Haven’t you heard? DJT has outlawed bad weather. No more blizzards. No more hurricanes. No more tornadoes. No more atmospheric rivers. They make him look bad. Similar to the way he has outlawed diseases and pandemics.
“C.I.A. Conducted Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela”
“The attack last week, on a dock purportedly used for shipping narcotics, did not kill anyone, people briefed on the operation said. But it was the first known U.S. operation inside Venezuela.”
The C.I.A. conducted a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela last week, according to people briefed on the operation, a development that suggests an aggressive new phase of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the Maduro government has begun.
The strike was on a dock where U.S. officials believe Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, was storing narcotics and potentially preparing to move the drugs onto boats, the people said.
No one was on the dock at the time, and no one was killed, they said. But the strike is the first known American operation inside Venezuela.
The details of the strike, which were reported earlier by CNN, fleshed out an attack that President Trump had already discussed openly, despite the secrecy that typically surrounds C.I.A. operations.
[…] The New York Times reported earlier this year that Mr. Trump had authorized C.I.A. operations in Venezuela and ordered them to plan for a variety of potential missions.
The C.I.A. regularly conducted drone strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere during the Obama administration. But the agency is not known to have conducted strikes recently, leaving operations to the U.S. military.
It is not clear if the drone used in the mission was owned by the C.I.A. or borrowed from the U.S. military. Military officials declined to comment on Monday. The Pentagon has stationed several MQ-9 Reaper drones, which carry Hellfire missiles, at bases in Puerto Rico as part of the pressure campaign.
Russia claimed that Ukraine targeted Putin’s private home with a drone attack. Ukraine strenuously denied it. Trump accepted Putin’s story as true anyway.
Related video at the link.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine were made even complex this week when Vladimir Putin alleged that his rural home had been targeted by a failed Ukrainian drone attack. Russia offered no evidence to substantiate the claims, and as The New York Times reported, Ukraine strenuously denied that such an operation took place:
Ukraine immediately denied any such attack, accusing the Kremlin of inventing a pretext to undermine the peace talks being orchestrated by the Trump administration. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who met with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Sunday to discuss a possible deal, called the Russian allegation a ‘complete fabrication.’
[…] Donald Trump, however, apparently accepted Putin’s claims at face value.
“I learned about it from President Putin today,” the American president told reporters. “I was very angry about it.”
Asked whether Putin’s claims had been verified by evidence collected by U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump initially replied: “Well, we’ll find out.”
Or put another way, the American president became “very angry” about claims, despite not knowing whether they were true or not.
In case that weren’t quite enough, moments later Trump told the reporter who asked the question, “I mean, you’re saying maybe the attack didn’t take place. It’s possible, too, I guess, but President Putin told me this morning it did.” [social media post, with video]
The comments reflected a simple truth that too often goes unmentioned: Trump simply trusts Putin. Trump has never explained why, but the Russian leader has the American president’s ear, and Trump appears eager to accept Putin’s claims at face value — despite everything he really ought to know about the former KGB agent’s record and obvious lack of credibility.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has consistently been critical of the White House’s weakness toward Moscow, wrote via social media, “President Trump and his team should get the facts first before assuming blame. Putin is a well-known boldface liar.”
The fact that Trump will likely ignore the retiring congressman’s good advice speaks volumes.
“As electricity costs climb, Trump could try to avoid blame for the problem. He prefers to push an alternate reality in which the problem doesn’t exist.”
Related video at the link.
[…] “Electricity is down. It’s way down,” Trump said. “You know, when the gasoline goes down and when the oil and oil and gas go down, the electricity comes down naturally. But it’s all coming down. It’s all coming down. It’s coming beautifully.” [Lies]
American consumers would surely be delighted if their president were telling the truth, but he’s not.
As the editorial board of The New York Times recently explained, “Electricity prices are almost 10 percent higher than they were a year earlier, according to the most recent numbers.” [!]
[…] the Times’ editors added that the Republican administration’s energy policies “are not helping — and will soon make matters worse.”
A new report in The Wall Street Journal pointed in the same direction.
Most Americans are paying more for electricity — and need to prepare their wallets for further pain ahead.
Data centers are getting much of the blame lately for rising power costs, but they aren’t the only catalyst and don’t always cause increases. The reasons our bills are rising are complex and varied. Hurricanes, wildfires, state renewable-energy plans and the replacement of aging or damaged grid equipment are all playing a role.
[…] “We intend to slash prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months,” Trump said in August 2024. He went on to claim, “We’re looking to cut them in half, and we think we’ll be able to do better. … You will never have had energy so low as you will under a certain gentleman known as Donald J. Trump. Have you heard of him? So we think your energy bills will be down by 50% to 70%. How good would that be?”
[…] the president has failed spectacularly to deliver on his promise.
The curious thing about these developments is that Trump could plausibly explain why rising electricity prices are not entirely his fault. But instead of making the case to the public on why he doesn’t bear full responsibility for the problem, the president has decided to manufacture an alternate reality in which the problem doesn’t exist, and electricity costs are “way down.”
That the president is the nation’s most prolific liar is nothing new, but I continue to believe 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 electricity prices are “coming down … beautifully,” no one needs a fact-checker; they just need a bill from their local power company.
“Tenet Media’s Lauren Chen is back—even though the illegal-influence and money-laundering investigation remains open.”
[…] Lauren Chen left the United States in July in disgrace. Her Tenet Media YouTube channel, which positioned itself as a sort of MAGA supergroup bringing together such popular commentators as Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin, had been exposed in 2024 by the FBI as a Russian media front illicitly taking money from pro-Putin propaganda outlet RT.
[…] In the wake of the indictment, Chen lost her work visa and was forced to leave the country. She also vanished from social media. It seemed unlikely she would return to the United States anytime soon.
But this holiday season, Chen and her husband were back in Nashville, where she lived while running Tenet. She broke the news herself, by announcing on Instagram and X on Christmas Day that she could now return to the United States, and specifically thanking the State Department’s Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser on consular affairs and former Trump presidential campaign worker, for his help.
[…] Chen also thanked Customs and Border Patrol, the FBI, and “the administration” broadly.
[…] Rittenhouse does appear to be a fan of right-wing media. In August, he posted a picture with his feet up on a desk in what appeared to be a government office building, watching a video from right-wing British YouTuber “Sargon of Akkad.”
[…] the administration has not shied away from throwing bones to right wing media figures—prioritizing them at White House functions and elevating them at the briefings. As for Russian interests, the president has long been outwardly comfortable associating with them.
[…] According to court records, the federal case against Tenet’s funders is still open. But with the Russian operators who allegedly facilitated the money-laundering scheme still at large, the investigation hasn’t gone anywhere in the year since the indictments were filed.
The right-wing commentators who posted on Tenet have maintained their innocence about the nature of the operation, with Johnson, Rubin, and Pool all claiming that they were “victims” of Chen’s company—duped, as it were, by the Russian government into taking tens of thousands of dollars for making a single YouTube video.
[…] The one person who did face some fallout was Chen, whose visa situation with the American government was dire. This past September, she complained that the Biden administration had “nuked my visa” after Tenet’s funding was exposed. […]
The Trump administration’s intervention on Chen’s behalf comes as it has moved to dramatically restrict visa rules more broadly—even denying visas to activists opposed to disinformation. […]
Imagine a nation, a major world power, where people are being persecuted, erased, snatched off the street and dumped in faraway countries to which they have no connection, because the nation is run by bigoted nationalists who are led by a dementia-addled ball of shrieking, hot rage. Where open corruption flourishes at the highest levels of a government stocked soup to nuts with some of the most feral, vicious, incompetent dipwads that nation has ever produced
And yet you are stuck pretending those are the good guys, because the bad guys have spent almost four years bombing your nation to smithereens while displacing and murdering hundreds of thousands of your citizens, and you need the dipwads’ help to get them to stop.
Such is the plight of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president came to Florida this weekend, to Donald Trump’s bargain-basement Xanadu that he thinks is on par with the greatest buildings ever created by Western civilization, to present a 20-point peace plan for ending Russia’s invasion of his country. This was a counter to the 28-point plan that the US floated a few weeks ago that read as if it had been dictated by Vladimir Putin himself. Which it probably was.
Remember back in August, when Trump flew to Alaska to meet Putin, going so far as to have a red carpet rolled out when Putin deplaned so that his fancy-soled shoes would not have to suffer the indignity of touching an airport tarmac? The two leaders met on that carpet and shook hands while grinning broadly, Trump because there is nothing he admires more than a ruthless dictator he can suck up to, Putin because Donald Trump is such a sucker.
There was none of that for Zelenskyy. There was not a single American official waiting on the tarmac to greet him, just Ukraine’s ambassador and some other personnel. Trump could not be bothered, even though the Miami airport is slightly closer to Mar-a-Lago than Alaska. This struck us as quite the diplomatic snub, one that sent a message that very clearly told the Ukrainians who America finds important and worth listening to here. […]
“How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump”
“Customer service deteriorated by key measures as the agency enacted sweeping cuts in Trump’s second term, internal data and interviews show.”
The Social Security Administration — the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans — began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover.
It ends the year in turmoil. A diminished workforce has struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices — record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents and dozens of interviews.
Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath.
Exaggerated claims of fraud, for example, have led to new roadblocks for elderly beneficiaries, disabled people and legal immigrants, who are now required to complete some transactions in person or online rather than by phone. Even so, the number of calls to the agency for the year hit 93 million as of late September — a six-year high, data shows.
The troubled disability benefits system is also deteriorating after some improvement, with 66 percent of disability appointments scheduled within 28 days as of December — down from nearly 90 percent earlier in the year, data shows. [Graph]
[…] Commissioner Frank Bisignano has authorized millions of dollars in overtime pay to employees in a race to clear the bottlenecks, which worsened dramatically after nearly 7,000 employees — 12 percent of the workforce — were squeezed out early in the year. The agency said it has made improvements: It reduced the processing center backlog by 1 million cases this fall, cut pending disability claims by a third and kept the website live 24/7 after a series of outages earlier this year.
The current crisis follows years of disinvestment by Congress […]
This account of the crisis at Social Security is based on internal documents and interviews with 41 current and former employees, advocates and customers, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about their concerns.
[…] The table was set in February by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which installed a loyal, mid-level data analyst with no management experience to lead the $15.4 billion agency.
[…] Regional offices abruptly disappeared in a rushed reorganization. New policies to fight fraud were rolled out only to be canceled or changed, prompting confused customers to jam the phones and the website, which crashed repeatedly. Daily operations in some respects became an endless game of whack-a-mole as employees were pulled from one department to another.
Along the way, Social Security also became ground zero in the administration’s quest to gather Americans’ personal data — largely in service of its mass deportation campaign. […]
Much more at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
A Different Bias
“The truth about Putin’s Belarus nuclear gambit”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DqIr1FF9nK0
I am picturing Russians placing an old tactical nuke on a trebuchet. Because Russian military tech is rusting away.
NASA is sending four astronauts on a ten-day journey making an U-turn behind the moon. This is less ambitious than the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and closely mimic the Soviet Zond missions.
The Soviets were planning to send two cosmonauts around the moon about the same time as Apollo 8, but decided it would look too unimpressive after NASA beat them.
mizzisays
@birgerjohansson
Thank you for those interesting science links, especially the Mouseheimer one.
“We’re going to probably bring a lawsuit against him,” the president said, referring to an unlikely civil suit against the Federal Reserve chairman.
Related video at the link.
[…] The president has pressed the Fed chair to lower interest rates with heavy-handed tactics, and the more Powell ignored him, the greater the fury from the Oval Office.
Indeed, the president has resorted to juvenile taunts and name-calling, publicly condemning Powell as, among many other things, a “moron” for failing to follow the White House’s misguided demands.
But Trump apparently still has another tactic in mind that he hasn’t yet pursued. The Washington Post reported:
President Donald Trump on Monday said he might sue Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell for what the president called ‘gross incompetence,’ injecting new tension into the already strained relationship between the White House and the independent central bank.
[…] As part of the same exchange, Trump said he hadn’t ruled out trying to fire the Fed chair he personally chose for the job, overlooking the inconvenient fact that he doesn’t have the authority to do so, and he publicly vowed not to after markets fell in response to related rhetoric in April.
But putting that aside, it’s important to emphasize that the White House, as part of an apparent intimidation campaign, has been making related threats for months. In August, Trump wrote online that he was “considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed,” and press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted he was serious about this.
Like many of the president’s other threats, nothing came of this. And though Trump apparently hasn’t given up on the idea, it’s unlikely that he’ll follow through.
What’s more, there’s no reason to assume that such a civil suit would even be possible. “It wasn’t clear what specific claims Trump was referring to Monday, or how or when a suit could be brought,” the Post’s report added.
But I’m also curious about the implications of such an effort. If litigants can file civil suits against government officials over perceived “gross incompetence,” wouldn’t that lead to an avalanche of such cases?
Given Team Trump’s brazen and routine incompetence, it isn’t difficult to imagine the president and administration officials facing a whole lot of lawsuits along these lines if he were to open such a door.
A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia reveals that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the United States. [!]
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Tennessee to charges of human smuggling. He is seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive—a way for the Trump administration to punish him for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.
To support that argument, he has asked the government to turn over documents that reveal how the decision was made to prosecute him in 2025 for an incident that occurred in 2022. On Dec. 3, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw filed an order under seal that compelled the government to provide some documents to Abrego Garcia and his attorneys. That order was unsealed on Tuesday and sheds new light on the case.
Earlier, Crenshaw found that there was “some evidence” that the prosecution of Abrego Garcia could be vindictive. He specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a Fox News program that seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful deportation case.
Rob McGuire, who was the acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee until late December, argued that those statements were irrelevant because he alone made the decision to prosecute, and he has no animus against Abrego Garcia.
In the newly unsealed order, Crenshaw writes, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.” [1]
[…] The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee where Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the car, and state troopers discussed the possibility of human smuggling among themselves. However, he was ultimately allowed to leave with only a warning. The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, but there is no record of any effort to charge him until April 2025, according to court records. [!]
The order does not give a lot of detail on what is in the documents that were turned over to Abrego Garcia, but it shows that Aakash Singh, who works under Blanche in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, contacted McGuire about Abrego Garcia’s case on April 27, the same day that McGuire received a file on the case from Homeland Security Investigations. That was several days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor on April 10.
On April 30, Singh said in an email to McGuire that the prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, according to the order. Singh and McGuire continued to communicate about the prosecution. On May 15, McGuire emailed his staff that Blanche “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later, [!]” Crenshaw writes.
On May 18, Singh wrote to McGuire and others to hold the draft indictment until they got “clearance” to file it.
“The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” Crenshaw writes.
A hearing on the motion to dismiss the case on the basis of vindictive prosecution is scheduled for Jan. 28.
[…] Trump has repeatedly promoted conspiracies and smears posted online by a parody account that encourages followers to rate press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s butt.
The account, @WHLeavitt, pretends to be Leavitt asking followers to share their thoughts.
“What do you think of my backside? Watch the video—it’s featured in the final 3 seconds,” one post said, alongside a video of Leavitt traveling with Trump and Elon Musk.
Despite the ridiculously sexist content—or perhaps because of it—Trump himself has promoted it on his own social media feed. [I snipped examples that included promoting “restitution” for Rudy Giuliani; and examples showing Trump sharing racist smears like ““75% of Somalis in Minnesota are on WELFARE.” ]
[…] What makes Trump’s amplification of the account even more odd is that data from X reveals that it’s based in Taiwan and has only been active since November 2024, making it just one more pro-MAGA account promoting disinformation from overseas.
It’s unclear if Trump realizes that the account is fake or if he truly believes that it’s the official account of his press secretary, especially considering that he’s demonstrated signs of cognitive decline over the last few years.
[…] The account’s content is consistent with Trump’s sexist objectification of Leavitt, who announced a few days ago that she’s pregnant with her second child
“She gets up there with that beautiful face and those lips that don’t stop,” Trump said to reporters in early December. [Ick]
Leavitt has spent her time in the White House pushing obvious lies and bigoted falsehoods in service of Trump.
[…] the account is fake [however,] the sentiment is in line with the Trump team’s past actions.
Right before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy headed to the US for talks with Trump, Russia held a meeting with its General Staff leadership on 27 December.
During the meeting, General Valery Gerasimov and Russian military commanders made a series of hyperbolic claims about Russian successes, including the alleged complete capture of certain cities in Donetsk and Huliaipole settlement in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. However, this information was not true.
ISW estimates that in 2025, Russian troops advanced an average of 14.4 square kilometers per day. This means that capturing Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts at the same pace would take about 1,190 days, until 1 April 2029.
Analysts emphasize that this calculation does not account for crossings over the Dnipro River, water obstacles, or large cities like Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. […]
“As Russia’s war grinds on, its society is fraying”
“The Kremlin presents the country as strong, united and on an inevitable path to victory, but as peace negotiations drag on, Russian society is deteriorating.”
The bus from the front lines ground to a halt outside the roadside kitchen, and the soldiers on board limped out into the winter mud. [I snipped details of wounds.]
“I would never have signed a contract if I’d known what it’s like out there. Our television is lying to us,” said Fyodor, a young soldier from Siberia. Like others in this article, The Washington Post is not identifying him by his full name to protect him from any repercussions for criticizing the war. [rare video showing wounded Russian soldiers]
[…] “We’re fighting for fields that we cannot even take,” interjected a fellow soldier, Kirill, also in his 20s, laughing wryly. “This war will never end. … It feels like it’s only just begun.”
Scenes like this one remain invisible to most Russians, erased by state propaganda and glossy government projects supporting returning veterans. But inside the country, fatigue and resentment are festering beneath the suppression of dissent.
[…] a nearly four-year-long war is corroding the country from within and making society more dysfunctional, broken and paranoid, according to observers and those interviewed for this article.
Over the past year, the Russian economy has lurched from spectacular growth to near stagnation. Russia’s digital repression and isolation are deepening as more apps and platforms are banned. According to Western intelligence, more than a million Russian fighters have been killed or wounded — many in battles for marginal gains. And as Moscow’s search for internal enemies intensifies, its machine of repression is turning on its own children and patriots.
[…] A former senior Kremlin official told The Post that he was “very worried” about the “dark picture inside Russia.”
“We can’t turn the clock back easily; political will is needed to reverse this, and it simply does not exist,” the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss sensitive matters. [map]
In Belgorod, a Russian border city that once enjoyed close links to Ukraine’s Kharkiv — just 46 miles to the southwest — the price of this war is particularly tangible.
Daily drone attacks have long become part of the routine here. Mud-spattered ambulances and camouflaged air-defense units tear through the center of town. The city’s volunteer networks — an integral part of the war effort that has supported the troops with clothing, food and equipment where the government has failed — continue to work around-the-clock, with retirees sewing anti-drone netting and 3D-printing plastic bomb casings for drones.
[…] On a cold November afternoon, a group of volunteers helping deliver supplies to the army huddled around a table to eat soup. They told The Post that they felt abandoned by Moscow.
“They have absolutely no idea what is going on here!” exploded Edik, 52. “In Moscow there are parties, people having fun, going on vacations. How is that possible? Here blood is being spilled, and there they’re celebrating. How can they reconcile that?”
[…] Yevgenia Gribova, 35, who coordinates a center in Belgorod, said the volunteer movement is facing a crisis. In the first year, she said, people were spending the last of their rubles to support the troops, working constantly, without days off or vacation.
“Now people want to rest. They want to spend money on themselves rather than on materials for the front lines,” she said.
[…] “Everyone still wants to take Odesa. It’s a common opinion: People want to go to Odesa on vacation again,” Gribova said. “For us, this is a civil war between Russians and Russians who have forgotten a bit that they are Russians, that’s all.”
Belgorod and residents of Russia’s regions bordering Ukraine form part of what pro-Kremlin sociologist Valery Fyodorov, the director of VCIOM polling institution, has defined as “warring Russia”: a minority of the country — roughly 20 percent — consisting of soldiers, their families, patriotic volunteers and workers in military factories who consider the war vital for Russia’s survival and who are pushing for victory. The rest, he says, are either passively loyal, indifferent to the war, opposed to it but taking refuge in their private lives, or living in exile. […]
Veterans also have access to round-the-clock support from psychologists, doctors, caregivers and volunteers; they are given tax breaks and secure employment, even with disabilities. Belgorod’s program is even offering veterans free land on which to build a house.
Middlebury College professor Will Pyle, who studies Russia’s economy, has found that in some regions a larger share of Russians report being satisfied with their lives than at any time during the decade preceding the February 2022 invasion. The finding is based on analysis of data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which is maintained by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
According to Pyle’s research, conducted with the Bank of Finland, the increase in reported life satisfaction is especially pronounced in regions whose economies have benefited from wartime and military-adjacent industrial production.
This mirrors Fyodorov’s research. “The more depressed the region, the more people have noticed their improvement in life,” he said.
But underneath the lionizing of the soldiers and this temporary uptick in prosperity is the darker impact of returning veterans and the longer-term social consequences of the invasion. Already, horrific murders, rapes and crimes have been committed by returning soldiers, and many of the convicted criminals who signed contracts to win their freedom have returned home to commit more crimes.
“Every governor in Russia knows that a wave of problems is coming with the soldiers returning home from the front with serious post-traumatic stress disorder,” said a Kremlin insider […]
The vocal, ultrapatriotic “Z” military bloggers, initially a backbone of support for Putin’s invasion, have gone on to criticize corruption and shortcomings in the army. The most radical of their leaders, such as ultranationalist hawk Igor Strelkov, were initially jailed. But this fall, they saw their ranks swept by an unexpected purge as the whole movement became the focus of repression.
In September, authorities branded Roman Alyokhin, a prominent blogger with 151,000 subscribers on Telegram, a foreign agent, a label usually reserved for liberal opposition figures. In October, blogger Tatyana Montyan was declared a “terrorist and extremist.” Another, Oksana Kobeleva, was detained by the police. All had publicly criticized senior officials or other propagandists. The Z community has since turned on itself, with bloggers racing to denounce one another.
“The moment of unity did not last very long, and after almost four years, we are seeing how people begin to oppose each other as well, deciding which of them is more patriotic,” said military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the Rybar Telegram channel, which has links to the Defense Ministry.
[…] In Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg, security services have found a different target: teenagers.
At the Izmailsky courthouse last month, masked police officers escorted two teenage musicians from their hearing to the secret service cars waiting outside. The pair, 18-year-olds Diana Loginova and Alexander Orlov — from the street band Stoptime — had just had their arrest extended for a third time. Orlov, the guitarist, fist-bumped one of his friends as he exited the courthouse. Officially, they stood accused of blocking the entrance to a metro station during an impromptu street concert this autumn, but their true crime was their viral performances of anti-war songs.
[…] the young musicians’ case sent a chill through this still-liberal Baltic city, where street performances are an integral part of local culture. [I snipped details recounting arrests of other teenagers and musicians in general.]
China fired rockets, massed assault ships and flew bombers around Taiwan on Tuesday, simulating a military blockade in an apparent warning to the United States against supporting the Beijing-claimed island. The second day of the large-scale war games, called ‘Justice Mission 2025,’ saw the Chinese military encircle Taiwan in its biggest such exercise in eight months.
The U.S. military said Monday that it had conducted another strike against a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people. The strike, which was announced by U.S. Southern Command on social media, has brought the total number of known boat strikes to 30 and the number of people killed at least 107 since early September, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
The Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs at the nation’s capital on Jan. 5, 2021, is requesting a conditional release from jail as his attorney cites his autism diagnosis.
Federal prosecutors allege that Brian Cole, 30, is the man who planted explosive devices at the Republican and Democratic national party headquarters the night before rioters swarmed the Capitol. He has been in custody since he was arrested Dec. 4, when he was charged with transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials.
Cole has not yet entered a plea.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh declined to rule on whether Cole would be released Tuesday, telling both parties there were “important arguments under consideration.” Neither Cole nor the several members of his family at the hearing reacted to Sharbaugh’s announcement.
Cole, wearing a khaki jumpsuit, spent much of the hearing sitting quietly and attentively as the parties argued, occasionally adjusting his glasses or fidgeting slightly in his chair. His attention was on the judge throughout the proceedings.
In a federal court filing Tuesday morning, Cole’s attorneys said he has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The filing described his diagnosis as a mild form of autism.
[…] Cole has kept the same job with his family’s bail bonds business over several years and hasn’t moved or tried to flee, his attorneys said.
“The government argues that Mr. Cole spent nearly five years trying to evade detection,” the filing said. “Not true: Mr. Cole lived with his parents the entire time, never moved, and followed his same routine daily.”
In a motion filed Sunday, the government alleged that Cole wore a mask and gloves the night he planted the bombs and that he wiped down the bombs with disinfectant. The government said Cole also performed factory resets of his phone more than 900 times from December 2020 to the day he was arrested.
Federal prosecutors have urged a judge to keep Cole in detention, alleging that Cole felt “extreme acts of violence” were justified because of his dislike of both political parties. The motion said the man told FBI agents that “something just snapped” after he had watched “everything getting worse.”
He directed his ire at the Democratic and Republican parties because “they were in charge,” Cole told agents, according to the government filing.
NBC News previously reported, based on sources familiar with the matter, Cole confessed to having planted the pipe bombs in an interview with FBI agents and that he believed in conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Prosecutors confirmed in the filing Sunday that Cole told agents he thought it looked like “something was wrong” with the election and that Trump supporters who believed the election was being “tampered with” shouldn’t be called “conspiracy theorists,” “bad people,” “Nazis,” or “fascists.”
He is alleged to have told agents that he didn’t align politically with his family members and that he didn’t tell them he was “going to a protest in support of [then President] Trump.” […]
An acclaimed jazz group has canceled two New Year’s Eve concerts at the Kennedy Center, joining a growing list of artists who have scrapped plans to perform at the famed arts institution since President Donald Trump’s handpicked board of directors voted to add Trump’s name to the center.
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot lapse, a blow to the Trump administration, which had declared the agency’s cash stream illegal. In her motion, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington wrote that the C.F.P.B. could continue to receive funding from the Federal Reserve even though the Fed had been operating at a loss since 2022.
President Trump just said that no hostages were released from Gaza during the Biden administration. That’s not true. In the 2023 cease-fire, 105 hostages were released.
President-elect Trump initially balked at submitting names of likely nominees to the FBI for background checks, a basic step intended to flag possible financial conflicts or ethical problems.
Justice officials felt sure Homan would not be able to obtain a security clearance based on the evidence gathered in the corruption probe, which they and FBI agents believed had shown Homan unsuitable for a trusted senior role in government service, according to the sources. It remains unclear how Homan was eventually granted a security clearance, or whom Bove alerted after being briefed on the Homan probe.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson declined to answer MS NOW’s questions about the Trump transition official being briefed on the Homan probe and how Homan was able to obtain his clearance, but accused MS NOW of seeking to “resurrect a story that has already been thoroughly debunked.”
White House spiked the investigation into Homan and it isn’t clear if he had any background check at all. Trump had already picked Homan and the transition team knew their role was to figure out how to get Homan thru the process, not to determine if he should have the job.
Militant Agnosticsays
A great Red Blues performance by Blue Moon Marquee and Northern Cree
retaliation against Colorado for keeping his ally Tina Peters in prison. Peters was convicted on state charges for a scheme to tamper with voting systems in a search for election rigging in the 2020 presidential race. The pipeline is in Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district. Boebert recently stood up to the Trump administration to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
[…]
Trump is killing the bill to finish […] a decades-long project to bring safe drinking water to 39 communities on the Eastern Plains between Pueblo and Lamar. The groundwater there is high in salt, and wells sometimes unleash radioactivity into the water supply.
[…] there could be wide margins to overturn his veto if Republican leaders in the House and Senate allow an override vote. It’s rare for presidential vetoes to be overridden by Congress, but also rare for a president to veto a bipartisan, unanimous bill as he promises retaliation against a specific state.
Rando: “Let’s see if congress has any spine at all.”
whheydtsays
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #32…
At least in the House, it looks like a good place to use a discharge petition.
birgerjohanssonsays
British Christmas TV Special covers an Illegal Swedish tradition
Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Trump, warning against his “gaslighting” about rising bills and the state of the economy. Charlie Dent and Tara Setmayer join Jason Johnson to discuss.
Team Trump ensured Tom Homan skipped normal background check amid bribery probe. [as noted by JM in comment 28] Exclusive reporting from MS Now’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian reveals that during Donald Trump’s transition to power, his people knew Tom Homan was accused of serious political corruption—and they hired him anyway.
The Trump administration is planning to spend a reported $100 million in taxpayer funds to recruit people to execute Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda at ICE, and much of that money will be spent on bigoted right-wing media outlets.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that an internal ICE memo refers to a “wartime recruitment” strategy meant to bring in new recruits to act as mass deportation foot soldiers.
The strategy calls for spending money on platforms like Rumble, one of the right’s favorite video platforms.
Rumble is notorious for being a venue where racist and antisemitic content is allowed to thrive and spread. Notorious conservative podcasters like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and white supremacist Nick Fuentes are among the most well-known content creators on Rumble. Under the administration’s plans, these programs could now be flush with money from Americans they discriminate against.
The ICE document also references plans to spend advertising dollars with right-wing influencers and on venues with pro-gun content. [!] At full implementation, the plan would involve a significant transfer of money from the public to the conservative media ecosystem.
ICE’s marketing materials also reinforce a right-wing and bigoted worldview. They refer to migrants as a “flood” to be destroyed, “enemies” at the gates, and call on potential recruits to “defend the homeland.”
These messages are consistent with dehumanizing language that Trump and other Republicans have used about migrants, which extremists have then regurgitated. In fact, this language has been employed by more than one mass shooter who sought to prevent migration via murder.
Under Trump, ICE has faced considerable recruitment problems as the population hoping to be affiliated with his racist mass deportation scheme is smaller than expected. Despite millions spent to attract recruits, the administration has had to lower job requirements and cut training time in hopes of bringing in people willing to be on the front lines of a racist operation. […]
Democrats have made it clear that they intend to catalogue and document abuses committed by ICE operatives, who could face severe consequences down the line.
The risk of responding to one of the administration’s ads on a right-wing disinformation outlet may just not be worth it in the long run—even for Trump’s most fervent racists.
Happy GET THE FUCK OUT 2025 Day to all who celebrate! That’s you, and you, and definitely YOU! […]
The worst part of 2025 might have been the ICE and National Guard invasions of our best cities. It might have been slow-walking into a war against … dudes in Venezuelan fishing boats? But I think the worst part of 2025 happened right at the beginning: just knowing it all was coming, in various flavors of degeneracy that we wouldn’t be able to foresee until they hit us in the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Trump going War of 1812 on his own White House wasn’t the very worst — nobody got hurt, that we know of, no US citizens were put in Brett Kavanaugh’s ICE jail by Trump blowing up the East Wing up like the aliens in Independence Day — but it still managed to shock me breathless. Similarly, putting his own stupid name on the goddamn Kennedy Center, or putting up those fucking plaques about Barack Divisive Hussein Obama and Joe the Autopen in the “presidential hall of fame,” didn’t hurt anything but our own dignity.
But they were a hell of a blow to that.
The ICE stuff we saw coming — except, somehow, the people who voted for the man promising MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW while married to actual immigrants. The hideously corrupt and contemptible Cabinet […] It still hurt though when the Senate agreed to make RFK Jr. secretary of polio. […]
We expected Joe Biden’s hard-earned economy — an actual decrease in income inequality for probably the first time in “America,” hot-shit employment numbers, actual wage growth — to be shat upon immediately, and for Trump to steal everything that wasn’t nailed down. But we didn’t see “kill USAID” coming. Surprise!
Nobody expected the Venezuelan Inquisition.
