venezuela).”
The term “blockade” was problematic—according to international law, a blockade is an act of war, but the Kennedy administration did not think that the Soviets would be provoked to attack by a mere blockade. […] [The State Dept and DoJ] concluded that a declaration of war could be avoided if another legal justification, based on the Rio Treaty for defence of the Western Hemisphere, was obtained from a resolution by a two-thirds vote from the members of the Organization of American States (OAS).
[…]
[Kennedy’s] Chief of Naval Operations wrote a position paper that helped Kennedy to differentiate between what they termed a “quarantine” of offensive weapons and a blockade of all materials […] Kennedy obtained the approval of the OAS for military action under […] the Rio Treaty.
birgerjohanssonsays
Antony Price, ultra-glam designer for Duran Duran, Bowie and Roxy Music, dies aged 80
What can Venezuela do to address America’s threats? What concrete goal is the armed diplomacy trying to achieve? The naval assets offshore suggest what comes after “or else.” But what comes before?
Nicholas Slayton (Task&Purpose): “Exactly this. As bad faith as the threats to Iran this were they were about a real thing, the nuclear program. What Venezuela even capable of doing here?”
U.S. companies have been a major player in Venezuela since a century ago when oil production started. There was a brief period when nationalization happened in the oil industry of Venezuela between 1975 and the early ’90s in which the oil companies were not there, but then they came back—particularly Exxon, Conoco and Chevron. But then there was a renationalization by Hugo Chavez, and only Chevron remains. But it’s a very big player in Venezuela, producing about 25% of Venezuela’s exports. […] The dominant player still is the national oil company. And the national oil company has been mismanaged […] And as a result, the production has declined in the last 25 years from around 3.6 million barrels to about a million barrels today. Of course, U.S. sanctions, starting in 2020, did also affect the oil industry.
[…]
It seems to me that the policy is being driven by Secretary Marco Rubio, who has for a long time thought that Venezuela and Cuba are nefarious actors against U.S. interests. And the drug issue and the crime issue and the immigration issue sort of have been a way to align his views with others in the administration to really focus on producing a change in government […] They want to do it […] just by putting a credible threat on what they might do in Venezuela. […] to get Maduro out without having to pay any significant cost on the U.S. side.
Rando: “those assets were ExxonMobil’s and Conoco’s, not ‘ours’. But for Trump, he and the oil companies are one and the same.”
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune.
Dr. Kirk Moore had been on trial for five days, accused of falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards and throwing away the government-supplied doses.
The Utah plastic surgeon faced up to 35 years in prison if the jury found him guilty on charges that included conspiracy to defraud the United States. […] Moore’s lawyer called him early one Saturday this July with what felt to him like unbelievable news.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had ordered Utah prosecutors to drop all charges, abruptly ending his two-and-a-half year court battle.
“I just literally collapsed to the floor, and tears rolling down my face,” Moore recalled in a recent interview.
Bondi’s announcement marked a striking reversal of how the federal government handled the prosecution of COVID-19-related fraud under President Joe Biden. It has since emboldened other medical professionals who were similarly charged to consider seeking reexaminations of their cases. And it signaled the increasing clout of doctors and politicians who champion what they call “medical freedom,” which rejects modern public health interventions such as vaccine requirements in favor of individual choice.
Dismissed by the medical establishment, this movement has nevertheless built momentum […]. It has also gained new influence in Washington, where longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversees the nation’s health agencies. […] The Trump administration’s evisceration of long-standing federal vaccine guidelines and rejection of scientific evidence have alarmed the American Medical Association and other professional medical groups.
Just days before Bondi’s decision, a federal prosecutor from her department had stood before the jury in Moore’s case and accused him of enrolling in the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution program in order to “sabotage” it, according to a court transcript. She had asked jurors to convict him and to “find that no one is above the law, not even a plastic surgeon.”
Moore said […] his plan was always to give vaccine cards without providing the shots because he wanted to offer patients a choice to circumvent vaccine mandates.
Bondi explained her decision to dismiss the charges on X later that morning, writing that “Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so. He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.” [FFS]
[…] Moore was one of at least 12 health care professionals charged after giving or selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards since 2021 […]
Other than Moore, only one of these health care workers went to trial […]
Of those 11, the Chicago pharmacist appealed his conviction but the U.S. Supreme Court in November declined to hear his petition; his attorney told The Tribune and ProPublica that they are exploring a presidential pardon. One other health care worker said she, too, would like to be pardoned by Trump.
Some of these health care workers, along with those in other professions who were also convicted of vaccine card fraud, started a group called Covicted Patriot following the dismissal of Moore’s case. […]
Brian Dean Abramson, an immunization law expert in Virginia who serves on the board of directors for the National Vaccine Law Conference, said that medical workers falsifying vaccination cards is “absolutely horrifying” from a public health perspective. […] “This undermines every layer of the system that protects us from infectious disease,” Abramson said. “Vaccination policy relies on accurate records and honest medical participation.”
Moore met with The Tribune and ProPublica in his clinic in the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale. A neat row of clogs, his preferred footwear, lined one wall of his cluttered office. The 60-year-old physician wore black scrubs and a “Trump 2024” rubber bracelet stacked atop a gold chain.
Moore, a licensed physician in Utah since 2005, doesn’t deny the government’s claims: that he gave falsified vaccine cards to patients, that his staff threw away doses, and that, in some cases, he gave children saline shots instead of the COVID-19 vaccine at their parents’ request.
“All of that stuff is true,” he said.
[…] Moore referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “bioweapons” a dozen times […] He said he concluded the vaccines were unsafe after conducting his own online research that he said cast doubt on the medical technology used in their development and the amount of testing before the first doses became available under emergency use authorization in December 2020.
The COVID-19 vaccine was developed in record time during Trump’s first term, less than a year after federal authorities declared a public health emergency — a feat Trump touted at the time as a “monumental national achievement.” This was made possible by a federal effort known as Operation Warp Speed that reduced bureaucracy and invested in clinical trials and manufacturing, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office — not due to any shortcuts in testing. The technological backbone of the vaccines, known as mRNA, has been in development for decades by scientists who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine. [All true]
Moore said that the vaccines “failed in every animal test.” “All the animals died, and now all of a sudden, we’re going to use the human population as our guinea pigs,” he said. The Food and Drug Administration has previously told reporters that such claims, widely promoted among vaccine skeptics during the pandemic, are false. [!] [So much for that doofus Moore doing his own online research.]
The plastic surgeon said that he believes all vaccines are “poison” and that they have not been adequately tested — a view he says he has held for more than two decades. [!]
Vaccines approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC have been proven to protect public health by preventing disease, serious illness or death. Major health authorities like the World Health Organization have affirmed the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which researchers estimate prevented more than 14 million deaths worldwide in their first year. [!]
[…] When sending their donation, patients were told to include an emoji of an orange in the Venmo subject line, according to federal prosecutors, and they were also instructed to bring an orange with them to the waiting room of the clinic. […]
Moore confirmed this system in his interview with The Tribune and ProPublica, saying the piece of fruit was a quiet signal to his busy staff that the patient was there for a falsified vaccine card.
He said during this time he maintained his plastic surgery practice while distributing fake vaccine cards and treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin and other methods. Ivermectin has not been authorized by the FDA or recommended by the CDC to treat COVID-19.
An undercover state licensor called Moore’s office in March 2022 and asked to make a vaccine appointment during the criminal investigation after someone complained to the state health department, according to the prosecutors. At his clinic, the licensor, posing as a patient, received a vaccine card attesting to her vaccination without ever being offered a shot, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors alleged in their trial brief that a portion of the donations for the advocacy group paid a part-time worker at the plastic surgery clinic $18 an hour to give out falsified vaccine cards and administer saline shots to children. […]
“Nobody in my practice was ever tricked. Nobody came to me expecting a vaccine and didn’t get it,” Moore said. “Everybody got what they wanted.”
But some children who received saline shots at their parents’ request falsely believed they were being vaccinated against COVID-19, according to court filings and Moore. This was a breach of medical ethics […]
Emboldening a Movement
On the first day of Moore’s trial in July, about 60 supporters […] gathered on the stairs outside the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. […]
The rally increased public and social media attention on Moore’s case, eventually reaching Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She sent a letter to Bondi, urging the U.S. attorney general to drop Moore’s charges. […]
That same day, Bondi ordered the charges be dropped and thanked Greene and Utah Sen. Mike Lee in posts on X for bringing the case to her attention. […]
Utah prosecutors then dismissed the charges against Moore, his business and a neighbor who prosecutors alleged had organized the donations to the health freedom advocacy group. […]
Less than a week after his charges were dropped, Moore and his fiancée flew to Washington, D.C., at Bondi’s invitation to meet with her and Greene; Moore said he asked if Lee could join them. Moore said the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank founded by former Trump administration officials, paid for his travel. […]
As he’s tried rebuilding his practice in recent months, Moore rebranded as Freedom Surgical & Aesthetics. […] Moore’s medical license is in good standing. […]
The lack of consequences for medical workers who falsify records could encourage others to undermine public health guidance, said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit, who served on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel from 1998 to 2003 and has clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy, was kicked off a vaccine advisory committee for the FDA in August.
“The first two years of the pandemic turbocharged the medical freedom movement, which is a euphemism for basically saying that I don’t need experts […],” Offit said. […]
As Moore vows to “do everything I can to get COVID shots off the market,” others who faced similar legal battles say his turn of fortune has inspired them to fight their convictions. [sheesh, bad news]
Julie DeVuono, a former nurse in Long Island who also distributed fake vaccine cards to her patients, said she and two others created the CovictedPatriot X account after others who gave out fake cards reached out to her in response to her social media post celebrating Moore’s vindication.
New York state prosecutors had charged DeVuono with forgery and money laundering for using the proceeds from the fake vaccine cards to pay her mortgage. She pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to community service and probation. Her home was also seized as part of a $1.2 million forfeiture, and she lost her nursing license.
[…] she can’t ask for a presidential pardon because her charges were filed in state court. […]
Breault [Kathleen Breault, a recently retired midwife and nurse in New York] said she was buoyed by news over the summer that similar charges against Moore were dropped at the behest of the Trump administration. The outcome of Moore’s case has motivated her to begin the process of asking for a presidential pardon.
[…] Breault said she’d like to have her conviction erased so she’s not limited by her felon status. She’d like to own a gun again, but those with felony convictions are prohibited from possessing firearms in New York. She’d also like more freedom, including not having to report to her probation officer when she travels or how much is in her bank account.
[…]
[Chris Murphy (D-CT)] said Hegseth and Rubio admitted that no fentanyl is coming out of Venezuela—despite President Donald Trump’s misleading attempts to tie the country to the drug so he can justify the attacks. Cocaine is flowing out of the South American country, Murphy said, yet nearly all of it is going to Europe.
[…]
There have been about 25 administration-ordered launches against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing at least 95 [as of Dec 15th].
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Tuesday’s classified briefing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirms the Trump administration has no legal or national security justification for the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Murphy said in a video on the social platform X that the two Cabinet officials admitted to lawmakers that the accused drug-trafficking vessels are believed to be smuggling cocaine, not fentanyl. He also said Rubio and Hegseth said intelligence suggested the boats were going to Europe, not the U.S., contradicting the administration’s public justification for the strikes.
Murphy said Tuesday that the two officials said President Trump has the authority to green-light such strikes due to the State Department’s designation of Cartel de los Soles, an alleged Venezuelan drug trafficking network, as a terrorist organization.
But the Connecticut senator noted such a move only gives the president the capability to sanction members of the group, not to authorize strikes against them.
“Only Congress, only the American public, can authorize war. And there is just no question that these are acts of war,” Murphy added. […]
Democrat Gary Clemons is projected to win a special election to a fill a Kentucky state Senate seat, according to Decision Desk HQ.
Clemons, president of United Steelworkers Local 1693 and an Army veteran, beat back challenges from Republican Calvin Leach, an Army veteran and former state Senate candidate, and Libertarian candidate Wendy Higdon, who founded the Louisville Tea Party in 2009.
Democrats were expected to hold on to the seat, which is located in southwest Louisville and leans blue. Their victory Tuesday comes after a recent spate of special election wins that saw them flip a number of seats in conservative areas of the country. […]
“Oklahoma Supreme Court Won’t Let Ryan Walters Jesusify Social Studies Class After All”
“And there won’t be Bibles in every classroom, either.”
Back in September, Ryan Walters, […] Christian Nationalist, announced that he would be retiring from his post as the Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction in order to spend about the same amount of time shoving religion down the throats of children, but now as the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance instead. This occurred, by sheer coincidence, the day after it was revealed that he had spent over 100,000 state tax dollars meant for education in order to pay PR companies to promote his personal brand and secure more than 400 media appearances for him during his time in office.
But prior to that, this past February, he threw in a bunch of last minute changes into the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies without leaving any time for public comment. […]
As it turned out, many parents and teachers were not very happy about this at all, and a whole group of them, led by the Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall, interestingly enough, filed suit against the Oklahoma State Board of Education (OSBE) for violating the state’s Open Meeting Act by adding those things in a mere 17 hours before they voted to implement the standards. The law requires at least 24 hours notice before such changes can be implemented, so as to give the public time to see them and weigh in.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma found 5-4 in favor of the plaintiffs in Randal v. Lindel Fields (Fields is the new Superintendent of Public Instruction who replaced Walters) and ordered that the state’s standards revert to the previously implemented 2019 standards. […]
“These new social studies standards violated students’ and families’ religious freedom by promoting one version of Christianity and advancing Christian Nationalist disinformation. Not on our watch. Public schools are not Sunday schools.”
Sunday schools do exist and people are free to send their children to them. […]
This is, you should know, not the only recent victory for those who don’t think Oklahoma school children should have Christianity forced upon them. Lindel Fields’ office announced back in October that they would not be continuing with Walters’ plan to put a Bible in every classroom in the state […]
From January through November, public records show the department has lost more than 2,900 attorneys—triple the number of those who left in each of the previous four years.
Brad Heath (Reuters): “All told, almost 13,000 people left jobs at the Justice Department between January and October. That’s about 50% more than left the department in all of 2024.”
One third are OK with bombing a made-up country with an Arab-sounding name.
But they are OK with the president doing business with Saudi Arabia, the country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came from.
“Trump Finally Allows Jobs Report After Shutdown. Nobody Gets Dolls Or Pencils For Christmas!”
“Tiny 64,000-jobs gain in November, after loss of 105,000 jobs in October.”
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] finally released its jobs report for November yesterday, after a delay in data gathering allegedly caused by the government shutdown. If you want to also blame Donald Trump’s evisceration of the federal workforce and his distrust of the BLS, we certainly won’t blame you. After holding at 50-year lows for most of the second half of Joe Biden’s term, the unemployment rate is up to 4.6 percent, the highest it’s been since September 2021, when we were finally pulling out of the pandemic recession. But really, the White House says, everything is fine, the economy just has to shake off the doldrums of the Biden economy […]
Another key metric, the number of job-seekers who are working part-time now but would prefer to have full-time work, plus those who want work but are discouraged from looking, is up to 8.7 percent, a full percentage point higher than it was last year at this time. See how Donald Trump is making everything fine?
The report showed the economy added 64,000 jobs in November, following a loss of 105,000 jobs in October. How accurate the numbers actually are is open to question; last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned there could be “something of a systematic overcount” of as many as 60,000 jobs per month in recent BLS reports, although he attributed such errors to problems with getting solid data, not Trumpfuckery. Everything is fine, okay? FINE.
Also, those job losses in October did not include federal workers idled or working without pay because of the government shutdown [!] They were counted as still employed, but the October numbers did reflect the actual departures of federal employees who accepted buyouts/deferred shitcanning earlier in the year, and who actually fell off payrolls at the end of September. […]
The truncated October count is the third time in six months that US payrolls declined, and there were also downward revisions to the reports for August (down by 22,000 jobs for a total loss of 26,000) and September (down 11,000 jobs, trimming the month’s gains to 108,000). Everything is fine!
Economists, having long grown accustomed to finding dark clouds in Joe Biden’s strong job growth reports, were at least pleased to explain these bad numbers are unmistakably bad:
“The U.S. economy is in a jobs recession,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The nation has added a mere 100,000 in the past six months. The bulk of those jobs were in healthcare, an industry that is almost always hiring due to America’s aging population.”
The White House rolled out a beautiful new tube of Trump-branded lipstick for the jobs report pig, with a triumphant social media post proclaiming “THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt [insisted], “The strong jobs report shows how President Trump is fixing the damage caused by Joe Biden and creating a strong, America First economy in record time.”
Everything is going so perfectly, she lied, claiming that “Workers’ wages are rising, prices are falling, trillions of dollars in investments are pouring into our country, and the American economy is primed to boom in 2026.” […]
OK, the bit about wages rising wasn’t a complete lie: Wages were up a whopping tenth of a percent, for an annual gain of 3.5 percent from a year ago, the smallest annual gain since May of 2021, when, once again, we were still struggling our way out of the pandemic.
All in all, it was a perfect jobs report, just in time to have a war with Venezuela, and for healthcare premiums to soar through the roof […]
Well lookie here, The New York Times confirmed what’s been rumored for a while: Co-Deputy FBI Director Daniel John Bongino has left the building, for real this time! […]
Bongino has said he plans to leave his job as soon as this week or as late as mid-January, according to three people with knowledge of his plans.
One sign it might be sooner rather than later: Mr. Bongino has been sending office knickknacks and other possessions back to Florida, where he intends to resume his lucrative career as a pro-Trump media broadcaster in time for the midterm elections, they said.
But Mr. Bongino’s departure plans, like his brief tenure at the bureau, have been steeped in vacillation and melodrama.
[…] Rumors of Bongino’s departure started swirling as early as July, after his bizarre appearance with FBI Director Kash Patel on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures, both of them looking like hostages reading from cue cards that there were no Epstein files, no client list and that the guy totally killed himself, case closed, while Bongino shook his head and blinked like he was trying to send a message in Morse code. [video]
And Bondi put out that jailhouse video that she swore was COMPLETE and UNEDITED but with three missing minutes that convinced even the more credulous MAGA faithful that some kind of cover-up was going on. And internally Bongino got blamed, because it was his idea, and he’d vouched that he gave the tapes a “thorough review.”
But not as thorough as Wired, which figured out it was modified in about 10 minutes. […]
And following that humiliation, somebody leaked to NewsNation that if it was up to Bingo and Kash, they would have released all the files months ago. And Pam Bondi did not like that. [video of cat fight]
[…] a few days later, Bongino resurfaced on X with an ominous and cryptic message saying that he had seen things that shocked him to his core and he will never be the same after learning.
[…] Pro-Trump podcasting does not seem like a growth industry lately.
[…]. By May Bongino seemed to be in full meltdown, wringing his hands that he had given up everything to work for Trump.
And then in August he was given an unprecedented co-deputy, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. And then we did not hear from Bongongo for a while.
Turns out, though, not only did Dan Bongino know that there are Epstein files, as we were later to discover, Bongos himself had been busy since at least February with what they called the “Epstein Transparency Project,” LOL. He was overseeing 934 FBI employees working like a […] sweatshop, toiling more than 14,000 overtime hours, including nights and weekends, to comb through 100,000 documents in those very files, redacting Trump’s name, and others. […]
And he has been busy behind the scenes with other things, like tagging along with Kash Patel to Miami to make peace in Ukraine. What does domestic law enforcement have to do with Ukraine? Something extremely legitimate and not corrupt in any way, for sure!
“Fifteen years after the Dodd-Frank Act became law, the White House wants to roll back the clock and reembrace the rules that existed before the 2008 crash.”
Around this time 17 years ago, the Great Recession was wreaking havoc on the nation and the world. Bear Stearns had collapsed; the stock market had lost roughly half of its value; and the economy shed 750,000 jobs in November 2008 alone.
It wasn’t easy, but after Barack Obama and congressional Democrats took a variety of steps, including approving the Recovery Act and rescuing the American automotive industry, the crisis ended and the nation got back on its feet.
And at that point, policymakers got to work on trying to prevent the next crash.
In 2010, Democrats approved the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, better known as the Dodd-Frank Act, that was designed to impose a series of safeguards on the financial industry to prevent systemic risks.
Fifteen years later, the White House wants to roll back the clock and reembrace the rules that existed before the 2008 crash.
On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump said he wanted to relieve Wall Street of “burdensome regulations.” A year later, the president’s treasury secretary is thinking along the same lines. [video]
Secretary Scott Bessent complained to Fox Business this week that the safeguards created after the Great Recession are holding back the finance industry. “We have to take the financial system out of this straitjacket,” he said.
So, a few things.
First, 15 years after Dodd-Frank became law, Wall Street appears to be doing just fine, making it tough to justify a sweeping deregulation effort.
Second, if you’re thinking this was part of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint, you’re right. [!]
And third, for all the talk about Trump being a “populist,” his administration is once again looking out for the powerful elite, even if that means creating a set of financial rules that resembles the regulatory system that led to the Great Recession in the first place. [!!]
The Senate on Wednesday delivered a clear rebuke of President Donald Trump’s authority, signing off on legislation that could force the Pentagon to turn over footage of strikes against suspected drug smugglers and rein in the administration’s ability to limit troops abroad.
The annual defense policy bill cleared the chamber in a wide bipartisan vote after it passed the House last week. Trump is expected to sign the measure, despite the White House’s misgivings with some provisions.
The 77-20 vote saw substantial support from Democrats and Republicans to push through the $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act, the product of months of negotiations between leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees. Just two Republicans — Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky — broke ranks on the bill while 18 members of the Democratic caucus opposed it.
Lawmakers are using the sprawling policy bill to demand the Pentagon hand over unedited videos of strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats near Latin America. The bill restricts a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until Congress receives the footage.
[…] Most lawmakers still haven’t seen the full footage of the strike, although members of the Senate and House Armed Services panels viewed it behind closed doors on Wednesday.
[…] Some members of Congress also worry the boat strikes could escalate into a full-on conflict with Venezuela. Trump ratcheted up the pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday by ordering a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going to and from the country. […]
[The defense bill] restricts the Pentagon from reducing the total number of U.S. troops in Europe below 76,000 for more than 45 days until the Pentagon and the head of U.S. European Command certify to lawmakers that the drawdown is in U.S. interests and that NATO allies were consulted. The leaders also would need to provide assessments of that decision’s impact.
Lawmakers similarly restricted the Defense Department from shrinking the U.S. military footprint in South Korea below 28,500 personnel, a downsizing the administration has reportedly weighed on the Korean Peninsula.
The bill also limits the U.S. from turning over the military role of NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, which has been held by the European Command chief for decades.
[…] Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who spearheaded the bill in the upper chamber, has for months clashed with the Trump administration over support for NATO and Ukraine. That includes a recent Pentagon decision to remove a rotational Army brigade from Romania, which Wicker and other defense hawks argued would undermine the transatlantic alliance and embolden Russia.
The bill also authorizes $400 million for Pentagon efforts to arm and equip Ukraine’s military […]
Lawmakers also pushed back on Trump’s and Hegseth’s purge of the military’s senior ranks, including the ousting of Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown and other top leaders that began in February. The bill requires the Pentagon to notify Congress and provide a rationale when members of the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders and judge advocates general are removed.
Republicans and the White House touted their own conservative wins, including provisions that codify a variety of Trump’s executive orders and repeal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the Pentagon. The package also includes a bipartisan suite of acquisition reforms aimed at more quickly producing and fielding weapons and new technology.
The measure authorizes $901 billion for national security programs, including the Pentagon and nuclear weapons development overseen by the Energy Department. The price tag is $8 billion above the budget level proposed by Trump. But the bill only authorizes Defense Department programs, and lawmakers must still enact a full-year defense appropriations bill to fully fund those efforts.
[…] The measure also includes a long-sought win for critics of extensive presidential war powers. The defense agreement would repeal the 2002 and 1991 Iraq and Gulf War resolutions.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/hayes-who-is-calling-the-shots-for-a-napping-president-trump-2472605763703
Video is 8:34 minutes
The video also covers Trump’s egregiously racist comments about Somalia.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/trump-doj-set-to-seek-to-re-indict-letitia-james-on-thursday-2472604227695
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285908
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors.”
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285903
Trump Intervenes Again in Honduras Vote, Alleging Fraud Without Evidence
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285900
Trump’s name was added to the exterior of the US Institute of Peace building
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285891
Putin refuses compromise in Moscow talks
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285882
The European Commission is adamant it has done what’s needed to address Belgium’s concerns about a financial package worth up to €210 billion to fund Ukraine’s defense against Moscow.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/he-wanted-me-killed-kelly-rips-trump-hegseth-threats-as-boat-strike-scandal-widens-2472360515582
Satire.
Hegseth responds to inspector general’s findings, flubs the meaning of ‘exonerated’
“Trump has a habit of using the word “exonerated” in ways that suggest he doesn’t know what it means. He is not alone.”
Related video at the link.
Suspect arrested in Jan. 6 pipe bomb case
“The arrest is the first known break in a five-year manhunt that has fueled intense speculation and conspiracy theories.”
Washington Post:
Wall Street Journal: “For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year”
“Almost a quarter of a million more children are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024”
Commentary from Talking Points Memo:
Link
Snippet from Wonkette news coverage:
Village People lead ‘world-class line-up’ for Trump-tinged World Cup 2026 draw
“Trump expected to receive Fifa’s new peace award”
Green Berets defend their Afghan counterparts after D.C. shooting
“The shooting of two National Guard members has prompted the Trump administration to crack down on Afghans who entered the U.S. after assisting American forces during the war.”
Rebecca Watson hits the nail on the head again:
https://skepchick.org/2025/12/blocking-out-the-sun-wont-save-us/
Good news, as reported by 11 alive:
More campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug—When they came, did you speak up? Not me.
Reuters: Putin questions US punishing India for buying Russian oil
Putin is playing to the Indian crowd by talking about oil. India, like China, has little native oil so they have to buy it someplace.
India wants to buy raw resources from the resource rich Russia. They have basic goods and electronics that would sell well in Russia. They are not as willing as China to anger the entire west and/or lie about their trade. They don’t care much about what is happening in Ukraine though, their concern is the complex relations between India/Russia/China.
Russia’s major goal is convincing India to buy more oil and other resources just to get money. Putin would love to buy what they can from India. Mostly electronics because India isn’t willing to sell Russia arms and ammunition directly. As a secondary point, getting Putin out of Russia and back on the international stage works in Russia’s favor also.