[…] This November, Democrats will likely win at least the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, perhaps helped along by Trump’s insistence on dummymandering all the red states. That will help mostly for reasons of morale, because “being constrained by laws or Congress” certainly didn’t stop Trump and his cretins from doing a single evil thing they ever put their minds to. But it’s still something to look forward to!
[…] We can take solace in knowing not just that we are good people, but that there are others like us, and we’re all right here. People we love will marry; people we love will have babies; people we love will keep right on living. And when they or we shuffle off to Buffalo (I mean die), they or we will be actually mourned, loved, and missed, and our good lives lived celebrated. Despite these utter shitheads being temporarily in power, most people loathe them […]
Rachel Maddow took last night off from her show so this shit’s gonna be short. Those are the rules, just made ‘em up. (They ran a special on MS NOW about her new Burn Order podcast in its place, though. If you haven’t heard, it’s about that thing when the US government put Japanese immigrants in concentration camps during World War II — very relevant now! — and you should find that special and watch it, and also listen to the podcast.)
Anyway, a few tabs!
Behold, the story of Donald Trump telling some rando on the radio that we bombed ground targets in Venezuela, and nobody knows if it’s true, or a lie, or a dementia, or a confused, or somehow all of these things? [Washington Post / The Handbasket] [embedded links available at the main link]
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social
It’s a good commentary on 2025 that the US President announces a major military attack on a foreign country and even the straightest arrows think, 50% chance it’s an attack, 50% chance president is on another cognition bender.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Vladimir Putin is a total fucking liar with his crybaby bullshit about waaaaaah Ukraine tried to drone my house. Of course, because Donald Trump is both incredibly stupid AND ALSO Putin’s incredibly stupid [B-word], he believes Putin. [Guardian / Daily Beast]
Wanna read that Marge Taylor Greene profile in the New York Times? Well then you can. She has some interesting things to say, like what Trump said to her when she threatened to identify some of the named Epstein victims Epstein had named for her. [New York Times]
Pam Bondi says all the biggest MAGA [people] in Donald Trump’s Nazi Gestapo government are doing a big investigation into CONSPIRACYYYYYYY against Dear Leader. [… Behold this sentence: “As part of the probe, a grand jury is set to convene in Fort Pierce, Florida in mid-January. Currently, Aileen Cannon [!] is the sole federal judge at the U.S. courthouse in Fort Pierce.” [Democracy Docket]
This Chicago Trib Sunday feature on how Chicago fought back and beat the ICE losers out of their fucking town is excellent, you should read it. [Chicago Tribune]
You also need to read this Carole Cadwalladr on the Trump regime attacks on the very people who exist to counter Russian disinformation, how they’re revoking visas, banning Europeans who do this work from entering the US, and basically just doing everything they can to intimidate the free world […] [How To Survive The Broligarchy]
Meanwhile, hey guess what, we’re giving visas to Kremlin propaganda spreaders now. Remember Lauren Chen? Is this news blurb related to the last news blurb? We feel like it is! [Bulwark]
[…] Beyoncé is a billionaire now […] [Forbes]
How are musical acts responding to […] Kennedy Center Director Ric Grenell’s threat to sue the jazz musician who canceled his Christmas Eve performance in response to Donald Trump pooping his name onto the side of the building next to the name of a real American? By canceling their own performances, because […] not a goddamned single self-respecting person, much less an artist with actual talent, wants to be associated with that. [New York Times]
This will confirm the disgust and anger PZ and all of us have for the destruction of science by the magat admin: https://digbysblog.net/2025/12/30/heartbreakingly-shortsighted/
Since the beginning of 2025, “all, or nearly all, federal agencies that supported research in some way have decreased the size of their research footprint,” Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist who has been tracking the federal funding cuts to science, told me. Less funding means less science can be done and fewer discoveries will be made.
“EXCLUSIVE: Kennedy Center changed board rules months before vote to add Trump’s name”
The new rules say only trustees appointed by the president can vote, barring other members, including Democrats who hold seats, from decisions. […]”
The Kennedy Center adopted bylaws earlier this year that limited voting to presidentially appointed trustees, a move that preceded a unanimous decision this month by board members installed by President Donald Trump to add his name to the center. [Fuckery, skullduggery, malfeasance]
The current bylaws, obtained by The Washington Post, were revised in May to specify that board members designated by Congress — known as ex officio members — could not vote or count toward a quorum. Legal experts say the move may conflict with the institution’s charter.
Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February, purging its board of members he had not appointed. The months that followed saw struggling ticket sales and programming changes that began to align the arts complex with the Trump administration’s broader cultural aims, culminating with the annual Kennedy Center Honors hosted by the president.
Days later, on Dec. 18, the board voted to add the president’s name to the institution, and within 24 hours it was on the website and the building itself: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
[…] Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations, told The Post that ex officio members have never voted.
[…] The Kennedy Center lists 34 presidentially appointed board members, including Trump himself as chair, and 23 ex officio seats. The center’s president, Richard Grenell, is also an officer of the board.
The federal law that established the Kennedy Center designates specific government and federal positions — including the librarian of Congress; the mayor of Washington, D.C.; the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate — to serve as ex officio members.
The law identifies them as part of the board of trustees, which it directs to maintain and administer the facility as a living memorial. But it does not distinguish between voting and nonvoting members […]
The center’s original bylaws didn’t distinguish voting powers, either. […] its most recent tax filings list 59 “voting members” of its governing body — a total that includes both general and ex officio members. [!]
A former Kennedy Center staffer with knowledge of board proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, told The Post that ex officio members were “always included in debate and discussion” during their tenure, but the person did not recall a time when those members’ votes were counted.
“Theoretically they could vote, but our practice was not to have them vote or count toward quorum,” the person said, noting they were not aware of the new leadership’s practices at the center.
[…] Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) told The Post that he became an ex officio member this year after he became the lead Democrat on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works — another ex officio seat designated by Congress — but was not invited to board meetings until his committee began investigating the Kennedy Center last month.
Whitehouse said the statute “makes no distinction between ex officio and presidentially appointed Trustees when it comes to members’ rights and responsibilities on the board, including voting,” and he accused the Trump-appointed board of attempting to “illegally change the bylaws to silence dissent.” [I snipped other responses from ex officio members, some of whom acknowledged confusion about voting procedures.]
[…] Other changes from the May revision state that the general trustees “serve at the pleasure of the President.” (Previously, that language appeared in the bylaws and the federal statute only in reference to the Advisory Committee on the Arts, a separate body that makes recommendations to the board.)
[I snipped details recounting a lawsuit filed by ex officio member, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who was muted when she attempted to speak out during the Dec. 18 vote. I also snipped details of Democratic Party legislation planned to “reverse” the addition of Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center.]
[…] Roger Colinvaux, a law professor at Catholic University, said his read of the statue establishing the center was “not quite as demonstrative” as Beatty’s, but “I’d argue that the statute does not differentiate among types of trustees in terms of powers and obligations, which would include voting.” […]
birgerjohanssonsays
GOP gets WIPED OUT in Shock Election Loss In IOWA!!
“EXCLUSIVE: Future of D.C. golf courses uncertain as Trump administration terminates lease”
“National Links Trust, the nonprofit that has run the courses since 2020, objects to Interior Department’s assertion that it hasn’t fulfilled its obligations.”
The Trump administration terminated the lease agreement governing Washington’s three public golf courses, a move that throws the future of municipal golf in the District into uncertainty and clears a path for the president to put his imprint on one of the region’s most prominent public courses.
The Interior Department issued the termination letter Tuesday, formally severing ties with the nonprofit National Links Trust, which has managed Langston Golf Course, Rock Creek Park Golf and East Potomac Golf Links — all public courses on federal land — under a lease agreement since 2020. In the letter, Interior officials said the decision was based on what they described as National Links Trust’s failure to complete required capital improvements and to provide a satisfactory plan to cure alleged defaults under the lease.
In a statement Wednesday, National Links Trust officials said they are “fundamentally in disagreement with the administration’s characterization” and “devastated” by the decision. National Links Trust has agreed to continue operating the courses in the short term, though its renovation project at Rock Creek Park has been suspended.
National Links Trust co-founder Michael McCartin said the organization opted to remain in place temporarily rather than walk away from the courses, which could have forced an abrupt shutdown and deepened uncertainty for workers and golfers.
[…] McCartin said National Links Trust has complied with terms of its lease and that the nonprofit is exploring its legal options. National Links Trust signed the 50-year agreement with the National Park Service in October 2020 to operate and renovate the courses, taking over from a private contractor that ran the properties on a day-to-day basis but had no ambitious plans for capital improvements.
The move marks an extraordinary federal intervention into the management of District recreational assets and reflects a broader push by […] Trump to remake high-profile civic spaces in the nation’s capital, from the Kennedy Center to the White House grounds, while expanding the federal government’s role in policing the city. [Yep. Unfortunately true.]
The termination process has been led by the Interior Department rather than the National Park Service, the agency that signed the original lease. In the termination letter, Interior officials asserted that National Links Trust failed to complete major renovation projects at all three courses […]
National Links Trust officials say there were no specific issues outlined in the Oct. 29 notice — a two-sentence letter [!] with few details — and defended the work done at all three courses, which they say has included more than $8.5 million in capital improvements. They also pointed to language in the lease that states that “timeframes are general and subject to change due to compliance timeframes or other circumstances.” In a statement, the officials said that National Links Trust has “had a productive and cooperative working relationship with the National Park Service and have worked hand in hand on all aspects of our golf course operations and development projects.”
[…] In the termination notice, the Interior Department also said National Links Trust owes the government as much as $8.8 million in unpaid rent. National Links Trust officials dispute this assertion, saying that the lease allows rent to be offset by course improvements and that the rent offsets were approved by the National Park Service. [Trump is going after the money as well!]
[…] National Links Trust has partnered with several high-profile course designers and has undertaken extensive work at all three properties. Last month, the nonprofit closed the Rock Creek Park course — one of the country’s oldest public courses and a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places — to begin a major renovation that includes a new maintenance facility, a modern clubhouse, a driving range and a putting course.
“After five years spent navigating the complex Federal permitting processes, this development is extremely disappointing for all who have supported the project,” National Links Trust said in its statement.
[…] According to people with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, Trump’s team has held talks with multiple golf course designers about reimagining East Potomac. In November, Trump hosted Tom Fazio — an acclaimed designer who has worked on several Trump properties — at the White House after Fazio toured the site.
Behind the scenes, administration officials have floated an expansive vision for East Potomac that goes well beyond routine repairs. In internal conversations, they have discussed rebranding the property [just wondering whose name they will slap on that golf course] […] expanding the course footprint in East Potomac Park […]
Municipal courses traditionally serve as an entry point to the sport, offering lower fees and broad access in contrast to private clubs. Washington’s golf community has been abuzz about whether a federally run or Trump-influenced remake of East Potomac could erode that model. [Duh]
[…] Trump has not waited for the lease termination to begin leaving a physical imprint on the property. As part of another controversial project — the demolition of the East Wing of the White House — dirt from the construction site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW was transferred and stored at East Potomac. Large piles now sit alongside the ninth hole of the White Course, a move that has drawn criticism from golfers and park advocates. […]
National Links Trust said in its statement. “While this termination is a major setback, we remain stubbornly hopeful that a path forward can be found that preserves affordable and accessible public golf in the nation’s capital for generations to come.”
“At the moment we suspect aggravated disruption of telecommunications and also aggravated sabotage,” Helsinki Chief of Police Jari Liukku told reporters.
Finnish police on Wednesday seized a ship sailing from Russia on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea telecoms cable running from Helsinki to Estonia across the Gulf of Finland, an area hit by a string of similar incidents in recent years.
The seized cargo vessel “Fitburg” was en route from the Russian port of St Petersburg to Israel at the time of the incident, Finland’s Border Guard authority told a press conference in Helsinki.
“At the moment we suspect aggravated disruption of telecommunications and also aggravated sabotage and attempted aggravated sabotage,” Helsinki Chief of Police Jari Liukku told reporters.
Concern is growing in Europe at what officials see as an increase in hybrid threats from Russia since it launched its war in Ukraine, which Moscow denies.
Earlier this month, NATO’s top military commander said the alliance must be ready to respond to these type of threats to defend its territory.
Hybrid threats refer to both military and non-military tactics designed to undermine an adversary’s security. They can include cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, sabotage of key infrastructure and use of drones or irregular armed groups.
[…] The Fitburg’s 14 crew members were from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and were all held by Finnish police, investigators said. The ship sailed under the flag of St Vincent and Grenadines.
According to LSEG data, the owner of the vessel is Fitburg Shipping Company Ltd and the manager is Albros Shipping and Trading Ltd.
Eight NATO states border the Baltic Sea, which also borders Russia. They have been on high alert after a string of outages of power cables, telecoms links and gas pipelines that run along the relatively shallow seabed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
NATO has boosted its presence in the Baltic with frigates, aircraft and naval drones in recent years. […]
The Fitburg was dragging its anchor in the sea, and was directed to Finnish territorial waters, the police and Finland’s Border Guard said. The cable belongs to Finnish telecoms group Elisa.
[…] Estonia’s justice ministry said a second telecoms cable connecting the country to Finland had also suffered an outage on Wednesday.[…] An Arelion spokesperson confirmed that the company had suffered an outage.
[…] Finland in December 2024 boarded the Russian-linked oil tanker Eagle S which investigators said had damaged a power cable and several telecoms links in the Baltic Sea by dragging its anchor.
A Finnish court in October dismissed a criminal case against the Eagle S captain and other crew members, ruling prosecutors failed to prove intent and that any alleged negligence must be pursued by the ship’s flag state or the crew’s home countries.
Posted by NBC News, but Reuters is the source.
JMsays
@46 Lynna, OM: It’s a good sign of how far his brain has declined that he cares more about the golf courses in DC then he does about most real global and internal issues. The golf courses in DC are fine but not pretentious enough and don’t have Trump in their names, so they are a huge issue for him.
In his first term he might have made a move to take them over but he would have delegated it to one of his sycophants. He understood that he had to at least appear to be focused on the big issues and things Americans cared about.
The department is seeking to enlist roughly 400 employees in the effort, which is expected to run from Jan. 5 to Jan. 20, two sources familiar with the plan told NBC News.
The Justice Department is scrambling to review about 5.2 million pages related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to comply with a law passed by Congress […]
That number is much higher than previously known. [!]
DOJ was seeking to enlist roughly 400 employees in the effort to sift through the records […]
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday that lawyers from department’s headquarters, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of New York “are working around the clock through the holidays, including Christmas and New Years, to review documents in compliance with federal law.”
“It truly is an all-hands-on-deck approach and we’re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,” he wrote on X. “Required redactions to protect victims take time but they will not stop these materials from being released. The Attorney General’s and this Administration’s goal is simple: transparency and protecting victims.” [And, they intend to protect Donald Trump.]
A bipartisan law required the Justice Department to release the federal government’s trove of Epstein files by Dec. 19. […]
[…] The Trump administration has come under fire since it failed to release all of the government’s records related to Epstein by the Dec. 19 deadline, which was required by the law signed by President Donald Trump. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who spearheaded the legislation in Congress, said earlier this month that they are speaking with members of Congress about holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also said last week that he would introduce a resolution directing the Senate to “initiate legal action against the DOJ” for releasing only some of its records related to Epstein.
A day later, the Justice Department released 30,000 more documents — the third batch that was made public — including an email that claimed that flight logs show Trump flew on Epstein’s plane at least eight times in the 1990s. The email was from an unnamed assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, but the sender and recipient were redacted.
[…] Last Friday, Trump acknowledged that more than a million documents potentially related to the Epstein case were were turned over to the DOJ by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI. The president complained that the DOJ “is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax.” He added, “The Radical Left doesn’t want people talking about TRUMP & REPUBLICAN SUCCESS, only a long ago dead Jeffrey Epstein — Just another Witch Hunt!!!”
[…] Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was found guilty in New York in 2021 of multiple sex trafficking charges for her role in the sexual abuse of underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The deposition conducted earlier this month lasted more than eight hours, during which Smith was grilled by lawmakers over the twin criminal investigations into Trump – one probing the mishandling and retention of classified documents and a second inquiry into his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for nine of those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the 10 indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts,” Smith told the committee.
There are links in the article to the transcript and video if watching 8 hours of Congressional figures trying to bait a highly experienced prosecutor into saying something embarrassing interests you. Given how long it took to release and neither the Democrats or Republicans cared that much I’m assuming there are no obvious mistakes on either side and no good sound bites.
[…] Trump is being criticized for more corruption after he issued the first vetoes of his second term on Monday.
Among them is a bipartisan bill that would have allocated funds to finish construction on Colorado’s Arkansas Valley Conduit. Upon completion, the project would have provided drinking water to 50,000 people across 39 communities.
But Trump has a grudge against Colorado, and that’s apparently more important than water access.
Trump has previously called for the release of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, who’s in prison for breaking into secure election systems. A believer in Trump’s conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen, Peters sought to rig the state’s results in his favor after he lost to former President Joe Biden. [!]
Ahead of his veto, Trump said that the state would face “harsh measures” if Peters was not released. [!] He issued a “symbolic” pardon of Peters earlier in December, but it was ineffective because she was convicted on state charges—not federal.
[…] “This is payback because Colorado won’t bend to his corruption. It’s weak, it’s dangerous, and it’s unamerican,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado wrote on X.
Longtime Trump ally Rep. Lauren Boebert represents Colorado’s district where the pipeline is being built, and she supported the legislation in question. “Nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people,” Boebert said in a statement. [Even Boebert is speaking out against Trump’s vindictive actions.]
Trump issued another veto that highlighted his vindictive streak.
Legislation that would have incorporated Osceola Camp, which is part of the Miccosukee Tribe, in Florida’s Everglades National Park, was vetoed. It also had backing from both parties in the state—including GOP Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Carlos Gimenez and Democratic Rep. Darren Soto.
In his statement justifying the action, Trump complained that the tribe “has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected.”
The tribe has sued Trump over his “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility in Florida, arguing in a legal filing that the construction of the facility was “unlawful.” The facility came under fire for its role in advancing Trump’s racist anti-immigrant agenda and for its incredibly harsh conditions.
In vetoing these bipartisan bills, Trump has demonstrated that he will run over even his fellow Republicans to back election conspiracies and bigoted anti-immigration policies.
“2025: The Year Big Oil’s Investment In Trump Paid Off”
“Also the year Trump outlawed science, Project 2025 happened to the planet, and China became the climate’s best hope.”
As we slouch towards 2026 to see what horrors a second year of Trump bring (in general, but specifically in terms of climate and energy), we’re looking back at what we wrote two days after the election about where we thought climate policy would go in a second Trump term. […] By last year’s New Year’s Wrapup, I’d gone and leased an EV, assuming correctly that Trump would kill the EV tax credits, which went away at the end of September this year. To get in on the credit before it vanished, Americans bought EVs in record numbers (except for Tesla Cybertrucks, because nobody wants those).
But we seriously underestimated just how happy red-state Republicans would be to roll over and let die Biden clean-energy policies that were already bringing a manufacturing boom to their states. We also thought the auto industry would put up more of a fight to preserve the tax credits that were helping them open new assembly lines for EVs and batteries. At the very least, we thought, they’d want “regulatory certainty” instead of a partisan seesaw of policy changes. Instead, both the industry and Republicans […] let Trump roll right over them, possibly fearing that even trying to negotiate would result in far worse backlash from [Trump].
We would like to apologize for ever thinking there would be any limits to how far the fucker would go, or how far Republicans would bend over backwards to let him go there. Silly us! Hey, maybe the courts will still save us [HOLLOW MORDANT LAUGHTER].
The Fucking Fuckers Fuck Up (Almost) Everything
Right out of the gate, with the help of executive orders literally written for him by Big Oil lobbyists [!], Trump declared war on Joe Biden’s impressive climate agenda, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement on Day One. In July, Trump’s EPA moved to eliminate its mandate to regulate greenhouse emissions, and the Energy Department pretended that some hired cranks had disproven the science (they hadn’t), not just freezing funds for clean energy, but also eliminating jobs in the National Weather Service and other agencies that acted like science was real, a trashing of America’s science infrastructure that hasn’t let up. [!] Even grants to plant more trees were cancelled […]
Legislatively, Republicans in Congress used the Big [for] Billionaires Bill to gut most of the good stuff in the Inflation Reduction Act, although there were one or two bright spots: Grid-scale batteries and enhanced geothermal will continue to get tax credits. A few manufacturing-side tax credits for EVs and batteries survived, too, although without the consumer-side incentives, demand has dropped off. And some of the very worst amendments to that bill failed. Very much a “could have been worse” situation […]
And here’s a surprise: Somehow the Bugfuck Ugly Bill didn’t actually repeal the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s program to build out the EV charging network, although Trump froze funding for the program for months until forced by a lawsuit to resume funding. [True] Several states are even getting back the funding Trump froze. More widely, blue states and cities are continuing to pursue climate goals and coming together to cooperate on interstate action, too. It’s no replacement for having a functioning federal government, but it’s a start.
Now The Good News
Trump can’t change the fact that climate change is real, no matter if the EPA no longer says humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels. And he also can’t change another fact: Clean energy is just plain more efficient and economical than fossil fuels, and clean energy development is booming in the rest of the world, especially in China.
Just yesterday, The New York Times ran a major report on how cheap electricity from Chinese solar panels is transforming Africa […] Geopolitical stuff aside, one great thing about widespread solar from anyplace is that it powers, and empowers, local economic development without the same exploitation and ecological disaster oil does. […]
Renewables are still booming in the US because they make economic sense […] Ninety-six percent of new US power plants in 2024 were carbon-free, and while Trump’s attempts to kill offshore wind and industry attempts to ramp up new gas plants to run data centers put a ding in that in 2025, the vast majority of new electric plants this year were still clean: Half were solar, nearly a third were battery storage, and a tenth were wind. Fossil gas plants made up just 7.7 percent of new power plants from January through November, and although a number of coal plants will stay online past their scheduled shutdowns, nobody in the US is even thinking of building new ones. Batteries keep coming onto the grid (remember, there are still significant tax advantages for them) […]
And while EV demand dropped after the tax credits were killed, the rest of the world is adopting electric transportation (not just cars, but trains and buses) like crazy. Thanks to Trump, there may or may not be a US auto industry in another two decades, depending on whether US manufacturers figure out how to build affordable small EVs. Ford quietly discontinued its F-150 Lightning EV pickup in December because while Americans like big trucks, the truck-buying market wasn’t in the mood for a very expensive electric pickup. Ford will try again with a midsized EV pickup, and there are a whole lot of small, affordable EVs expected to debut in 2026, including Chevy’s revived Bolt compact; the slightly bigger Equinox EV is the third-best-selling EV in the US (and the top not-a-Tesla electric). Sometime in late 2026, the stripped-down economy-model Slate truck will arrive, with a price starting in the mid-$20,000 range. […]
So while Mad King Donald tries to fight a rearguard war to protect fossil fuel profits for another decade or two — at potentially devastating cost to the climate and to humanity — Bill McKibben is still right, just as he was in 2021: The future is electric, and fossil energy is doomed. The question, more pressing than ever, is how much damage we’ll continue to do to the planet and its ability to sustain civilization before we reach that future.
Here’s a reason to cautiously take heart: Science magazine named “the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy” its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. US voters from the local to the national level will decide how quickly we rejoin the rest of the world on that path.
[…] even after Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska and gave him a ride in The Beast, Russia only bombed Ukraine harder than ever before. And Russia and Ukraine are now no closer to a ceasefire than when Russia invaded nearly three years ago.
But the Peace President ended eight wars! As long as it doesn’t count if both sides continue to kill each each other, or were never actually at war to begin with.
Such as in the Near and Middle Easts! The Trump-Kushners cannot wait to end the war between Israel and Hamas in whatever way leads fastest to a family-owned resort in Gaza. In February Dear Leader even posted a whole weird AI slop video fantasizing about it.
And on October 13, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, and mostly Qatar brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to return Israeli hostages, hooray for that! But it did not even take 24 hours before six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in northern and central Gaza. And Israel has now gone back to banning dozens of major international humanitarian aid organizations there.
Trump also includes Israel and Iran in the eight wars he credits himself with ending, meaning the 12-day “war” that Israel started by surprise-attacking Iran behind Trump’s back while Trump TruthSocialed in all caps that Israel SHOULD NOT DO IT, and then publicly waffled about wanting to get involved.
In the end, Hegseth dropped some mostly impotent bombs on Iran’s nuclear Smaug mountain, after Iran got about a two-week heads up about it thanks to Trump […] The generals even had to send two decoy planes going in the wrong direction to fool Trump so he wouldn’t post about the attack before it happened. Is that normal?
And then Iran came up with the peace, actually. And it was a beautiful solution! To quote ourselves:
[W]ith the world on tenterhooks waiting to see what Iran might do, they came up with a solution off of the pages of one of the missing tales of Scheherazade: Bomb the US Al Udeid base in Qatar, with a symbolic same number of bombs that the Americans dropped on Iran, and give the US and Qatar ample heads up so that the base could be evacuated. Probably behind the scenes Iran also reassured him oh yeah, all that uranium, totally obliterated, no need to keep looking for it! There, got you back, everybody’s happy. Indeed, the spectacle pleased and distracted Trump.
And peace therein did flower, more or less, and Trump took the credit.
As for the other places, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, Ethiopia and Egypt, Rwanda and Congo, Cambodia and Thailand, and Armenia and Azerbaijan, are all either not at actual war, and/or have not actually stopped fighting.
Is pulling out of USAID a world peace thing? Bombing boats and killing more than a hundred random people in the Caribbean and Pacific? (That NYT article about the bombed boat washing onshore, JFC!) Bombing Nigeria? And don’t forget Syria and ALL CLEAR ON OPSEC Yemen […] Are these peace things, or are they “creating new generations who will see America as the enemy” kinds of things?
And are we at war yet with Venezuela or not? Trump claims that the US has bombed a dock there, which would be the first land attack, but after 24 hours Venezuela was still not confirming that. And the US has the port under blockade, kind of, and has possibly been cyberattacking the state oil company.
[…] It’s been a year of war on anybody who looks like they might be an immigrant, trans people, education, anybody who stands up to Trump, blue cities, people with the audacity to quote Charlie Kirk’s own words, the environment, pregnant people, the rule of law, civil servants, evidence-based medicine […]
Peace on earth, 2025 was not your year. And next year doesn’t look so great either. Guess we’ll all have to work on making our own peace from scratch at home. [Peace Train video]
“Kyiv denies Moscow’s accusation it targeted the Russian president’s residence.”
Ukraine on Tuesday criticized Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani and Emirati officials for supporting Russia’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s home had been attacked — an accusation Kyiv denies.
“Almost a day passed and Russia still hasn’t provided any plausible evidence to its accusations of Ukraine’s alleged ‘attack on Putin’s residence.’ And they won’t. Because there’s none. No such attack happened,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said […]
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday accused Ukraine of launching 91 drones against Putin’s official residence in the Novgorod region, which lies between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Lavrov added that a Russian air defense system had shot the drones down.
[…] “Russia is at it again, using dangerous statements to undermine all achievements of our shared diplomatic efforts with President Trump’s team,” Zelenskyy said on Monday, calling the accusations “a complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine, including Kyiv, as well as Russia’s own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war.”
France appeared to side with Zelenskyy’s version on Tuesday. In a statement, an aide to President Emmanuel Macron said Paris had found “no solid evidence to corroborate the serious accusations made by the Russian authorities, even after cross-checking the information with our partners.” [!!]
“The Russian authorities themselves are saying everything and its opposite about what really happened,” the statement added, portraying the accusations as an attempt by Moscow to undermine the peace process.
But Russia’s claim nonetheless triggered condemnation of the alleged attack from Russia-aligned countries and the United States.
The United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry said it “denounced this deplorable attack”, while Pakistani Prime Minister Shebhaz Sharif called it “a heinous act.” India’s Modi said he was “deeply concerned” by the alleged strike.
Trump said Putin had told him of the attack in a phone call.
“I learned about it from President Putin today. I was very angry about it,” the U.S. leader said.
“It’s a delicate period of time,” he added. “This is not the right time. It’s one thing to be offensive, because they’re offensive. It’s another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that.”
Putin told Trump that Russia would have to reconsider its position in peace negotiations, dealing a blow to efforts in recent weeks by the U.S. and Ukraine. Following the Sunday meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy in Florida, both parties hailed significant progress, with the U.S. offering Ukraine 15 years of security guarantees.
Uhhh yeah I can see why these childcare properties weren’t eager to let in some rando dudes asking “where are the kids?” [Video clip]
Sidekick: We’re just wondering where the kids are.
Staff: Who are you? […] Which department?
Nick Shirley: We are from ourselves. We’d like to ask where the money’s going?
*Door slams shut.*
Shirley: Look at that. Shut us down. Where are the children?
The Trump administration is freezing child care funding to the state of Minnesota in response to a viral video that purports to expose extensive fraud by federally funded day care centers.
Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old self-described “independent YouTube journalist,” posted the 42-minute video […] he and an older man […] visit various seemingly empty day care centers, bombarding Somali employees with questions and accusing them of not providing services to any children despite receiving public funds. […]
Allegations of social services fraud in Minnesota have been the subject of federal investigations and mainstream media coverage for years. In one high-profile example, more than 90 individuals have been charged since 2022 in the ongoing case of [Feeding Our Future, whose founder Aimee Bock is White, though 89% of those charged are Somali Americans].
[…]
However, Shirley’s specific allegations have not been verified […] a CNN camera crew interviewing Shirley outside a different center filmed caregivers dropping off their kids in the background […]
The lack of evidence hasn’t stopped a number of prominent conservatives—including Elon Musk and key members of the Trump administration—from amplifying and acting on Shirley’s claims. […] Vice President Vance reposted Shirley’s video […] FBI Director Kash Patel also responded, writing on X […] Shirley has been making shock-value YouTube videos for years, starting with pranks
[…]
At [a White House anti-Antifa] event, Shirley […] said that while he’s traveled to 15 countries […] “the most dangerous place I’ve been has been here in the United States” because of anti-Trump protests. “I’m attacked every time I do my job,” he said, without citing specifics. “When I leave my house to go to work, I’m violently assaulted. I’ve been bear sprayed and beaten down. I’ve been almost killed.”
According to recent research from the Harvard Kennedy School, the thousands of local protests during Trump’s second term have yielded an “extremely low number of injuries, property damage or arrests.”
Gov. Tim Walz: “This is Trump’s long game. We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue – but […] He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans.”
security footage from the same day Shirley was here [showed kids arriving hours before and after him].
[…]
Reporter: Did you come during normal operating hours?
Nick Shirley: I came at 11:00am. […]
Reporter: Surely you don’t think a daycare should be unlocked? You shouldn’t be able to just walk into a daycare.
Shirley: There should be a reception.
Reporter: No, every daycare is locked.
Shirley: Okay, you bring up a fair point.
Rando: “This is so stupid. Unless a kid is coming or going, there’s no kids in the hallway or lobby when you come into our daycare. They have their own little classrooms. And our daycare has an afterschool program so there’s classrooms that are empty 7am-3pm until school lets out. What a moron.”
Steve Dill (Fmr prosecutor & reporter): “Daycare centers don’t let strange men enter their premises, especially those who ask for ‘the children.'”
Shirley questions the legitimacy of the center, citing locked doors, a misspelled sign and a nearly-empty parking lot. […] When [someone] asked Shirley who is in charge of operating the center, Shirley simply stated, “Somalians.”