It’s a complex situation but they are pretty sure to come to some sort of deals. Putin wouldn’t have gone to India if they didn’t have something lined up.
Meidas Touch:
“Trump Crashes Out at Disastrous Presser on FAKE Peace Deal!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ytXBQy0Aqrk
Lynna, OM @ 2
Thank you.
BTW I have forgotten which state has a literal flat-Earther as major Republican politician among all the political turbulence. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Republicans in that state do in the 2026 elections.
WIRED link
“Cloudflare Has Blocked 416 Billion AI Bot Requests Since July 1”
“Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince claims the internet infrastructure company’s efforts to block AI crawlers are already seeing big results.”
WIRED link
“FBI Says DC Pipe Bomb Suspect Brian Cole Kept Buying Bomb Parts After January 6”
“The 30-year-old Virginia resident evaded capture for years after authorities discovered pipe bombs planted near buildings in Washington, DC, the day before the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.”
Anton Petrov:
“Wow! Asteroid Bennu Discoveries Spark New Questions About Life’s Origins”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSwGcF5R3KM
It is nice to view science news that require us to look up from this squalid political and economic mess to issues like the origin of life.
WIRED link
“The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Is Detaining People for ICE”
“Louisiana’s hunting and wildlife authority is one of more than 1,000 state and local agencies that have partnered with US immigration authorities this year alone.”
CNN: Trump hires new architect for White House ballroom amid clashes over project
Trump wants to make the ballroom even bigger, and McCrery apparently objected. The new size isn’t clear yet but I’m guessing it will be bigger then the rest of the White House at this point.
NBC News:
New York Times:
Washington Post link
“Video shows second strike hit before survivors could flip boat, lawmakers say”
“The footage was shown on Capitol Hill, where Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who oversaw a deadly attack on alleged drug smugglers, faced a day of difficult questions about the operation.”
Supreme Court allows Texas to use new congressional district map drawn to favor Republicans
“Texas officials drew the new congressional map to help Republicans gain up to five additional seats in the House in next year’s midterm elections.”
Re: birgerjohansson @18:
Minnesota Republicans elect a flat-earther to a party leadership post (2025)
A a district’s GOP chair. Minnesota has had a solid Dem majority, and the Rs there are so bonkers, it should stay that way.
Georgia GOP Chair: I’m Not a Flat-Earther … But Globes Are a Conspiracy (2023)
Kandiss Taylor (known for “Jesus, Guns, Babies”) failed a governor run with 3.4% of the primary in 2022, and is gonna try for congress in 2026.
Aspiring lieutenant governor penned 479 page flat Earth screed (2025)
Dean Olde got 1.8% of the Lt. Gov primary in 2022. He’ll try again in 2026.
Grand jury declines to indict N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James, less than two weeks after the first case was dismissed
“Federal officials failed to secure the new indictment against James, whom Trump has targeted, after a judge said the previous one was secured by an unlawfully appointed prosecutor.”
Re JM @23:
Ooh, Witkoff could get Russian blueprints for the Chernobyl sarcophagus.
Under PZ’s post about the US Institute of Peace, I compiled an index of Infinite Thread links chronicling the takeover.
Adding to Lynna @26.
Rando 1: “So they didn’t rule on the merits, just lifted the stay? So the suit continues, but too late for 2026?”
Joshua Friedman (Atlantic): “Right!”
Rando 2:
Lawrence Hurley (NBC):
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
NPR – Congo and Rwanda to sign symbolic peace deal in Washington as fighting rages
Gregg Gonsalves (Epidemiologist):
/Articles at the link.
Nature – Experimental vaccine prevents deadly allergic reactions in mice
Four unidentified military-style drones breached no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy’s arrival in Dublin
Commentary
The origin of the word “woman”.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1A1RFa2FoV/
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/scientists-discover-one-of-our-universes-largest-spinning-structures-a-50-million-light-year-long-cosmic-thread
Archaic humans were strategic and picky hunters, new study suggests.
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-archaic-humans-strategic-picky-hunters.html
Felis Catus only arrived in China 600 AD, during the Tang dynasty. Before that, the Chinese had a commensal relationship with the small leopard cats.
“Human-cat friendship started much later than you think”
. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-human-cat-friendship.html
Kneel before your new masters, human worms!
CERN’s ATLAS detects evidence for decay of Higgs boson into muon–antimuon pair
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-cern-atlas-evidence-decay-higgs.html
https://www.ms.now/all
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/500-tons-of-cocaine-trump-pardons-trafficker-who-helped-flood-u-s-with-drugs-2472950339615
Video is 8:29 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/maga-backlash-builds-as-gop-women-turn-on-mike-johnson-2472941635872
Video is 2:16 minutes
Sky Captain @35, quoting a commentator:
Yes, agreed. I’ve been thinking about the risks Zelensky takes. He is both dedicated and brave.
Sky Captain @33, yep. Sometimes it seems like a slow slide downhill toward catastrophe, but really this decline that will lead to institutional collapse has been quite rapid.
Sky Captain @32, so it is all just theater. Trump gets to pose as a peace maker while Congo and Rwanda continue to fight. Eventually, Trump will blame someone else for his failures in this instance. As an aside, I find it hard to characterize how much I despise Trump spouting flapdoodle and bunkum like ““a glorious triumph.”
Sky Captain @31, this is a good summary of Justice Kagan’s dissent:
Followup to comments 5 and 20.
Suspected pipe bomber told FBI he backed Trump, believed 2020 election conspiracies
“There’s no shortage of questions about Brian Cole Jr. and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore.”
Related video at the link.
Bongino was saying, in effect: “I am an asshole, a mind boggling doofus, and you can’t trust me.”
Link. The link leads to a presentation of various, current news reports.
Reuters Exclusive: Trump administration orders enhanced vetting for applicants of H-1B visa
Trump wants to be free to spread disinformation. And he wants to admit to the USA only H-1B visa applicants who also are on his disinformation bandwagon.
Followup to comment 35.
God Awful Movies!
GAM 534 And God Made Man
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pSga-ahzkb0
Scathing Atheist 665 Serious Vulgarities Only Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWouazqd4FU
Cartoon: Under the rug
Rando:
Commentary
Patrick Shea (Former attorney): “Pardons don’t apply to international law. In fact, it is a violation of international law for state actors to use pardons or amnesty in an attempt to shield war criminals from justice. When the rule of law is restored, these thugs, all of them, need to be on the first flight to the Hague.”
Wikipedia – US and the International Criminal Court
Trump releases racist blueprint for the world
Dangerous. More or less Nazi-like obsession with racial purity, plus lots of Trump’s authoritarianism, plus Stephen Miller’s basic evil. Very bad indeed.
Watch ‘wartime’ House speaker drop some baffling bullsh-t
https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-isnt-some-self-aggrandizing
“Donald Trump Isn’t Some Self-Aggrandizing Tinpot Dictator! He Appoints People For That.”
“Say hello to the Donald J. Trump Institute Of Getting His Piece.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jd-vance-welcomes-all-jews-to-participate
“JD Vance Welcomes All Jews To Participate In Christmas”
Trump’s closure of Voice of America is coming back to bite him
“As the president threatens Venezuela, Russia and China are filling the information vacuum.”
Brad Moss (Natsec attorney): “The FBI now consists of ‘Uber for drunks’.”
MS NOW – Kash Patel ordered FBI detail to give girlfriend’s pal a lift home
Rando: “The National Security strategy could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just published the 14 words instead because that’s what it amounts to.”
Cheryl Rofer (Retired nuclear scientist):
Anne Applebaum (Atlantic):
Link
The Senator from North Carolina should not have to resort such tactics in order to get approved disaster recovery funds sent to his state.
Washington Post link
“The CDC’s change to hepatitis B vaccination is even worse than it seems”
“The new recommendations portend even more harmful shifts ahead.”
NBC News:
ms.now:
Politico:
CNBC:
PBS:
MS.NOW:
Wall Street Journal:
The World Cup sucks up to Trump, and it sucks
Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):
Sky Captain @69, the banality of evil. And the surprising tendency of people to be nice to each other when face to face … no matter what the circumstances.
Lie: “We are your friends.”
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/letitia-james-undefeated-champ-of
Re: Lynna @70:
I’m sure the alternative was not far from their minds.
Here is a fun little distraction from the ongoing apocalypse.
Anime: Introvert guy sewing outfits for cosplay (as seen in parody made by Grimmjack)
“My Dress-Up Darling Abridged – Episode 1 (S1) ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bMjiwW5vYwQ
Bolts – Hawaii Supreme Court expands rights of defendants, and once again rebukes SCOTUS
The article describes some of his other spicy rulings.
“Have I Got News for You S70E9 | Hannah Fry” [they have a surprisingly cool bishop]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YBozFhDKvq8
@71 Lynna, OM: Johnson is just repeating the White House line here. Trust us, everything is OK, everything will get better next year, after the election. Don’t question the great leader and vote Republican.
Jeffries is being too generous. If the Republicans were organized they would be fighting against the American people but right now they are too divided to push Trump’s agenda.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/trump-accepts-fifa-peace-prize-despite-fuming-over-media-coverage-of-his-age-2473254467786
Video is 8:35 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/cdc-panel-ends-recommendation-for-newborn-hepatitis-b-shot-2473252419771
Video is 9:00 minutes. This is a really good presentation.
Link. The link leads to a compendium of recent news reports.
Cartoon: A MAGA dilemma
Always angry and pugnacious, LazerPig deals with the exaggerated claims that tanks have become obsolete.
“BuT tAnKs ArE oUtDaTeD bEcAusE dRoNeS!1 (re-upload)”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PN0SdVDj-oc
Britain: A Different Bias
“Nigel Farage throws his deputy Tice under bus as racism scandal deepens”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QE3JrrAzAeo
Vampire Billionaire Attacks Pope
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tyrant-judge-orders-trump-to-restore
Gaza ceasefire talks are at a ‘critical moment’ as questions remain for second phase
Related video at the link.
The video referenced in comment 85 relates personal stories of prisoners that include accounts of sexual assault and rape on both sides of the conflict, Palestinians and Israelis.
Followup to comment 52.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-european-elections/
@ 83
What? Am I supposed to feel sympathy for the leader of the most evil organization in human history just because some capitalist parasite criticizes his performative “altruism?”
This is the point where I’d insert the clip of Ken Watanabe in the Godzilla movie saying “Let them fight.”
NYT – Halligan Continues as U.S. Attorney
Southpaw (Lawyer): “If your appointment is invalid, you never had the job in the first place.”
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “This is the same Office of Legal Counsel which furnished the Murder Memo enabling the killing spree at sea.”
Rando:
Brandon Friedman (Former Obama HUD): “Laws aren’t real. They exist solely on account of buy-in from society’s participants. Once one side disengages, you no longer reside in a society based on laws. You live in a society based on power and armed force. I am begging folks to accept this so we can get moving.”
Randos
Sky Captain @89, this part bears repeating:
Akira @88:
I choose to deplore the history of bad deeds done by (or allowed to continue) by the Catholic church, while simultaneously being appalled by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel’s “anti-Christ” nonsense.
Jury-shopping with Jeanine, and abortion-pill liars get a pass, plus more.
Psaki: Loomer, O’Keefe covering Pentagon ‘not a real press corps’
Followup to comments 52 and 58.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-has-a-new-world-domination
Washington Post link
“Winter is coming. Not all weather offices are ready.”
“As the cold season looms, National Weather Service offices in more than half a dozen states, from Maine to Wyoming, are experiencing vacancies.”
MS NOW – Minneapolis police chief warns officers: Stop unlawful force by ICE or lose your job
Holocene impact
Previously Unknown 1 km Wide Jinlin Impact Crater in South China and Why It’s So Exciting
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aqutR88gwdY
Harem Anime: A History
(It gets weird)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6JtB9kq8Zuo
An Actual Cult Made These Anime | Happy Science Cult Vol. 1
(This was also featured in God Awful Movies)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dobQ9_YS5MA
Vampires in Anime
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=i_49ERlMo28
“Actually, I Am” seens genuinely fun. And “Karin” is a reverse vampire, injecting blood into people and improving their health. Good luck finding US media investing into concepts this odd.
Alucard in “Hellsing Ultimate” is as badass as Deadpool.
“Jelling Stone: 3D scans reveal power of a Viking queen – BBC News”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGhc5LEB_6I
Britain: Churches fight back against racist hate.
“Tommy Robinson’s Christian Hypocrisy Just Got EXPOSED”
Tommy Robinson is not even his true name.
Apologies for fucking up the tread again. Not wearing glasses.
.
This is a Ukrainan blog, but still interesting. Tanks are not obsolete, if used right.
“Ukrainians penetrate Russian flanks by 5 kilometers on tanks!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=H0eNuReq76A
This has gotten so out of hand.
Trump insults CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: ‘stupid and nasty’
The president has disparaged other women in the White House press corps in the past few weeks, calling them “piggy,” “stupid” and “ugly.”
‘No basis in reality’: Steve Rattner fact-checks Trump on inflation, affordability
“Inflation, in fact, has not decreased under Trump, and it’s certainly not stopped in its tracks,” the “Morning Joe” economic analyst said Friday.
Related video at the link. The video is the full presentation by Rattner.
Cartoon: No survivors
Followup to comment 104.
Trump rages as Fox News guest says life under Trump will be “more unaffordable” than with Biden
Cheryl Rofer (Retired nuclear scientist):
Rando 1: “Translation: It’s not going to nuclear explode like it does when it catches fire in Sim City 4.”
Rando 2: “I vote for patching the hole and not panicking. Also, for not having explosive drones hit the thing.”
Cheryl Rofer: “The danger of falls [off the roof] will be the greatest hazard.”
birgerjohansson@76,
Richard Coles isn’t a bishop, just an ex-vicar. His elder brother is the well-known rapist Andy Coles; information in Richard’s autobiography led inadvertently to Andy being outed as one of the UK “spycops”: police officers who infiltrated non-violent protest groups and in many cases including his, had sexual relationships with female members of the group they infiltrated without disclosing their identities, then later vanished from their partner’s lives.
Cheryl Rofer: “The story, over and over again, of metals companies.”
[Utah] US Magnesium’s bankruptcy leaves a looming question: What happens to the Great Salt Lake cleanup?
Mediaite: Trump Rages Against House Democrat He Just Pardoned: ‘Such a Lack of LOYALTY!’
Trump was apparently under the impression that Cuellar would change party. It isn’t clear why Trump expected this. It’s likely he talked to somebody but it’s also possible he just expected that Cuellar would do him a favor after he did a favor for Cuellar. Trump is one of those oblivious people, he fills the ranks around himself with self serving people like himself and yet is constantly surprised when they prove to be as untrustworthy as he is.
Mediaite: Trump Considering Move to Oust Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem: Report
Independent UK: Trump no longer pushing back when White House insiders say Hegseth is not up for the job as he tires of controversies: report
Rumors of this sort have been floating around for most of Trump’s term in office. Most of the people on his cabinet shouldn’t have the job and were selected more for being yes men then anything. These rumors are more serious but I think they say more about infighting at the White House then Trump seriously considering replacing somebody. As long as they are willing to say “Yes sir” when Trump orders them to do things and appear loyal to Trump their jobs are fairly secure.
Still, there could be a major loser in the White House infighting or Trump may decide that somebody has to go. If that does become the case who gets fired is likely to depend on who last had a scandal that made the news more then history of problems or how serious they are.
ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 6, 2025
The Russians claim to have already captured these cities while Ukraine says they are still in heavy fighting. The ISW assessment is that the Russians are slowly winning but it’s a street by street battle situation.
Away from Pokrovsk the Ukrainian’s appear to have made some small advances. The fog of war is getting worse, as the grey zone created by drones where it’s dangerous for either force to be gets wider. Near the more active areas it’s getting harder to even determine where the lines are.
This is ugly but I suspect it won’t go well for India. These migrants are going to look for work but they are going to be treated badly, not paid and some will end up fighting for the Russian army.
At this point both sides are talking about technology sharing but India doesn’t really have technology Russia wants. India has avoided selling arms or ammunition to Russia but with India starting up production of drones based on Russian designs the situation bears close monitoring.
KG @ 108
Than you for the correction.
His brother a rapist? Holy sh*t!
.
At least that is not genetic, so Richard should be OK.
(He is an old pal of the investigating journalist sitting next to him on the panel)
This time the rapist was never invited, unlike wossname that gross ‘comedian’ that got outed for SA a couple of years’ back.
.
And this is a reminder: Men do not notice the creeps, because – unlike Epstein – most creeps do not shed their camouflage in the company of men.
BTW the leaders of the Church of England have little to be proud of but at least the lower ranks occasionally show moral courage in opposing the likes of Farage.
Addendum: If men doing SA pop up this frequently -just in connection with TV- it has awful implications for their frequency in the general population.
Huh – that trophy should have been mine! I’ve ended well over a hundred wars before they started, indeed mostly before the countries concerned had any idea they had some sort of dispute! Most notably, perhaps, the vicious war between Andorra and Lesotho, which would certainly have led to billions of deaths if I hadn’t stepped in to remind them that they are both landlocked countries, and thousands of miles from each other.
KG @ 115
Your achievements pale beside mine. I prevented the time-travel war that killed 80% of the world’s population.
Russia has no ideology left (and neither has China) – Sarah Paine
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pPjsFgXgqs
And this begs the question – does America have any credible national ideology left? Isolationism? Aggressive imperial predatory capitalism does no nonger work on the rest of the world, China has proven that.
Is USA going to spend a half-century like France or Britain, clinging on old memories? I doubt it can afford a bloated military as the economic competition from the rest of the world ramps up, but Dubya showed illusions of strength live on.
How the Amber Trade Transformed Bronze Age Europe
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=k5je7IkR5Wk
Retro Vault:
10 Hidden Gems: Adult Animations You Might Have Missed from Around the World
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eahtDkjq5KA
.
10 Animations That Clearly Weren’t for Kids (But We Watched Anyway)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ozHeKZb3FQA
GEO GIRL
“How The Grand Teton Mountains Formed & Why They’re So Pointy!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pivXm1XJiSk
In Range by Carl Kasarda
“Is Juneteenth a Fake Holiday?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tnHdsTUNVSk
Background on Chernobyl @107.
Lawyers, Guns, & Money – Drone Damage to Chernobyl Confinement Structure
Trump Has Massive Meltdown as Texas Democrat DEFIES Party Switch
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MXxUkngbaOo
Hmm… If you induce more meltdowns, he will probably get more erratic. Short term, this means he will do more damage but he will also stumble over his own feet more often. Keep this up until the midterms and then you can contain his legislative agenda.
“Shocking Number Of Young Republicans Admit They’re Racist” (according to survey by the conservative Manhattan Institute)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=LLXxjfgv2MA
I did not find information about the size of the survey.
@117 birgerjohansson: Putin never had any ideology, this was one of his attractive features to begin with. As long as he was entirely practical and didn’t try to take some great view of history he could get along much better with neighbors. Even after Putin became a dictator he was able to build trade with other countries. As long as he was just trying to build up Russia’s industrial base and wealth other countries didn’t have a problem with him treating the Russians badly.
It wasn’t until he got this idea of recreating the Russian Empire and the unity of the Russian people did he become a military threat. This wasn’t an ideology he could spread any other way as everybody that wanted to hear it was already part of Russia.
Annoyingly people at Youtube have started to recycling news items from a year ago or more with ‘bad news for Trump’ themes. This must be a clickbait thing.
@126 birgerjohansson: I’ve been getting some click bait fake news also. Some channels using stolen art and AI voice overs to mimic Rachel Maddow pretty well. Take or fake some static shots from the Rachel Maddows show and use AI voice over to read a script and it looks like a clip from her show at first glance.
Link
More at the link.
ICE has arrested nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records, data shows
“The figures don’t include arrests made by Border Patrol [!], which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities in recent months.”
More at the link.
Lei’s Real Talk: General Liu and The Hidden Trial Audio the PLA leaked
During the Tiananmen Square events the Chinese general who naturally would have been in command of suppressing the students refused to do it. The general, Xu Qinxain, was in charge of the military forces charged with guarding the capital and the leadership of the CCP. He was ordered to suppress the students but refused. He was arrested, tried and served a couple of years in prison before going into house arrest for the rest of his life. A leaked video of the secret military trial of Xu Qinxain has reached the internet. It ended up in the hands of one of the surviving students who now lives in the US.
The video itself is interesting but Lei is more concerned with why it was leaked now. It obviously plays into the hidden conflict between political figures and military figures for power in China.
Samantha Montano:
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87 and 93.
Russia praises US security strategy shift heralded by ‘strong’ Trump. [JFC]
Moscow regards Washington’s updated National Security Strategy as “consistent with our vision.”
More at the link.
JM @ 127
Thanks.
Motor history
“Volvo TP21 Sugga (“Sow”) — The Offroad Swedish Military Legend”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=fijoVzSz88k
More practical than the Jeep, with space to function as a staff car complete with radios. Annoying AI voice, otherwise OK.
Bannon in trouble with MAGA As Gross Epstein Emails Surface
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=S_M8mayJ5Gs
Naah. They will forget it next week.
Greg Abbott Called Out By His Own Party After Staggering Trump Switch
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xNe8Wl6xQzY
Trump’s Strategy Shocks Europe And The World | News Round-Up
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BJxpkWo8OtA
He is not shocking anyone, he is just not pretending anymore.
Latest episode in a brilliant series by Paleo Analysis here – The Complete History of the Earth: Early Jurassic Period – 45 mins long yt doco.
I chose a video from an American in a non-Scandinavian country for a change.
‘Danielle living in Spain’
EUROPE CULTURE SHOCK AS AN AMERICAN
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9WhF_gDAN5g
Stevo R @ 137
Yes, I really enjoy the series.
The first appearence of hair and fur is poorly understood, but this is when proto-mammals started to turn into something recognisably mammalian.
Btw this started a period when our ancestors were mostly small and short-lived, losing the genes for regeneration and repair other lineages have.
When the dinosaurs were gone, mammals had to re-evolve the genes needed for longer life spans.
A reminder of how the world works.
“At the End of this interview I’ll be released” | Lord of War Full Endining
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=rjTtMcKo0UY
Young Nigel Farage at the school nativity play.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17f8iWCCB1/
Autoblog: All of Russia’s Porsches Were Bricked By a Mysterious Satellite Outage
It’s funny when it happens to Russia but this will eventually happen by accident to some major company in the west and in a more global war this sort of stuff will be shut off intentionally.
Americans should care about Aaron Siri’s work with RFK Jr.
“Siri famously petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. His ongoing work with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. matters.”
‘Blatant lawlessness’: Judge decries another ‘unlawful’ deportation
“Faustino Pablo Pablo was deported to Guatemala despite his urgent warnings to immigration officials that he faced serious danger in his home country.”
Link. The link leads to a collection of disparate news reports.
Josh Marshall: “Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger”
Link
MTG Finally DISCLOSES Trump’s Dark Secrets Before Leaving
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JM_caAKLTsg
Trump’s Own Voters Now Blame HIM For Their Financial Struggles
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=smK2WCTfDdc
Followup to comment 146.
Link
Trump declares Europe an enemy
“Trump’s National Security Strategy Attacks European Democracy and Backs Far-Right Groups”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pwwFGFxhIng
Meidas Touch
TWENTY GOP Congress Members READY TO QUIT on Trump!!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tYMKKPwKqqM
Cartoon: Trump trough
Link
Bezos thinks big donation makes it okay to poison a lagoon
Posted by readers of the article:
Good news, mostly: Dozens of cities, states hiking minimum wages in 2026 amid federal inaction
“The rate will hit $15 per hour in dozens of localities, though the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour.”
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4u3hwe3p7oy3hoy3amlw7rp2/post/3m7dorn465s26
Posted by Robert Reich.
Excerpts from Wonkette’s news roundup:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/regular-animals-tabs-mon-dec-8-2025
Supreme Court poised to expand Trump’s power over independent agencies
“The justices seem likely to allow the president to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a nine-decade old precedent that insulated some agencies from political influence by the executive.”
More at the link.
“Not in the interest of the American people.” True.
Washington Post link
“Trump to announce $12 billion tariff relief for farmers”
Ex-Trump lawyer Alina Habba announces she’s stepping down as U.S. attorney for N.J.
“The decision comes after an appeals court found her appointment to the post was unlawful.”
Trump administration abruptly cancels citizenship ceremonies for some immigrants
Trump’s football troubles take a weird turn as he eyes new name ‘for the NFL stuff’
Link
Inside The Secret New ICE Deportation Plan Called ‘Operation Irish Goodbye’
.
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-plan-undocumented-immigrants-border_n_69371e0ce4b0020dff816622
Farron Cousins:
“Insider Predicts Exact Moment When Republican Lawmakers Will Turn Against Trump”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=B8iFYZmIMDY
Supreme Court Seems Ready To Give Trump More Power
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-trump-slaughter_n_69370d2fe4b013f1f7d26389
birgerjohansson @ 166
Trump will thus get the power to purge anyone who does not do his bidding. There will be no independent agencies anymore
Progressives Take Aim At Incumbent Moderate Senator
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/progressive-launches-primary-challenge-to-colorado-sen-john-hickenlooper_n_6936347ae4b0020dff80b7d8
Trump Is Desperately Fighting To Keep Jack Smith’s Final Report Hidden
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FshX-ZDSGU0
About a word in DailyKos @154:
Bible scholar Dan McClellan – Where does Jesus ever claim to be God? (26:48)
A switch from politics.
Anton Petrov
“Largest Spinning Object in the Universe Found 140 Million Light Years Away”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=au1gpdqmDnI
Hossenfelder alert
“New Fossils Suggest That Life On Earth Started Twice”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SSjiecPF3QE
White House Makeover
.https://youtube.com/shorts/bS0w-y2GnDo
The Onion.
JD Vance reminded to use White House service entrance.
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx-hTXbyKDTBCM0OdA2NODPySxuDpJ70BM
We Didn’t Evolve Color Vision to See Color
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GckqMcaz-3M
Kubrick’s Hidden 2001 Ending (They Never Showed You)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IlAxoH0vcjQ
CNN – Woman with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released from ICE custody
Giant Husky Tries to Ignore Tiny Kitten… But Then This Happens!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Aa0DbmzP6zY
Dragon Ball Z
“Perfect Cell vs Ugandan Knuckled 1-4”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Abe0sd99Hhg
New York City ties its record for lingest stretch without a homicide.