[…]
the video was recorded outside the center’s operating hours, which are posted on the door as Monday through Thursday from 2 to 10 p.m. […] Shirley arrived around 11 a.m., when children and staff were not present. “Obviously, there’s no cars in the parking lot,”
Rando: “just the goddam dumbest, most racist, overblown horseshit I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s another slice of Veritas-style full-throat deception”
Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth (R) […] said at a virtual press conference that the state GOP has been “working with” Shirley
[…]
[Also, the] Assistant U.S. attorney Joseph Thompson told reporters earlier this month it is possible that “half or more” of the $18 billion billed to 14 [state] programs since 2018 is fraudulent. […] [Gov. Tim Walz], who has disputed Thompson’s estimate, ordered a third-party audit of the 14 aforementioned programs in October.
Kat Abughazaleh (Congressional candidate): “The GOP’s midterm strategy is literally just Comet Pizza.”
Rando:
Fwiw, the State started investigating the guy’s allegations. That’s appropriate
The local police came (it’s on the video) and told the guy to leave. That’s appropriate.
The facilities may want to upgrade their security (doorbell cameras, remote locks) and if he returns, seek a TRO. That’s appropriate.
[…] the video was recorded outside the center’s operating hours, which are posted on the door as Monday through Thursday from 2 to 10 p.m. […] Shirley arrived around 11 a.m., when children and staff were not present. “Obviously, there’s no cars in the parking lot,” […]
Nick Shirley actually created some fake news.
And, of course “the state GOP has been “working with” Shirley”!
FFS. It is going to take some time for all of the debunking efforts to get to the public. And even then many of the MAGA cult followers will not see or hear the debunking.
Homeland Security agents were in Minnesota conducting what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called a “massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud” on Monday, many of their targets came not from tips from the FBI, but from a video […] state officials also visited some of the sites on Monday.
[…]
CBS News conducted its own analysis of nearly a dozen day care centers mentioned by Shirley: all but two have active licenses, according to state records, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months. One, Sweet Angel Child Care, Inc., was subject to an unannounced inspection as recently as Dec. 4.
CBS News’ review also found dozens of citations related to safety, cleanliness, equipment, and staff training, among other violations, but there was no recorded evidence of fraud.
What is not helpful is the president of the United States demonizing an entire community [calling Walz the r-word] or pardoning [David Gentile] single-handedly responsible for $1.6 billion in fraud.
[Another YouTuber]: Almost 4,000 daycares in a 20-mile radius around Boston, with 1/4 of that being water. [Map]
Trump guys are about to Comet Pizza every third daycare center because they think they are all fronts for Somali money laundering. They’re only doing this near cities with progressive mayors. This is straight up Government by LibsOfTikTok.
Rando:
This works on two levels:
1) racism
2) making people afraid to work in daycare, driving up the price, forcing more women to forgo work to stay home and take care of kids
Win/win for the regressive mind.
Commentary
When u r pronatalist.
4000 daycares? My god… Boston would have to have *millions* of people… impossible.
Always flabbergasted by the right wing phenomenon of “big number I don’t understand = conspiracy”.
Yes, the famous Somali daycare centers with no children in them we all expect to see every few blocks in every major metro area.
Not the point, but they are including every preschool and organization with an after school program in this map. For example, every YMCA, Montessori, Head Start, and Boys & Girls Club is included in this.
And actually—Comet Pizza was a page out of a playbook that started with daycare decades before.
In 1983, a California mom accused her son’s childcare provider of subjecting children to Satanic rituals—like flushing them down toilets into secret basements […] The mom who made the allegations was later found to be suffering from schizophrenia. But that didn’t stop the prosecution of the childcare provider. And it didn’t stop journalists and policymakers from turning that one accusation into a nationwide witch hunt.
[…]
in the early 80s, employment rates among moms (and particularly White, middle-class moms) were increasing rapidly. Which was leading to growing interest in a national childcare program […] The GOP, however, very much didn’t want a national childcare program. Because billionaires and big corporations didn’t want to pay the taxes needed to build one. And because the religious Right didn’t want to incentivize women (especially White women) to abandon their “proper” place at home.
[…]
without substantial public investment, childcare can’t be both affordable and decently compensated. So, that underpaid work falls to those most vulnerable.
The US *did* have universal child care briefly during WWII (1943-1946), when men were shipped out, and women worked factories etc. … until congress let funding run out.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
^ “demonizing an entire community” = Somalis. I was reading another article where Trump called Walz the r-word over all this.
Akira MacKenziesays
Just had a great steak dinner now I’m watching my annual Marx Bros marathon. I’ll have some cheery cheesecake later.
The oil tanker fleeing American forces in the Atlantic Ocean has been formally renamed and added to an official Russian database of vessels registered in that country, potentially complicating U.S. efforts to board the runaway ship.
[…]
But the vessel’s efforts to stay out of U.S. jurisdiction might still be a long shot, because American officials said it was not flying a valid national flag when it was initially approached by the Coast Guard more than a week ago.
The slow-moving tanker has been evading the Coast Guard after being stopped on its way to pick up oil at a Venezuelan port. It may now be trying to invoke the aid of Russia, a longtime ally of Venezuela’s. Crew members recently painted a crude Russian flag on the side of the vessel. […] The Russian government’s stance on the ship is not clear.
[…]
American officials said the Bella 1 was not flying a valid flag when it was approached by the Coast Guard in the Caribbean Sea late on Dec. 20, making it a stateless vessel susceptible to boarding […] The tanker, which was not carrying oil, refused to be boarded and has been on the lam ever since.
[…]
U.S. forces have a seizure warrant for the ship that was issued before the boarding attempt. The court order was authorized because of the vessel’s history transporting Iranian oil, which U.S. authorities say is sold to finance terrorism.
birgerjohanssonsays
Drug death rates.
.
“Bondi DELETES TWEET After Accidentally Praising…BIDEN?!”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/7Ti-1WAkcYc
They are as incompetent as they are evil.
birgerjohanssonsays
Breaking: Trump almost got something right. So close!
the Trump administration is freezing federal child care funding to all states, not just Minnesota. […] recipients of funding who are “not suspected of fraudulent activity” are required to send HHS their “administrative data” for review.
[…]
recipients of federal funding in Minnesota and those “suspected of fraudulent activity” have to provide HHS additional records that include “attendance records, licensing, inspection and monitoring reports, complaints and investigations.”
[…]
HHS said Tuesday it was tightening requirements for payments from the Administration for Children and Families to all states, requiring a justification and a receipt or photo evidence
If they mean photos of kids, that sounds like slurping up dodgy biometrics for ICE.
KGsays
A thoroughly Woke and Anti-fascist New Year to one and all!
Oh and via that link and mentione din it is this site :
The crew of STS-93 deployed Chandra from the payload bay of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999. Today, they join more than 10,000 members of our community in a new (June 2025) letter to the Senate CJS Appropriations Committee. A similar letter has been sent to the House CJS Appropriations Committee. Read the Senate letter here.
“This fall’s competition between high school athletes isn’t exactly poised to be a unifying moment for the country’s 250th birthday.”
[…] Trump has been looking forward to 2026. Not in anticipation of this year’s midterm elections, but for his chance to oversee July 4’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Trump announced last month that as part of the yearlong festivities, America will hold its first ever “Patriot Games,” which many of the president’s critics likened to the dystopian spectacle that forms the basis of the fictional “Hunger Games.”
The details were sparse in Trump’s Dec. 19 video message from the Oval Office announcing the games. The games will feature 100 high school athletes, according to Trump, with two drawn from each state and territory. (There are 50 states and 16 U.S. territories, so the math there doesn’t work out [!], and what about the District of Columbia?) Though the details remain unclear, Trump did emphasize that “one boy and one girl” will represent each state, which fits with his administration’s efforts to stamp out transgender participation in sports.
We also don’t know what sports the athletes will compete in during the four-day event, or how the student athletes will be chosen. Those details will theoretically come later via the games’ organizer, the White House’s “Freedom 250 Task Force,” which sounds more like a military operation than a party-planning committee. That task force and its associated nonprofit, Freedom 250, are not to be confused with America250, a bipartisan effort Congress established in 2016 that has commandeered the Times Square Ball and will be holding its own celebratory events this year.
The games aren’t the only event Freedom 250 has in store. The group has already partnered with conservative edutainment company PragerU [conservative schlock-creation company] for the semiquincentennial, releasing a set of weird A.I.-generated history videos that has left some historians deeply skeptical. Freedom 250 is also arranging a June 14 UFC fight on the White House lawn, a date that just happens to coincide with Trump’s 80th birthday. (Last year’s wasteful and narcissistic military parade in Washington was also held on the president’s birthday, though Trump said it was meant to commemorate the Army’s 250th anniversary.)
In an ideal world, next year’s games would bring the country together, with the Pan-Hellenic Games of ancient Greece being the most obvious comparison. Unlike the modern Olympics, athletics weren’t the sole focus of the Pan-Hellenic Games. According to Australia’s Hellenic Museum, there were also competitions in fields that included music, dance and other artistic endeavors. In most cases, the participants weren’t competing for their particular city-states but for individual glory. But at time when there was no unified “Greece,” the games provided a forum for competition without war and a shared praise of the gods worshipped across the region.
Given the focus on physical athleticism, though, ancient Rome makes for a more apt reference point for Trump’s Patriot Games. While the Romans emulated the Greeks in many ways, the “games” they held at the Coliseum and other amphitheaters weren’t the celebrations of human capabilities and praise of the gods their predecessors held. More often they were blood-soaked spectacles for the masses’ entertainment and included gladiator matches and public executions.
But given the dark mood currently gripping the country, the “Hunger Games” franchise is the comparison many Americans are making. In the series of books and subsequent movies, those games are used to placate the upper classes with violent entertainment as the children of Panem are forced to fight to the death. The games in that fictional universe also are used to subjugate the rest of the post-apocalyptic society with fear of the state. The fact that teenagers will be competing in Trump’s “Patriot Games” adds to the metaphor, which Democrats were happy to transform from subtext into text on X. [video], social media content]
The Patriot Games thankfully won’t spiral into the deadly horror show of either the gladiatorial bouts or the Hunger Games — but the “bread and circuses” vibe is undeniable. […]
By explicitly excluding trans athletes, for example, the cultural divisions the MAGA movement happily exploits are already front and center. As my colleague Jarvis DeBerry argued last month, this year’s semiquincentennial celebrations are more likely be about honoring Trump than the country he leads. Similarly, his idea of an athletic competition seems intended to push his backward-looking vision of America than elevating our shared history the potential for greatness each of us has within.
It wasn’t the first time—or the last—that the town endured horrific downpours. In fact, the working-class town of 11,000, about 25 miles southwest of Newark, has long been known for getting swamped by tropical storms, nor’easters or even just a wicked rain. It was so bad, Onderko recalled, that the constant threat of flooding had strained his parents’ marriage, with his mom wanting to sell and his dad intent on staying.
“It’s pretty traumatic to watch your childhood home be bulldozed,” said Onderko, 64 and now the mayor of this 2.5-square-mile borough, which sits at the confluence of two rivers and a placid-looking brook that turns into a raging river when a storm moves through.
His boyhood property—now just a grass lot—is one of some 1,200 properties that have been acquired across New Jersey by the state’s Blue Acres program, which has used more than $234 million in federal and state funds to pay fair market value to homeowners in flood-prone areas who, like the Onderko family, had grown weary of getting flooded over and over again.
Blue Acres is really a generous program, buying up land that has value only because the federal government backs the flooding insurance. New Jersey has slowly ramped up pressure on the areas that have been flooded over and over, pressuring them to take Blue Acre buyouts.
The idea is good, these are areas that are not going to habitable eventually or will require constant government subsidies. Buy the land out at a price favorable to the owners and move them someplace further inland. At some point shut off sales to anybody but the state and let the few remaining people die of old age. Convert all of the land into new coastal wet lands as it is bought so it’s clear the entire town is going away.
In addition, a report last month by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund warns that communities may well have to come up with new ways to pay for such initiatives as the Trump Administration continues to downsize government and cut programs.
Already, the NRDC said, billions of dollars in previously approved Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) resilience grants have been cancelled.
Of course the Trump administration is cutting funding.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he’s withdrawing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland but left the door open to sending federal forces “in a much different and stronger form.”
His announcement comes after the US Supreme Court last week rejected his request to allow him to deploy the guard to Chicago to protect ICE agents as part of the administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
The loss at the Supreme Court has left him with nowhere to go. He frames it as his decision but the courts would force his hand in short order.
He suggested the possibility of future deployments, writing, “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!”
There is a bunch of Trumpian wining along with the order. The threat that he might send them in again under different form is the only parts that matters. Figures in the administration have talked about using the Insurrection Act but that would on questionable legal grounds also. That law gives the president broader authority to act but only to suppress serious unrest. That law is talking about situations where the state government fails to stop rioting or secure the rights of citizens.
“If you’re doing anything tiny to fight fascism, you’re on it.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, Ilhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, Jamie Raskin and all the other members of Congress who actually understand what we are up against, that we are fighting Nazis for our country and for our very lives, and that there is no going back to “normal.”
Members of Congress like LaMonica McIver who have been arrested by the fascist regime, and those who will be in the future, and judges like Hannah Dugan, who are not and will not cowed by this bullshit.
[…] Judges like James Boasberg and Tanya Chutkan and all the others who rule against Trump fearlessly and with devotion to the Constitution, many of whom are victims of MAGA terror campaigns of intimidation, but they keep doing it every day.
Lawsuit filers like Marc Elias and all the immigration lawyers working tirelessly to make sure every judge in the nation has to work A WHOLE BUNCH and never gets a break, ha ha, suck it, JUDGES, gonna be a lot more cases in 2026! Sorry about your never napping again. :(
[…] Librarians. Always the librarians.
[…] People registering people to vote, people running for office, people doing the work to get people elected, knocking on doors, organizing all these fucking pissed off people for democracy.
Artists canceling shows at the KENNEDY Center>/b>, because fuck that fascist loser.
Journalists reporting fearlessly, whether they’re on TV and famous or they’re in the trenches, independent or even still stuck in the bowels of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post and using the tools they still have at their disposal to subvert fascism.
Historians like Snyder and Anne Applebaum, Carole Cadwalladr, Rachel Maddow and her important history podcasts that relate eerily to where we are now, extremism experts, authoritarian experts, anybody out there who’s using their expertise to synthesize and contextualize all this bullshit so that we can respond to it more smartly.
[…] People who don’t obey in advance and people who don’t obey AT ALL, people who tell the fascists to fuck off from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night, people who show up outside ICE concentration camps and prison facilities […]
People who dress up like dinosaurs and Teletubbies and Bluey and Christ knows what kinds of furries, so that Fox News can accurately describe the “devastation” in places like Portland.
Cops, police departments, and local governments that make a point of not helping ICE. […]
[…] Senators and congressmen who make videos to make sure the military knows it has a duty to say “SIR, FUCK OFF, SIR!” to illegal orders from domestic enemies in positions of power, and members of the armed forces currently contemplating how they’re going to navigate that order when it comes to them.
Abortion activists and LGBTQ+ rights activists and immigrant activists and disability rights activists and civil rights activists and people who fight for the poor and for children. People who cook for people who are doing all those things.
[…] People who resign from DOJ and CDC and every other agency to shine a light on what’s happening in all the places Donald Trump is destroying, people who leak[…], whoever ends up leaking the full unredacted Epstein Files. (2026 goals activated!)
People who are taking their science and medical knowledge and using it to create new public health authorities ]…] or who are packing up to move abroad so that the vital research they’re doing for humanity may continue.
[…] Gavin Newsom’s social media team and Gavin for letting them go wild.
People who do quiet things we can’t see, people who deliver food to immigrant families terrified of leaving their houses, people who patronize immigrant businesses, people who look for ways to create community […]
People who look for opportunities, any opportunity, tiny opportunities, to be a light in the darkness for somebody else.
Point is, it’s lots of people.
And before anybody says anything, of course we forgot a gazillion people and kinds of people. […]
And of course, if you’re here, it means you’re still plugged in, and that we’re all still doing this thing […]
“Keep doing the thing.” It’s all we can do, really.
“About 40 killed, 115 injured in New Year’s bar fire at Swiss ski resort”
“Officials ruled out the possibility of an attack and are investigating the cause of the blaze, which left many of the injured with ‘significant, severe burns.’ ”
About 40 people were killed and 115 injured, many severely, after a fire broke out during a New Year’s celebration at a bar in southwest Switzerland, according to Swiss officials.
Identifying the victims and informing their families will take several days, said Frédéric Gisler, the Valais canton police commander, at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Nationalities of victims were not provided.
The fire struck the Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, in the heart of the Swiss Alps, around 1:30 a.m., as New Year’s celebrations were underway. […]
more than 10 helicopters, 40 ambulances and 150 responders were deployed to the scene.
[…] Many of the injured have “significant, severe burns,” Reynard said, adding that the intensive care unit at the Valais hospital is full. He said some victims were sent to other hospitals for treatment […]
Fifteen people are being treated at Zurich University Hospital, said Marcel Schlatter, the hospital’s head of media. “The vast majority of them are young people around 20 years old,” Schlatter said via email. “All have severe burn injuries.”
[…] Switzerland has only two centers that treat burns with more than 20 percent of body surface area affected; these are Lausanne and Zurich, according to 24 Heures, neither of which is close by. [map]
[…] The bar is located within the Crans-Montana Mountain Resort, popular for its skiing, gourmet restaurants and nightlife. The resort was acquired by the U.S.-based Vail Resorts in 2023.
[…] The resort has played a key role in professional skiing, hosting more than 50 World Cup races and the 1987 World Championships. It is set to host the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in February 2027.
Inauguration Day: Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor and its youngest in more than a century, was officially sworn in hours ago, during a brief event held shortly after midnight. […]
Special guests: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York will make opening remarks, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will administer a ceremonial oath of office.
[…] The crowd breaks into cheers as Letita James, the New York attorney general, walks to her seat and waves to the crowd. James swore Mamdani in as mayor just after midnight.
[…] The cheers are deafening at the block party as Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are seen onscreen.
[…] Mamdani, the city’s first millennial mayor, has an eclectic taste in music that was on display today. He was a self-described C-list rapper who went by Mr. Cardamom and released music honoring his grandmother and the greasy splendor of Ugandan-style chapati. When he entered the mayor’s race, he said that “strangely enough,” his music career had prepared him well for politics.
“Once you’ve tried to sell your mixtape to people who are just trying to get on the bus to go home, you’re well prepared to get rejected when you’re trying to get New Yorkers to sign your petition to get on the ballot at 6 a.m. at the subway station,” he said.
[…] A year ago today, on the other side of the city, Mamdani took part in the annual Coney Island polar plunge to try to draw attention for his long-shot campaign. “I’m freezing … your rent as the next mayor of New York City!” he said in a memorable clip just before diving into the ocean in a business suit. Even his own aides have said they never expected it would end here, on the steps of City Hall today.
[…] Yusef Salaam, a city councilman from Harlem and a member of the Exonerated Five, described today’s environment as electrifying because of what it represents. “This is a new era, a new day,” said Salaam, standing with Raymond Santana, who was falsely accused as a teenager alongside Salaam in the Central Park jogger case. “This administration represents a shift,” Salaam said. “What we feel in the air right now is indicative of what the future could hold.”
[…] With the temperature at an icy 26 degrees and a wind chill of 18, according to AccuWeather, the plan from Mamdani’s transition team was to try to keep the inauguration to 90 minutes.
[…] Block party attendees packed shoulder to shoulder in sight of City Hall sang along to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” in the minutes before the ceremony began. […]
“The introduction of the euro is the final milestone in Bulgaria’s integration into the European Union,” president says, but public opinion isn’t so convinced.
Bulgaria joined the eurozone on January 1, becoming the currency union’s 21st member.
The euro replaced the Bulgarian lev, with a final exchange rate set at 1 euro = 1,96 levs as of Dec. 31.
President Rumen Radev said in his New Year’s statement: “The introduction of the euro is the final milestone in Bulgaria’s integration into the European Union — a place that we deserve with the achievements of our millennial culture and the civilizational contribution of our country.”
The Bulgarian central bank’s governor, Dimitar Radev, has taken a seat on the table with the Governing Council of the European Central Bank. “I warmly welcome Bulgaria to the euro family and Governor Radev to the ECB Governing Council table in Frankfurt,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said in a statement on Thursday.
People will still be able to pay in levs for about a month, but they will start getting their change in euros. Until June 30, old money can be exchanged for no fee at banks and post offices, and indefinitely at the Bulgarian Central Bank.
Public opinion, however, remains mixed. According to a Eurobarometer poll from March, 53 percent of 1,017 Bulgarians surveyed opposed joining the eurozone, while 45 percent were in favor. A majority also felt Bulgaria was not ready to introduce the euro. The main fear was concern over “abusive price setting during the changeover.”
Bulgaria joined the European Union on January 1, 2007. In an official EU survey from May, 58 percent of Bulgarians said the country has benefited from its EU membership.
“In October, the United States said that 13 Italian pasta companies would face an extra 92% duty — on top of the regular 15% rate on most European Union imports.”
The United States has sharply lowered proposed duties on several Italian pasta makers following a reassessment of their activities, Italy’s foreign ministry said Thursday.
In October, the United States said that 13 Italian pasta companies would face an extra 92% duty — on top of the regular 15% rate on most European Union imports — from January 2026, accusing two producers in particular, La Molisana and Garofalo, of selling pasta at unfairly low prices.
However, after a review, the U.S. Department of Commerce cut the tariff for La Molisana to 2.26%, while Garofalo’s rate was set at 13.98%, the Italian foreign ministry said in a statement.
The remaining 11 producers, which were not individually examined in the review, face a tariff of 9.09%.
[…] full conclusions of the U.S. review would be released on March 11, adding that the ministry would continue to provide help to the companies affected in the coming weeks.
The threatened pasta tariffs had been an embarrassment to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had hoped that her close ties with President Donald Trump would shield Italian companies from any additional tariffs.
Italy’s total pasta exports were worth over 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) in 2024, according to data from national statistics agency ISTAT. The U.S. market was worth almost $800 million to Italian firms.
Have a safe, healthy caring new year for 2026, I dare you. Here is my contribution for now.
Years before reading the article linked below, I knew that the big problem with transportation today is that it is 19th technology. It is a big, deadly wound that has had only a few tiny ineffectual bandages put in it since the first ‘horseless carriages’.
Example: phoenix, arizona has a huge freeway wrong way driver problem causing innumerable accidents. But, they have spent millions on wrong way cameras at freeway exits, etc. They don’t prevent accidents, they just warn law enforcement that there is going to be an accident! And, the result in reducing accidents has been insignificant. I have often wondered why they don’t use those one-way in ground spike arrays like you see in parking garages, etc. It may be that lawyers warn cities they will get sued when some idiot runs over them and flattens all 4 tires.
1) The roads that are poorly designed and put pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars and trucks on collision courses with each other and even with buildings.
2) The never ending trend for ever bigger, heavier faster vehicles that can’t help but cause more injury, death and destruction whenever there is a crash. And, no amount of cameras can make up for the lack of visibility of your surroundings caused by the ‘oh, so cool’ design of cars. Also, the ridiculous profusion of gimmicky controls and screens that baffle most drivers and take people’s attention off the road.
3) and MOST IMPORTANT and DANGEROUS COMPONENT: ‘the nuts holding the wheels’. People are not inherently careful or thoughtful when piloting vehicles (or doing anything else, for that matter). The majority of Ebike injuries caused by ‘numbskulls’ not wearing a helmet is huge. The ongoing large huge number of fatalities from people not wearing seatbelts.
Russia rang in the new year by launching more than 200 drones at Ukraine, while President Vladimir Putin used his year-end address to rally support for his troops and to assure his nation of victory.
In Ukraine itself, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Dec. 31 address was defiant but also optimistic about the frenetic shuttle diplomacy being brokered by the United States.
Zelenskyy said that Russia, whose officials are also in talks with the Americans, remains the central barrier to peace, with Putin unyielding in his maximalist demands.
[…] Zelenskyy said just before the clock struck midnight: “[…] I — all of us — can say that Ukraine is truly doing everything for peace.”
The Ukrainian leader recently returned from a meeting with President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday. Afterward, Zelenskyy said Trump had offered 15 years of the crucial “security guarantees” that he says are essential to stop Putin from attacking again. Ukraine had asked for 50 years, he said.
Hours before the new year’s bells chimed, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff posted on X that he had held a call with Zelenskyy, Ukrainian national security secretary Rustem Umerov and the national security advisers of Britain, France and Germany.
In his own post on X, Umerov said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were also on the call.
Though Zelenskyy said that the “peace agreement is 90% ready,” he suggested that the remaining 10% contained the thorniest issues preventing peace.
“Those are the 10% that will determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live,” he said. […]
The Ukrainian leader charted what has been a roller-coaster year trying to retain the goodwill of Trump, a pivotal and changeable figure in the peace process. Zelenskyy said “it was not easy at all to achieve such a change in the tone of relations between Ukraine and the United States” after he clashed with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in an extraordinary White House meeting in February.
Trump has often shifted between appearing to favor Russia and then Ukraine during these negotiations, and has at various points been criticized for freezing Ukraine and Europe out of the process.
“Without Ukraine, nothing will work. Ukraine has defended its right to have a voice,” Zelenskyy said, adding later: “Ukraine is, in fact, the only shield that now separates Europe’s comfortable way of life from the Russian world.” [!]
Hours after Zelenskyy spoke, Russia launched 205 drones — mostly Iran-designed Shaheds along with some Russian Gerbera drones — into Ukraine, according to the country’s military. Air defense systems downed 176 of these, but 24 strikes were recorded at 15 locations, it said. There was also shelling right along the line of contact between Russia and Ukraine.
At least two people were killed and more than a dozen injured across the country, according to regional officials.
For its part, Ukraine launched a strike against Russia’s Rosrezerv oil depot in the Yaroslavl region, the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, said in a statement. The SBU said this was the latest strike designed to “cut off the supply chains of Russian petroleum products with surgical precision, both abroad and for the troops attacking Ukraine.”
Russia claimed this week that Ukraine had attempted to assassinate Putin with a drone strike on his country residence, something that Ukraine denied and the CIA concluded was not true, a source with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.
[I snipped some of Putin’s blather about “bringing joy an warmth.”
#80 Lynna, OM posted about the Mamdani Inauguration.
I reply: YES! we need more as caring as he is. His religion is irrelevant to his honest, decent desire to help people instead of caving to criminal corporations or magat hate.
“Ukraine had been aiming to hit a military target in the same region as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s country residence, a source with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.”
A CIA assessment has concluded that Ukraine did not try to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin at his country residence as alleged by the Kremlin, a source with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.
Ukraine had been aiming to hit a military target in the same region as the Russian president’s country residence, the source said.
The director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, briefed President Donald Trump on the issue earlier Wednesday. Afterward, Trump posted a link to a New York Post editorial with the headline “Putin ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace.” [WTF? Trump shifting and changing his allegiance to Putin again?!]
[…] Earlier this week, Trump told reporters that he was “very angry” after Putin claimed in a phone conversation that Ukrainian drones had attacked his residence on the shore of Lake Valdai in the northern Russian region of Novgorod. Russia has not provided any public evidence for its claims.
[…] Zelenskyy vehemently rejected Russia’s allegation in posts on social media, accusing Moscow of trying to sabotage peace negotiations.
“Russia is at it again, using dangerous statements to undermine all achievements of our shared diplomatic efforts with President Trump’s team,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
“This alleged ‘residence strike’ story is a complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine, including Kyiv, as well as Russia’s own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war. Typical Russian lies,” he added.
Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense had described it as “a terrorist attack using long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against the residence of the president of the Russian Federation.”
Since its full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022, Ukraine has attempted to strike back at oil depots and other facilities it says fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.
While Russia has repeatedly said that it does not strike civilian targets, drones and missiles have regularly struck Ukrainian residential areas and civilian utility sites supplying the population with heat and light.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a bold move to staunch the exodus of audiences from his renamed Kennedy Center, on Thursday Donald J. Trump announced that he was cutting ticket prices 5000 percent.
Trump announced the discount while wearing a sandwich board outside the once-fabled performing arts venue.
“Affordability is a Democrat hoax,” he told passersby. “Tickets to the Trump Kennedy Center have never been cheaper. In fact, we’re paying people to go.”
In what some observers called a desperation move, Trump offered Venezuelan drug traffickers U.S. citizenship to become seat fillers.
Surveys conducted by the Bulgarian firm Alpha Research showed that in May 2025, 46.5 percent supported adopting the euro, while 46.8 percent opposed it. According to pollsters, most of those against the move were residents of smaller towns and villages, often pensioners or semi-educated working-age individuals active on social media.
[…]
Experiences in other countries have shown that “whenever there is a changeover from national currency to the euro, there is often a minor inflation effect, but it’s typically less than 1 percent”
[…]
[A pro-Russian party leader and other] far-right politicians have also been accused of spreading false claims that the savings of common Bulgarians will disappear as a result of the change
[…]
Euroscepticism is rising across the continent as a whole as far-right political parties gain more influence. Nearly one-third of European voters now support far-right parties, up from just 3 percent in the mid-2000s
[…]
At its creation in 1999, 1 euro was worth about $1.17, and it is currently $1.18. Against the pound, the euro was initially set at about 0.70 pounds, while the current rate is approximately 0.87 pounds.
[A pro-Russian party leader and other] far-right politicians have also been accused of spreading false claims that the savings of common Bulgarians will disappear as a result of the change
[…]
Euroscepticism is rising across the continent as a whole as far-right political parties gain more influence. Nearly one-third of European voters now support far-right parties, up from just 3 percent in the mid-2000s […]
I suspected as much. Thanks for that additional information.
Details recounting nonsensical attacks against Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, and Tom Hanks are available at the link.
Some of those celebrities have won awards that Trump covets, but has not won. Also, I think Trump is just jealous of their popularity. Trump is particularly incensed when celebrities choose to endorse political candidates other than himself.
My conclusion is that Trump does not know how to pick his fights.
A federal judge in California has dismissed an indictment against a popular TikTok streamer who was shot by ICE agents and accused of “ramming” a law enforcement vehicle. The judge ruled the man’s rights were “jeopardized” by the government as he was “deprived” of access to his court-appointed lawyers, among other “constitutional violations.”
Attorneys for Carlitos Ricardo Parias — who goes by Richard LA on social media and has more than 130,000 followers — alleged that they tried to meet and consult with the 44-year-old multiple times after he was arrested and held in detention for assault on a federal officer following the October shooting incident. But the government “repeatedly” denied them access, according to U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin, a Barack Obama appointee.
More details about something mentioned before by Lynna, OM. This makes clear that the case was dismissed for basic procedure mistakes by ICE and the DOJ, not some constitutional issue relating to immigration and ICE enforcement. They blocked access to his lawyers multiple times and delayed producing discovery evidence till after the due date. They government messed up their duty until it made a fair trial impossible.
birgerjohanssonsays
The president delivers a … not very heartwarming…New Year’s Eve message.
NBC news: Protests in Iran over economy turn deadly
Semi-official news agency reports 3 deaths and 17 injuries. An unknown number of arrests but the protests are wide spread, disorganized and have become a real problem for the government, so probably a lot.
The protestors want the religious government out but are too disorganized to be clear about what they want to replace it. They want a functioning economy and something less religious.
Tyeesha Ferguson fears her 28-year-old son will kill or be killed.
“That’s what I’m trying to avoid,” said Ferguson, who still calls Quincy Jackson III her baby. She remembers a boy who dressed himself in three-piece suits, donated his allowance, and graduated high school at 16 with an academic scholarship and plans to join the military or start a business.
Instead, Ferguson watched as her once bright-eyed, handsome son sank into disheveled psychosis, bouncing between family members’ homes, homeless shelters, jails, clinics, emergency rooms, and Ohio’s regional psychiatric hospitals.