.https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-york-city-ties-record-longest-stretch-without-homicide/story
The city went 12 days without a homicide, which ties a stretch in 2015.
Lynna @ # 154 – I worry about the military personnel who (anonymously) protested against the order of their hyperxian C.O.
Though there may well be multiple commanding officers who “… made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable “wokeness” which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military.” and whose base “[t]he next day [had] four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.”, who had one (or more) Jewish troops ask him about a little menorah (with a wife, also a Jewish active-duty military person, “starting a family”), and who (the C.O.) has a really poor understanding of Middle Eastern history, it would seem likely that would provide enough information for said C.O. to identify MRFF’s complainant.
Or maybe there are lots of personnel who might fit that profile – and their C.O.s will punish all of them. MRFF really should work more discreetly.
Recommended.
“The Most TERRIFYING Depictions of Cosmic Horror In Film”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ASimT1_m3FU
birgerjohansson @179:
Stephanie Zvan’s assessment of the genre stuck with me.
Daniel Swain (Climate scientist):
Curent EPA – Causes of Climate Change
Wayback EPA – Causes of Climate Change
Wayback EPA – Climate Change Indicators in the US
Zack Labe (Climate Scientist):
NBC News:
MS NOW:
Wall Street Journal:
That is on Trump’s list of wars he supposedly ended.
Reuters:
Thank goodness for that. Good news.
Oh FFS.
Salon:
Trump plans to play a role in proposed Netflix, Warner Brothers deal: ‘I’ll be involved’
It’s Time to Govern, and Republicans in Congress Can’t Remember How
Trump says he will allow Nvidia to sell some AI chips in China
“The announcement ended what has effectively been a ban on AI chip sales to the world’s second-largest economy and America’s strategic adversary.”
ACLU:
Back in March, a surveillance camera witnessed six thugs in hoodies and masks abduct her on the sidewalk into an unmarked vehicle. All because a doxxing website flagged her for writing an op-ed in a school newspaper urging the university to heed resolutions passed by the student senate: a call to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and divest from Israel.
SEVIS was previously covered here.
Source : https://www.space.com/technology/nasa-spacecraft-were-vulnerable-to-hacking-for-3-years-and-nobody-knew-ai-found-and-fixed-the-flaw-in-4-days
Re: StevoR @191:
Faint praise for the AI. From the blog post:
Building commandline strings and passing them to a shell process to interpret and execute is bad. And redundant: devs were already coding C, which can execute intended binaries directly. System() is warned about in general for exactly this reason, and though the blog blames the project’s complexity spanning lots of files, that call alone should have been nagged about by humans and static analysis tools.
Devs neglected to sanitize inputs. In this case, a config file could in principle be edited (by someone who already had access) to put commandline stuff where a username was expected. Why anticipate someone might do that? Assume users are malicious or fools, and—in spite of them—try to write code that operates as intended or fails gracefully.
Bobby tables strikes again (different attack, same principle).
Meidas Touch
Job data released
“Trump Gets Terrible News as Info He Tried to HIDE goes Public”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4vcrkx5n4Hs
Stephen Colbert
“Trump Can’t Tell Kimmel From Colbert | FIFA Peace Prize | Is There Anything MAGA Won’t Tolerate?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=S87f56XVHzE
Jimmy Kimmel:
Trump Attacks “Horrible” Jimmy Kimmel, Gets Embarrassing Fake Award & Jimmy Announces Show Renewal ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=608NKYhMuWg
Erratum: the text in the image should be COMPLEX life arose twice.
“This Discovery Might Change What We Know About Life!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SSjiecPF3QE
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-suffers-frequent-failures-as-americans-push-back-at-every-turn-2474012739821
Video is 9:55 minutes
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-trump-risks-shattering-u-s-as-states-seek-alternative-to-decimated-federal-health-expertise-2474004035670
Video is 9:58 minutes.
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87, 93 and 132.
‘Unacceptable’: Germany’s Merz slams Trump’s controversial Europe document
U.S. administration’s foreign policy document roils Berlin.
Trump amps up his racist immigration tirade
Here’s how Trump’s propaganda princess is blaming Joe Biden now
Posted by readers of the article:
Legal AF: Trump DOJ Makes SHOCK ADMISSION in DEVASTATING FILING
It looks like the DOJ will try to revive the Comey indictment. There is an option that lets the prosecution fix an indictment tossed on technical grounds and continue the case past the statue of limitations. This shouldn’t work in this case because the grounds for rejecting it were serious.
Even if it does get reactivated Comey has additional grounds to get the case dismissed again because they didn’t get reviewed the first time. The case was dismissed at step zero and nothing after that considered. So most of the issues raised with the original case never got resolved.
I suspect that winning this case isn’t the point though. The point is that Trump wants to punish Comey. For this dragging Comey through court for years suits their purpose even if the DOJ lawyers know the case can’t be won in the end.
Reese Waters having fun talking about Mike Johnson’s problems.
“Mike Johnson: Y’all Not Leaving Me With Trump”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IY7eAGaDyqM
Somalis? Old-timers like myself may recall the band X Ray Specs (contemporary with Blondie et al) with the singer Poly Styrene.
She was an Irish-Scottish-Somali artist.
Jesse Watters, Fox News host, discusses watching videos of Pete Hegseth’s strikes on civilian boats in international waters:
Commentary from Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jesse-watters-really-getting-off
11.600 years old:
“NEW Gobekli Tepe Discoveries Confuse Archaeology, Labelled the Largest Megalithic Site On Earth”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/3aZRkztXK5M
Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems as if Comey is out of danger.
Meanwhile congressman wossname (guy fistbumping with insurrectionists 2021) is threatening to break with Trump over Obamacare.
And MTG going on 60 minutes to say out loud what many Republicans think will prod some others to openly critizise Trump.
I recall from other tumultous political events that at first nothing happens. Then all of it happens at once, like a ketchup bottle.
States fight back as Trump’s CDC wages war on health and science, by Rachel Maddow
Trump delegates sweeping powers over 2020 election pardons to Bondi, Martin
“Two White House cronies will get to figure it out who falls under the umbrella of Trump’s 2020 election pardons.”
FFS.
Alina Habba’s new job in Trump’s Justice Dept. isn’t much better than her old one
“After resigning as an interim U.S. attorney, Habba will serve as Pam Bondi’s senior advisor on federal prosecutors nationwide. That’s not a good idea.”
On affordability and consumer costs, Trump goes all-in on an alternate reality
Related video at the link.
The purge:
Link
Fun viewing from the late 90s.
“Blade | Vampire Night Club Scene | ClipZone: Heroes & Villains”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BtpqWSmH5gE
Re: birgerjohansson @206:
John Bull:
Trump team isn’t just confessing its crimes—it’s bragging about them
Posted by readers of the article:
Marjorie Taylor Greene says she forgives Trump
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jasmine-jasmine-crockett-queen-of
“Jasmine, Jasmine Crockett, Queen Of The Wild Senate Frontier?”
The Guardian – Organizers submit enough signatures to block gerrymandered Missouri map
Scientific Frontline – Jellyfish can be used to make mayonnaise and butter
The Handbasket – Conspiracy theorist election denier given FEMA’s second-most important role
About the job
Commentary
NBC News:
NBC News:
Associated Press:
New York Times:
The attorney general said he had asked Interpol to detain Juan Orlando Hernández, who was freed from a U.S. prison last week.
New York Times:
Democrat wins Miami mayor’s race for the first time in almost 30 years
“Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González, NBC News projects.”
Related video at the link.
Lynna, OM @ 225
Eileen Higgins (D) won by 20 points!
Scam I am !
Jimmy Kimmel:
“Trump Calls Affordability a Scam, Everyone Treats Him Like a Child & MAGAland Hawks Christmas Crap”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JRmF0xt9fzs
Good 20 mins long yt video here – You’re Not Crazy. The Bugs Are Disappearing by Joe Scott.
Travel Buff!
Stephen Colbert :
“Why Trump Flip-Flopped On Boat Strike Video | Sweatin’ At The Airport | Paramount’s Dictator Money”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GQLEgDr3ss8
I am getting worried about you!
😟
There is a hiatus of five hours since the last post. Either the dominance of sad political news have scared away people from the thread, or the epidemics JFK Jr is spreading has done a Netanyahu on you.
HuffPost:
“Trump Now Happy To Openly Disparage ‘S**thole Countries'”
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/jasmine-crockett-lights-up-texas-senate-race-texas-wants-a-fighter-2474316867773
Video i s 8:22 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/jd-vance-s-supreme-court-showdown-could-upend-midterm-campaign-finance-rules-2474311235827
“More billionaire money in politics.”
Video is 9:07 minutes.
Why Trump’s unsubtle reversal on his ‘s—hole countries’ comment matters
“In 2018 [Trump] denied using the racist language. In 2025, he seems to take a degree of pride in using the phrase.”
Related video at the link.
‘You can give up certain products’: Trump tells Americans to settle for less
“The president expects Americans to make sacrifices but doesn’t appear willing to make any sacrifices of his own.”
Related video at the link.
Trump stumbles into an important contradiction on pardon for drug trafficker
[Trump] said he examined Juan Orlando Hernández’s case. Eight days later, he said the opposite. Both can’t be true.
Link. The link leads to a roundup of news reports.
This keeps happening. (Farage is the former nazi and current leader of Reform UK who is riding high in the polls)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1Krinf7pmL/
As reported by The Washington Post, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
As reported by The Associated Press, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
Cartoon: The worst of the worst
Texas GOP turns schools into indoctrination machines
Ban me if you must, Lynna and PZ, but I must speak openly and honestly since few others will.
Ilhan Omar has proven by her words and actions that is a caring decent person. I would gladly have her as a neighbor. I would NOT tolerate anyone from the magat administration as a neighbor.
O.K. If you want to rid this country of undesirable, nonproductive immigrants, as tRUMP has deplorably stated, let’s start with someone who still holds citizenship in a terrible foreign country, who entered this country on false claims on a genius visa, who after many years still has trouble with the english language. Who just has a contractual relationship with an abomination of a hateful, criminal citizen as a spouse.
Send malaria trump back to slovenia! And, her son who has slovenian citizenship should be packed up and sent with her.
re Lynna @235:
I would presume that those “very good people” received large sums of money to be passed on the behalf of Hernández to The Orange Turd’s tiny hands.
Top Trump official stoops to reading bigoted talking points on live TV
Posted by readers of the article:
johnson catman @242, yeah that pardon does smell like bribes were attached.
Unrelated: Cartoon: MurderKorp
Link
Lots of proposals, no agreement on real solutions.
Followup to comment 22.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/brownshirts-in-the-bayou-your-immigration
During our lunch break I had a fervent request from our tech support specialist to add one more despicable, destructive, arrogant immigrant to the list to deport. He has destroyed the environment and ruined the lives to thousands with massive pollution from his rockets and his dozens of illegal gas turbines, not to mention his championing fascists and nazis on his massive xhitter social media swamp. So, we want to see the muskrat sent back to south africa so he can destroy that country, too.
I’m sure people have many other viable candidates for deportation, too. While he isn’t an immigrant, can we deport (shadow president) S.S. Miller to Sudan?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/this-is-actually-the-most-insane
“This Is Actually The Most Insane Thing He’s Ever Posted”
“No, really.”
Years after his defeat, Trump says he’ll soon have proof of a “rigged” election. Don’t hold your breath.
African immigrant Elon Musk spouts racist BS about African immigrants
Link
Cartoon: Even a cuckoo clock …
Lynna @225
New Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins is a Mechanical Engineer and a former Peace Corp director in Belize
Link
Thanks to Militant Agnostic @253, and to birger @226, for adding additional information about Eileen Higgins.
In other news:
Link
Washington Post link
“U.S. seizes ‘very large’ oil tanker off Venezuelan coast, Trump says”
“The seizure was a significant escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.”
In message to Trump, Ukraine’s top general attacks Kremlin battlefield narrative
“Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi says Russia’s frontline gains are tiny as U.S. pressure grows on Ukraine to accept a peace deal.”
Federal agents arrest citizen observer watching ICE detain neighbors on her north Minneapolis block
Lynna, OM @ 225
Meidas Touch:
“GOP Gerrymander BACKFIRES with Shock Loss…IN GEORGIA!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lq21joPCSRE
HuffPo – ICE has a plan to arrest undocumented migrants voluntarily leaving
Yassifying a genocide – 17 mins long yt clip on Israeli pinkwashing and hypocrisy by Spooky Scary Socialist.
Anton Petrov:
“Bizarre Discoveries About Evolution of Dogs in the Last 50,000 Years”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QFXqYRIOEJ4
Adam Klasfeld (All Rise News):
Judge Charles Breyer: “Defendants take the position that, after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts. Defendants’ position is contrary to law.”
Dan Kaszeta (Historian, Chemical weapons expert):
[Illinois] Law barring immigration enforcement in courthouses signed by Pritzker
Rando 1: “Connecticut has a similar law [the Trust Act]. If I remember correctly, they will need a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant is not enough. And even if they have the right paperwork, they can’t wear masks.”
Rando 2: “As does Colorado.”
Trump’s ‘chilling’ social media snooping rule imperils World Cup, critics warn
“Even the worst authoritarian states in the world do not have such an official policy,” Irish centrist MEP Barry Andrews said.