Over the past year, The Marshall Project – Cleveland and KFF Health News interviewed Jackson, other patients and families, current and former state hospital employees, advocates, lawyers, judges, jail administrators, and national behavioral health experts. All echoed Ferguson, who said the mental health system makes it “easier to criminalize somebody than to get them help.”
State psychiatric hospitals nationwide have largely lost the ability to treat patients before their mental health deteriorates and they are charged with crimes. Driving the problem is a meteoric rise in the share of patients with criminal cases who stay significantly longer, generally by court order.
Patients Wait or Are Turned Away
Across the nation, psychiatric hospitals are short-staffed and consistently turn away patients or leave them waiting with few or no treatment options. Those who do receive beds are often sent there by court order after serious criminal offenses.
In Ohio, the share of state hospital patients with criminal charges jumped from about half in 2002 to around 90% today.
The surge has coincided with a steep decline in total state psychiatric hospital patients served, down 50% in Ohio in the past decade, from 6,809 to 3,421, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. During that time, total patients served nationwide dropped about 17%, from 139,434 to 116,320, with state approaches varying widely, from adding community services and building more beds to closing hospitals.
[…] The decline in capacity at state facilities unfurled as a spate of local hospitals across the country shuttered their psychiatric units, which disproportionately serve patients with Medicaid or who are uninsured. And the financial stability of local hospital mental health services is likely to deteriorate further after Congress passed President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which slashes nearly $1 trillion from the federal Medicaid budget over the next decade.
The constricted flow of new patients through state hospitals is “absolutely” a crisis and “a huge deal in Ohio and everywhere,” said retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton. As co-chair of the state attorney general’s Task Force on Criminal Justice and Mental Illness, Lundberg Stratton has spent decades searching for solutions.
[…]Mark Mihok, a longtime municipal judge near Cleveland, told a spring gathering of judges and lawyers that he had never seen so many people with serious mental illnesses living on the streets and “now punted into the criminal justice system.”
[…] Statewide, Ohio has about 1,100 beds in its six regional psychiatric hospitals. In May, the median wait time to get a state bed was 37 days.
That’s “a long time to be waiting in jail for a bed without meaningful access to mental health treatment,” said Shanti Silver, a senior research adviser at the national nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.
[…] This year, Jackson waited 100 days in the overcrowded and deadly Montgomery County jail for a bed at a state hospital, according to jail records.
[…] Katie Jenkins, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Cleveland, said the shift from mostly civil patients, who haven’t been charged with a crime, to criminally charged patients has changed the hospitals.
[…] “It’s hard in our state hospitals right now,” she said. Unfortunately, she said, patients who have been in jail bring that culture to the hospitals.
In the first 10 months of 2024, at least nine patients escaped from Ohio’s regional psychiatric hospitals — compared with three total in the previous four years […]
In hundreds of official complaints, inadvertently posted online by the Russian government, soldiers and their loved ones describe a lawless and violent military apparatus that abuses its own troops to maintain its assault in Ukraine.
June 25, 2025: They were handcuffed undressed to a tree in January and held for several hours, some of them until the morning.
Aug. 11, 2025: He is now performing combat missions despite the fact that he can’t feel his legs.
June 3, 2025: He can’t even hold a spoon or fork, and now he’s being sent back to the special military operation. PLEASE HELP US SORT THIS OUT.
Aug. 19, 2025: His fellow soldiers beat him again, and left him helpless in some kind of pit on the site of a pigsty.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has built a war machine in Ukraine with an insatiable demand for men.
Underpinning that machine is a pattern of brutality and coercion in which commanders dole out abuse as punishment while exploiting soldiers — even the gravely ill or injured — to keep them on the battlefield, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
Mr. Putin has hailed the troops fighting his war of attrition as sacred heroes, and Russian society as the most important weapon in his forces’ advance on the battlefield. But more than 6,000 confidential complaints about the war reviewed by The Times show that anger and discontent simmer beneath the surface as the Russian leader’s methods for sustaining the war destroy countless military families.
“We’ve been living in fear for three years, keeping silent about everything,” the wife of a soldier from Saratov, a city in southwestern Russia, wrote in one complaint. “I’m being torn apart on the inside from the injustice!”
Thousands of those petitioning the Russian government struggle to get answers about their missing or imprisoned loved ones. More than 1,500 of them describe wrongdoing in the ranks that is largely hidden from the Russian public because of a ban on criticizing the military and the eradication of independent media.
Allegations of a vast array of abuses are laid out in the documents:
Soldiers are sent to the front despite debilitating medical conditions like broken limbs, Stage 4 cancer, epilepsy, severely damaged vision and hearing, head trauma, schizophrenia and stroke complications.
Released prisoners of war are deployed directly back to active combat.
Russian commanders threaten their own soldiers with death so often that the killings have their own name — “zeroing out.”
Some commanders extort or steal from their soldiers, including by collecting money to exempt troops from deadly missions.
Soldiers who complain, object to doomed missions or refuse to pay bribes can be beaten, locked in basements, stuffed in pits or tied to trees.
Recruits brought in through a draft or mandatory military service are pressured to sign extended contracts and threatened with transfers to assault units with high mortality rates if they refuse.
The confidential complaints were submitted to the Russian human rights ombudsman, Tatyana N. Moskalkova, who reports to Mr. Putin. After a mistake by her office, complaints filed between April and September were made accessible online, according to Maxim Kurnikov, the founder and editor of Echo, an online Russian news outlet in Berlin. He and his team collected the files and provided them to The Times.
[…] The Times took extensive steps to confirm the overall authenticity of the documents. First, reporters contacted more than 240 of the complainants. While most did not respond or refused to talk, 75 confirmed that they had filed a petition. Dozens gave additional details. Email addresses, phone numbers and publicly available information were also used to confirm the identity of complainants.
Second, The Times conducted detailed interviews in a number of cases to confirm the veracity of the claims made in the filings. In attachments to filings and in interactions with The Times, the petitioners often provided corroborating materials such as videos, photographs, voice memos and text messages from the front, as well as medical reports, court files and internal military documents.
[…] The complaints show that coercion remains integral to filling Russia’s ranks. They reveal the pressure that conscripted soldiers are under to sign extended contracts. One soldier described being manipulated into agreeing to such a contract by his base’s psychologist. Another provided materials indicating that drafted soldiers who refused to sign contracts were, as a policy, being transferred to assault companies, the most dangerous units.
[…] Multiple filings describe situations in which soldiers who were refused medical treatment left their units to seek civilian care, only to be branded absent without leave. They were then picked up by the military police and sent back to the front, often while still wounded.
[…] In at least 95 cases reviewed by The Times, prisoners of war released by Ukraine were returned against their will to Russian military service, often to active combat.
Thousands of captive Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been freed in prisoner exchanges over the last four years. The documents show that Russia sometimes sends these troops back to the front line as quickly as a day after their release.
[…] Some soldiers report being punished for resisting extortion. Troops in certain units have been asked to pay bribes to go on leave, secure transfers to another regiment or avoid going as “meat” on the next high-mortality assault, according to the complaints.
[…] “Zeroing out” goes beyond sending troops into a mission with a high risk of losses, something troops have contended with throughout history. Russian commanders have been accused of setting out to have certain soldiers killed, often as retribution or punishment, in some cases sending them into battle without weapons or protection.
The word appears in at least 44 complaints reviewed by The Times. More than 100 mention a direct threat by a commander to kill his own soldier, part of a broader pattern of fratricidal violence.
[…] “To conceal evidence of the murders, the bodies of the executed soldiers were either buried in abandoned places or blown up with antitank mines, leaving virtually nothing behind,” the complaint said. “Only small fragments of bodies were delivered to relatives in sealed zinc coffins, while a majority remained somewhere out there in the fields.” […]
Much more at the link.
beholdersays
@98 StevoR
Megaconstellations May Be Just 2 Days Away From Causing a Kessler Syndrome
A Youtuber makes an easily verifiable doomsday prediction too close to the predicted time. I’m sure this headline will age well.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: StevoR @98:
Anton Petrov […] 2 Days Away From Causing a Kessler Syndrome
Not quite. Co-author of the paper, Sam Lawler, wrote a thread about it last month.
This calculation tells us how long to a collision if all orbital maneuvers were to suddenly stop.
[…]
“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.”
/Thread also pointed out Starlink is even more haphazard than she’d thought.
birgerjohanssonsays
25 minute video of the decay of the Russian military industry.
Oh my goodness, this Wall Street Journal piece about Trump’s ailing health that includes an interview with him […]
Trump admits to taking more aspirin than his docs recommend: “They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart. I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?” What could possibly go wrong!
The piece doesn’t directly address what’s going on with Trump’s black hand, but says he has delicate skin that causes him to bleed constantly. “Trump said he applies makeup to his hands after he gets ‘whacked again by someone … I have makeup that’s easy to put on, takes about 10 seconds.'”
Trump denies what we’ve all seen with our own eyes—that he regularly falls asleep during on camera events—instead saying he’s just “blinking.” […]
Finally, Trump’s diet! Oh my god. The piece closes with RNC Chair Joe Gruters saying he was “shocked” to witness Trump eat “french fries, a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, a Big Mac and a Filet-O-Fish” in one sitting.
In sum, despite all the obvious lying, if this piece is meant to dispel concerns about Trump’s health, it actually does the opposite. This is not a guy who is taking care of himself at 79 years old.
Commentary
How is he still alive?? […] Back in 2016 everyone used to tell us how he wouldn’t make it through the first term.
WSJ […] omits the funniest part: he mashes his orders together before eating them! [HuffPo]
No wonder why he talks about toilets not flushing hard enough.
aspirin doesn’t actually change the viscosity of blood. It blocks the formation of prostanoids, which cause platelets to stick together when there is inflammation or a break in a blood vessel wall, starting the coagulation pathway. This is a good way to get a GI bleed though.
the most interesting detail here to me is that Trump called the reporters and yammered on to them about his health, but Trump’s minders wouldn’t let the reporters talk to his doctor. “The White House declined to make Barbabella available for an interview.”
The purported MRI a while back was instead a CT scan that ruled out cardiovascular issues, per his doctor at the WSJ link. Doc said his ill-advised daily aspirin is 325mg, and Trump said he’s done that for 25 years.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
First day running New York City. Scott Horton (Attorney):
Mayor Mamdani has nullified every executive order issued by Eric Adams after he struck his corrupt bargain with Trump to secure dismissal of the indictment against him.
I first read the name of Trump’s doctor as Barbrady, like the officer in South Park.
.
Iran Collapse Is Far Worse Than You Think: Protests Everywhere, No Water, No Electricity
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UWaweFaLZ-A
birgerjohanssonsays
I will never grow tired of hearing about Russians failing.
“Russia deploys cavalry against Ukrainian robots with machine guns”
Gammon Right Winger ANGRY With King Over Diversity!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OqsmSYdK0bM
Yup. The feudal billionaire on the throne is too woke and lefty.
Also, I like that this Youtuber references Robespierre in his name.
birgerjohanssonsays
…Also, I think Americans should adopt the British usage of “gammon” for angry, red-faced vulgo-conservatives.
mordredsays
Ugh, just got into an argument with someone on Bluesky who posted a very obviously faked YT video of Brian Cox arguing against space exploration. The discussion is in German an I now had three people telling me I should just watch the English original instead of the AI translation…
“I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart,” the president said. “Does that make sense?” Actually, no.
Recent questions about Donald Trump’s health were hardly unreasonable. The president has, for example, appeared to fall asleep at a couple of White House events, which roughly coincided with a series of exchanges in which he struggled with questions about an MRI he claimed to have had in October, telling reporters he had “no idea” which part of his body was scanned.
Complicating matters, after observers noticed bruises on the Republican’s right hand, the official White House line for months was that frequent handshakes led to discoloration — which seemed vaguely plausible until the problem spread to his left hand.
While it’s possible that there was no cause for concern, Trump’s unfortunate record made it difficult to give him and his team the benefit of the doubt. It was against this backdrop that the president spoke to The Wall Street Journal about these questions, and his comments advanced the story in weird and unexpected ways. From the report:
President Trump is taking more aspirin than his doctors recommend. He briefly tried wearing compression socks for his swelling ankles, but stopped because he didn’t like them. And he regrets undergoing advanced imaging because it generated scrutiny of his health.
‘In retrospect, it’s too bad I took it because it gave them a little ammunition,’ Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on his decision to get a cardiovascular and abdominal scan in October.
Broadly speaking, there are a handful of key takeaways from the reporting and interview.
Right off the bat, after months in which Trump and the White House said the president received an MRI during a physical exam in October, Trump has changed his story, telling the Journal it was a CT scan. “It wasn’t an MRI,” he said. The article added, “Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, Trump’s doctor, confirmed in a statement to the Journal that Trump had received a CT scan.”
I have no idea whether this revised story is true, though taken at face value, it’s curious that it took the White House three months to clear this up. [Yes. Why did it take them so long?]
As for recent instances in which he appeared to be sleeping during official events, Trump, the oldest elected president in American history, said he’d simply been photographed “blinking.” (There’s reason to believe otherwise.)
The president, the Journal went on to report, “has at times eschewed the advice of his doctors and scoffed at the medical community’s widely accepted health recommendations.” This is especially true when it comes to aspirin, which he chooses to take daily and which apparently causes him to bruise easily. In fact, the president acknowledged applying makeup to his hands to obscure discoloration.
“His skin is so delicate that Pam Bondi, now his attorney general, caused his hand to bleed when she nicked him with her ring while giving him a high-five at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee,” the article noted.
“Sometimes,” my MS NOW colleague Hayes Brown noted, “metaphors just write themselves.”
But of particular interest is why Trump ignores his physicians’ recommendations on daily aspirin doses. He initially told the Journal that he’s been taking it for 25 years and is therefore reluctant to stop. “I’m a little superstitious,” the president said.
He then went further. “They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump said. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”
It was probably a rhetorical question, but the answer is, no, it does not “make sense.”
Stepping back, the president’s comments were hardly out of character. Throughout his decade-long political career, Trump has repeatedly expressed his disdain for science and medical evidence on everything from the climate crisis to vaccines to Covid treatments, so it stands to reason that Mr. Inject Disinfectants is going to prioritize his superstitions and baseless assumptions about “nice, thin blood” over the recommendations of those who know what they’re talking about.
The trouble is, this is the same president who believes he has the credibility and expertise needed to give the public guidance on, among other things, how much Tylenol to take and what child vaccination schedules should look like.
In other words, Trump’s comments to the Journal weren’t just important in their own right, they were also a timely reminder to the public that his judgment on matters related to health are better left ignored.
Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker on Friday as a customer revolt over Elon Musk’s right-wing politics and stiff overseas competition pushed sales down for a second year in a row.
Tesla said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9% from a year earlier.
Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 vehicles last year, is now the biggest EV maker.
For the fourth quarter, sales totaled 418,227, falling short of the 440,000 that analysts polled by FactSet expected. The sales total may likely have been impacted by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit that was phased out by the Trump administration at the end of September.
Even with multiple issues buffeting the company, the stock finished 2025 with a gain of approximately 11%, as investors hope Tesla CEO Musk can deliver on his ambitions to make Tesla a leader in robotaxi service and get consumers to embrace humanoid robots that can perform basic tasks in homes and offices.
Shares of Tesla rose almost 2% before the opening bell Friday.
[…] Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who now heads the Civil Rights Division, worked hard to prove that she can be just as unethical and vindictive as anyone else at the DOJ.
Dhillon is sort of a surprise late entrant here in a crowded field of horrifying Trump DOJ picks that has included Todd Blanche, John Sauer, and Emil Bove—all former Trump criminal defense attorneys who were rewarded handsomely for their service.
Dhillon didn’t represent Trump in his myriad criminal cases. Instead, she was installed at the DOJ because she has spent much of her legal career trying to make voting harder and is a true believer in the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election.
Since stepping into her role, Dhillon has paused nearly all normal civil rights investigations to instead do things like go after Chicago because the mayor hired Black people. She also declared that her top priority is ending “radical indoctrination” in schools and being a loyal foot soldier in Trump’s war on transgender athletes. [Yikes]
These things are at least marginally related to civil rights, albeit focused on taking away people’s civil rights rather than protecting them.
But Dhillon’s recent and extremely enthusiastic participation in going after anyone who was part of the January 6 Commission has no connection to civil rights whatsoever—insurrectionists are not a protected class. Their civil rights were not violated because they were investigated. [!]
[…] she’s using her personal and official accounts on X to issue fact-free screeds and threats about prosecuting members of the January 6 Commission. [“and official accounts”!]
[…] “Trump/Bondi DOJ is working to bring to justice those who weaponized January 6th, 2021,” she wrote on her official account. “No statute of limitations will hinder DOJ’s efforts to bring justice to those who weaponized persecution of American citizens. January 6th 2026 is NOT a deadline for DOJ to bring prosecutions.”
[…] is it good when one of the DOJ’s top attorneys announces that the agency is planning to ignore any statutes of limitation in its quest to prosecute Democrats for investigating Jan. 6?
On that same official account, she resorted to chatting with Grok to have her legal views on the statute of limitations confirmed. […] is it good when one of the DOJ’s top attorneys thinks that answers from Elon Musk’s MechaHitler Nazi bot count as sound and correct statements of the law?
Dhillon’s big idea here is that the five-year statute of limitations did not start running on Jan. 6, but instead from when the committee was formed in July 2021. She’s got six more months to gin up fake charges! Definitely a totally appropriate and not at all vindictive thing to say on your official government account.
Of course, there’s also the wee problem of how investigating an insurrection isn’t a crime or lawfare or weaponization or a civil rights violation or anything that Trump has demanded these nitwits prosecute.
[…] But it was on her personal account that she decided to really cut loose about the haters and the simps. She is absolutely furious that pro-Trump influencers who normally praise everything that Trump does are insufficiently enthusiastic about current efforts.
“‘Conservative’ influencers, if you think you are ‘keeping the pressure on’ or ‘winning’ by spreading bullshit attacks on @realDonaldTrump ’s hand-picked cabinet, you are NOT. You are earning money to spread misinformation. You are hoes. Learn an honest profession!”
So it looks like official government accounts are where you can talk about haters and simps, but if you want to say that Trump’s critics are sexually promiscuous, you have to take it to the alt account.
[…] she saved her retweet of Scott Adams, always an authoritative and reliable source, to push some fact-free allegations and filthy, unwarranted racism about Somali people committing fraud in Ohio.
[…] Dhillon might not be as high-profile as some of Trump’s other loyalists, but don’t count her out. She’s ready, willing, and able to do whatever it takes to get Trump’s dirty work done. […].
WSJ:
Mar-A-Lago Supplied Women To Jeffrey Epstein For Years (despite the women reporting on his lewd and inappropriate behavior)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1IYmX-tovT4
Trump knew about Epstein sleaze 2003
Superficially, Walmart Inc. and Costco Wholesale are very similar. Both are large, international, for-profit corporations whose primary activity centers around selling discounted goods to the public from enormous ”big box” stores that resemble warehouses.
But these companies achieve success through radically different business philosophies. That difference doesn’t just have a huge impact on the lives of the retailers’ customers and employees; it can mean delivering a boost or a boot to the face for whole regions surrounding these massive stores.
In short, Costco often acts as an engine of revival for localities where its stores are established, providing greater economic activity without eliminating local retailers. Meanwhile, Walmart holds out the prospect of low prices and hundreds of jobs while turning downtowns into deserts and leaving everyone wishing they had never come to town.
Here’s why.
[…] When Walmart moves into an area, it has a well-measured effect on the local community.
One of Walmart’s most detrimental effects is lower wages in the local economies it enters.
“Walmart may say they help people ‘live better,’” said David West, the now-former executive director of Puget Sound Sage and current labor and employment consultant at ChangeWorksNW, in the press release. “But this study shows that communities will be much worse off with lower wages and less money in the community after a Walmart opens.”
This decline in wages and draining of the local economic pool is known as the “Walmart effect.”
There is also a “Costco effect.”
A growing body of research shows that new Costco locations can raise wages and strengthen local economies. The effect is so consistent that analysts now call it the Costco Effect.
Unlike the Walmart Effect, which is linked to more business closures and lower pay, Costco tends to lift surrounding wages. The reason is simple. Costco pays even its entry level workers well, so nearby employers raise pay to compete.
It might seem that this would lead to businesses closing in the vicinity of a Costco, but the opposite is true. More on that later.
[I snipped some of the explanation of the differences between the way Walmart pays managers and the way Costco pays managers.]
[…] Costco compensates its general workers so well that they know they’d never match its overall package without making a jump into another industry, likely one that requires a college degree and experience. The result is fierce employee loyalty that keeps turnover below 6% in a sector where companies like Walmart see rates as high as 60%. Single Walmart stores have reportedly lost more than 75% of employees in a single year.
[…] For Walmart employees to survive, they have to climb. The company has little incentive to provide them with extensive training or to invest in them as individuals unless they can fight their way off the bottom rungs of the company’s ladder. It’s a fiercely competitive system that fosters high levels of employee churn as new workers try to grab the gold ring before bad working conditions and low salary squeeze them out.
For Costco employees to survive, they have to stick with the organization and learn more about their jobs. Despite the company’s rapid growth, over half of all employees worldwide have been with Costco for over five years. Not only does this allow Costco to save money on basic training for new employees, it can also spend some of those savings on much more extensive employee development programs. In return, the company has reportedly earned $100 million from ideas collected from an actively encouraged employee idea program.
Overall, Costco provides a good salary to many people at each store. Walmart provides a huge salary to a very few people at each store and even more for those who escape to regional or corporate positions.
Walmart employs predatory pricing schemes and economies of scale to drive local retailers into ruin. Costco bouys up local retailers by acting as a destination and a source for materials.
Walmart’s overall strategy isn’t hard to define. They are ruthless with suppliers, demanding extremely low prices in return for shelf space in their thousands of stores. They are famous for their logistics, using their extensive transportation and storage network to distribute goods to their stores in a way that smaller competitors simply can’t match.
And they’re well known for undercutting every local retailer until they have absolute command of a regional market. […] Walmart has been known to raise prices in an area after local retailers have closed, leaving consumers with fewer choices while maintaining an effective regional monopoly on many items.
[…] You may not buy those big bags of rice [at Costco], but local restaurants do. And food trucks. And school systems. And retirement homes. […]
Providing bulk items to local retailers that they can reuse and resell in the community is part of Costco’s strategy.
[…] This isn’t to say that Costco can’t have a bad effect on some local retailers. They certainly can. And it doesn’t mean that localities are doing the right thing when they give Costco decades-long tax abatements to lure a store into their area. Because that’s a suicidally foolish idea.
But the effect of increased visitors combined with a rising wage base and resources that are often helpful to local retailers is why Costco’s coming to town does not generate the footsteps-of-doom feeling that many local businesses experience on learning of Walmart’s approach. […] it doesn’t have to bludgeon manufacturers into moving their operations to China or cutting worker pay like Walmart.
[…] Walmart stores sometimes have a surprisingly short lifespan. That includes immediately closing a store after workers unionized.
When Walmart leaves an area, the damage it generates for the local economy is only compounded.
Ten years. That’s all the time it took for the store to rise up in a clearing of the lush forest of West Virginia’s coal country and then disappear again, as though it had never been there. …
Costco isn’t immune to closing stores. Since its founding, the retailer has closed 58 locations. However, it appears that all of these were done to replace early stores and stores opened during an early-90s flirtation with smaller Costcos (where “small” means only around 90,000 square feet) with newer sites that fit the current warehouse model. […]
The most remarkable aspect of this story is back there in the first paragraph: This isn’t a tale of a ruthless empire versus a warm and fuzzy commune. These are both large companies, generating substantial profits and navigating complex business arrangements to deliver favorable outcomes for their shareholders.
Nothing requires Costco to pay its employees well. Nothing requires Walmart to treat its employees like contestants on Squid Game.
These are strategies; two companies taking radically different approaches to the goal of putting money in the till. They are both operating within the boundaries of the system that we’ve created.
[…] Remember that part about how the average Walmart supercenter has about 25% fewer employees than the average Costco Warehouse? Those fewer employees have to deal with 30 times as many items, more frequent restocking, and do it while getting less pay and fewer benefits. They work harder for less. By design. For stores that damage their local economy, and which are much more likely to simply pack up and leave. That’s all a choice.
None of this makes the people running Costco into saints, though co-founder Jim Sinegal sure seems like a nice guy who remains dedicated to his company. […]
It also doesn’t make the people who run Walmart into monsters. They simply … Sorry. Scratch that. No matter how you look at it, they suck. [More details at the link]
“The president’s sudden interest in the rights of protesters is hardly in line with the vision he has espoused for decades.”
One of Donald Trump’s most controversial foreign policy decisions of 2025 came in June, when the president launched a preventive military strike on suspected Iranian nuclear sites. Soon after, Trump assured the public that Iran’s “key nuclear enrichment facilities” had been “completely and totally obliterated,” though those claims were quickly called into question.
Among the lingering questions was whether this would be Trump’s only offensive against Iran, or the first in a series.
Last week, the American president added fresh fuel to the fire, declaring during a news conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran “may be behaving badly.” After suggesting that Iranian officials might be taking new steps to advance their nuclear program [a talking point probably provided by Netanyahu], Trump added: “If it’s confirmed, look, there will be consequences. Consequences will be very powerful — maybe more powerful than last time.”
As 2026 gets underway, he’s still at it. The New York Times reported:
President Trump said on Friday that the United States would come to the aid of protesters in Iran if the government there used lethal force against them, in a sharp escalation of remarks after days of widespread demonstrations against the Iranian government.
The comments came a day after reports from Iranian state media and activists said that at least one person had been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, as officials tried to contain protests incited by economic distress. Since then at least two more people have been reported as dead.
While the precise casualty count is the subject of ongoing scrutiny, the demonstrations in Iran — an authoritarian society where mass protests are not common — are real and sizable. The unrest appears to have been caused initially by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency, but as NPR reported, it has become increasingly common to see crowds chanting anti-government slogans.
It was against this backdrop that Trump used his social media platform to publish a message that appeared intended to get Tehran’s attention. “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote in a missive published at 2:58 a.m. ET. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
This did not go unnoticed. NBC News reported, “Senior Iranian officials fired back, warning that U.S. intervention would spark regional chaos and make American forces in the Middle East ‘legitimate targets.’” In fact, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the head of Iran’s Parliament, said via social media that “all American bases and forces across the entire region will be legitimate targets” if the U.S. interferes.
Time will tell whether, and to what degree, Trump is serious about further intervention in Iran, and whether the U.S. military is actually “locked and loaded” for another Middle East operation. But it’s worth noting for context that his sudden interest in the rights of protesters is not altogether in line with his broader vision.
On the contrary, in the recent past, Trump has gone to great lengths to celebrate “strongman” and “iron fist” leaders abroad, including those who seem to revel in cracking down on dissent.
What’s more, Trump’s former Pentagon secretary, Mark Esper, has repeatedly claimed that the president pushed to shoot protesters in the legs in 2020. Years earlier, remarking on the 1989 democratic protests in Tiananmen Square, Trump celebrated the Chinese response as a demonstration of “the power of strength.”
Or put another way, when the world saw the image of a student standing in front of tanks, Trump sided with the guys driving the tanks.
Is he now suddenly concerned about violence toward protesters in Iran, or is the incumbent American president looking for an excuse to push fresh threats toward a foe in the Middle East?
“The more people get flu shots, the better off they’ll be. The CMS chief, a physician by trade, ought to understand this.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz wasn’t just a poor choice to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services because he lacked the requisite skills and background; he also was haunted by his embarrassing background.
The New York Times reported in 2021, for example, that Oz had a history of “dispensing dubious medical advice” and making “sweeping claims based on thin evidence.” The article referred to bizarre comments the television personality made about everything from weight-loss pills to apple juice to cellphones.
The Washington Post had a related report during Oz’s ill-fated GOP campaign for the Senate, adding that during his show’s 12-year run, Oz “provided a platform for potentially dangerous products and fringe viewpoints, aimed at millions of viewers, according to medical experts, public health organizations and federal health guidance.”
Years later, too little has changed. The Hill reported:
Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Tuesday called the seasonal flu vaccine ‘controversial of late’ and advised various Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiatives as ways to ‘overcome’ the virus.
Appearing on Newsmax, Oz spoke on this year’s flu season, which has been marked by a more severe strain than previous years.
In context, the Newsmax co-host asked about the growing number of Americans struggling with a dangerous flu strain. It led the CMS chief to stray far from his lane and start pontificating in irresponsible ways. [social media post and video]
“Every year there’s a flu vaccine,” Oz said. “It doesn’t always work very well. That’s why it’s been controversial of late.”
Except it hasn’t been “controversial.” Every year, thousands of Americans die of influenza, and the more people get flu shots, the better off they’ll be […]
Indeed, Dr. Jerome Adams, Trump’s first surgeon general, noted online earlier this week that this year’s vaccine will make flu viruses milder and make hospitalizations less likely, even if there’s a mismatch between the annual vaccine and the predominant strain. [True!]
“Even in mismatched years, flu vaccines provide cross-protection because the strains are related,” Adams wrote on X. “Historical data … show mismatched vaccines can still reduce lab-confirmed flu risk by around 50-60% overall and are particularly good at preventing severe outcomes like hospitalization and death.” [True!]
As for why Oz took an irresponsible message to a national television audience [he is] part of a Republican administration with radical ideas related to public health, including flu shots.
birgerjohanssonsays
TV. David Attenborough at 99 | Wild London review – honestly, telly does not get any better than this
“The president took to Truth Social hours after the Kennedy family announced their tragic loss to share posts from MAGA supporters mocking the political dynasty”
As the Kennedys mourned the untimely death of Tatiana Schlossberg — the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy — Donald Trump took to social media to share posts mocking the famous family.
Tatiana, the middle child of Caroline Kennedy and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, died on Tuesday, Dec. 30, at age 35, just over a month after publicly sharing that she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.
The news was shared by the social media accounts for the JFK Library Foundation, on behalf of Tatiana’s family, which included her husband, Dr. George Moran, and their young children, Edwin and Josephine.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” read the post, which was signed by “George, Edwin and Josephine Moran, Ed, Caroline, Jack, Rose and Rory.”
Trump did not directly mention Tatiana’s death in his social media deluge following her death. Instead, he shared screenshots of MAGA supporters mocking the famous political family for their recent responses to his decision to add his name to the Kennedy Center, a historic performance venue in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated as a memorial to JFK following his assassination in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.
“The Kennedy Family have LONG neglected the Kennedy Center, btw,” claimed one. “They don’t raise money for it. They never show up. And the only Kennedy who has been there recently is a member of Trump’s cabinet.”
“The Trumps have always been supporters of the arts. The Kennedys are supporters of the Kennedys,” read another.
[…] Kennedys have approached the matter from a legal standpoint. “The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law,” wrote Joe Kennedy III, the grandson of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. “It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says.” […]
I snipped tributes to Tatiana for people like Maria Shriver (Caroline’s cousin).
Correction to comment 131. “I snipped tributes to Tatiana for people like Maria Shriver (Caroline’s cousin).” Should be: “I snipped tributes to Tatiana from people like Maria Shriver (Caroline’s cousin).
Another more than $200 million in medical debt has been wiped out for Arizonans.
And the recipients are going to know who to thank: Gov. Katie Hobbs.
The new figure was announced Monday by Allison Sasso. She’s the president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, a company that agreed earlier this year to use some $10 million in state American Rescue Plan COVID relief dollars to buy up medical debt from hospitals and doctors for a few pennies on the dollar, eliminating a negative mark on the credit reports of those who racked up the bills.
All totaled, according to the governor’s office, the program has so far erased $642 million owed by more than 485,000 Arizonans.
[…] What’s behind all this is a program that United Medical has been offering across the nation.
Established in 2014, it uses government funds and private donations to acquire portfolios of medical debt from health care providers or debt buyers.
What makes the money go farther, according to company officials, is the debt has reached the point where those holding the rights are willing to sell them for pennies on the dollar.
People can’t actually apply. Instead, Undue Medical has to find them.
[…] The program is aimed at those with medical debt whose income is less than 400% of the federal poverty level. That is currently $128,600 for a family of four. Also eligible are those whose debt is 5% or more of their annual income. That would aid those who have higher income levels than the cutoff—but much higher debt than they may be able to handle.
[…] Once the bills have been paid off, the patient gets a letter in an Undue Medical envelope informing for the first time that the obligation has been wiped out and the credit bureau has been notified.
[…] The deal Hobbs cut with the charity when she first signed the deal in 2024 requires that beneficiaries know that the financial relief is happening because of the governor’s action […]
Gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater, in defending that provision when the program was announced in July, said that is appropriate. He said the letters are designed to tell people not just that their medical debt was relieved but “how it happened.”
[…] Undue Medical said what’s also crucial is that the patient starts from scratch. Generally speaking, when a debt is forgiven, it can be considered income for tax purposes. But Courtney Story, the charity’s vice president of government initiatives, said in July that doesn’t apply when the money comes from a “disinterested third party.”
[…] In unveiling the plan in 2024, Hobbs insisted that there’s nothing illegal about the state using money it has received from the federal government to pay off the medical debts of private Arizonans.
A provision of the Arizona Constitution makes it illegal to “make any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association or corporation.”
[…] Arizona wouldn’t be the first jurisdiction to use COVID dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act in this way.
Undue Medical has provided press releases from other jurisdictions that have taken advantage of the program, with recent press releases from Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and one from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a local program.
birgerjohanssonsays
Survived 4 Fires: Strv 122 Crew’s Raw Truth in Combat (the Swedish variant of the Leopard 2 tank)
.
Thr narrator’s voice is grating, but the information appears genuine.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7LD5Gh5vRIc
birgerjohanssonsays
@ 133
It is about the war in Ukraine.
.
Unrelated: I just learned Russians are sending in infantrymen one by one in Pokrovsk, to avoid detection. Their generals really do not care how many of their men die, they just want to report about successful infiltrations.
“Ahead of possible changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, a new report highlights growing confusion over the best time to protect infants from serious infectious diseases.”
With the United States likely to lose its measles elimination status in the next few months and the possibility of looming changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, new research highlights the risk of delaying vaccination.
The study, which was published Friday in JAMA Network Open, analyzed the health records of 321,743 children with regular access to care, finding that getting the vaccines recommended in the first four months is the most likely sign that a child will receive the first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine at 12 to 15 months. […]
“It was a surprise for me to see how early this was happening,” she [Nina Masters, the study’s lead author] said. “To see that the first visit, that 2-month visit, we’re already seeing a strong effect between parents who are delaying that vaccine and then not getting the MMR vaccine for their child, to me, just indicates that that hesitancy is happening really early.”
[…] school exemptions to routine vaccinations have been rising across the country, with exemption rates more than doubling in more than half of counties and jurisdictions, from their first year of collected data to the most recent. [map]
Under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, the current U.S. childhood immunization schedule has come under scrutiny. In early December, the vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to change the guidance that all newborns should get the hepatitis B vaccine. The panel, without presenting new evidence, suggested that babies wait until they’re 2 months old to be protected against the incurable, contagious liver disease. Other changes in vaccine recommendations may be planned for 2026.
The current U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, developed by infectious diseases experts, epidemiologists, pediatricians and other scientists, is based on the maturation of children’s immune systems and when they’re most likely to be exposed to viruses […] [map]
In a baby’s first few months, it’s currently recommended that they get vaccinated to protect against nine infectious diseases. In addition to RSV and the first hepatitis B shot (with a 2nd shot at 1 to 2 months of age and the 3rd shot at 6 to 18 months of age), first doses of five vaccines are given: diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP); rotavirus, which protects against a life-threatening diarrheal disease; polio; pneumococcal; and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), an infection that can lead to meningitis.
Typically, the first dose of the MMR vaccine is given between age 12 and 15 months, and the second is given between 4 and 6 years of age. To provide the best protection, a number of the shots, including the MMR, need to be spaced out in several doses, a timing determined after decades of research.
[…] Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, said the primary concern with delaying vaccines is that, “you’re going to be unprotected for a longer period of time while that delay is in place.”
Worries about the vaccine schedule, that children get too many shots at one time, or that combination vaccines are dangerous, are unfounded, she said. “There’s no evidence of any of these things.” [!]
Risks from delaying first doses
“Our current vaccine schedule was chosen over many years and collecting quite a lot of data to show that those are actually the times to vaccinate people, when the risks are going to be minimized and the benefits are going to be maximized,” Rasmussen said.
[…] More than 2,000 cases of measles were reported in the U.S. in 2025, the highest number since 1992.
“Measles is sort of the canary in the coal mine, the smoke alarm,” said Dr. Lee Harrison, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. […]
“People have barriers to care: it’s hard for them to get into clinic, it’s hard to get appointments, it’s hard to get time off work to take their child in. Or, it could be a strong fixed belief on wanting to follow some alternative delayed vaccine schedule,” Lo said. “The practical takeaway is, the minute a clinician sees that a child isn’t up to date on their vaccines, that, of course, raises your attention to seeing what can be done.”
“[…] pediatricians have to really engage early, right away about vaccines, provide education, provide a safe space for parents to ask questions and to provide reassurance about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, really, before that 2-month visit,”[…]
JMsays
@134 birgerjohansson:
Unrelated: I just learned Russians are sending in infantrymen one by one in Pokrovsk, to avoid detection. Their generals really do not care how many of their men die, they just want to report about successful infiltrations.
Another side effect of modern technology. It’s possible now to put every single soldier on their own individual secure radio communication channel. It allows for a level of small scale tactical coordination that would have been impossible before the year 2000 or so.
Doing this with single soldiers or teams of 2 or 3 soldiers is the method for infiltration the Russians have developed over the summer. A 10 man squad just gets destroyed because they always get seen, but very small groups have a chance of sneaking in. Then once the Russians have infiltrated enough men they start moving the men to secure some sort of line and attack Ukrainian positions so the Russians can bring up more troops faster. It has not worked in Pokrovsk because the Ukrainians are constantly sweeping to clear out infiltrators but it has worked in other areas.
Imagine ushering in 2026 surrounded by chandeliers, champagne, and… Vanilla Ice rapping “Ice Ice Baby” next to a dancing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
That’s the scene that unfolded at Donald Trump’s lavish New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago, and one short video clip from the night has the internet in absolute meltdown mode.
It’s equal parts funny and disturbing. Vanilla Ice is just demonstrating just how out of touch Trump is. Whoever planned the party brought in somebody that is something like 30 years out of date because Trump is comfortable with them. Stephen Miller acting like he has no frame of reference for what is going on is probably an accurate image.
MAGA media personality and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon compared President Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton in a scathing attack on his old boss on Friday.
During a discussion about Trump’s threat to use the U.S. military to come to the defense of Iranian civilians protesting against the brutal Islamist regime in charge of their country, Bannon expressed his strong disapproval.
“Aren’t people teasing right now that Samantha Powers [sic] and Hillary Clinton must somehow have gotten invited to the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve celebration because the president coming out today saying, ‘Hey, we’re locked and loaded,’ isn’t that straight from the Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton playbook?” asked Bannon.
This is Bannon being a little consistent about his isolationist position. The sort of aggressive intervention that Trump is threatening Iran with is more consistent with the sort of neoliberal policy of Hillary Clinton. What Hillary would have done in this specific situation is pure conjecture and Bannon bringing up Hillary is trying to make the idea sound bad by association. It’s more interesting to see him rejecting the idea so strongly.
Elon Musk’s racist chatbot Grok is wreaking havoc once again, this time by producing sexualized images of children and women who did not consent.
Over the last few days, users have been able to use prompts on X to generate the images, which were then widely shared. xAI, the Musk-owned company that oversees Grok, had a short response to a request for comment from Reuters: “Legacy Media Lies.”
The incident has already prompted an international response. India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a formal notice to X calling for the removal of the images, which it regards as a violation of Indian laws.
Before the likely illegal images were produced and began circulating, Musk himself praised the chatbot for producing lewd imagery. After the bot was prompted to put a photo of Musk in a bikini, Musk replied, “Perfect.”
This isn’t the first time that Musk has celebrated Grok’s creation of sexual content. In July, a version of Grok was released that created sexualized versions of an anime character named Ani. It also announced that it was hiring a “waifu” engineer, named after the subculture of sexualized female anime characters and the fans who celebrate them.
Grok has previously been in the news for its affiliation with controversial content. In July, the chatbot—which Musk has touted as being programmed to contest “woke” content—began to refer to itself as “MechaHitler.” It also praised Adolf Hitler, saying that he had a good strategy for targeting Jewish people.
Another affiliated project from Musk is a clone of Wikipedia, called Grokipedia. The faux encyclopedia is filled with dozens of articles incorporating inaccurate, bigoted, and racist theories and ideas. The site even promotes the debunked theory that the proliferation of pornography in the 1980s worsened the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Musk continues to pursue and promote Grok alongside his own bigoted views while serving as a major funder within the Republican Party. […]
Considering Musk’s ties to the Republican Party, it’s no wonder that his chatbot is creating lewd images of women and children—the GOP has always had a penchant for pedophilia, after all.
In case you missed it, at around 2 p.m. on Wednesday — you know, the day before New Year’s Eve, and after most reporters had already left the office [,,,] the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released video of Special Prosecutor John Luman “Jack” Smith’s eight-plus hours of closed-door testimony about his investigation of Donald Trump, from December 17. And it was ass-scorching damning to Trump. It quickly became quite clear why Jim Jordan did not want Smith’s testimony public, and timed its release in the hope that when stories came out everyone would be too drunk to read them, and it would have become old news by the time everyone had recovered from their hangovers.
But like ones about a child-rape-cabal of shadowy elites, stories about the felon president’s crimes never expire!
Video of Smith’s whole testimony is below; here is a link to the 255-page transcript, or let’s just pull the most notable parts! [video, and embedded links are available at the main link].
First your reminder, Smith’s testimony is something that Jim Jordan himself asked for:
Chairman Jordan has requested this deposition as part of the committee’s oversight of the Biden-Harris administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department and its misuse of Federal law enforcement resources for partisan political purposes.
But derp, it did not go the way Jordan had hoped! In spite of desperate entreaties to get Jack Smith to say that Joe Biden made him investigate poor innocent sweet baby lamb Trump and do wiretapps on Josh Hawley and other Republican congresspeople, Smith pushed back at every step. [video]
“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”
And,
“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat. Recent narratives about my team’s work are false and misleading, including stories about our collection of toll records.”
By “toll records” he means the phone calls made to and by members of Congress, which Republicans have been heaving were wiretaps but were not. Why did Smith have a record of some Republican congresspeople’s calls? Because Trump was the one who kept calling them! [video]
“President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I did not choose those Members, President Trump did.”
Somewhere around there is probably where Jim Jordan started to realize he’d made a terrible mistake.
Q: You just made some pretty definitive statements about your belief that President Trump was guilty of these charges. Is that correct?
SMITH: Yes, I believe we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt in both cases.
And remind us, who exactly was responsible for January 6? [video]
“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”
But but but wasn’t Donald Trump just doing FREEZE PEACH statements of his opinion? [video]
“There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.”
Thanks for clearing that up!
And by the way, Smith reminds us, it wasn’t Democrats who made up the case against Donald Trump. It was Republicans.
“The president was preying on the party allegiance of people who supported him. The evidence that I felt was most powerful was the evidence that came from people in his own party who […] put country before party and were willing to tell the truth to him, even though it could mean trouble for them.”
Mike Pence, for instance. He would have made a powerful witness at a trial, with testimony about Trump demon-dialing him and now-disbarred John Eastman whining to Pence that Trump could get away with his coup if only Pence was willing “to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn [the House] for 10 days” so Eastman et al. could “investigate” and “audit” the fraud that surely must have occurred in order for Trump to lose.
Or other Republicans, like head of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, Lawrence Tabas, who directly told Trump that he did not win the state, only for Trump to be like lalala I didn’t hear you, fraud fraud fraud! Or the Pennsylvania electors who would only sign off on the fake electors if there was a clause in there saying Trump would only use their certificates if he won all of his election lawsuits first.
Noted Smith: “there was a text chain with some of the people who were carrying out this scheme for President Trump basically ended with, ‘These people should be shot,’ because — ‘and that we can’t let this snowball like this; otherwise, we’re going to have to do this in all the other States.’”
DAMN. NING.
Fox News and conservatives tried to make hay about Smith saying he would not have called Cassidy Hutchinson. [social media post]
What Smith actually said:
“[M]y recollection with Ms. Hutchinson, at least one of the issues was a number of the things that she gave evidence on were secondhand hearsay, were things that she had heard from other people and, as a result, that testimony may or may not be admissible, and it certainly wouldn’t be as powerful as firsthand testimony.”
Gee, that sure doesn’t sound like exoneration.
And here is a juicy tidbit: Smith says Rudy Giuliani didn’t believe the vote-fraud bullshit he was peddling either.
“Our evidence was, he did not. And, in fact, when we interviewed him, he disavowed a number of the claims. He claimed they were mistakes or hyperbole, even the claim about Ruby Freeman, where he, you know, basically destroyed this poor woman’s life by claiming she was a vote scammer. President Trump did the same thing in a recorded call with the Secretary of State; he disavowed things he’d said in that interview.”
And Smith said he would not have called Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, or Peter Navarro as witnesses due to their “highly uncooperative nature.” We would also add that they all have the credibility of guys selling Rolexes from the inner pocket of a trenchcoat outside of a bar.
And finally, Smith revealed that by the time Trump got into office and shut the investigation down, he had not decided on bringing charges against alleged co-conspirators Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, and Boris Epshteyn. […]
We will never forgive Merrick Garland for taking two whole fucking years to appoint a Special Counsel. Yeah, yeah, the Supreme Court Six had obviously been planning to let Holy Executive Trump […] off the hook no matter what. But still! Voters deserved to see the evidence. And Trump sure deserved to spend every day of the rest of his life answering for himself in various courtrooms, like any other schmo who broke the law would have.
It was the greatest failure of federal law enforcement in American history, and we and the rest of the world will all be paying for it for the rest of our lives.
“Ukraine’s secret service warns of a staged high-casualty attack, potentially targeting a church in the run-up to Russian Orthodox Christmas.”
Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service warned Friday that the Kremlin was likely to carry out a false flag attack inside Russia or inside the Ukrainian territories it illegally occupies to derail peace talks mediated by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kyiv has already accused Moscow of lying about an alleged Ukrainian drone attack against the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to disrupt the peace process, and is now warning the Russians are likely to seek to up the stakes further with a staged high-casualty attack in the run-up to Russian Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7. [!]
[…] “We predict with high probability a transition from manipulative influence to the [Russian Federation] special services’ armed provocation, resulting in significant human casualties,” the intelligence service said in a statement.
“The location of the provocation may be a religious building or other object of high symbolic significance both in [Russia] and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” the statement read.
The spy service said the Kremlin intended to pin the attacks on Ukraine by deploying Western-made drones brought from the front line to the site of the faked attack. [!]
Such operations are “consistent with modus operandi of Russian special services,” the Ukrainian secret service continued.
“Putin’s regime has repeatedly used this tactic within the [Russian Federation], and now this same model is being exported abroad, as indirectly confirmed by public statements from senior Russian officials,” the intelligence service added. [!]
A series of attacks widely viewed as an example of this tactic are the apartment bombings in 1999 that struck the Russian cities of Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk, killing more than 300 people and injuring more than 1,000. The attacks, officially blamed on Chechen militants, were used to launch a new war in Chechnya, and boost Putin’s popularity ahead of elections. [!]
The world’s richest man is openly lusting over a teenager. He’s recently been awarded the world’s biggest ever paycheck—one trillion dollars—to turn Tesla’s crashing fortunes around. But Elon Musk is behaving a bit distracted. […] Homosexuality in Stranger Things. Gender definitions. Disbanding the European Union. The debunked “Trump election was stolen” conspiracy theory. Declining (Western) birthrates. New Age hyperconsciousness. The antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. The apocalyptic implications of good Samaritan-style empathy. And advocating deportations. […] But there’s one deportation scare he isn’t happy with.
[A 19yo] High school student [who] was briefly threatened with deportation back to the United States from her new home, Denmark. Musk, 54, was outraged. What was different about this case?
She is female. She is young. She is blonde. She is white. She is … “hotness”. The father of 14 (that we know of) insisted: “8 or above level hotness should get an exemption.”
[…]
Now he’s been linked to controversial pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Musk’s name was among the few not completely redacted from the thousands of pages of grand jury evidence so far made public. It appears in phone logs, flight itineraries, financial records and Epstein’s personal schedule.
The U.S. military said Wednesday it struck five alleged drug-smuggling boats over two days, killing a total of eight people while others jumped overboard and may have survived.
This makes the new total 35. The USA has struck civilian boats in international waters 35 times.
A federal judge ruled Friday that the suspect accused of planting pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican national committee headquarters the night before the U.S. Capitol riot will remain in custody pending his trial.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is pulling National Guard troops out of Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, for now. District judges and appeals courts have issued various rulings about the legality of the deployments. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a lower court’s decision barring Trump’s use of the National Guard in Chicago.
President Trump signed a proclamation Wednesday to delay increases in U.S. tariffs for imported upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for one year.
The C.I.A. has determined that Ukraine did not target President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or one of his residences in an attack this week, according to U.S. officials, rebutting an assertion Mr. Putin made in a phone call to President Trump on Monday.
A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday found that the Trump administration illegally moved to end temporary deportation protections for tens of thousands of people from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. The ruling was a blow to the administration’s efforts to limit the reach of a humanitarian program meant to shield migrants from deportation to countries in crisis.
The United States has recorded 2,012 measles cases as of Dec. 23 this year, the highest total in more than 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The last time the U.S. hit more than 2,000 cases was in 1992, or 33 years ago, CDC data shows.
Washington Post:
Vaccination rates among kindergarten students have plunged across broad swaths of the United States since before the pandemic, exposing children and families to increasing health risks as many school districts pull back from their traditional role as a bulwark against infectious disease, according to a Washington Post investigation.
Millions of Americans had their health care costs significantly increase as of Jan. 1—a direct result of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Republicans and signed into law by Donald Trump.
On the first day of the year, subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which were protected under the administration of former President Joe Biden, were allowed to expire. This means millions of people currently receiving government help with their health insurance costs will no longer have that assistance.
An analysis of the situation in September by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF estimated that, on average, the loss of subsidies will increase health care bills by 114%. The new costs will affect more than 24 million people who buy insurance on Obamacare exchanges.
[…] A November poll from KFF found that 74% of respondents favored extending subsidies, including 76% of independent voters—and even 50% of Republicans.
“Make no mistake, the blame behind the skyrocketing health care costs millions are facing today is squarely at the feet of House Republicans, and the American people know it,” Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Politico. […]
“U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, said in the 2-1 decision that the state’s law could not stand under the Supreme Court’s 2022 landmark gun rights ruling.”
A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled that California’s ban on openly carrying firearms in most parts of the state was unconstitutional.
A panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided 2-1 with a gun owner in ruling that the state’s prohibition against open carry in counties with more than 200,000 people violated U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
About 95% of the population in California, which has had some of the nation’s strictest gun-control laws, live in counties of that size.
U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, said the Democratic-led state’s law could not stand under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 landmark gun rights ruling.
That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, was issued by the court’s 6-3 conservative super-majority and established a new legal test for firearms restrictions. The test said they must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
VanDyke, whose opinion on Friday was joined by another Trump appointee, said the latest case “unquestionably involves a historical practice — open carry — that predates ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791.”
He noted that more than 30 states generally allow open carry. California itself allowed citizens to carry handguns openly and holstered for self-defense without penalty until 2012, he said.
A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled that California’s ban on openly carrying firearms in most parts of the state was unconstitutional.
[I snipped details of an earlier cases.]
The 2022 Supreme Court ruling has prompted court cases nationwide challenging modern firearm restrictions, including in California.
A 9th Circuit panel in September 2024 upheld a California law that prohibits people with concealed-carry permits from carrying firearms at several categories of “sensitive places” like bars, parks, zoos, stadiums and museums.
In a fundraising email circulated Monday, Trump told supporters that Democrats would seize their so-called “tariff rebate checks” and hand the money to undocumented immigrants unless donors responded within an hour. […] “Only a massive and immediate response will do,” it continued. “I need YOU to help me hit my end-of-year fundraising goal by midnight tomorrow or EVERYTHING we’ve worked so hard to accomplish could go BYE BYE.”
The language closely mirrors the mechanics of common financial scams: urgency, fear, and the promise of money that will vanish unless the recipient acts immediately. Cybersecurity experts have long warned consumers that such pressure is a hallmark of fraud
[…]
A similar email earlier this month urged recipients to “confirm” their names to receive the checks and claimed to be “the only tariff rebate email authorized by President Trump.” The fine print noted it was paid for by […] a rebranded super PAC tied to Trump’s 2024 campaign, and that it was not official government communication.
[…]
Online reactions to the email were blistering and personal. “Donald Trump counts on his supporters being the dumbest people on the planet,” one commenter wrote. […] A different user observed, “Well, in all fairness, they haven’t proved him wrong…”
Promise checks that will never come, then blame Dems.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has declared a national emergency and hit out at US “military aggression” after attacks in capital Caracas and several other states early Saturday morning local time.
At least seven explosions, low-flying aircraft, and one column of smoke were seen in Caracas.
Technically Trump’s already been impeached twice FWIW. Should’ve ben convicted twice too but for the Repug’s in Congress..
KGsays
Lynna, OM@135,
It amazes me that none of the raving right factions have yet accused RFK Jr. of being an agent of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy, aiming to kill as many American babies and children as possible. After all, he comes from a well-known Democrat family.
gijoelsays
Trump claims that they have captured Maduro. Much as I despise Maduro, I think America getting dragged into another war for a wag the dog scenario is not a good thing.
rorschachsays
It’s been only 3 days in 2026, I suggest we try turning it off and back on again.
mordredsays
German news sites report both Democrat and Republican polititions call the attack on Venezuel illegal. I’m not expecting them to actually do anything against Trump and his fascist warmongers…
StevoRsays
@ rorschach : I occassionally try saying “Computer, end program.”
It hasn’t worked so far..
(Must confess I yoiked this from an old~ish fb meme but still.)
StevoRsays
Apparently Trump is gunna give a press conference on the Venezula attack and kidnapping of Maduro and his wife at 11 am USoA time.Which is .. v late night / early morning ours. (Aussie typing.)
Bloody timezones & the USA being so far behind the rest of the planet in those among so many more aspects.
I don’t think I’m going to sleep much tonight.
birgerjohanssonsays
Time Team lives on, with new episodes on Youtube. Here is a summary of last year.
“The U.S. has built up significant military force in the region, but Trump does not appear to have sought permission from or informed Congress of Saturday’s military action.”
President Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that the United States had carried out a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who Trump said were then flown out of the South American nation.
Trump made the statement in a post to Truth Social at 4:21 a.m., announcing that he would hold a news conference at 11 a.m. at his Mar-a-Lago resort with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said the operation, which he watched from Mar-a-Lago, was “extremely complex” and involved a number of aircraft. The operation was supposed to take place four days ago but was delayed due to the weather, Trump said, adding, “I watched it literally like I was watching a television show.”
The president suggested that the U.S. did not have a day-after plan. “We’re making that decision now,” he told Fox News about what comes next for Venezuela. “We’ll be involved in it very much.”
“Venezuela rejects, repudiates and denounces before the international community the extremely grave military aggression carried out by the current Government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and population,” the Venezuelan foreign minister said in a statement.
The outlines of the Trump administration’s intentions began to emerge early Saturday in the hours after the strikes occurred.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced early Saturday morning that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were indicted in the Southern District of New York on charges of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns” and other charges.
“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi posted to X. [social media post]
Two law enforcement sources told MS NOW that agents from the FBI’s hostage rescue team embedded with U.S. military special operators from Delta Force, a counterterrorism unit, for the mission. The FBI took custody of Maduro, the sources said.
Trump told Fox News on Saturday morning that Maduro and his wife are on board USS Iwo Jima.
The U.S. has built up significant military force in the region surrounding Venezuela, but Trump does not appear to have sought permission from or informed Congress of Saturday’s military action.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a Trump ally, acknowledged there had been no congressional approval of — or authorization for the use of military force for — prior to the U.S. action.
Lee said he spoke with Rubio, a harsh critic of the Maduro regime, who told him that Maduro had been arrested “by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States” and that the military action “was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.” Lee said such action would fall under the president’s “inherent authority” under Article II of the U.S constitution to protect American personnel
Rubio “anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody,” Lee said of Rubio.
Vice President JD Vance also defended the administration’s actions, saying Trump offered “multiple off ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States.”
He also suggested the operation was not illegal, pointing to federal narcoterrorism charges against the Venezuelan leader.
“Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism,” Vance wrote on X. “You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.” [social media post]
“Today’s decisive action is this hemisphere’s equivalent to the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” said GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who was born in Cuba and represents a heavily Hispanic district in southern Florida. “It’s a big day in Florida, where the majority of Venezuelan, Cuban, & Nicaraguan exiles reside. This is the community I represent & we are overwhelmed with emotion and hope.”
Nonetheless, the operation had already sparked backlash in its early hours as questions swirl about the legal justification for the actions targeting Venezuela.
“No matter the outcome, we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., an Iraq war veteran, on X.
“Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress,” posted Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J. “Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”
Sen. Jim Himes, D-Conn., Ranking Member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that he has seen “no evidence” that Maduro’s presidency “poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos.”
Himes added, “Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
The United States has for months been building up military forces off the coast of Venezuela, and has targeted dozens of boats in the region in what the White House says is a war against illegal narco-trafficking. It has also intercepted oil tankers in the region in a bid to cut off the country’s largest economic asset.
Trump had previously warned of ground operations in Venezuela, and the CIA recently struck a dockyard in the country.
Earlier this month, the House narrowly rejected a war powers resolution that would have directed “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.” In response to the CIA’s drone strike on the Venezuelan dockyard, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the bill’s sponsor, described the actions as “illegal hostilities” and reiterated his view that the “American People don’t want another endless war over oil.”
Similar resolutions have stalled in the Senate, where the 60-vote threshold means even steeper climb.
“The illegality of Trump’s insane war in Venezuela is out of control,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted on X on Dec. 30. “Remember, this has NOTHING to do with stopping drugs from entering America. Venezuela produces cocaine bound for Europe. This is war mongering distraction.”
“What Are We Changing The Subject From When We Bomb A Country’s Capital And Kidnap Its President?”
“Or did Trump just want ‘a win’?”
My little brother and I got in a stupid fight a week or two ago. We were talking about the war crimes Trump has been doing out loud, bombing fishing boats and murdering shipwrecked men down off the coast of Venezuela. And my little brother wanted me to agree that sanctions on Venezuela are just as bad as the war crimes. I said I didn’t care about the sanctions; I didn’t know enough about the situation to know whether they were warranted but that I’m not always opposed to sanctions. I think they have real utility with that Putin asshole, for instance. “THEY’RE THEFT” he screeched in that frantic tone where he filibusters really fast and nobody else can say anything, “WE’RE STEALING FROM THEM.” And when I said again I didn’t care about the sanctions, and kept repeating “I care about the war crimes” over and over, he shrieked at me that I was immoral, and I told him to shut his mouth and get the fuck out of my house.
We should have been able to agree on what we agree on: caring about the war crimes. Why did we have to discuss until the point when he could accuse me of being insufficiently Left, and immoral, and uncommitted to Sparkle Motion and a real piece of shit?
I care about the war crimes.
Well my husband just woke me up and it’s 5 a.m. and we’ve bombed the Venezuelan capital and kidnapped its president, just cold spirited him away. Might as well be in the back of a van. [I snipped Trump’s war-like Truth Social post.]
[…] Fuck you so hard for unleashing whatever this specious bullshit will unleash. I’m not reading your Truth Social and I’m not watching your 11 a.m. stroke session where you rot in front of our eyes while proclaiming how Maduro was doing terrorism with all the fentanyl he doesn’t produce and so manly President Tuffandstuff led Seal Team Six to capture him with a Rambo tie around his head and a knife between his teeth.
[…] here are some things they might be attempting to change the subject from, if it’s not that second part.
– Trump’s child raper best friend and the investigation that now has some “millions” of documents to release.
– Elon Musk’s robot servant posting “sexualized children” on X.
– Jack Smith’s January 6 House testimony.
– Trump’s third (?) cognitive exam, which the doctors for some reason keep asking him to take?
– Hey did we pardon any other criminals this week, simultaneously stopping the requirement that they pay back their victims?
– Nobody liking the Trump Kennedy Center and everybody laughing about his FIFA Peace Prize.
– People really liking that Mamdani guy.
I don’t know, it’s Fuck O’Clock, and I ain’t know shit. But I know what I care about.
I care that we just bombed another country and kidnapped its president and first lady, and if it matters, it was based on fuck and all. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Recommended reading:
The Invention of Capitalism:
Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation: ,Michael Perelman
While charging that Maduro had undermined Venezuelans’ right to “self-determination,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a statement that the U.S. operation “contravenes the principle of the non-use of force that underpins international law … no lasting political solution can be imposed from the outside.”
Apparently connecting the Venezuela operation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Barrot said that the “growing number of violations of this principle” by permanent members of the U.N. Security Council “will have grave consequences for global security, sparing no one.” [Interesting framing.]
The CIA had a source within the Venezuelan government that provided the U.S. spy agency with information on President Nicolás Maduro’s movements and location, leading to the U.S. Special Operations raid that captured the Venezuelan leader and his wife, said people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
[…] The CIA “had a small team clandestinely on the ground starting in August that was able to provide extraordinary insight into Maduro’s pattern of life that made grabbing him seamless,” the source familiar said.
[…] The Venezuela strategy was coordinated among White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, with sometimes-daily phone calls and meetings among themselves and with President Donald Trump, the person said.
[…] Responding to criticism of the military action in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Saturday fired back saying in a Fox News interview that his administration was lowering the cost of oil.
“We’re bringing the prices way down,” he said, “When you do oil, everything follows. Everything is following.”
He added that the U.S. oil companies would be involved in the Venezuelan industry.
“I see that we’re going to be very strongly involved in it, that’s all. I mean, what can I say?” he told Fox News. “We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest. And we’re going to be very much involved anytime.”
[…] The Defense Department said that it “provided support” to a request from the Justice Department that the military help enforce an indictment against Maduro. The administration has argued that the Venezuelan leader is the head of a cartel, helping traffic harmful drugs onto American soil — an assessment unsupported by the U.S. intelligence community. […]
Trump’s administration has now distributed photos of Maduro in handcuffs.
New York Times Editorial Board, “Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise”:
Over the past few months, President Trump has deployed an imposing military force in the Caribbean to threaten Venezuela. Until now, the president used that force — an aircraft carrier, at least seven other warships, scores of aircraft and 15,000 U.S. troops — for illegal attacks on small boats that he claimed were ferrying drugs. On Saturday, Mr. Trump dramatically escalated his campaign by capturing President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela as part of what he called “a large scale strike” against the country.
Few people will feel any sympathy for Mr. Maduro. He is undemocratic and repressive, and has destabilized the Western Hemisphere in recent years. The United Nations recently issued a report detailing more than a decade of killings, torture, sexual violence and arbitrary detention by henchmen against his political opponents. He stole Venezuela’s presidential election in 2024. He has fueled economic and political disruption throughout the region by instigating an exodus of nearly eight million migrants.