Sky Captain @263:
That’s memorable! Well said by Judge Breyer.
Followup of sorts to comments 263 and 266.
MS NOW:
NY Times:
Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his allies carry a symbol depicting a golden noose on their lapels, indicating their support for summary killings.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1AZAMPaRF1/
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87, 93, 132, 149, and 198.
Some updates and additional details concerning Trump’s National Security Strategy, or NSS:
Link
US threatens new ICC sanctions unless court pledges not to prosecute Trump
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “I believe this is referred to as consciousness of guilt.”
Four years since he was released from prison.
Steven Donziger, de facto prosecuted by Chevron after he won the Ecuador pollution case.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/17hRdPt8Cc/
Link
Link
Doofus made a fool of himself.
Posted by readers of the article:
Interesting weapon idea for fantasy ice demons.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14SHWo7HcrY/
The Guardian
Starmer is lobbying Europe to join him in watering down the ECHR. This illiberalism will harm us all
.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/10/starmer-europe-human-rights-uk-prime-minister-echr
Ancient humans mastered fire-making 400,000 years ago, study shows
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ancient-humans-mastered-years.html
Owen Jones Gaza Hunger Strike BURIED By Media – Situation CRITICAL – 19 mins long.
Let’s Talk Elections
“Republicans Likely to Face Major Loss in Missouri”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6CkGYvFSxfU
.
Farron Cousins: “Analyst Reveals Signs That Trump Knows His End Is Near”. Yes, please!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=oSKc6DEtJ78
I wasn’t planning to go to the USA when Trump was in charge anyhow even if I could afford to do so but still – land of free & brave & right to free speech and criticise govt huh? Any Freezepeachers!!1ty! going to fight against this ya reckon?
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-11/us-travel-social-media-privacy-concerns/106128910
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/10/tents-flood-families-seek-shelter-as-storm-byron-bears-down-on-gaza
From back when our Cosmos was 5% its current age :
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope/the-james-webb-space-telescope-just-found-the-oldest-supernova-ever-seen
The New Republic – Firewood banks aren’t inspiring
From today’s PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-affordability-speech-turns-into-a-rant-against-immigrants
Also via PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/watch-live-ask-us-anything-about-fighting-science-misinformation-during-a-special-reddit-ama
Thought-provoking rather mistitlled I think video here – Katie Halper interviews Ghada Karmi – just under ten minutes length.
Sammy Obeid MINNEAPOLIS SOMALIS V.S. ICE | STAND UP COMEDY – 20 mins long.
Zeteo yt SHORT Some comedians in Israel make ‘genocide jokes’ – interview with comedian and activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi.
Law and Crime: Jan. 6 plaque is faulty and thus should not be hung, DOJ argues in effort to make case go away
Contemptible but the DOJ is likely to win this one. The police officers that brought the case can’t show any injury to themselves for not getting the plaque raised.
MSN: Fed Chair Jerome Powell says US may be drastically overstating jobs numbers
Before any conspiracy theories get raised, Powell is talking about a technical issue in how the estimation is done and why it is almost always revised downwards later. There is a plan to use a better estimation method starting next year but until then we should expect some sharp downward revisions.
Powell is talking about this publicly because some of the latest figures seem too good. He likely has inside information on what the revisions look like and wants to prepare markets. He could also be trying to say something to the White House but this is far to subtle a method for this administration. If that is his goal he should try a Truth Social post insulting the people who do the estimates.
Just a magnificent, endangered raptor here w photos and info about it :
https://naturebackin.com/2024/12/31/the-bateleur-eagle-south-african-bird-of-the-year-2024/
This African raptor is magnificent and beautiful and it is endangered because of our species and our impact oin the world.
We as a species can choose to prioritise and save it – or not. Will we?
^Iwish theasnwer wasn;’t almost certainly no, we wont. For .. fucks sake. Humanity..
So wish we’d actually live up to our latin species name meaning of “wise (hu)man”” for flippin” once or twice or thrice or just always.. Becoz we never fn do , Do we? Or at least far too rarely.
I am tired.
So fn tired.
Not giving up. Not giving in to despair or defeatism but just so very tired & yet cannot sleep.
Via Zeteo yt SHORT here – Pro-Palestine protesters physically assaulted at event hosting pro-Israel commentator Van Jones. Raw emotion, raw Truth shouted. WARNING: Swearing. Becoz apparently that’s a problem not y’know the things that deserve far more than just swearing about..
Apoolgies here Lynna (& respect) but just.. no words suffice. For this & so much else.
If anyone deserves to be heard when they speak,if anyone has the right to say, well, this mensch does Visiting Israel MADE Me ‘Anti-Zionist,’ Says Holocaust Survivor via Zeteo & 25 minutes long.
MS Now: Trump seeks Senate confirmation for prosecutor whose cases were thrown out
Should be a no go as Trump has lost a lot of his ability to push on this sort of thing, Halligan isn’t qualified for the job and she has already made a career ending mistake in the job before even being nominated. Who knows though, the Senate might treat this as a gift to keep Trump happy.
Also what he says here – 87-year-old Holocaust survivor says: “Stop the genocide in Gaza – 3 mins 15 seconds. Respect. Huge.
Follow-up to Lynna @256.
Nicholas Nehamas (NYT, live update, Dec 10 4:19pm ET):
Rando:
Andy Vitek (PoliSci Professor):
* Article 110 of the UN law of the sea.
NYT – Oil tanker U.S. seized has faked its location before, data shows
Reuters – Over 30 sanctioned ships in Venezuela at risk after US tanker seizure
Rando:
Rando: “I can see The Onion headline now: Trump regime apologizes for lawful seizure of oil tanker.”
WaPo – Hundreds quarantined as South Carolina measles outbreak accelerates
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/corrupt-talarico-says-cornyn-forfeited-his-right-to-represent-texans-2474636355555
Video is 10:08 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/bernie-sanders-blasts-pathological-liar-trump-for-calling-affordability-a-hoax-2474618947979
Video is 6:41 minutes
ProPublica – Senator endorses discredited doctor’s book on a chemical he claims treats everything from autism to cancer
Cherly Rofer: “This advice is, literally, DRINK BLEACH.”
Rando: “This is not a shock coming from the man who drank hydrochloric acid to ‘cure’ his acid reflux.”
* Cheryl
Trump-imposed changes at national parks faces swift pushback in Congress, courts
“If the White House hoped to these changes would go unnoticed or unchallenged”
Follow-up on Abrego Garcia, after the admin lied about Costa Rica not wanting him.
Joyce Vance (MS NOW):
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
Roger Parloff (Lawfare):
FEMA’s personnel problems go from bad to worse with latest hire
When a NATO member’s military intelligence service describes the United States as a potential security risk, it’s a problem
The rest of the world sees that the Trump administration is dishonest … and not reliable.
‘Trump Gold Card’ goes on sale, offering visas for $1 million, sparking controversy
“With legal fights on the way, those writing seven-figure checks shouldn’t assume their cards are coming soon.”
Aaron Rupar:
Commentary
Both Dem and GOP Messaging Bills on Expiring ACA Subsidies Fail in Senate As Expected
Cartoon: Nap time
Link
re Lynna @304:
I concur, but also, I don’t want to see his face ANYWHERE. And his idiotic voice totally annoys me. I will be glad when we never have to see or hear him again.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug News—Trump executes pardon strike on boatload of narcoterrorists
re Lynna @308:
Truly. Divide $50,000,000,000,000 ($50 trillion) by $5,000,000 ($5 million, his original figure), and you would have to have 10,000,000 (10 million) people pay to get that much money.
Followup to Sky Captain @299.
Russia demands Trump administration provide reasoning for seizure of oil tanker
https://www.wonkette.com/p/epa-wins-exxon-peace-prize-after
“EPA Wins Exxon Peace Prize After Deleting ‘Fossil Fuels’ From Climate Change Webpages”
“Actual science still found on some pages. Don’t tell!”
johnson catman @315, true, and funny.
In other news, https://www.wonkette.com/p/mad-vlads-got-exploding-dildos-for
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nobody-wants-to-come-to-donald-trumps
“Nobody Wants To Come To Donald Trump’s Sh*thole Country”
New York Times link
“A Grand Jury Again Declines to Re-Indict Letitia James”
“It was a striking rejection of the administration’s retribution campaign.”
EXCLUSIVE: AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show
Talking Points Memo exclusive: Fetterman Writes Letter Asking Israel’s President to Pardon Netanyahu
“In a previously unreported letter, the Pennsylvania senator pushed to save Netanyahu’s political career.”
Justice Department moves to drop charges in international soccer corruption case
/Absent from the 2025 CBS article: “FIFA”. Its first link leads to a 2023 CBS article that had “FIFA corruption scandal” in its title.
MotherJones – Indiana Republicans just defied Trump’s pressure campaign to rig their congressional maps
Rando: “My theory is they are too afraid to dilute their seats. Indiana voted for Obama, there is a universe where they lose their majority in the midterms. From their perspective it’s probably better to foster a stable majority over two gained seats.”
Capital Chronicle has an illustration. Black outlines for current districts overlaid on white-outlined color-filled draft districts. Districts pinwheel out of the carved-up center to touch Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky.
An unexpected cover. (warning: flashing lights)
Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” performed live by “Portugal. The Man” w/ Weird Al and Jorma Taccone (Lonely Island)
/An article about the song
Commentary
Colbert – Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah from “Weird Al” Yankovic
NBC News:
Washington Post:
Wall Street Journal:
Cartoon: Bribe wars
AP – House votes to nullify Trump order and restore bargaining rights for federal workers
A followup of sorts to comment 321.
Washington Post link
“Trump defies GOP critics by signing controversial order threatening states over AI laws”
More at the link.
About 100,000 people have been asked to evacuate their homes in Washington State as a series of atmospheric river storms drenched the state this week.
Video at the link.
Sam Lawler (Orbital dynamicist):
From the CRASH Clock link: “Another way to think of the CRASH Clock is the reaction time needed to respond to a serious loss of space situational awareness.”
From the paper: “currently 2.8 days, which suggests there is now little time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm.”
Reuters – Bulgarian government resigns after weeks of street protests
Technology p*rn. “This is The Strongest Transmission Ever Built”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4f9lFhMsLGg
An explanation for the mysterious ‘Carolina bays’.
“What is this strange pattern down the east coast of America?”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/nMqWWO6p7-c
Bateleur Pair Soaring (1 min 7secs) plus Beautiful Up Close: The Bateleur (under 5 mins) in addition to The Real Life Phoenix Bird (5 mins 51 secs.)
Bateleur Pair Soaring (1 min 7secs) plus Beautiful Up Close: The Bateleur (under 5 mins) in addition to The Real Life Phoenix Bird (5 mins 51 secs.)
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/absolutely-extraordinary-buttigieg-on-trump-s-indiana-redistricting-flop-2474965571911
Video is 8:40 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/barron-trump-s-ties-to-accused-sex-trafficker-andrew-tate-exposed-in-nyt-report-2474968643583
Video is 10:03 minutes
House Democrats release more photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate
“The release, which contains photographs of Trump, former President Bill Clinton and other prominent figures, comes amid next week’s deadline for the Justice Department give what files it has on Epstein to Congress.”
Followup to the video highlighted in comment 339: “Trump’s Indiana redistricting flop.”
“Trump pretends his power-grab flop in Indiana wasn’t humiliating (but it was)”
“It was one of the most brutal failures of the president’s second term. To hear Trump tell it, this fiasco wasn’t a big deal.”
BREAKING: Judge Blocks ICE From Re-Detaining Abrego Garcia
Link
Details at the link.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/kilmar-abrego-garcia-out-of-jail
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia Out Of Jail, Not Out On Bail, And That’s The Way It Goes!”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia Out Of Jail, Not Out On Bail, And That’s The Way It Goes!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/kilmar-abrego-garcia-out-of-jail
Details at the link. This account is well-written and thorough.
Today Sweden celebrated ‘Lucia’, a tradition I am unable to explain with logic. Scandinavian atheists celebrating a Sicilian martyr?
Dani Connor videoblog;
“What I Love Most About Sweden; Squirrels, Cinnamon buns & Scandinavian folklore”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xz-Jvy4Lhd4
House Republicans made matters even worse for Trump on his day from hell
“The president has suffered through plenty of awful days this year, but few could compete with Thursday’s events.”
Trump’s delusions should be harder for him and his supporters to sustain:
Link
Followup to comment 344.
Link
Excerpt from the court filing:
Posted by readers of the article:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589189/gov.uscourts.mdd.589189.110.0_3.pdf
That’s the ruling in the Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia case.
New York Times link
“How a Manosphere Star Accused of Rape and Trafficking Was Freed”
“Barred from leaving Romania, Andrew Tate courted powerful figures on the American right, from Tucker Carlson to Barron Trump. Then an extraordinary order let him go.”
Much more at the link.
FBI: Man, woman drive to police station with Homeland Security agent trapped in vehicle
Commentary
Atlantic – The Trump administration’s favorite tool for criminalizing dissent
Official liar for Trump continues to lie:
Link
The Hill – Indiana governor says he’ll help primary Republicans who defied Trump on redistricting
Rando:
Kit Malone (ACLU): “I actually think it’s cute that he thinks he has any clout remaining in that caucus. His own party literally introduced legis this year to change the way LGs are picked to prevent something like him from happening ever again lol.”