If there is an overriding lesson of American foreign affairs in the past century, however, it is that attempting to oust even the most deplorable regime can make matters worse. The United States spent 20 years failing to create a stable government in Afghanistan and replaced a dictatorship in Libya with a fractured state. The tragic consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq continue to beset America and the Middle East. Perhaps most relevant, the United States has sporadically destabilized Latin American countries, including Chile, Cuba, Guatemala and Nicaragua, by trying to oust a government through force.
Mr. Trump has not yet offered a coherent explanation for his actions in Venezuela. He is pushing our country toward an international crisis without valid reasons. If Mr. Trump wants to argue otherwise, the Constitution spells out what he must do: Go to Congress. Without congressional approval, his actions violate U.S. law. [All true.]
The nominal rationale for the administration’s military adventurism is to destroy “narco-terrorists.” Governments throughout history have labeled the leaders of rival nations as terrorists, seeking to justify military incursions as policing operations. The claim is particularly ludicrous in this case, given that Venezuela is not a meaningful producer of fentanyl or the other drugs that have dominated the recent epidemic of overdoses in the United States, and the cocaine that it does produce flows mostly to Europe. While Mr. Trump has been attacking Venezuelan boats, he also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, who ran a sprawling drug operation when he was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022.
A more plausible explanation for the attacks on Venezuela may instead be found in Mr. Trump’s recently released National Security Strategy. It claimed the right to dominate Latin America: “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere.” In what the document called the “Trump Corollary,” the administration vowed to redeploy forces from around the world to the region, stop traffickers on the high seas, use lethal force against migrants and drug runners and potentially base more U.S. troops around the region.
Venezuela has apparently become the first country subject to this latter-day imperialism, and it represents a dangerous and illegal approach to America’s place in the world. By proceeding without any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority or domestic endorsement, Mr. Trump risks providing justification for authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere who want to dominate their own neighbors. [All true.] More immediately, he threatens to replicate the American hubris that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump seemed to recognize the problems with military overreach. In 2016, he was the rare Republican politician to call out the folly of President George W. Bush’s Iraq war. In 2024, he said: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” [He lied.]
He is now abandoning this principle, and he is doing so illegally. The Constitution requires Congress to approve any act of war. […] Mr. Trump has not even a fig leaf of legal authority for his attacks on Venezuela.
Congressional debates over military action play a crucial democratic role. They check military adventurism by forcing a president to justify his attack plans to the public […]
In the case of Venezuela, a congressional debate would expose the thinness of Mr. Trump’s rationale. His administration has justified his attacks on the small boats by claiming they pose an immediate threat to the United States. But a wide range of legal and military experts reject the claim, and common sense refutes it, too. An attempt to smuggle drugs into the United States — if, in fact, all the boats were doing so — is not an attempt to overthrow the government or defeat its military.
We suspect Mr. Trump has refused to seek congressional approval for his actions partly because he knows that even some Republicans in Congress are deeply skeptical of the direction in which he is leading this country. Already, Senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski and Representatives Don Bacon and Thomas Massie — Republicans all — have backed legislation that would limit Mr. Trump’s military actions against Venezuela.
A second argument against Mr. Trump’s attacks on Venezuela is that they violate international law. By blowing up the small boats that Mr. Trump says are smuggling drugs, he has killed people based on the mere suspicion that they have committed a crime and given them no chance to defend themselves. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and every subsequent major human rights treaty prohibit such extrajudicial killings. So does U.S. law.
The administration appears to have killed defenseless people. In one attack, the Navy fired a second strike against a hobbled boat, about 40 minutes after the first attack, killing two sailors who were clinging to the boat’s wreckage and appeared to present no threat. As our colleague David French, a former U.S. Army lawyer, has written, “The thing that separates war from murder is the law.”
The legal arguments against Mr. Trump’s actions are the more important ones, but there is also a cold-eyed realist argument. They are not in America’s national security interest. [I snipped a comparison to ousting to the leader of Panama 36 years ago.]
The potential for chaos in Venezuela seems much greater. Despite Mr. Maduro’s capture, the generals who have enabled his regime will not suddenly vanish. Nor are they likely to hand power to María Corina Machado, the opposition figure whose movement appears to have won the country’s most recent election and who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize last month.
Among the possible bad outcomes are a surge in violence by the left-wing Colombian military group the ELN, which has a foothold in Venezuela’s western area, or by the paramilitary groups known as “colectivos” that have operated on the periphery of power under the Maduro dictatorship. Further unrest in Venezuela could unsettle global energy and food markets and drive more migrants throughout the hemisphere.
So how should the United States deal with the continuing problem that Venezuela poses to the region and America’s interests? We share the hopes of desperate Venezuelans, some of whom have made a case for intervention. But there are no easy answers. By now, the world should understand the risks of regime change.
We will hold out hope that the current crisis will end less badly than we expect. We fear that the result of Mr. Trump’s adventurism is increased suffering for Venezuelans, rising regional instability and lasting damage for America’s interests around the world. We know that Mr. Trump’s warmongering violates the law.
Trump is now speaking at a press conference held in Mar-a-Lago. He is stumbling. He looks and sounds old. He is reading hesitatingly from text on paper. Trump even mentioned Tren de Aragua. Then he went off script, starting a long riff about making Washington D.C. safe. He followed that with lies about other cities. Trump is rambling. Trump claims he “saved Los Angeles.” Tren de Aragua, again: “Sent by Maduro to threaten our citizens.” More rambling.
The U.S. is “going to run the country,” Trump said of Venezuela at a news conference today, following the U.S. capture of his South American counterpart.
“We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transitions,” he said. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
“We’re there now,” he added. “So, we’re going to stay until such time as we’re going to run it essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place.”
rorschachsays
Ok I take it all back after watching the press conference. He does have dementia.
The U.S. strike in Venezuela, which removed President Nicolás Maduro, has raised questions about executive authority and congressional oversight, according to one former military officer.
“Quite clearly, it is an act of war,” said Ret. Col. Gregory A. Daddis. “I think that certainly is not simply within the executive authority, that Congress has to be a part of that conversation, as I would argue, the American public.¨
There has been “very little debate within the legislative branch,” he told NBC News “As far as I can tell right now, the Senate Armed Services Committee wasn’t even notified of the military strike. There’s no congressional oversight or authorization.”
The operation also raises broader questions about targeting the head of another sovereign state, he said, wondering whether targeting the head of another sovereign state was “acceptable foreign policy, and is it the norm that any head of state is fair game for the United States?”
“We can simply engage in a series of decapitation strikes and then have show trials in U.S. courts?” he asked. “And can the U.S. courts even hold foreign presidents accountable for crimes, not international courts, but U.S. courts? I think there’s a host of questions here that so far have not been answered.”
Gregory also placed the strike in a historical and strategic context, citing the Roosevelt Corollary and a long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America.
“In many ways, it follows a long history of American interventionism in the Western Hemisphere,” he said, “where we have argued that the Western Hemisphere, in its entirety, falls within our jurisdiction to protect U.S. interests.”
Now Marco Rubio is speaking at the press conference. Rubio is talking about guts and grit and so forth. “Stealth, lethality, precision […]” About Maduro, “He effed around and he found out.” Rubio also heaped mass quantities of praise on Trump.
U.S. companies will enter Venezuela, spend billions and “start making money for the country,” Trump told the news conference, adding that the country’s oil business has been a “bust.”
The “partnership” will make the people “rich, independent and safe,” he said. Venezuelans living in the U.S. will be “extremely happy,” he added.
The U.S. is “ready” to stage a second “and much larger” attack on the country if needed, he said.
Rachel Maddow reacts to Trump’s ‘illegal’ strike on Venezuela. MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow reacts to President Donald Trump’s strike on Venezuela and capture of Venezuelan President Maduro.
Video is about 16 minutes.
This video was made before Trump’s press conference.
Maddow: [Maddow covered lots of recent history, and Trump’s remarks, and then she went on to summarize.] “All of the purported explanations for what’s happened here don’t stand up to logical scrutiny. The president never articulated a coherent rationale for having done this. Seems like Marco Rubio’s dream, not Donald Trump’s dream. […]”
Trump called in to Fox and Friends before he held a press conference. Trump was enthusiastic about watching the invasion of Venezuela like he was “watching a TV show.”
J.D. Vance is pounding his chest on social media. Likewise for many Trump lackeys.
There’s some reporting that the Vice President of Venezuela is now in Russia.
canadianstevesays
from quote NYT editorial in #174 Lynna, OM
Mr. Trump has not yet offered a coherent explanation for his actions in Venezuela. He is pushing our country toward an international crisis without valid reasons. If Mr. Trump wants to argue otherwise, the Constitution spells out what he must do: Go to Congress. Without congressional approval, his actions violate U.S. law.
Except that the Trump lackeys in the supreme court made this irrelevant, because they ruled that Trump is criminally immune for any actions in official capacity as president, therefore this is legal according to the law of the land. Unclear if any military members could still be prosecuted.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Aaron Rupar: “Trump posts footage of the Maduro raid set to ‘Fortunate Son’—a protest song about the Vietnam War draft. [Video clip]” Eric Columbus: “One line is ‘I ain’t no millionaire’s son’, but please don’t ask how Trump avoided Vietnam.” Anthony Kreis (Constitutional law prof): “My God. He’s so stupid.” James Ball: “I’m sure destabilising Venezuela and likely all of its neighbours will work wonders for refugee flows from that region. Genius.” Andy Kim (Senator D-NJ): “Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel):
None of this excuses Trump, but:
1) There is an OLC opinion that authorizes this, which future AG then OLC head Bill Barr signed in 1989 to authorize the very similar Panama invasion.
2) There is an indictment. It was unsealed under Barr in 2020.
3) Indictment is real. Former top aide pled in June.
this 1989 OLC opinion. [Link: Authority of the FBI to Override International Law in Extraterritorial Law Enforcement Activities]
And my critique of the 1989 OLC opinion. [Link]
The conclusion that the president has the authority to override Article 2(4) of the UN Charter appears to rest on the absence of judicial enforcement. Under this view, the only law binding upon the president is that which is judicially enforceable. In other words, if the president can get away with it, then it must be legal.
Rando 1: “What is the mechanism of correction for these fucking OLC opinions?”
Marcy Wheeler: “There isn’t one. But it’s one that the after times should get around to dealing with.” Rando 1: “Oh… fantastic.” The Onion (2018): “Trump claims he can overrule constitution with executive order because of little-known ‘No one will stop me’ loophole.”
Sen Mike Lee [citing a phone call w/ Rubio, gave] the first account I’ve seen of the Admin’s legal theory for the strikes. On the domestic law side—something like: Art II law enforcement power to capture Maduro (by invading his own country) combined with Art II power to protect those personnel executing the warrant.
The “actual or imminent attack” language speaks in intl law. (Under the UN Charter, states may use force in self defense against an armed attack—clearly not an actual grounds here.) But it’s muddled with the Art II constitutional Q of presidential power to act without Congress.
The “protect US personnel” language sounds drawn from the theory of unit self defense—under which the USG claims authority (under domestic and intl law) to protect U.S. personnel who are *otherwise legally stationed abroad.* Unit self defense has always been a slippery slope, but one might imagine especially so if the unit in question has itself just invaded a sovereign nation.
Rando 2: “So just to be clear, we executed a mission to invade a sovereign nation and then abduct its national leader. And then we bombed that nation in an act of *self defense* as we believed our invading forces would get attacked?”
PSA for everyone saying this was “illegal”: Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.
Elie Mystal (The Nation): “Actually, that’s exactly how JURISDICTION works unless you have an extradition treaty.” Rando 3: “Yale needs to rescind his law degree.” Michael Lehrhoff (Retired attorney): “Didn’t Trump just PARDON a Honduran leader who was CONVICTED of narcoterrorism???????” Marcy Wheeler: “One nifty thing abt Maduro’s known 2020 indictment is it cited trafficking drugs THROUGH Honduras, whence Juan Orlando Hernández was just pardoned so he could help Peter Thiel destroy government.”
James Ball (The New World): “Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.” Elie Mystal: “Reading the Maduro ‘indictment’ I’m suddenly reminded of WHY Gitmo existed and Obama didn’t shut it down. It’s because you can’t KIDNAP people, based on ‘evidence’ you violated rights to obtain, and bring them to trial in U.S. courts.”
A federal indictment charging Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, his wife and four other people […] In addition to the narco-terrorism conspiracy charge, the indictment alleges counts of cocaine importation conspiracy; possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Brian Finucane: “Did a Control + F for fentanyl, but no hits.” Rando 4: “THEY HAD MACHINE GUNS?!?!”
Brian Finucane: “Today is the anniversary of the capture of Noreiga in Operation Just Cause.” Rando 5: “This one was called Just ‘Cuz.”
Michael Paarlberg (PoliSci prof): https://bsky.app/profile/mpaarlberg.bsky.social/post/3mbjd62ljvs2r
the closest comparison for the Venezuela operation isn’t Iraq but Panama. In both cases, the invasion was portrayed as a police action to capture a head of state to stand trial in the US for drug trafficking.
Operation Just Cause, unlike Operation Iraqi Freedom, is seen in US defense circles as a success, a quick operation that did not result in a prolonged occupation or bloody insurgency. It also succeeded in installing Guillermo Endara as president, and dismantling the Panama Defense Forces entirely.
There are reasons why this comparison doesn’t work, however. Unlike Venezuela, Panama already had a major US military presence as the then-headquarters of Southcom, with over 10,000 troops already on Panamanian soil, who could guarantee a transition of government and US-friendly administration. It’s also much smaller and was exclusively under the thumb of the US from its founding. Venezuela is much larger, has oil, and closer relations with other foreign powers, notably China. Its military is democratically unaccountable, has vast powers beyond national defense, and is rich from oil rents and criminal activities.
It’s hard to see how Venezuela transitions to a democratic, opposition-run government without either the FANB’s buy-in, or dismantling. And it’s hard to see how those things are secured by a smash-and-grab operation that appears to already be over.
Matt Novak (Gizmodo): “It feels like Democrats have three options: impeachment, shutting down the government on Jan. 30 to extract concessions, or strongly worded letters and long speeches.”
Fmr. CIA director Brennan: This U.S. invasion of Venezuela is about oil, wealth and regime change. Former CIA Director John Brennan discusses the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro. “It’s all about oil and wealth. If Venezuela did not have this oil wealth, I’m sure nothing like this would have happened,”the Trump antagonist tells Alex Witt. “This is about regime change. This is about a U.S. invasion…this is unprecedented in so many respects.”
“The state Department of Children, Youth, and Families said it visited the nine facilities at the center of right-wing claims of fraud and found them ‘operating as expected.’ ”
Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families on Friday said that investigators have found child care facilities at the center of recent fraud allegations were operating as they should. […]
The Trump administration, and President Donald Trump himself, have alleged fraud in Minnesota after a recent video from a right-wing online influencer named Nick Shirley contained unsubstantiated claims of fraud at child care facilities in the state.
[…] “Investigators confirmed the centers were operating as expected, gathered evidence and initiated further review,” the department said in a statement Friday.
[…] The department said it has ongoing investigations into four of the centers, and 55 investigations into providers that receive funding from the Child Care Assistance Program, which it oversees.
Following Shirley’s video, which gained traction in right-wing circles, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that it was freezing all federal child care payments to Minnesota.
[…] There was a $250 million fraud scheme involving the Feeding Our Future nonprofit in Minnesota that, beginning in 2022, has resulted in criminal charges against 78 people so far, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the state. The scheme involved charges against some defendants who are members of Minnesota’s Somali community.
The “mastermind” of the scheme was Aimee Bock, who is white, according to the federal prosecutor’s office. She was convicted along with Salim Said of wire fraud and other counts in March.
Bock has not yet been sentenced. Prosecutors said that the scheme involved federal Covid-19 relief funds for meals for children […]
Some of the criminal cases are ongoing. The most recent person charged, the 78th, was indicted last month. […]
A state audit released in 2024 found that the Minnesota Department of Education did not properly oversee Feeding Our Future.
[…] “Distribution of unvetted or deceptive claims and misuse of tip lines can interfere with investigations […]
Trump has criticized the Somali community in the U.S. before the latest allegations. Trump, without providing evidence, wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday, “Much of the Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia.” […]
“A yearlong effort to build an AI probate assistant reveals the limits of government chatbot development.”
Dealing with a loved one’s belongings after their death is never easy. But as Alaska’s state courts have discovered, an inaccurate or misleading artificial intelligence chatbot can easily make matters worse.
For more than a year, Alaska’s court system has been designing a pioneering generative AI chatbot termed the Alaska Virtual Assistant (AVA) to help residents navigate the tangled web of forms and procedures involved in probate, the judicial process of transferring property away from a deceased person.
[…] Designing this bespoke AI solution has illuminated the difficulties government agencies across the United States are facing in applying powerful AI systems to real-world problems where truth and reliability are paramount.
“With a project like this, we need to be 100% accurate, and that’s really difficult with this technology,” said Stacey Marz, the administrative director of the Alaska Court System and one of the AVA project’s leaders.
But Marz said she thinks this chatbot should be held to a higher standard. “If people are going to take the information they get from their prompt and they’re going to act on it and it’s not accurate or not complete, they really could suffer harm. It could be incredibly damaging to that person, family or estate.”
[…] “Our goal was to basically try to replicate the services with the chatbot that we would provide with a human facilitator,” Marz told NBC News, referring to AVA’s team of attorneys, technical experts and advisers from the NCSC. “We wanted a similar self-help experience, if somebody was able to talk to you and say, ‘This is what I need help with, this is my situation.’”
While the NCSC provided an initial grant to get AVA off the ground as part of its growing work on AI, the chatbot has been technically developed by Tom Martin, a lawyer and law professor who launched a law-focused AI company called LawDroid and designs legal AI tools.
[..] traits that would otherwise be welcomed become more problematic when applied to topics as consequential as probate. Working with Martin, NCSC’s Souza noted that early versions of AVA were too empathetic and annoyed users who might have been actively grieving and simply wanted answers about the probate process […]
Beyond the system’s superficial tone and pleasantries, Martin and Souza had to contend with the serious issue of hallucinations, or instances in which AI systems confidently share false or exaggerated information.
“We had trouble with hallucinations, regardless of the model, where the chatbot was not supposed to actually use anything outside of its knowledge base,” Souza told NBC News. “For example, when we asked it, ‘Where do I get legal help?’ it would tell you, ‘There’s a law school in Alaska, and so look at the alumni network.’ But there is no law school in Alaska.”
[…] To evaluate the accuracy and helpfulness of AVA’s responses, the AVA team designed a set of 91 questions regarding probate topics, asking the chatbot, for example, which probate form would be appropriate to submit if a user wanted to transfer the title of their deceased relative’s car to their name.
Yet the 91-question test proved too time-consuming to run and evaluate, according to Jeannie Sato, the Alaska Court System’s director of access to justice services, given the stakes at hand and the need for human review.
So Sato said the team landed on a refined list of just 16 test questions, featuring “some questions that AVA had answered incorrectly, some that were complicated, and some that were pretty basic questions that we think AVA may be asked frequently.”
[…] Despite its many fits and starts, AVA is now scheduled to be launched in late January, if all goes according to plan. […]
“It was just so very labor-intensive to do this,” Marz added, despite “all the buzz about generative AI, and everybody saying this is going to revolutionize self-help and democratize access to the courts. It’s quite a big challenge to actually pull that off.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday warned Cuba’s leaders that “I’d be concerned” following the United States’ capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during an attack earlier in the day.
Rubio spoke to reporters at a press conference at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The secretary accused Cuba of being “run by incompetent, senile men, and in some cases not seen now, but incompetent nonetheless.” He claimed Maduro’s guards and Venezuela’s “whole spy agency” were “full of Cubans,” and that “this poor island took over Venezuela.”
“In some cases, one of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba,” Rubio added. “They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint. So, yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.”
Before Rubio spoke, Trump said his administration “wants to surround ourselves with good neighbors” but added that Cuba is “not doing very well right now” and a “failing nation.”
“It’s very similar in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba, but we want to also help the people who are forced out of Cuba and living in this country,” he said.
Cuban officials condemned the strikes and capture. Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla wrote on the social platform X that his country condemned the “military aggression” of the U.S. “against Venezuela and the kidnapping of its legitimate President Nicolás Maduro Moros and his wife.”
[…] Trump at his press conference declared that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until a “safe” transition could take place.
“We’re going to be running it with a group, and we’re going to make sure it’s run properly,” Trump said. “We’re going to make sure the people of Venezuela are taken care of and we’re going to make sure the people of Venezuela who were forced out by this thug are taken care of.”
Democratic lawmakers criticized the attack and said it was illegal without congressional approval. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called Maduro “an illegitimate dictator” but said his capture “without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.”
[…] The Washington Post got its hands on the 30-page document outlining what ICE calls a “wartime recruitment” strategy and the rest of us might call “a pathetic excuse for a job program for the otherwise unemployable.” To wit:
The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear[.]
Fantastic. What the nation needs is more of Joe Rogan’s audience armed and carrying badges.
It gets worse somehow:
Under the strategy, ICE would also use an ad-industry technique known as “geofencing” to send ads to the phone webbrowsers and social media feeds of anyone who set foot near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, or gun and trade shows.
We live within 15 miles of multiple military bases and three college campuses. Can’t wait for the targeted ICE recruitment ads to start flooding our phone. It’s good money for the marketers. The Post reports that two marketing firms scored $40 million worth of contracts to support the “recruitment campaign.” […]
This report comes at the end of a year that has seen ICE absolutely debase itself — more than it was already — to try and bring in enough recruits that they can throw into the field as fast as possible. To that end, the agency has cut requirements deeply.
Age restrictions were relaxed. The training time at a federal law enforcement training academy in Georgia was cut in half, from four months to two. The timing of fitness tests for recruits has been moved up because so many were failing it that the trainers decided they should weed them out sooner so they wouldn’t waste time.
And this is not what we would consider an overly strenuous fitness test. The whole thing consists of running 1.5 miles, doing 15 pushups and 32 sit-ups in 14 minutes. We’re just a middle-aged yutz who has spent most of his adult life sitting down, but we’re pretty sure we could do those first two in close to 14 minutes. In fairness, if we also must do the sit-ups, we’ll probably die.
The physical deficiencies of these recruits makes it even more hilarious that ICE is pushing such a martial mindset for the demanding job of walking into an immigration court and arresting everyone with skin tones darker than ecru. We already mentioned that ICE refers to this effort as “wartime recruitment.” There are ads showing Uncle Sam pointing and saying “America Needs You” like it’s 1942 and World War II is really kicking into gear. There is a lot of talk about enemies being at the gates and needing to “cowboy up” and start deporting.
There are even the ads that call back to World War I posters: [images at the link]
[…]
“We call for restraint,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said […]
The European Union urged the adherence to international law after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro early Saturday.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife “will soon face the full wrath of American justice” after they were flown out of Venezuela following a U.S. attack that Trump called a “large-scale strike.”
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU “is closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela” after the capture of Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
“The EU has repeatedly stated that Mr. Maduro lacks legitimacy and has defended a peaceful transition,” Kallas said in a post on X on Saturday.
“Under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the U.N. Charter must be respected. We call for restraint,” she said.
Kallas said she had spoken with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the EU’s ambassador in Caracas.
[…] When asked to react to the Venezuela operation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy laughed cheekily. “Well, if you can do this to dictators, the U.S. knows who can be next,” Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv on Saturday evening.
[…] The prime ministers of Italy and Spain were among European leaders who said they were closely monitoring developments in Venezuela.
“We urge everyone to de-escalate the situation and act responsibly. International law and the principles of the U.N. Charter must be respected,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said said in a post on X.
“The Trump Administration Approved a Big Lithium Mine. A Top Official’s Husband Profited.”
“Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 at the Interior Department, didn’t disclose a $3.5 million water-rights contract between her husband and the developers of a Nevada mine, records show.”
A high-ranking official in the Interior Department is drawing scrutiny from ethics experts because she failed to disclose her family’s financial interest in the nation’s largest lithium mine that had been approved by her agency, according to state and federal records.
In 2018 Frank Falen sold water from a family ranch in northern Nevada to Lithium Nevada Corp., a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, for $3.5 million. The company was planning a $2.2 billion lithium mine nearby called Thacker Pass, and lithium mining requires significant amounts of water.
The mine needed a permit from the Interior Department, where Mr. Falen’s wife, Karen Budd-Falen, worked as the deputy solicitor responsible for wildlife from 2018 until 2021. She returned to the agency last year and is now the associate deputy secretary, the third highest-ranking position.
Mr. Falen’s sale of his water rights also depended on the mine getting a permit from the Interior Department. Without it, Lithium Nevada Corp. could have terminated its deal with him.
[…] Ethics experts said the financial relationship between Mr. Falen and the Thacker Pass developer raises questions about whether Ms. Budd-Falen acted improperly when she met with company executives, and why a $3.5 million water deal wasn’t publicly disclosed.
[…] Lithium America’s stock jumped roughly 30 percent on Oct. 3 when the Trump administration announced the government was taking a 5 percent share in both the mine and the company developing it. The stock price has since fallen to $4.70 a share.
[…] On four successive financial disclosure forms submitted to the government between 2018 and 2021, Ms. Budd-Falen listed her husband’s ranch, named Home Ranch, as an asset, noting that he had a 50 percent ownership share. The disclosures didn’t mention her husband’s sale of the water rights to Lithium Nevada Corp.
Each document filed annually also listed income from the ranch as less than $201. At the time, it was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in initial payments from Lithium Nevada Corp., according to the contract.
A disclosure form that Ms. Budd-Falen submitted this past May, shortly after she re-entered government, said the ranch was earning more than $1 million, while not specifying the source of the income.
[…] A self-described cowboy lawyer, Karen Budd-Falen grew up on her family’s fifth generation cattle ranch in Wyoming near Big Piney. She spent much of her career representing ranchers who have challenged grazing regulations or environmental protections […]
She once tried to sue individual federal employees who had issued grazing citations against a Wyoming rancher […] The Supreme Court ultimately rejected her challenge. In 2011 she told Congress that the Endangered Species Act has been “used as a sword to tear down the American economy.”
One prominent client was Cliven Bundy [!], whom she represented in 1989 along with other Nevada ranchers in a dispute over grazing an area that is home to the endangered desert tortoise. Mr. Bundy in 2014 staged an armed standoff with the federal government over cattle grazing fees. […] [Ms. Budd-Falen sounds like a trumpian cult follower]
[…] Lithium is a critical component in rechargeable batteries for cellphones, laptops, electric vehicles and electronics for the military. […]
Thacker Pass in northern Nevada is the largest known lithium deposit in the United States. Supporters of the mine included the Biden administration.
But lithium mining is a thirsty business. Lithium Americas requires about 200 acre-feet of water per year to construct Thacker Pass, which is currently underway and expected to continue through 2027. Once in production, the mine would require about 2,600 acre-feet of water per year. […]
[…] Opponents of the Thacker Pass project said the mine threatened the Lahontan cutthroat trout, bighorn sheep, and pygmy rabbits as well as sage grouse habitat.
[…] the Trump administration in 2020 limited reviews to speed up permitting of road, pipelines and mining operations. The review for Thacker Pass was completed in under one year under the fast-tracked system.
birgerjohanssonsays
Sweden’s Gotland-Class Submarine Upgrade Complete: HMS Halland Returns To Navy.
.
Part of the technology will be used in a future sub delivered to Poland, to boost its defence against Russia
(A sister ship was leased to the US Navy and operated as the opposing force in a naval exercise, successfully penetrating the defences around the carrier USS Ronald Reagan)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=j31QmVV70jA
[…] Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), another — and longstanding — thorn in Trump’s side in Congress, was quick to notice the tension in the administration’s statements about what, exactly, they had done and are doing.
“AG and others legally characterize attack in Venezuela as ‘arrest with military support,’” he wrote on X.
“Meanwhile Trump announces he’s taken over the country and will run it until he finds someone suitable to replace him.” […]
I wrote this morning that there was no known indictment of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores. Now there is. In a superseding indictment, unsealed today, a grand jury in the Southern District of New York charges her and others with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy; possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
These charges are necessary for the administration’s dubious claim that this was all a law enforcement operation, not an effort at regime change, and not a violation of U.S. or international law.
Reuters – World reacts to US strikes on Venezuela
Judah Grunstein: “China, Brazil, and South Africa are the most pointed and principled. Russia is firmer than the snippet I saw earlier suggested. France is unsurprisingly the strongest European reaction. Starmer and Von der Leyen competing for title of best-behaved lapdog.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel):
people REALLY need to account for [Manuel Noriega] an important precedent not least bc [HW Bush] got buy-in from Europe on that one (DOJ ultimately sent Noriega to France for prosecution after he was done in the US).
Because those legal precedents explain 1) how Trump will escape any domestic liability 2) including impeachment.
Trump’s attack on Venezuela did not go unnoticed in Russia, which says with a straight face that disputes must be handled through dialog. [Social media posts quoting The Moscow Times, Ukrainska Pravda, and Medvedev.]
An excellent example of American peacekeeping.
A harsh military operation in an independent country that posed no threat to the States. Special forces capturing the legally elected president with his wife. Of course, all of this strictly within the framework of international law and national legislation, coordinated with Congress. Almost complete silence from democratic Europe. Guaranteed love in Latin America – after all, the Monroe Doctrine is very popular there. In short, yet another brilliant step toward the Nobel Prize.
[More social media comments are available at the link, including this: “Russian milbloggers now fret that Moscow’s weapons stockpiles in Venezuela might not only vanish with unpaid loans but suddenly “reappear” in Ukrainian hands.” And this: “It goes without saying that the Russian-made air defense assets around Caracas, Venezuela, completely failed to do their job.”]
[…]
Jeansays
This is the first US part of the Putin-Trump “peace” plan. The supposed peace discussions that Trump has been having with Putin is to see how they divide the world. Venezuela was easier to do than Ukraine (those pesky Europeans and the NATO chart) and was Rubio’s pet project.
It’s going to be a bit more problematic when it comes to Greenland which may be next if Cuba is not (the other Rubio project).
And the official protests from Russia on the Venezuela take-over are just for show. And China will want Taiwan soon.
Did he just say we’re going to run the country? Oh good, he said it twice. These assholes can’t even run this country, and they want to fully occupy other ones. Congratulations to Marco Rubio, [head of StateDept, NSA, USAID,] National Archivist and Viceroy of Venezuela.
They put less thought into this than I do when I run into CVS with no list.
Trump: There is nobody to take over. You have a vice president who has been appointed by Maduro. She’s I guess the president. She was sworn in just a little while ago. She had a long conversation with Marco and she said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need.’ She really doesn’t have a choice. [Video clip]
Anjali Dayal: “He’s monologuing his crimes like a Pixar villain—it’s not even that he can’t help himself, it’s that he has no conception of lawfulness, it’s like explaining cold fission to a sea cucumber. I think they’ve just made explicit threats to Cuba and Colombia, although it’s hard to parse their rambling. This is a very dangerous way for any government to behave and speak, no matter how powerful.”
Announcing an occupation before you’ve occupied a country is a new one. Trump says he’ll make deals with oil companies to fix Venezuela’s oil industry, should help with all the resources theft their planning, and threatens Venezuela with further violence.
[…]
Trump is just rambling about unrelated stuff now. Trump, who definitely doesn’t know what the word asylum means: “A mental institution isn’t as tough as an insane asylum”.
Sky Marchini (Economist):
I know several oil barons, I’ve had the oil and gas industry as clients in a past life: none of them want the Venezuelan oil, it’s dog shit quality and getting the PDVSA fields up to modern standards would take 20 years! It’s just trump being stuck in 1987. […] it’s just not worth it at current & foreseeable oil prices. It would cost tens of billions of dollars […] it does not make sense to do so when oil is 60 bucks a barrel, and you can frack light crude
Judah Grunstein: “They have not thought through how to expropriate the oil. […] Yeah, Chevron has worked with it for ages, and my understanding is that it has refineries tailored to Venezuelan oil, but no one else would bother. But also, general risk averseness will keep most US majors out of unstable and conflict-prone countries.”
Sky Marchini:
OK, crash course in oil. Oil has two main gradings, viscosity (light or heavy) and sulfur (sweet or sour). A light (low viscosity) and sweet (low sulfur) oil is easier to process into gasoline and other products than a heavy and sour one, so the light & sweet oil commands a premium price.
Oil is sold as standardized blends (simplification, I know it’s different in practice). In the US, it’s famously WTI. The Venezuelan standard blend is Merey, which is sour and VERY heavy. WTI has a gravity spec of around 40°, while merey is 15°.
Venezuela ships this blend because it has to mix their main crude oil reserve, from the Orinoco belt (which is EXTREMELY heavy, gravity 8° or so) with lighter crude from elsewhere for it to be shippable.
And that’s the problem with Venezuela’s oil reserves: they’re basically sludge.
Rando: “This isn’t a war for oil or, if it is, it’s a war for oil only in the dumbest possible cartoonishly ignorant way”
Cheryl Rofer: “Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976. That’s 50 years ago. Marco Rubio was 4 years old.”
Jeansays
I should add that as a Canadian, I don’t feel safe at all because we definitely are on the Trump list of desired targets.
Rob Grigjanissays
birgerjohansson @192: One of the rare moments in my internet experience in which I agree 100% with the presenter! I wonder if he shares my loathing for the LotR movies (couldn’t find out with a quick google search).
Jem @196: “And the official protests from Russia on the Venezuela take-over are just for show.”
Yes, that’s what I thought too. Especially when you see this from the Russians: “[…] Russia, which says with a straight face that disputes must be handled through dialog.”
Correction to comment 200: “Jem@196” should be “Jean @196
Updates:
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife landed at Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, New York, on Saturday afternoon.
[…] Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said on state TV that the U.S. actions constituted an attempt at regime change in an effort to capture the country’s oil and natural resources. She later added that Venezuela stands ready to defend those resources.
[…] The South American country’s attorney general said innocent civilians were killed in the military strikes on several facilities in Caracas and the area. Sources told NBC News that some U.S. soldiers were also injured and are in stable condition. […]
Trump says the USA is going to run Venezuela, and its oil companies are going to take over the Venezuelan oil industry. That’s perhaps a franker declaration of imperialist conquest and theft than Hitler ever produced when invading a country. But it rather conflicts with the previous pretence that this is about drugs, or “narco-terrorism”, or Maduro cheating in last year’s election. I suspect that Putin, and Xi, while making a great show of protest, will be delighted – they can drop their own pretences in relation to Ukraine and Taiwan respectively: the purpose of power is power. Starmer, of course, snivelling coward that he is, says he wants to establish “the facts”. Trump told him, and the world, the facts with regard to American motivation – although admittedly, it’s far from obvious that the plan to colonise and loot Venezuela can be carried through.
Sky Captain @197, thanks for that additional information regarding the “sludge” quality (lack of quality) of Venezuelan oil.
More questions surrounding the transition government in Venezuela:
This is a time of cloak and dagger diplomacy. It’s even unclear whether President Trump can rely on a deal he says he’s done with the vice president of Venezuela.
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said on state TV today that the U.S. actions constituted an attempt at regime change and repeatedly stated that Maduro is the country’s only president.
However, just before Rodríguez’s address aired, Trump told reporters that Rodríguez was sworn in as president and would be working with the U.S. NBC News has not confirmed her swearing in.
It’s unclear why the two appear to be on different pages. Rodríguez is somebody who is expected to be loyal to the Maduro regime. So why is the Trump administration under the impression that she is willing to work with them?
Trump is posting a bunch of photos without captions, presumably of him watching the Maduro kidnapping.
Is this the inside of a SCIF at Mar-a-Lago or did they just toss up some pipe and drape? With Rubio as Hillary Clinton [covering his mouth]. Several of the photos have Twitter up on a screen in the background [searching for “Venezuela” and “Maduro”].
Matt Novak: “Upon closer inspection I was giving them too much credit by assuming it was pipe and drape. There’s no piping. They just tossed curtains haphazardly over [a ceiling joist].”
Commentary
Ah, the photo op. Because he has to have his dramatic “situation room” shot like Obama did when they got Osama bin Laden.
it’s open at the top. Which raises, uh, some questions about OPSEC
Just a black curtain so they didnt get the Mar a-Lago guests in the picture. Any number of random people, wealthy CEOs and foreign nationals right on the other side
They’re not even blackout curtains.
No sound could penetrate that see-through fabric open to the ceiling. Top, top secret.
That’s a pillow fort.
Don’t overlook the gold chairs!
Gentlemen, you can’t look at nonconsensual AI-generated bikini pics in here, this is the war room.
[…] Mr. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as interim president at a secret ceremony in Caracas, accused Washington in a national address of invading her country under false pretenses and asserted that Mr. Maduro was still Venezuela’s head of state.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Ms. Rodríguez, appearing with her defense minister and other officials, said.
The main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, posted a statement urging that her political ally, Edmundo González, be recognized as Venezuela’s president immediately. Though Mr. Maduro claims he defeated Mr. González in the last election, the United States and other international observers say he won through fraud. “Today we are prepared to enforce our mandate and take power,” said Ms. Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year.
Mr. Trump avoided embracing either Ms. Rodriguez or Ms. Machado. He said his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had spoken to Ms. Rodriguez and “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” He also said Machado didn’t have the support or respect to lead the country.
Mr. Rubio played down Ms. Rodriguez’s speech rejecting cooperation with the Trump White House. “We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” he said, referring to the interim Venezuelan government.
One thing Mr. Trump made clear was his desire to open up Venezuela’s vast state-controlled oil reserves to American oil companies, who he said would pay to rebuild the energy infrastructure in Venezuela. [Pipe dreams, or dementia dreams in Trump’s case. See comment 197.]
“We are going to run the country right,″ Mr. Trump said. “It’s going to make a lot of money.” Past Venezuelan governments, he said, “stole our oil” — an apparent reference to the country’s nationalization of its oil industry. […]
Trump: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so.” [Video clip]
JMsays
@197 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain: There is money to be made on Venezuelan oil. It’s not as profitable as other oil but there is a lot of it and it’s close to the US.
The real problem is that the risk is incredible. As soon as the US has another president the risk that Venezuela just nationalizes the oil industry again starts to rise. Who is going to sink billions of dollars and probably a decade of work knowing there is a good chance they don’t get any of it back?
Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other [decades-ago] seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its shattered petroleum industry […] The offer has been on the table for the last 10 days, […] “But the infrastructure currently there is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operable.”
[…]
A central concern for U.S. industry executives is whether the administration can guarantee the safety of the employees and equipment that companies would need to send to Venezuela, how the companies would be paid, whether oil prices will rise enough to make Venezuelan crude profitable and the status of Venezuela’s membership in the OPEC oil exporters cartel.
[…]
Trump said during Saturday’s appearance […] that he expected oil companies to put up the initial investments. “We’re going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which requires billions of dollars that will be paid for by the oil companies directly,” Trump said. “They will be reimbursed for what they’re doing[“]
[…]
However, the administration’s outreach to U.S. oil company executives remains “at its best in the infancy stage,” said one industry executive […] “In preparation for regime change, there had been engagement. But it’s been sporadic and relatively flatly received by the industry,” this person said. “It feels very much a shoot-ready-aim exercise.”
Eric Columbus: “Among many similarities to Iraq: we’ve heard many different reasons for the military action but there’s no single cohesive U.S. government story about why we’re doing it.”
Josh Marshall (TPM): “You can say it’s about oil. And part of it is. But the White House is actually being forced to strong-arm the oil companies to get involved.”
Asked about the possibility of impeachment, Schumer says, “We hope that we can have support from our Republican colleagues to put a brake on this long before it gets that far”. [Video clip]
He kidnapped the leader of another country and said the U.S. is now going to run it, Chuck. Trump abolished USAID, tore down a third of the White House, is putting his own face on money, kidnapped the leader of a foreign country, and is erecting a monument to himself.
But Chuck Schumer just wants to work across the aisle on kitchen table issues rather than impeaching the motherfucker. Schumer voted for the Iraq War which is at least part of the problem here.
Popehat (Attorney): “Jesus Christ […] maybe the Republicans will start to put limits on Trump?”
Rando: “there are many reasons for their obsession with ‘moderate republicans’, but one of them that oft gets missed is they want someone they can use as a blast shield to take all the heat in their place. Stark example: trying to get Pence to invoke the 25th.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Ridley Scott is making a postapocalyptic film based on the novel The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (I have read it, it is quite good). It will be released this year.
Those surprised that Trump threatened Mexico along with Cuba and Colombia today should read this superlong NYT story on it [from Dec 27th]. Or my gloss. Here’s the key passage from NYT. [Screenshot]
Miller: I’m looking for ways to use [War on Terror] precedents to attack Latinos. Can we bomb Mexico?
Adults: Well, that would undermine efforts against drug trafficking.
CIA: How about fake boat bombings?
Miller: Death! I must have death!!!
StevoRsays
Good Op-ed by Aussie ABC’s Laura Tingle here :
But it is equally concerning that world leaders in general have been so relatively meek in speaking out about the new low the country that used to regard itself as the leader of the free world has set for international relations.
What’s to stop other countries now mounting military operations to kidnap the leaders of other countries and proclaim that they are now running them?
As a sign of just how far things have moved in terms of both US policy and the bounds of what is acceptable international behaviour, we only need to look to past statements of Mr Trump’s director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who had previously criticised US policy towards Venezuela.
“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future,” Ms Gabbard said in a January 2019 post on X.
“We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders, so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”
In late April 2026, a long-period comet will swing through the inner solar system. It will likely be visible with binoculars, and there’s a small chance it could be seen with the naked eye.
Mark Chadbourn (Jan 1): “The statue of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been toppled in Ardabil in northwest Iran. It was only erected a few days ago.”
Decades of brutal repression, torture and execution by the theocratic regime was topped by a complete failure of governance over the last year that made lives all but impossible.
Drought has devastated the country and almost led to the evacuation of the capital Tehran. Food prices have risen by 70% in 12 months. Inflation stands at 40% and rising. The currency, the Rial, has hit an all-time low.
At the same time scarce public funds have been diverted into a nuclear weapons and missile program to threaten foreign enemies and into the funding of a widespread terrorist network, the regime’s real priorities.
[…]
A national strike closed down the country and merchants shuttered their stores, silencing Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. What started as an economic protest quickly spiralled into a demand for regime change. […] “Death to Khameini”, the Supreme Leader, became a regular chant, along with “This is the Year of Blood.” […] Something snapped. And this is what sets the current uprising apart from previous ones which were based around freedoms. For many citizens life has simply become unbearable.
[…]
[*snip*: enumeration of foreign interests/fears of China, Israel, Russia, US.] The stakes are high for those foreign powers happy to jump in to turn a crisis into a catastrophe. Opportunity and desperation drive their actions.
But the highest stakes lie with the courageous Iranian people […] Security forces have already opened fire on protesters, killing at least eight […] Women who have organised protests have been snatched from their homes and university dormitories, their whereabouts unknown. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is renowned for its brutality.
[…]
The Iranian people are fighting back. Molotov cocktails have been used to set fire to […] Police stations, military headquarters and security vehicles […] The main problem facing the people’s revolt is that there is no obvious leader-in-waiting. […] many citizens are adopting a watch-and-wait approach. They’re not going to put their lives on the line if the revolution fizzles out for lack of direction.
Demonstrators clash with security forces in Yasuj, Iran, on Day 7 of the uprising. Protesters in Ilam are now armed with rifles. Regime forces shooting at civilians in the Abdolabad neighborhood, Tehran. Large scale demonstrations overwhelm Mashhad.
[…] the Islamic Republic shut down the internet in Iran to silence the spread of information. There’s a reason: regime forces are now openly firing on protesters.
The regime has lost control of two areas in Tehran, Narmak and Haft-Hoz, where protesters now control the streets. Protesters have set fire to an IRGC checkpoint in Mahallat, Markazi Province. Iran has been hit by a widespread cyberattack. Government websites have gone dark including portals for multiple ministries and the Tehran municipal administration. The uprising has now spread to 80 Iranian cities. Streets are now gridlocked in southern Tehran’s Naziabad district as protesters chant for the fall of the regime. Protesters are now increasingly armed—including flamethrowers! This is a big change from previous protests.
Rando: “Iran’s population heavily armed in general?”
Mark Chadbourn: No.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Tangent from 205.
WSJ: “With Nicolás Maduro out of power, the Trump administration is racing to assemble an interim governing structure for Venezuela.”
Commentary
Is that what’s happening? Or did it fail today to coopt Maduro’s subordinates in the Chavista regime, who are still entrenched in power and pissed off?
WSJ also seems to think the entire government of Venezuela was just one 63 year old guy.
They really think they somehow conquered the country with some missiles and a kidnapping.
Venezuela has a line of succession. If you’re reporting this as something OTHER THAN a U.S. overthrow of the Venezuelan Constitution, you suck at journalism.
How many Fox hosts are left? Do any of them speak Spanish?
Rando: The Washington Post editorial board comes out in favor of the Venezuela attack/operation to capture Maduro.
Reuters: Nicolas Maduro’s heavy-handed rule in Venezuela is finally ended by Trump
Marisa Kabas: “This is billionaire-controlled media. […] The consent manufacturing has begun.”
Marisa Kabas: “Fox News is framing this as liberation for Venezuela. They’re showing people in Florida celebrating and thanking Trump. A Hispanic Fox News reporter in the ground in Florida is saying the US attack on Venezuela will make the country safe and make Venezuelans want to go back.”
KGsays
In my opinion, Trump is spinning news about [Venezuela’s vice-president] Rodíquez, (if he is not lying and/or making shit up that in his demented mind he thinks is true). – Lynna, OM@203
I’d guess the latter, and that Trump and Rubio have had no meaningful contact with Rodíquez, but I’m not claiming any knowledge of her, or the others near the top in Venezuela. Trump may think (using that word in a very loose sense) that having removed Maduro, the Chavista regime will disintegrate andor kneel to him, but I doubt it: too many people have a clear interest in it continuing. It could even turn out that Trump and Rubio have done them a favour, as Maduro has been almost entirely concerned with maintaining his own power and enriching his family (remind you of anyone?). His removal may provide a chance for a “reset” under a more collective leadership, as well as acting as a focus for anti-US feeling even among Maduro’s opponents, although unless they can actually improve living conditions for the majority they are unlikely to recover much support.
I’m amused that Trump has dismissed the opposition leader María Corina Machado (who is an extreme conservative and Trump fan) as not having enough support to take over, although I’m sure she would actually be a useful (and initially popular) puppet if she were installed. She made the mistake of winning the Nobel Peace Prize (a ridiculous decision in my view) which belonged by right to Trump!
birgerjohanssonsays
David Frum Bonus Episode: How Is Trump Planning to ‘Run’ Venezuela? (With Anne Applebaum)
Loving the euphemisms the media is coming up with to excuse and trivialise this kidnapping of a foreign leader and the murder of 40 people: “audacious” “Trump’s personal geopolitics”
And only the NYT dared to call it what it is “illegal and unwise”.
A group of senior Venezuelan government officials, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the National Assembly, have quietly promoted a series of initiatives in recent months aimed at presenting themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative to Nicolás Maduro’s regime, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks. The proposals, funneled through intermediaries in Qatar, sought to persuade sectors of the U.S. government that a “Madurismo without Maduro” could enable a peaceful transition in Venezuela—preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.
So there was communication between Rodriguez and other Venezuelan officials, and figures in the Trump administration. The proposal was essentially that Maduro step down and a new temporary government would hold power during a transition. This is similar to what Trump is calling for, except the temporary government would be appointed by Trump instead of being Venezuelan figures.
The US rejected the Venezuelan plan because it doesn’t fix any of the problem, it just gives Maduro a path to retirement. It doesn’t deal with corruption or the drug trade or give the US control of the oil.
Posted by Sky Captain @220: Reuters: Nicolas Maduro’s heavy-handed rule in Venezuela is finally ended by Trump
Marisa Kabas: “This is billionaire-controlled media. […] The consent manufacturing has begun.”
Marisa Kabas: “Fox News is framing this as liberation for Venezuela. They’re showing people in Florida celebrating and thanking Trump. A Hispanic Fox News reporter in the ground in Florida is saying the US attack on Venezuela will make the country safe and make Venezuelans want to go back.”
CBS devoted three segments to letting “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth pound his chest and tell lie after lie.
What will it look like for the U.S. to run Venezuela? In an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said: “President Trump sets the terms.”
“It means we set the terms. President Trump sets the terms. And ultimately, he’ll decide what the iterations are of that,” Hegseth said. “But, it means the drugs stop flowing, it means the oil that was taken from us is returned, ultimately, and that criminals are not sent to the United States.”
[…] Hegseth was among the top Trump administration officials who oversaw the overnight U.S. military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro. He called it “the most sophisticated, most complicated, most successful joint special operations raid of all time.” [Oh FFS]
Dokoupil asked whether the administration would seek Congress’ approval for a full-scale intervention to stabilize Venezuela. Hegseth called Maduro’s capture a law enforcement exercise [So that’s the phrase they are going to use. Makes them sound like Putin. They should have just called it a “special operation.”] and said Secretary of State Marco Rubio “was clear there that this is not something you notify Congress about beforehand.” But he said if there are more extensions to this, “of course we will keep Congress involved.”
Without going into details about what the Trump administration’s next steps are in Venezuela, Hegseth emphasized American interest in Venezuelan oil, the security of the Western hemisphere and stopping drug trafficking.
“What was done by Venezuela against American oil interests and oil companies is well understood and it never should have happened and President Trump is willing to recapture that,” Hegseth said.
When asked about the blockade of sanctioned oil from Venezuela imposed by Mr. Trump last month, Hegseth said no oil is going in or out of the country, and the U.S. military is still poised in the Caribbean.
“[Mr. Trump] said it clearly at the podium today. We are going to get American companies in there. We are going to get investment in there. These oil depots have been operating at 20% capacity. That’s going to change,” Hegseth told CBS News.
Ultimately, Hegseth said, both Americans and Venezuelans can benefit from U.S. interventions.
“What happens next will be in the hands of Venezuelans to decide but ultimately America will benefit security wise, and with prosperity, we believe the Venezuelan people can as well,” he said.
It looks to me like CBS is now Trump TV. And the newly installed CBS Evening News anchor, Tony Dokoupil, pushed back so mildly against some of the stuff Hegseth said that he basically gave Hegseth free rein.
Unit self defense has always been a slippery slope, but one might imagine especially so if the unit in question has itself just invaded a sovereign nation.
I was wondering about this earlier, when I read about Venezuelan casualties. Maduro and the legality of the abduction is one thing, but what about the murder of Venezuelan citizens whose only crime seems to have been responding to an invasion of their country?
Arguably, Venezuela could indict Trump on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and then (assuming they had the physical ability) abduct him right back. What a lovely thought.
“Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.”
Part of me wonders if they’re actually going to put Maduro on trial. After all, that will give him the chance to speak in his defense and demand discovery of documents to support his arguments. I don’t know how clever Maduro is, but if he has even the slightest sense, he could make things very awkward for the administration.
… possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Are they seriously going to argue that the leader of a sovereign nation is not allowed to acquire weapons?
Maybe so. At the end of the day, none of this really matters, because the US government is a terrorist organization and nobody has the strength to hold it to account, even as it flushes our future down the drains.
Happy new year, everybody! Take care of the people around you, because sure as shit nobody else is going to.
“On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “run” means running policy, but won’t specify a timeline or rule out a U.S. occupation of Venezuela.”
Still doesn’t make sense to me.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday sought to reframe President Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States will “run” Venezuela, insisting the administration meant it would run the country’s policy — not govern it directly — even as he declined to rule out a prolonged American occupation.
“It’s running policy,” Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” attempting to walk back the president’s more expansive language. “We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it’s good for the people of Venezuela, it’s in our national interest.”
The clarification [which wasn’t really a clarification] reflects the precarious moment for the Trump administration following Saturday’s capture of President Nicolás Maduro. While Rubio dismissed what he called a “phobia” about regime change and argued that such efforts are different when they happen in the Western Hemisphere as opposed to the Middle East, he refused to provide a timeline for American involvement or specify what the administration’s ultimate objectives are in Venezuela.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Rubio did not rule out an occupation when pressed. “The president always retains optionality on anything, and on all these matters,” he said.
In his “Meet the Press” appearance, Mr. Rubio also reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to enforcing what he called an “oil quarantine” and said elections would not be held in Venezuela in the near term.
“Here’s the bottom line on it: We expect to see changes in Venezuela. Changes of all kinds — long term, short term. We’d love to see all kinds of changes, but the most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interest of the United States,” Rubio said. “That’s why we’re involved here.”
Rubio repeated the Trump administration’s assertions that Venezuela under Maduro had been heavily involved in drug trafficking, and defended the boat strikes against vessels suspected of drug-smuggling, despite criticism from international law experts who have called such actions extrajudicial.
Rubio also spoke to the country’s vast natural resources, condemning the country’s previous leadership for “using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries around the world” — including Iran, Russia and China — “and not benefiting the people of Venezuela or, frankly, benefiting the United States and the region.” Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. [Reserves of heavy, sour crude that is the sludge version of oil — not worth as much as Trump thinks it is. Also, oil infrastructure in Venezuela is so bad that no one is jumping at the chance to go in there and fix it.]
[…] On Sunday, Rubio praised Machado, but said the U.S. was dealing with “the immediate reality” that “the vast majority of the opposition is no longer present inside of Venezuela.” [Sound like hyperbole to me.]
[…] Rubio defended the administration’s decision to conduct the operation without notifying Congress in advance. “This was not an action that required Congressional approval,” Rubio said. “This was not an invasion. This was not an extended military operation. This was a very precise operation that involved a couple of hours of action.”
Rubio also hinted at possible interventions elsewhere in the region. When asked whether Cuba might be the administration’s next target, Mr. Rubio called the Cuban government “a huge problem.” While declining to discuss specific plans, he said, “I don’t think it’s any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime.”
Donald Trump’s decision caps a year of impulsive, personalistic foreign policy that ignores multilateral norms. Trump is not acting here as a guarantor of democracy, but rather placing force above the rule of law. Other powers will take note of these new rules as they look at Taiwan or Ukraine. Pointing this out is not a defense of the Venezuelan regime, but a warning: democracy is not exported by missile strike, nor imposed from the air —much less when invoked by someone who has repeatedly shown contempt for institutions.[…]
Added to this political ambition is another, no less alarming: the announcement that U.S. companies will take over Venezuela’s oil industry to “make money,” reinforcing the perception that the intervention is not aimed at restoring rights, but at managing power and wealth. Even if the reconstruction of devastated infrastructure is invoked, this amounts to the forcible external appropriation of natural resources, blurring the line between aid, investment, and economic domination.
Collette Capriles writes forThe New York Times:
For Venezuelans, our situation will not be fixed by Mr. Maduro’s departure, let alone by a foreign occupying force. We are not a nation held together by a government or a social contract, but a collection of individuals trapped in a struggle for survival. Replacing the man at the top will not dismantle the web of bosses, private loyalties, corrupt practices and institutional ruins that have replaced public life here. […]
Even without Mr. Maduro, the state remains a maze, comprising a sprawling web of overlapping intelligence services, paramilitary groups known as “colectivos” and regional bosses who compete for kickbacks. This fragmentation has been the ultimate insurance policy: It helped ensure that no single general or minister held enough unified power to lead a coup, while keeping every official tethered to the center through the shared need for protection and profit.
Mr. Trump has not said how the United States will begin to run Venezuela or when it will stop, except to say it will do so until “we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” Whatever is to come, the system that Mr. Maduro has overseen can’t be dismantled overnight. His followers, longstanding Chavistas or armed opportunists, could very well mount a prolonged insurgency — the type of war in which the population is held hostage, regardless of political preferences. It is very easy to create chaos and make a country ungovernable when the formal institutions are already broken. No matter who is in power, the path to healing the anxiety, distrust and isolation that have flourished over the past decade is not clear.
Christian Science Monitor:
“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops [Russian leader] Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?” asked Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, following Saturday’s operation. “Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”
Yale Law School international law professor Oona Hathaway (interviewed by Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker):
What other arguments have you heard from the Administration?
One of the claims is that Maduro is not, in fact, the leader of Venezuela. This is something that they’ve been saying for a while now—that he’s not the legitimate leader of the country, that they don’t recognize him as the head of state. And that might justify his seizure and indictment, although using military force to do that would not be justified. I don’t know how they get from there to an argument that they can use military force in Venezuela.
What do you mean, exactly, about his “seizure and indictment”? Venezuela had an election. It was not a free election. He declared himself President, and he’s broadly recognized as the President of Venezuela, but, again, he was not freely elected by the people of Venezuela. That could justify his indictment in an American court?
I should back up. As part of this military operation, at least one of the key goals seems to have been the capture of Maduro and his wife, who have been indicted for criminal charges in the Southern District of New York. The only way they can do that is if they’re claiming that he’s not a head of state, because heads of state get immunity and heads of state are not subject to criminal prosecution in the domestic courts of other states. That’s just a basic rule of international law. The United States has long recognized it.
President Trump on Sunday reportedly threatened Venezuela’s new leader Delcy Rodríguez after the U.S. ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer in a Sunday phone interview. [Oh FFS. Still, that threat was par for the course. Trump is predictable.]
[…] Rodríguez, who assumed her role shortly after the Venezuelan president’s ouster, delivered a fiery defense of Maduro in a Saturday speech, just hours after he and his wife Cilia Flores were indicted on drug charges and transported to New York.
“There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros,” Rodríguez said in a televised address to Venezuelans.
Trump’s Sunday remarks mark a shift from his view of Venezuela’s new leader the day prior. During a Saturday news conference, the president said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Rodríguez.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump told reporters Saturday, describing Rodriguez as “gracious” but that she does not have “a choice” in the matter.
Rodriguez, 56, has served as vice president since 2018 and previously served as Venezuela’s foreign minister from 2014 to 2017.
Rubio, speaking to ABC’s George Stephananopoulous on “This Week,” characterized Rodriguez as an illegitimate leader.
“We don’t believe that this regime in place is legitimate via an election,” Rubio said Sunday. [See explanation from Yale Law School international law professor Oona Hathaway in comment 228.]
[…] Oil extraction requires a lot of capital and know-how — particularly in the case of Venezuela’s heavy, sulfurous crude, which is difficult to pump and refine.
But with Chávez diverting PDVSA funds into social spending, there was less money to invest in the oil fields. The country’s human capital was eroding just as fast, as experienced engineers and managers were replaced with regime loyalists. Meanwhile, the government kept demanding more and more concessions from multinationals operating in the country, to the point where they looked less like “concessions” and more like “extortion.” [Chávez was elected in 1998 and sort of ran the oil business until about 2010.]
[…] the illusory early success of Chávismo was entirely a function of capitalist markets that were making the oil under Venezuela’s soil more profitable than ever before. Unfortunately for the Venezuelans, those high prices spurred capitalists to look for new sources, such as shale oil. Meanwhile, the socialists at home were destroying the country’s ability to pump what it had out of the ground. […]
Venezuelan oil production slowly began to slide. By 2013, the year Chávez died of cancer, it was down to 2.65 million. For a time, this steady erosion of production was offset by the steep increase in oil prices, so Chávez never lived to see the consequences of his efforts. That whirlwind was reaped by his successor, Maduro, who saw oil prices and production go into free fall together, resulting in the largest peacetime economic contraction ever recorded. [!]
[…] Venezuela still pumps less than a million barrels of oil per day.
Turning that around will require the capital and skill of multinationals who are justifiably wary. Because oil fields are expensive to develop — and because the infrastructure is hard to move once it’s in place — governments face the eternal temptation to expropriate companies as soon as the development phase is finished. Under socialism, Venezuela indulged that temptation with a vengeance.
The government […] went for wholesale looting, and now it won’t be enough for Venezuela to dismantle its socialist economic policies and offer oil companies a reasonable profit on new development […] The new government, whatever it might be, will also need to find some way to make a credible commitment that things will stay semi-liberalized and somewhat reasonable. That will mean guaranteeing physical security for foreign investors and developing complementary infrastructure and services, such as repairing the country’s degraded power grid.
[…] If a new democratic government takes shape and it can make long-term commitments to growth, a major deployment of U.S. influence and money will be needed. I doubt reconstruction funds and state-building were what Trump and his advisers were thinking of when they decided to invade Venezuela. But if they’d been thinking it through, they probably wouldn’t have invaded in the first place.
the superseding indictment against Nicolás Maduro and his wife unsealed yesterday is a more political document than the one that first charged Maduro in 2020. One important difference lies in how DOJ attempted to claim Maduro is not the leader of Venezuela, which will be a key element required to overcome any immunity claim Maduro will surely invoke.
[…] both are real indictments, documenting decades of corruption and cooperation with drug traffickers and terrorists. Prosecutors worked hard to pull them together and investigators (in the US and around Latin America) and sources no doubt risked their lives to make it possible. Both indictments charge the same four crimes: Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Important Conspiracy, Two counts of use of machine guns or destructive devices in furtherance of the conspiracies.
The latter charges […] machine guns, have attracted some mockery […] DOJ is at the same time arguing that DC must allow semi-automatic weapons and at the same time charging a foreign leader with possessing machine guns. The charges are there (and were put there years ago) because they’re a way to get significant sentencing enhancements for other crimes.
[…]
the Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy charged in the newly unsealed indictment is interesting—and may have further significance—because it added several new cartels that have been deemed terrorist organizations last year. The 2020 indictment focused on FARC, the left wing Colombian terrorist organization that trafficked drugs, and Cartel de Soles (the vague name used for Maduro’s corruption). But in the last year, the Trump Administration has, for the first time (and controversially), designated drug cartels that engage in extreme violence as terrorist organizations. So the new indictment names not just FARC and ELN—Colombian terrorists whom Maduro gave shelter—but Sinaloa and the Zetas [both Mexican], along with Tren de Aragua [of Venezuela].
[…] There’s far more substance behind the FARC allegations than the Sinaloa and Zetas ones. The Zetas allegation relies on the Zetas’, working with unnamed Columbian traffickers, use of Venezuelan ports from 2003 to 2011. The Sinaloa allegation relies on Caraval-Barrio’s protection of Chapo Guzmán in 2011. Both those allegations took place long before Marco Rubio included the Mexican cartels in his new designations. But by including them in this indictment, DOJ makes this application of such crimes applicable in Mexico, an ominous inclusion given Trump’s overt threats to pull the same kind of invasion in Mexico next. […]
The Tren de Aragua is likewise thin. […] The TdA inclusion here relies on […] including its leader, Hector Ruthsenford Guerrero Flores as a co-conspirator. But his inclusion relies on two overt acts that don’t involve Maduro: Guerrero’s actual trafficking with someone not alleged to be part of this conspiracy, and comments made in a Venezuelan prison in 2019. (These may be the comments that US intelligence services have deemed to be unreliable.) That is, neither is TdA necessary to substantiate the narco-trafficking charges, which are well-substantiated based on protection of FARC, nor is the substance of TdA’s inclusion all that convincing. At all.
But no doubt Stephen Miller will use this—a grand jury finding probable cause tying TdA to Maduro—to attempt to renew his Alien Enemies Act deportations.
[…]
The inclusion of Cilia Maduro—who was shipped to SDNY along with her husband—rests on her allegedly accepting a bribe in 2007 to broker a meeting between a trafficker and Venezuela’s corrupt top anti-drug cop. […] prosecutors likely included Maduro’s family […] to acquire leverage against him.