Kit Malone: “Beckwith publicly shooting himself and his party in the foot by popping off on social media. Again. [Screenshot: Trump DID threaten federal funding]”
Kit Malone: “He’s always had like—yeah—the clownshow contingent and honestly, I think that scared some people in the caucus early on. This thing just really defanged him—or at least I’m predicting that. His threats have proven pretty empty once they were tested.”
Kit Malone:
Kit Malone:
Oh, that’s a shame. Arizona city rejects data center championed by Sinema and Trump
Link
Washington Post link
Russia files lawsuit against Euroclear as Europe bickers over frozen assets
“Court filing in Moscow comes days ahead of next week’s EU summit to discuss using the Russian assets to underpin a loan to Ukraine.”
New Yorker:
Declining tariff revenue creates a significant new headache for the White House
“The problem for Trump is that he has already made firm commitments to spend the money he doesn’t have.”
Plus :
Also :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-13/donald-trump-foreign-policy-national-security-strategy-europe/106136354
The fact that the USoA is a country on the other side of the world for, well, most of the world seems to have escaped them.
Politico: Frustrated Republicans move to force Obamacare vote as warnings mount about the midterms
It isn’t clear if either has a chance of getting to a vote and less chance they get by Trump. Just that it’s happening at all is politically significant. Discharge petitions are rare, the number turning up now indicates a lot of House Republicans angry at the party leaders and not afraid of angering them or Trump.
StevoR, that “National Security Strategy” pronouncement was extremely arrogant and off-putting. Not to mention racist.
Comments 52, 58, and 87… among others.
New York Times:
USA Today: US Mint gives 2026 coins a new look for America’s 250th anniversary
The significant part is really that the designs look hasty and generic. This is because they are, the original designs planned under Biden have been tossed as too woke.
Somebody managed to convince Trump there wasn’t enough time to get a good likeness engraved and that there wasn’t enough time to prepare to issue gold coins.
NBC News:
WTF?
Politico:
Reuters:
Moment of schadenfreude.
Elon Musk having less than stellar success selling Tesla vehicles.
WTF?
The Hill:
Leave Franklin alone.
@361. Lynna, OM : “StevoR, that “National Security Strategy” pronouncement was extremely arrogant and off-putting. Not to mention racist.””
Yup.
Some good news: the Russians got their asses handed to them in the town of Kupyansk – after Putin bragged about capturing the town. The general in charge now seems to have disappeared.
Supernova immersion model suggests Earth-like planets are more common in the universe
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-supernova-immersion-earth-planets-common.html
AP news: Zelenskyy offers to drop NATO bid for security guarantees but rejects US push to cede territory
It’s hard to tell what to make of this stuff now. The negotiating positions have just gotten more complex over time as the EU has gotten involved. Zelensky seems to have grasped that he has to play to Trump and the US press a bit while negotiating.
On their side Russia talks continuously about total victory and still seems to be stringing the negotiations along. At the same time the economic news in Russia is just getting worse and worse. At some point Putin will realize he has to negotiate something that will let him declare victory and go home.
How Earth’s mantle locked away vast amounts of water in early magma ocean
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-earth-mantle-vast-amounts-early.html
Graphene membranes offer efficient, low-cost option for industrial CO₂ capture
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-graphene-membranes-efficient-option-industrial.html
The Independent: Border Patrol to move away from sweeping raids as support for Trump’s mass deportation policy tanks: report
What they don’t say is that this is going back to the classic policy the department had before Trump took over, the one used by the Biden administration and every other administration beyond the Trump administration. Big raids are splashy and make the news but in terms of manpower required vs arrests it generally is ineffective. And it doesn’t get you the illegal immigrants actually involved in major crime.
How to build a genome: Scientists release troubleshooting manual for synthetic life
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-genome-scientists-manual-synthetic-life.html
Feeling happier starts with kindness: Compassion tied to higher life satisfaction
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-happier-kindness-compassion-higher-life.html
Kriszta Satori (Journalist):
BBC Video – Eyewitness captures moment man tackles and disarms Bondi shooter
Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified
BBC Live Text – Video gives clearest picture yet of how attack was carried out
Sri Lanka Guardian: Chinese Billionaires Build Mega-Families in U.S. Surrogacy Trend
Now here is a case where birth citizenship is actually a problem. Wealthy foreign citizens having children in bulk in the US.
Ryan Estrada (Artist):
Rando: “They deserve extra jailtime just for the lack of taste.”
Ryan Estrada: “It’s the only one with a veggie burger, so maybe they just had dietary restrictions.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Brexit was planned in an O’Hare Uno”
Washington Post link
Washington Post link
“She was shot at 15 in a school shooting. Brown was another close call.”
“Mia Tretta was a freshman when a classmate opened fire at her California high school. Now the Brown University student worries how she’ll recover a second time.”
Big by Matt Stoller: Secret Documents Show Pepsi and Walmart Colluded to Raise Food Prices Across the Economy
It’s really an interesting, with Pepsi and Walmart colluding over years to influence the market. The basic part is Pepsi gives Walmart a price advantage and Walmart gives Pepsi better positions in stores and places them in Walmart advertising. To maintain this Pepsi raised prices on some other stores to keep the price gap, which is where it turns illegal.
Merz compares Putin to Hitler: ‘He won’t stop’
“Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz told a party conference in Germany.
The Hill – 5 things to know about Laura Loomer and Trump’s national security purge
Micah: “Repeating ‘the lady who handcuffed herself to the twitter building has veto power over national security personnel’ to myself over and over and slowly going insane.”
Southpaw: “Handcuffed herself to one side of a double door on the Twitter building, IIRC.”
Shauna: “In the DEAD OF WINTER IN NYC.”
Rando 1: “While wearing a yellow star of David.”
Ryan: “I worked at Twitter then. Security locked the door and had everyone use a side entrance.”
Rando 2: “There are many valid criticisms of Pre-Musk leadership there but ‘she's not a fire safety hazard? Ok, leave her there’ was a stroke of brilliance.”
TheWeek (2018): “saying she wouldn’t leave until Twitter restored her account. […] ‘If I have to, I'll pee on myself,’ she added. […] After about two hours, complaining of the cold, Loomer asked the NYPD to cut her free, and she left”
Radley Balko (Journalist):
Sam (Lawyer): “Bovino is just wrong on the law too. While permanent residents are supposed to carry their green cards, US citizens have no affirmative obligation to carry proof of citizenship at all times. And this guy was a US citizen.”
Rando: “The kavanaugh stop paradox. Similar to the witch floating test. […] Bovino’s logic—you get stopped because you are POC; you must prove you are a citizen with paperwork, but citizens aren’t required to have paperwork; therefore you are not a citizen and have no rights to a lawyer and are subject to immediate deportation.”
Rando: “if Mubashir had an Enhanced Real ID, which is an option in Minnesota, then that absolutely is proof of citizenship. Bovino knows all this. But he’s creating a terrorist police state one word at a time.”
Jared McClain (Civil rights lawyer): “HSI just filed a declaration in our case challenging these policies, saying they can’t trust REAL IDs as proof of status.”
Rando 2: “There is no such thing as a REAL ID issued to somebody without a legal presence in the US. They are issued to citizens and legal residents and nobody else, they’re not proof of citizenship but they are proof of legal residence and HSI can blow it out their ass.”
Jared McClain: “That’s about what our brief is going to say.”
Jared McClain: “People trying to think of ways someone’s status might’ve changed while they have a REAL ID are missing the point. You don’t need absolute proof. You just need to overcome the basis for the stop, which is often just profiling. REAL ID does that unless ICE has reason to think a specific ID is invalid.”
Jared McClain: “DHS is also the agency responsible for certifying that state IDs comply with the REAL ID Act.”
Jared McClain: “Even a young(er) Sam Alito agreed having a REAL ID would establish legal status.”
Chicago Tribune
Greg Bovino’s the star of Trump’s deportation show. We trace his roots.
NYT – TSA is giving domestic passenger lists to ICE to find travelers subject to deportation orders
Rando: “Bin Laden’s wettest dreams realized.”
Edward Hasbrouck (Identity Project): “It appears to violate the Privacy Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, and Computer Matching Act. See my earlier story.”
Joshua Erlich (Civil rights lawyer): “This is a general warrant, and it’s specifically the kind of warrant the framers passed the 4th amendment to outlaw. You want originalism? Here’s some fucking originalism.”
Jamal Greene (Law prof): “we need to re-normalize Zooming into conferences.”
WaPo – Trump moves to take over public DC golf courses
Anton Petrov:
“Why Did Consciousness Evolve? Exciting Research on Bird Brains”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OlnioeAtloY
WaPo – The U.S. citizens getting caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown
More stories at the link.
NYT – U.S. Military Plane and JetBlue flight nearly collided over Caribbean
Federal agents use chemical irritant on crowd in Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis
Adding to Lynna @379.
Eric Columbus (Obama DHS/DoJ):
Samantha Montano (Emergency management professor):
Republicans in the House humiliated Trump by striking down an executive order from this spring, banning federal employees from collective bargaining.
Aa 30-minute summary of films that deserve a second look
“These Movies BOMBED HARD… But They’re All Amazing”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBj-5t0Jrnc
Texas governor Greg Abbott Scrambles Over Shattering Polls With Property Tax Bombshell
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ya7MDs-ZqK0
1) They terrorised people Trump wants terrorised.
2) They had lots of fun!
Where did that @776 come from?? @390 of course.
So, Chile is the latest country to choose fascism. You might have thought the memory Pinochet might have vaccinated the country against it, but no.
Maybe Zelenskyy has caught on to the fact that NATO is a dead alliance walking. If anyone still believes the USA would intervene to defend the Baltic States against Russia, I’ve a miracle cure for gullibility to sell them. Even if the Trumpoid regime is eventually removed, the confidence European elites have had in the USA is not going to return – what happened twice can happen a third time.
Quote from the clip; The good thing about America is that our fascists are so goddamn stupid.
“Trump’s CONFESSION Drops! Republicans Panic on Live TV! Lawrence O’Donnell”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=si-_TqQ_BEs
Hey, United States of America. Please note Australia has responded to a shooting massacre by guess what tougher guns laws and we already have relatively reasonable gun laws!
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-15/albanese-proposes-tougher-gun-laws-after-bondi-attack/106143310
If we can do, why can’t.. Oh yeah..NRA, gun culture, Dictatorship of ammosexuals, sigh. Well, we have set you an example anyhow.
Again.
See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)#Government_reaction
The only decent thing Howard ever did.
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/james-webb-space-telescope-finds-strongest-evidence-yet-for-atmosphere-around-rocky-exoplanet-its-really-like-a-wet-lava-ball
Wait, a wet, lava, ball?
Talk about words that somehow don’t really go together but paint an very intresting picture..
A healthier sugar substitute: Engineered bacteria yield a sweet solution (tagatose)
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-healthier-sugar-substitute-bacteria-yield.html
Seems we may have missed out on seeing a ringed Mars when our red sietr wa s younger – just maybe. Good yt video (11 mins long) by Kyplanet here – The Cyclic History of the Martian Moons
^ Red sister that is and apt in a few ways that was comment #404. (moon not found, 4th rock..)
Horrific mass murder at Bondi of jewish people celebrtaing the first night of Hanukkah yesterday and one I fear will have terrible implications into the future here in Australia – guess everyone has already heard but more Aussie ABC news coverage here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-15/bondi-beach-shooting-terrorist-attack/106142446
@398 KG: Trump hates the idea of NATO because part of the assumption is that the US will spend money to protect Europe. Trump would like a defense pact only if it was other countries spending money to protect the US.
It could be one of the weirdest things ever, with the US involved in a war that the president doesn’t want to be in. Congress is likely to force the US to side with NATO while the president is trying to minimize involvement and spend the money on other things.
Video is 11:16 minutes.
Link
Why the House Republicans’ health care ‘plan’ isn’t a serious health care plan
“GOP lawmakers want to be able to say, “See? We unveiled a plan,” and this helps them check a box in the most superficial way possible.”
Related video at the link.
GOP’s Ron Johnson backs book touting fringe treatment for autism and cancer
“It is all lunacy. Absolutely, it’s 100% nonsense,” one expert said about a weird theory the Wisconsin senator endorsed.
Cartoon: The news cycle
Link
Winter weather:
Link
Re: Lynna @412:
Lindsay Beyerstein (Journalist):
Zelenskyy: US offers Ukraine security guarantees corresponding to NATO Article 5
Follow-up to 376, 406.
Hero who wrestled gun from terrorist says he’d do it again
This seems to be one satisfactory explanation about life on other planets (as well as ours):
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1765770575-20251215_edit.png
Reading all the environmental destruction and carnage reported here, I wonder how close we are to removing humanity here from the ‘galactic list of planets’ with sentient life on them?
Also, I’m really glad freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ is back online. There is NO legitimate reason for such unreliable hosting. I know how difficult it would be for PZ to change hosing companies, especially right now when he is trying to prepare for the onslaught of classes. The hosting company our organization uses has had less than 5 minutes outage in over 20 years. But, bluehost has a 2.5 out of 5 rating for a good reason: IT SUCKS! There is even a site – https://bluehost-sucks.com/
Sky Captain @414, quoting Lindsay Beyerstein:
Good point … and also very scary.
VA eyeing 35,000 health care job cuts, drawing rebuke from veterans’ group
Trump’s VA secretary said months ago, “We’ll be making major changes, so get used to it.” We’re now getting a sense of what that means in practical terms.
Why Elon Musk is an asshole.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A5LkrxoqH/
Why witches don’t time travel.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1G43Fq2JHq/
Hello. Posting from a new laptop.
In the last few days, my Twitter feed has brought up US online privacy activists who are desperately trying to raise alarm over some hellish new legislation that’s supposedly being rushed through in the Congress. An example:
https://x.com/OnyxNuva/status/2000641460035829882
“The hope is that this dies in the committee rather than getting rushed out. No matter what though, we ALL need to start calling and yelling at our reps and the committees till we win.
Call your reps. Tell them to:
– Protect Section 230
– REFUSE repealing section 230
And to vote NO on:
– KOSA
– SCREEN ACT
– Stop Csam Act of 2025
– Interstate Obsenity Definition Act”
And a bunch more. I gather some of this has been on the brink of passing before in recent years, and the whole package is said to have devastating consequences for freedom of speech, online privacy and online economy. Especially for US folks, but also everyone else connected to the US via internet tubes. It’s said to be pushed by a coalition of anti-porn/anti-LGBT fanatics, tech industry ghouls and pro-Israel lobbyists. Mainstream media appears to be silent. I hope the US-based parts of the FTB community can help raise this matter to the attention of US voters.
Cartoon: Farmer bailout
Variables for gender
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DNCaqF8CD/
EU leaders won’t leave for Christmas until Ukraine funds agreed, says incoming Council presidency
“A deal to fund Ukraine must be agreed before Cyprus takes over the agenda at the end of the year, its deputy Europe minister told POLITICO.”
As an aside, I’ll just point out that Republican Congress critters in the USA will be departing for their Christmas vacation by the end of this week, leaving the devastating health-care insurance premium increases for Affordable Care Act beneficiaries to descend on many American families. Republicans will leave that and many more problems unsolved.
“Trump’s Own Fans Repulsed By His Comments On Rob Reiner’s Death”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7JY42Sj62Ho
I wonder how much of this is Trump being Trump and how much of this is frontal lobe dementia reducing his inhibitions .
Lynna @419:
The US gov is the largest employer, serving needs. And yet, giant private businesses—ostensibly providing services—are lauded as “job creators”.
Legal AF: Trump DOJ BLOWS IT and Misses MAJOR DEADLINE in Court
The Trump DOJ wants to file an emergency petition to delay complying with an order, and Lindsey Halligan wants to do it in an official role.
The emergency petition is garbage, seems to be an attempt to slow things down by claiming confusion over what words like “all” mean. Having Halligan do it is a separate issue and could be an attempt to get her established as an attorney by having her fill the job in a court in a different district. I have also seen it conjectured that Bondi and Halligan are trying to get the entire case dismissed so they can blame the court instead of having blame fall on the DOJ in Trump’s eyes.
MS NOW:
New York Times:
CNN:
Wall Street Journal:
New York Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Not good news, not at all.
New York Times:
MS NOW:
Another trumpian attack on Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
NOTUS:
Potentially good news.
Link
New York Times:
Scientific Frontline – Lowering blood sugar cuts heart attack risk in people with prediabetes
Scientific Frontline – Farmers boosted Europe’s biodiversity over the last 12k years
Joshua Friedman (Columbia mag):
Rando: “The government is ‘investing’ in AI.”
AP News: Trump administration says White House ballroom construction is a matter of national security
I suspect that the security of the White House is compromised in some ways by having part of the building torn down. That isn’t an excuse for no review, only that some minimal clean up might need done right now.
I have no idea where the issue of standing lands, standing on some national issues can get real weird.
Unsure if this has been shared before and I don’t think this going to surprise anyone here but a good reminder of facts and article here :
Source : https://theconversation.com/right-wing-extremist-violence-is-more-frequent-and-more-deadly-than-left-wing-violence-what-the-data-shows-265367
Bloomberg – Trump administration turning to private firms in cyber offensive
Commentary
Marcus Hutchins (MalwareTech):
Excellent 25 mins long yt video here – Israel Weaponises Bondi Beach Atrocity – ALL Violence Must Be Opposed by Owen Jones.
Meanwhile in Gaza where barely noticed the detah tollhas officially passed 70,000 human individuals killed :
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/12/14/we-now-see-the-ugly-face-of-gazas-new-normal
Oh and the future for the Gazans looks ever grimmer and worse too :
Source : https://www.newarab.com/analysis/smaller-cage-israels-two-state-solution-gazas-ruins
There’s a whole lot more detall and info there too – long & bleak but worthwhile reading I think.
Press Release – Governor Newsom announces top former CDC officials to lead public health innovation
Hateful and vile
Jimmy Kimmel :
“Trump Sinks to New Low Addressing Murder of Rob Reiner & Wife and Mrs. Obama surprises great family”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2nph8GjOQPU
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-trump-loses-on-public-health-leadership-as-states-leave-his-flock-of-quacks-behind-2476165187616
Video is 9:53 minutes
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-learns-politics-101-do-unpopular-things-become-unpopular-lose-political-power-2476176963768
Video is 9:48 minutes
A familiar picture: A Republican president, eyeing foreign oil, makes suspect WMD pitch
“Historically, the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ label has been limited to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Now it includes … fentanyl pills?”
At the Pentagon, Hegseth is ‘escalating’ the dubious investigation into Mark Kelly
Islamophobia Unleashed
Musk opens his wallet for the GOP—again
Cartoon: Serious mental health crisis
Followup to comment 450.
WTF is up with Trump expanding the definition of WMDs?
‘A hiring recession’: Trump’s tariffs devastate job market
Cartoon: MAGA Jesus
Well, that’s that then.
House GOP will not allow amendment vote to extend ObamaCare subsidies
I snipped more blather from Republicans about how they will produce a “health care bill, which is set to hit the House floor Wednesday, arguing it would reduce costs for all Americans rather than the small percentage of Americans who get health coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.”
Let’s Talk Elections:
“Democrats REIGNITE Senate Hopes for 2026 Midterms”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=CP89SD-p_P8
An elderly Russian couple in Sydney died trying to tackle one of the two Bondi Beach gunmen in the initial few minutes of the attack on Sunday, dashcam footage circulating on social media revealed.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/will-incompetent-clown-doj-convict
“Will Incompetent Clown DOJ Convict Milwaukee Judge For ‘Obstruction’ Of ICE?”
“The DOJ hasn’t had a stellar track record in these cases.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-look-the-nyt-solved-the-mystery
“Oh Look, The NYT Solved The Mystery Of How Jeffrey Epstein Got His Money!”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/americas-vilest-maga-creeps-sneer
“America’s Vilest MAGA Creeps Sneer At Unarmed Australians For Getting Shot”
15 Forgotten Movies from the 80s That Still Hold Up in 2025
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FIyFnt-jQfA
Manhunter with Manfred Mann was the first film with Hannibal Lecter, long before Silence of the Lambs. Near Dark has Lance Henriksen as baddie. The Hidden inspired Men In Black.
Hegseth refuses to release ‘double-tap’ boat strike video, despite Trump’s earlier vow
“Two weeks ago, Trump said his administration would “certainly release” the video, “no problem.” Now, the beleaguered Pentagon chief has walked that back.”
The chaos at the top of Trump’s FBI could have grave consequences, by Rachel Maddow
“Under Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the FBI is a mess.”
Professor Gerdes Explains: Kremlin CONFESSES! Russia Will Seize ALL of Ukraine.
Daily news on the war in Ukraine and related international politics. Today’s video is filled with interesting bits.
The important part today is that Russia is still saying they want to negotiate a peace but only if they get all of the contested regions of Ukraine, including the parts currently held by Ukraine. This is terms that Ukraine will not accept. It must be kept in mind though that unlike a generally open democracy like the US/Europe/Ukraine the Russian public position, negotiating position and actual position may be entirely different.
There is also an interesting section pulled from the White House chief of staff revelations today. Trump has come to the conclusion that Putin doesn’t want to stop. This makes Trump’s willingness to accept peace plans from Russia that amount to surrender even worse but at the same time says that Trump is going into negotiations with a bit more realistic view then I had thought. I was under the impression that Trump thought he could talk his “friend” Putin into some sort of peace plan. In reality he is willing to intentionally sell out Ukraine if the terms are favorable to the US.
There is a sadly amusing bit at 11 minutes in explaining that Russia today has more political prisoners then the USSR ever did.
Why it matters that Lindsey Graham is abandoning the Dream Act
“The senator’s shift is emblematic of the fact there’s no point in Democrats making deals with the GOP on immigration.”
Cartoon: Dear Santa …
NBC News:
Associated Press:
NBC News:
Washington Post:
CNN: Trump orders ‘total and complete blockade’ of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving Venezuela
Blockade is a major act but not quite an act of war if it’s carefully limited to sanctioned tankers. He is also giving away that his interest is in getting oil more then the drug trade. If the drug trade was his actual interest he would avoid talking about seizing land in Venezuela.
I think the timing of the announcement is also interesting. This blockade was obviously in preparation for some time but the announcement seems rushed. Likely trying to drown out other news today.
Andy Lee Robinson’s newest updated versionof his powerful and poignant Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2025 series. 36 seconds.
Farron Cousins:
“Whoops! Trump Official Admits They Feed Trump Fake Numbers”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zwxYxNYgHVI
Russian Kilo-class submarine destroyed (video footage)
“Putin SHOCKED as Zelenskyy STRIKES BACK…INSIDE Russia!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=w9lOcvMQ8Yc
NBC News: Centrist Republicans revolt, signing a petition to force a vote on Obamacare funding
Even with the discharge petition there is little chance of it passing this year. There is too much vacation time, letting Johnson run out the clock if he wants. Even if it does pass in the House it still has to get past the Senate and Trump. It’s more a rebuke of Johnson and the Republican plan.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/gross-new-low-hayes-reacts-to-trump-s-rob-reiner-post-2476454979655
Video is 10:03 minutes.
The cost of Trump’s White House ballroom has doubled over the last five months
“In late July, the White House said the president’s vanity project would cost $200 million. Now, it’s $400 million.”
Link
Trump moves to dismantle major US climate research center in Colorado
Trump doesn’t care if people can’t afford heat
Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts:
Link
Video at the link.
Re: JM @474:
Ryan Goodman (Just Security):
Milan Markovic (Canadian law prof): “For those keeping track, the administration is engaging in arbitrary detentions and illegal renditions at home, extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean, and now two crimes of aggression (Iran, Venezuela).”
Wikipedia – Cuban Missile Crisis, Blockade
Antony Price, ultra-glam designer for Duran Duran, Bowie and Roxy Music, dies aged 80
Dang. Anyone who watched music videos back in the day will recall his creations.
And why are so many named “Price” associated with a gothic look? (Bowie was in The Hunger, and Vincent Price worked for Hammer Films)
.https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/dec/17/anthony-price-roxy-music-queen-camilla-mick-jagger-designer
Elizabeth Saunders (PoliSci prof): “Coercive diplomacy requires a threat AND a promise not to carry out the threat if the target complies.”
Nicholas Grossman (International relations prof):
Nicholas Slayton (Task&Purpose): “Exactly this. As bad faith as the threats to Iran this were they were about a real thing, the nuclear program. What Venezuela even capable of doing here?”
NPR – Francisco Monaldi (Latin oil economist)
Rando: “those assets were ExxonMobil’s and Conoco’s, not ‘ours’. But for Trump, he and the oil companies are one and the same.”
Pam Bondi Dismissed Charges Against a Surgeon Who Falsified Vaccine Cards. It Emboldened Others With Similar Cases.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune.
Reuters – Mapping US strikes against suspected drug boats (Dec 12)
HuffPo – Senator reaches damning conclusions after classified briefing
Some facts are emerging:
Link
Democrat wins Kentucky state Senate special election
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oklahoma-supreme-court-wont-let-ryan
“Oklahoma Supreme Court Won’t Let Ryan Walters Jesusify Social Studies Class After All”
“And there won’t be Bibles in every classroom, either.”
Reuters – Unprecedented errors are eroding the credibility of Trump’s DoJ
Brad Heath (Reuters): “All told, almost 13,000 people left jobs at the Justice Department between January and October. That’s about 50% more than left the department in all of 2024.”
Xenophobia and islamophobia among Republican primary voters
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E2A8K7hRr/
One third are OK with bombing a made-up country with an Arab-sounding name.
But they are OK with the president doing business with Saudi Arabia, the country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came from.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-finally-allows-jobs-report
“Trump Finally Allows Jobs Report After Shutdown. Nobody Gets Dolls Or Pencils For Christmas!”
“Tiny 64,000-jobs gain in November, after loss of 105,000 jobs in October.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/bongos-out-for-real-this-time
When Cruelty Finally Crosses the Line
.https://youtube.com/shorts/ssAFqQWq5Xw
On post-crash Wall Street safeguards, Trump admin. wants to turn back the clock
“Fifteen years after the Dodd-Frank Act became law, the White House wants to roll back the clock and reembrace the rules that existed before the 2008 crash.”
Senate passes defense bill that defies Trump and forces sharing of boat strike videos