[…]
whether or not Maduro is and was a head of state is central to what will surely be an attempt to claim he is immune from all this. Both indictments attempt to deal with this issue. The 2020 one does so by pointing to the US’ 2019 endorsement of Juan Guaidó. The Trump Administration went all-in on declaring Guaidó interim president and… that went nowhere. […] the newly unsealed indictment doesn’t say who runs Venezuela.
“With brash threats aimed all around the region, the president and his team made it clear Venezuela might be just the beginning, sparking fear across the Western hemisphere.”
As President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for now, he and top aides made clear that the U.S. may not stop there — and demanded that the rest of the world take note.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Venezuela’s long-time dictator, Nicolas Maduro, captured in an overnight raid and extradited to New York on Saturday to be indicted on narco-conspiracy charges, “had a chance” to leave on his own before becoming the latest example of a leader paying a high price for not responding to Trump’s pressure.
“He effed around and he found out,” Hegseth said of Maduro.
The menacing comments were interwoven with specific threats toward three other countries that could soon be in the administration’s sights: Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.
[…] “All nations of the region must remain alert, as the threat hangs over all,” the Cuban government said in a statement.
[…] Trump again accused Colombia’s president of “making cocaine” and reaffirmed his past threats that he “does need to watch his ass.” He predicted “we will be talking about Cuba.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more sinister threat of future American action.
“Look, if I lived in Havana and I worked in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio said.
Earlier during a phone interview with Fox News, Trump warned that “something will have to be done about Mexico,” stating that he’s asked President Claudia Sheinbaum if she wants the U.S. military’s “help” in rooting out drug cartels.
“American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack as an aggression against all of South America and announced the mobilization of troops along the country’s border with Venezuela to halt a possible flood of refugees.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has tried to establish a rapport with Trump, said in a post on X that Maduro’s ouster “crossed an unacceptable line” and “recalls the worst moments of interference in the politics of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Mexico also criticized the strikes, which Sheinbaum said are a violation of the U.N. Charter. […]
[…] Trump outlined a more aggressively expansionist foreign policy in his inaugural address nearly one year ago, shocking long-time allies with threats of making Canada “the 51st state” and colonizing Greenland, an autonomous region belonging to Denmark. […] frustrating some allies who’ve noted this is far from the isolationist, “America First” approach he ran on.
Although the looming midterm elections in November provide a political incentive to shift his focus toward domestic matters, going ahead with regime change in Venezuela has opened up yet another foreign policy front on which the president — and by extension, his party in Congress — will be judged.
For Trump, in a final term no longer burdened by electoral concerns of his own, a short-term operational success in Venezuela could be emboldening, leading to the additional operations across the region that the president and aides already seem to be telegraphing. Katie Miller, the former administration official-turned-podcaster and wife of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted an image on her X account on Saturday showing a map of Greenland colored by the American flag with a one-word caption: “SOON.” [!!]
In his prepared remarks Saturday, Trump cited the Monroe Doctrine, a 200-year-old foreign policy blueprint that has seen something of a revival in conservative circles. It stems from President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration of a U.S. sphere of influence in the Americas that also served as a warning to would-be European colonizers to limit their aims to their own affairs.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal. But we’ve superseded it by a lot,” Trump said. “They now call it ‘the Donroe Document.’” [FFS]
[…] Florida state Rep. Juan Carlos Porras (R-Miami) applauded the administration’s moves and Rubio, specifically, as the “mastermind” behind it [!]. “Even more movement in Cuba would really take it to the next level,” he said, adding that it could theoretically happen quickly given the “precision and force” shown in Venezuela. [head/desk]
[…] said Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla): “Venezuela has been propping up the Cuban regime, and so if we have a democracy in Venezuela, that will stop. And so we would hope that maybe the regime falls under its own weight.”
[…] the Trumpadministration now must work to avoid splits in the Venezuelan military or the rise of criminal groups from further destabilizing the country.
But even if Trump remains preoccupied with Venezuela for the time being, his deposing of its longtime leader underscored a clear disregard for the sovereignty of other nations, which could presage additional conflicts to come.
[…] Stephen McFarland, a former ambassador to Guatemala during the Obama administration who also held diplomatic postings in Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador and Bolivia, said that “China might see opportunities: a potential failure for the U.S., increased division within the U.S. if it fails, and long-term a stimulus to Latin American countries looking to balance the U.S. by looking to China.”
And Chile’s former ambassador to China, Jorge Heine, said that Trump’s action against Venezuela may embolden Beijing to get more aggressive over its territorial claim to Taiwan.
“Beijing’s reasoning may be, ‘Well, why not Taiwan?’” Heine said. “You could say China has a much more significant claim on Taiwan than the United States on Venezuela.”
The New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night—but held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops
[…]
that secrecy was the news outlets’ decision—unlike other countries, the US does not have a mechanism for the government to prevent publication of secrets—to hold off their reporting for several hours after the administration warned that reporting could have exposed American troops
Commentary
“Endangering US troops” wtf? What about everyone else in the country?
Also, even IF you buy the argument that you should embargo a story to save American soldiers lives, you don’t then get to pull this “we don’t know” headline: Venezuela accuses US of carrying out attacks on capital.
You know what also would have protected the troops? Reporting what you knew. It would have forced the admin to delay and would actually have prevented an illegal act of war. Instead, NYT and WaPo are accomplices
So the media knew in advance, but he didn’t bother to tell Congress in case they leaked it. Of course.
The administration didn’t give key leaders on Capitol Hill any advanced notice, seeking to maintain the element of surprise […] “Congress has a tendency leak. This would not be good,” the president said.
Satellite imagery reveals the damage to the Venezuelan base where Maduro was captured.
New satellite imagery shows the damage to Fuerte Tiuna, or Fort Tiuna, the military complex where U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, on Saturday.
Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military base, is built into a mountainside in the south of the capital, Caracas. The base consists primarily of military installations with fortifications and roads winding around the compound.
Before-and-after imagery released on Sunday by Vantor, a Colorado-based space technology company formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, shows that at least five buildings at the complex were destroyed by U.S. forces. Cargo containers, military trucks and trailers were near these structures, although it is not clear what they contained.
Nina Simone – Feeling Good. (more than one version)
Pharrell Williams – Happy
Ella Fitzgerald – Blue Skies
Jenifer Lewis – Get Your Ass out and Vote
Nat King Cole and Patti Page – Blue Skies
birgerjohanssonsays
Thank you, Lynna!
.
In an attempt to help you think of other things than DJT, I reached far into Youtube.
.
The Atheists of Ancient India (“Nothing exists after death!”)
AnimeAmericaPodcast Reviews “Gushing Over Magical Girls” (BDSM warning)
“HOW DID THIS GET AN ANIME?! – What Am I Watching #23”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zlOyZ70vbC4
birgerjohanssonsays
Me @ 222:
David Frum correctly called it “a special military operation” …and we know how those turn out.
birgerjohanssonsays
Enheduanna – daughter of Sargon of Akkad- is the first known author in history.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eiKALZKmi7g
If you have the time, this may be perfect distractions from the awfulness of our era.
.
If you like hard science fiction, you might like “Planetes” from two decades ago. It did not reach the audience in the way of Cowboy Bebop, but it deserves a second chance.
birgerjohanssonsays
This needs much more attention.
“Iran Update”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4zaVDYhvtNM
I have followed how the priests hijacked the revolution, the purges, the mass executions for more than four decades (and, yes, I have not forgotten the path started with the CIA coup against the elected leader 72 years ago).
birgerjohanssonsays
Poland joins thw Baltic states in cutting the physical ties to Russia and Belarus.
Trump in a single gaggle on Air Force One just threatened: a second strike against Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Iran, [and] Greenland (which in turn would be an attack on the EU and Denmark)
Southpaw: Denmark is a NATO member state. Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela (and Cuba, formally) are OAS member states.”
Londo Mollari: “Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on 12 fronts.”
The New York Times reported Sunday that “Maduro’s regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalance in recent weeks helped persuade some on the Trump team that the Venezuelan president was mocking them and trying to call what he believed to be a bluff.” The Times cited anonymous sources saying that Maduro’s antics after rejecting an ultimatum from Trump to leave office and go into exile in Turkey, ultimately led the White House to follow through on its military threats.
[…]
Trump posted a video […] of Maduro shouting, “Come for me! I’m waiting for you here in Miraflores. Don’t take too long to arrive, coward!” The video, set to […] AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” was interspersed with shots of bombs lighting up Venezuela’s night sky as U.S. troops descended on Maduro.
The claim appeared on X on August 11, 2025. The screen caption read: President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, reacts to the $50 million bounty
[…]
the video is a short clip from Maduro’s speech on July 30th […] In the full recording of the speech, Maduro addressed his opponent as Mr. Coward and asked him to come to the presidential palace “The coward Gonzalez Urrutia, the new Guaidó. Mr. Coward, don’t come for the humble woman at home and her family. Mr. Coward, do not go for the ordinary man. Come for me, I’m waiting for you in Miraflores.” […]
On August 7, 2025, the [DoJ] doubled the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.
birgerjohanssonsays
Question: Was Isildur able to curse the Oathbreakers because he had just taken Sauron’s ring? The books I read are not adressing the issue.
Oathbreakers were a Pre-Númenórean people, indigenous. Númenóreans (aka Dúnedain), were settlers. Isildur was born in Númenor. The Oathbreakers went from worshipping Sauron to swearing allegiance to Isildur founding King of Gondor, then broke that oath when called to fight beside him against Sauron.
The Númenóreans worshipped the god Eru Ilúvatar who per The Silmarillion gave the Gift of Ilúvatar (death) and—I couldn’t readily verify this—is the only one with “authority to hold dead men in Arda (Middle Earth)” as one rando put it. A redditor said, “the reason that Aragorn could command them was because oaths pass down to the oath-receiver’s heirs. […] Aragorn was able to prove his claim to the kingship to the army of the dead”.
I am mostly going to stick to what I know best: Greece, Rome and the European Middle Ages. Oath-taking in the pre-Islamic Near East seems to follow the same set of rules, but that is beyond my expertise
[…]
You swear an oath because your own word isn’t good enough […] That assurance comes from the presumption that the oath will be enforced by the divine third party. The god is called—literally—to witness the oath and to lay down the appropriate curses if the oath is violated.
Two people close to the White House said the president’s lack of interest in boosting Machado, despite her recent efforts to flatter Trump, stemmed from her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the president has openly coveted. Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” said one of the people. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.
Commentary
A Ken Burns documentary wouldn’t have the stamina to portray how vain this man is.
How honest do we think anonymous WH sources are with the media? […] Whatevs, it’s good for the gossip mill.
how would he have installed her as president had he decided he wanted to? The government of Venezeula is still right there.
This is bait. There was some sort of deal struck with Rodriguez and cabinet members along the lines of “give us Maduro and the oil and we’ll let you stay in office and not bomb you into the stone age”. Why would they try to install Machado and spark a civil war that destroys the infrastructure they want to steal?
Let’s be real. Machado never would have gotten the opportunity either way. Women are not respected with this admin.
StevoRsays
DOCO ALERT for Aussies here – presume this is screening nationally not just in SA. 8 pm ABC c2. :
Disease X: Hunting the Next Pandemic
Monday, 5 Jan
8:01 PM – 9:01 PM [60 mins]
pgCCRepeated on Tuesday 6 Jan at 10:00 AM, ABC TV
Dr Chris van Tulleken investigates a mysterious virus that could cause the next pandemic, one scientists think will be deadlier than Covid-19. This is a global hunt to uncover ‘Disease X
‘.
Sounds potentially intresting & informative although I havn’t seen it yet myself.
Will likely be accessible on ABC iView later at least for Aussies and dunno if already on youtube or not.(Search found something but unsure if it is this show or not.)
There is not much benefit to operating in Venezuela – Chevron’s 20% stake in the Venezuelan national oil company has not paid off. American and Canadian Oil producer’s are laying off staff.
RNA, which is one of life’s most crucial molecules dealing with the synthesis of proteins, could be common in the universe, according to a new experiment that shows how RNA could easily have formed on Earth 4.3 billion years ago.
…(snip)..
..Now, a team of biochemists led by Yuta Hirakawa of Tohoku University in Japan and the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida say that chemists have been getting it wrong and that borates are actually beneficial to the formation of RNA.
Hirakawa’s team performed experiments in which they added the ingredients of RNA — the five-carbon sugar ribose, phosphates and the four nucleobases used by RNA (adenine, guanine, cytosine and uracil) — to a mixture that also included borates and basalt. They then heated the mixture and allowed it to dry out, mimicking conditions that they argue would have been common around underground aquifers on the early Earth.
What they found was that RNA had formed in the mixture. Furthermore, the borates hadn’t hindered anything at all, but actually supported some of the steps in the DSM model, such as stabilizing the ribose molecules that can often be unstable and break down, and facilitating the production of phosphates.
These findings have also been bolstered by new discoveries about the sample of material brought to Earth from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. In particular, with the recent announcement of the discovery or ribose in the Bennu sample, all the ingredients of RNA have now been identified in the 120 grams (4.2 ounces) of dirt and stones that OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth from Bennu.
“Restoring oil production amid chaos, corruption and nationalist resentment takes years — if it happens at all.”
Related video at the link.
In my opinion, Trump’s actions are going to make things considerably worse in Venezuela.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. strained to defend against accusations that the Iraq War was about oil. Today, President Donald Trump openly admits the U.S. is willing to carry out regime change in Venezuela to secure privileged access to the country’s oil reserves.
[…] The U.S., he said, will “run the country” until it can lock in a transition of power, and announced that “very large United States oil companies” will go in, “fix the badly broken infrastructure … and start making money for the country.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday this actually meant “running policy,” a statement that did little to clarify the administration’s next steps.
Indeed, what Trump is laying out as a straightforward mission is anything but that. [Trump] is describing a situation that doesn’t match reality on the ground, starting with the leftover Chavista regime vowing it “will not be anyone’s colony.”
He understated the time-consuming, costly effort it would take to rebuild Venezuela’s decrepit oil sector.
Already, Trump is making fresh threats that underscore the uncertainty of what’s next. On Sunday in an Atlantic interview, he warned new Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez that she is “going to pay a big price” unless she takes the country in a direction friendlier to U.S. interests. That night, she extended an olive branch, calling for a “cooperation agenda” between the U.S. and Venezuela built on mutual respect. The statement was stripped of the defiant, anti-hegemonic rhetoric that usually spills out of Caracas — for now. Even then, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López didn’t hesitate in calling Maduro’s seizure “a cowardly kidnapping” and renewed the military’s vow to confront “imperial aggression” on Sunday.
Oil companies, like any business, prize stability and time in executing regular business functions to profit. In Venezuela, both are going to be in very short supply in the near future. Already, Politico reported that U.S. oil executives are wary of Trump’s invitation to help restart production since it’s unclear who is running the country at the moment and questioning whether adding supply makes sense when trading prices are already slumping to $60 per barrel.
The American Petroleum Institute offered only a cautious statement Saturday that it was “closely watching developments involving Venezuela, including the potential implications for global energy markets.”
[…] Following Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, engineers from Chevron and ExxonMobil did not immediately fan out and start drilling across the country. No Iraqi oil boom followed the fall of Baghdad. Instead, major oil companies held off on major commercial ventures while a full-blown insurgency ravaged Iraq.
In 2004, President George W. Bush promised that Iraqi oil “will benefit the Iraqi people” as scrutiny mounted over the cost of occupying Iraq. But in the years that followed, the Iraqi government struggled to restore oil production to pre-war levels. [!]
In 2008, ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron were among a handful of Western companies negotiating no-bid petroleum contracts to service Iraq’s lucrative oil fields and regain their foothold. But the new Iraqi government abruptly canceled the prospective deals, citing the crawling pace of negotiations with the oil giants. “Big Oil” companies didn’t return to Iraq’s oil fields until November 2009 — six years after the U.S. invasion.
Venezuela has more oil than Iraq ever did. It sits on the world’s largest reserves — 303 billion barrels, or 17% of the global total. But tapping it means confronting underinvestment, corruption, and the devastating effect of U.S. sanctions on state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which scared away many would-be buyers of Venezuelan crude.
[…] Once an efficient, reliable source of wealth for Venezuela, PDVSA has been hollowed out by epic mismanagement and mass firings that eliminated technical expertise.
These days, Venezuela is a bit player in global oil markets. It produces around 900,000 barrels per day, or just 1% of global output. By comparison, the U.S. — now the top oil producer — produces around 13.9 million barrels per day. Chevron, the last major U.S. company still operating in Venezuela, pumps one-quarter of that while navigating debt and contract disputes and the jailing of several Chevron employees in recent years. One estimate from Rystad Energy, a consultancy, said it would take $110 billion in fresh capital spending to restore Venezuelan oil production to where it stood 15 years ago.
The deeper context matters. Many Venezuelans draw national pride from oil. For three decades starting in 1950, Venezuela was far richer than most Latin American countries. It harnessed oil wealth to fund social programs in healthcare, education and food access. […] When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that prosperity came crashing down. It was bound to happen again once Hugo Chávez tied the success of his socialist revolution to sky-high oil prices in the 2000s. […]
regime change can create chaos that persists for years, complicating even the most lucrative economic opportunities. […]
Declaring victory is the easy part. The United States has toppled Maduro, who continued policies that brought financial ruin on Venezuela while muzzling any opposition to his decade-long rule. Yet the hard work — and the reckoning with this modern chapter of “gunboat diplomacy” in Latin America — has only just begun.
StevoRsays
Recently, a new rogue planet was identified, and, unlike previously identified rogue planets, astronomers were able to calculate both its mass and distance from Earth. A new study, published in Science, describes how a few lucky observations from both ground-based and space-based telescopes made these calculations possible.
.. (Snip!)…
..This particular rogue planet’s microlensing effect was observed by multiple telescopes on Earth, as well as the space-based telescope, Gaia. After detection, it was named by two different groups, resulting in the two names: KMT-2024-BLG-0792 and OGLE-2024-BLG-0516.
And thanks to the timing of the event, Gaia was in a perfect position to allow for measurements enabling the calculation of the planet’s distance. The observations from two different points and a slight difference in the timing of the light signal allowed the team to calculate the microlensing parallax and determine the distance.
“Serendipitously, the KMT-2024-BLG-0792/OGLE-2024-BLG-0516 microlensing event was located nearly perpendicular to the direction of Gaia’s precession axis. This rare geometry caused the event to be observed by Gaia six times over a 16-hour period, beginning close to peak magnification,” the study authors write.
From their data, they determined that the planet had a mass of around 22% that of Jupiter, or just under the mass of Saturn. They calculated the planet to be around 3,000 parsecs (or just under 10,000 light years) away. Spectral analysis also found that the star it passed in front of was a red giant.
Followup to Sky Captain, quoting Aaron Rupar @245.
[…] Who’s next on Team Trump’s target list?
Trump spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night for 37 minutes, during which time he offered unsubtle threats against a half-dozen countries, including Venezuela. [video]
“If they don’t behave,” Trump said, referring to Venezuelan officials, “we will do a second strike.” He added that he hadn’t ruled out having U.S. troops on the ground in the South American country.
Hours earlier, he similarly told The Atlantic that if Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s executive vice president who has succeeded Maduro, “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
So much for the idea that Saturday morning’s mission was nothing more than “a law enforcement operation,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to argue on Sunday.
As part of the same Air Force One gaggle, Trump described Colombia as “very sick,” and when asked whether there might be a U.S. operation in that country too, the American president replied, “Sounds good to me.” [!] [video]
day earlier, Trump said of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, “He does have to watch his ass.”
Also on Sunday night, Trump said, “You have to do something with Mexico,” suggested he was willing to hit Iran “very hard” and emphasized his belief that the U.S. needs to acquire Greenland “from a national security situation.”
In case that weren’t quite enough, Trump also said he believes the government in Cuba is “ready to fall.” A day earlier, he said his administration would be “talking about” Cuba because he believes it’s “very similar” to Venezuela.
Rubio added during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believes Cuban officials are “in a lot of trouble.”
All of this, of course, comes on the heels of Trump approving a strike in Nigeria the day after Christmas.
It helped wrap up a year in which the Republican administration also launched preemptive military strikes on targets in Iran, initiated a bombing campaign in Yemen, targeted Islamic State group sites in Syria, struck Islamic State group targets in Somalia and launched dozens of deadly strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean.
If you voted for Trump because you expected restraint on foreign policy and the use of military force abroad, I have some bad news for you.
Looks like Trump’s adventures in Venezuela have given him an increased appetite for more of the same.
Sky Captain @250, that sounds very petty, both on Trump’s part and on the part of his lackeys. Ditto for the reaction to Maduro dancing. Therefore, it is probably true.
[…] On Sunday night, the American president spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One and was asked for his thoughts on the United States’ role in running the South American nation. The Republican initially responded that no one should ask who’s in charge of Venezuela “because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial.”
“What does that mean?” a reporter asked.
“It means we’re in charge,” Trump replied, offering the “very controversial” answer he said he didn’t want to offer seconds earlier.
[…] On Saturday, a reporter reminded the American president that the U.S. “has something of a mixed record of ousting dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes after.” Trump quickly interrupted.
“With me, that’s not true,” he said. “With me, we’ve had a perfect track record of winning. We win a lot, and we win.” […]
Saturday, the man who is somehow president and commander-in-chief of the United States and its armed forces went shopping for tile for his ballroom at a Florida strip mall. And then he went back to Mar-a-Lago, where Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put up some kind of impromptu war room with see-through curtains. [social media post, with photos]
And then the military went in and bombed Venezuela, killing at least 80 civilians. [video]
And US forces apprehended Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and flew them to the Brooklyn detention center. […]
It was shocking, but also kind of not, because Trump has been talking about wanting to take over Venezuela since his first term, telling a confused John Bolton that Venezuela was actually part of the United States. And in 2019, former US National Security Council official Fiona Hill told the House of Representatives in a deposition that in March, April and May of 2018, Russia had been pushing for a very weird quid pro quo (page 58):
And the Russians at this particular juncture were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine. In other words, if we were going to exert some semblance of the Monroe Doctrine of, you know, Russia keeping out of our backyard, because this is after the Russians had sent in these hundred operatives essentially to, you know, basically secure the Venezuelan Government and, you know, to preempt what they were obviously taking to be some kind of US military action, they were basically signaling: You know, you have your Monroe doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. We, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine.
Project 2025 also endorsed US takeover in Venezuela, see page 181, urging the US president to “unite the hemisphere against this significant but underestimated threat [of Venezuela] in the Southern Hemisphere.”
And now seems it has come to pass. Trump has done everything in his power to help out Russia with its invasion of Ukraine, from undercutting Congress’s attempts at sanctions to putting out a security manifesto rejecting any expansion of NATO and blaming Europe’s problems with Russia on Europe not being white and confident enough.
And now it seems Putin has returned the favor by turning a blind eye, other than some hypocritical words about how it was bad, and that the United Nations Security Council ought to meet and do something. That sounds like Putin making jokes!
So here we are. Donald Trump has done the thing, and if we know Donald Trump, he has a flawless plan for what to do next. [LOL] [I snipped text about Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Cortina Machado. Her role, or lack thereof, is discussed up-thread.]
No, there’s been some kind of drug deal where Maduro’s veep Delcy Rodríguez gets to take over, which means this regime change hasn’t really changed much. And how did she manage to convince Team Trump she was the right person to do this?
Wellllll, reports the Miami Herald, she’s been talking to Ric Grenell and:
“Senior Venezuelan government officials, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez…have quietly promoted a series of initiatives in recent months aimed at presenting themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative to Nicolás Maduro’s regime…funneled through intermediaries in Qatar.” […]
According to sources, the proposals were presented to the White House and the State Department by U.S. Special Envoy Richard Grenell, who earlier this year met with Maduro at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas and helped secure the release of several American citizens whom Washington considered wrongfully imprisoned by the regime.
[…] Whatever the purpose of this mission — a war for oil that oil companies don’t actually want because they correctly think it is stupid? — it was not about stopping drugs. After all, Trump just pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of proudly flooding the US with literally tons of cocaine, earning millions for the world’s most violent cartels, and who got sentenced to 45 years in prison for that. But now Trump is blaming Rubio and Rubio is blaming Trump for that pardon, derp. [video]
Trump’s own intelligence says that Maduro never controlled the Tren de Aragua gang. Venezuela is not a main importer of drugs to the US and it does not export fentanyl to the US at all. And no fentanyl has been found on the boats Pete Hegseth has blown up, which have now killed at least 115 innocent-until-proven-guilty people since September. Venezuela’s port is a waypoint for cocaine, but an estimated less than eight percent of even the cocaine that flows through the port winds up in the US. Most of it goes to Europe.
Trump now seems to have completely forgotten that importing drugs was even his pretense in the first place, and is saying out loud that this coup was all about the oil: [video]
And no, that video is not slowed down, Trump really does sound that unwell. So, anyway, forget the drugs, now the oil companies are going to go in, and “we” are going to take all of Venezuela’s oil. (Again, the oil companies don’t want it. But heeeennnngh, Trump does!)
[…] The US as global lawless entity operating at the whims of Trump’s imperial fantasies is not just a problem for Venezuela, Mexico, Greenland, Cuba, or whatever the next stop on the imperialism tour happens to be. It’s a gift to would-be colonialists everywhere who might be considering the same. Like Russia and other former Soviet republics, or China and Taiwan. How much has US influence kept peace around the world in the past century? We will now all find out!
The US certainly would not like it if France came in and snatched Trump and threw him in La Santé Prison next to Carla Bruni’s husband for breaking French laws. But the new rule of law is, who the fuck is gonna stop us?
Where is all this headed? Stay tuned, we guess. […]
“Canadian officials say US health institutions no longer dependable for accurate information”
“Misinformation from the Trump administration is cited as fuelling Canadians’ concerns over childhood vaccinations”
[…] In December, Canada’s health minister, Marjorie Michel, warned that US health and science institutions can no longer be depended upon for accurate information. In an interview with the Canadian Press, she said: “I cannot trust them as a reliable partner, no.”
Michel also told CBC News that “some” Canadians could be influenced by Kennedy.
The minister’s comments come at the conclusion of a disastrous year for measles in Canada, as the country was stripped of its measles elimination status in November after more than 5,000 cases were reported across the country.
[…] Kumanan Wilson, a doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, said Canada can combat concerns about changes at the CDC by cooperating with other public health systems worldwide and taking the helm on developing health surveillance while US institutions languish.
“If we build this system, it’s not only going to be great for Canada. We can provide really valuable information to the world,” he said. […]
[…] Cuts to public radio have spurred record-breaking “rage giving,” with $70 million more in donations in ‘25 year than in ‘24. Not enough to make up for the $535 million that got cut in July, but still nice. (The Guardian)
Copenhagen may be 5,200 miles away from Caracas, but the thrum of the helicopters that grabbed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will have been deafening in the Danish capital.
Trump’s longtime threats to seize Denmark’s territory of Greenland have been widely derided in Europe, mocked even, as outlandish talk that could surely never translate into the United States effectively invading a NATO ally.
But Trump’s willingness and ability to capture Maduro — and his suggestion that Greenland and its own vast natural resources may be next — have raised worries that there may be more to this Arctic ambition.
It has triggered the strongest protests yet against Washington’s hostile overtures, including from longtime U.S. allies in Europe.
“No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a Facebook post Sunday.
“When the president of the United States talks about ‘we need Greenland’ and connects us with Venezuela and military intervention, it’s not just wrong. This is so disrespectful,” he added. “Our country is not an object of superpower rhetoric. We are a people. A land. And democracy. This has to be respected. Especially by close and loyal friends.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen added Sunday that Trump talking about taking over Greenland “makes absolutely no sense” and that “the U.S. has no right to annex” it.
Trump and his team have for months said they want to take over the vast semi-autonomous Danish territory, citing its strategic importance and mineral wealth. After Maduro’s capture, he doubled down on the idea, telling reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday, “We need Greenland, from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you.”
He mocked local efforts to defend the sparsely populated island, saying “they added one more dog sled” that would be no match for the “Russian and Chinese ships” he claimed were “all over the place” around the territory.
(That rationale is disputed by experts: Peter Viggo Jakobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, told NBC News that these ships “do not exist.”)
Adding to the alarm, Katie Miller, a right-wing podcast host and the wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, posted an image of Greenland superimposed with the American flag and the caption “SOON!”
[…] Germany indicated Monday that European allies would be prepared to step in.
“Since Denmark is a member of NATO, Greenland will, in principle, also be subject to NATO defense,” Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told reporters in Lithuania. “And if there are further requirements to strengthen defense efforts concerning Greenland, then we will have to discuss this within the framework of the alliance.”
European leaders are hesitant to criticize Trump — a man on whom they still rely for much of their military defense, not to mention his ever-looming threat of more tariffs. But many were quick Monday to stress that Greenland’s future is “not for others to decide,” as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. France expressed similar “solidarity with Denmark.”
[…] The U.S. can already request additional military bases on Greenland’s frozen soil, and “there’s nothing to prevent the U.S. from making minerals deals either,” Jakobsen added.
“So in that respect, Trump is creating a problem that does not exist,” he said. “Does that mean that I’m then going to rule it out completely? No, because I’ve given up trying to understand what the Trump administration is doing.” [same]
[…] two U.S. military sources confirmed to MS NOW that Miller was key to the planning and execution of the operation in Venezuela and was heavily involved throughout the process. Similarly, The Washington Post reported that Miller “took a central role in the effort to remove” Nicolás Maduro.
It’s worth asking why.
Miller, according to the White House, is the president’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor. In Trump’s first term, Miller also led the White House’s speechwriting team.
He has no formal background in foreign policy or national security matters, but Miller nevertheless has been involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Israel, and Venezuela is apparently now part of his portfolio, too.
The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie recently noted in a column:
[Miller] is the primary force behind the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection into a roving deportation force. He has pushed both agencies to step up their enforcement operations, targeting schools, restaurants, farms and other work sites and detaining anyone agents can get their hands on, regardless of citizenship or legal status. It is Miller who is behind the militarization of ICE, the use of the National Guard to occupy Democrat-led cities and assist deportation efforts, and the plan to blanket the United States with a network of detention camps for unauthorized immigrants and anyone else caught in his dragnet.
Bouie added that Miller is effectively serving as the nation’s “shadow president for internal security.” In hindsight, perhaps “internal” was unnecessary.
In Trump’s first term, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had an almost cartoonishly large policy portfolio. In his second term, it’s increasingly obvious that the president has a similar model in mind for Miller.
[…] What is unfamiliar about [Trump’s Venezuela misadventure] and makes it more alarming than previous foreign escapades by the United States is that President Trump is claiming and exercising an unbridled form of executive power not heretofore seen in the United States, unconstrained by a pliable GOP-controlled Congress that has abdicated its constitutional power […]
“In a sense, we have been briefed — we’ve just been completely lied to,” one House Democrat said.
When White House chief of staff Susie Wiles recently spoke to Vanity Fair, she conceded that the Trump administration would need congressional approval before launching military strikes on Venezuelan soil. Around the same time, however, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether he’d seek congressional authorization for any land attacks in Venezuela.
“I don’t have to tell them,” the president replied, referring to lawmakers.
[…] In fact, the White House conceded that it deliberately left Congress in the dark.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that some lawmakers were informed after the mission was completed, adding, “This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on.”
That is a tough sell. Modern administrations of both parties have recognized the importance of coordinating with Congress’ “Gang of Eight” — a bipartisan group consisting of Republican and Democratic leaders from both chambers and both Intelligence Committees — which has a sterling track record of not leaking sensitive information. Rubio, a former member of this “gang,” surely knows that, but he kept them in the dark anyway and then peddled a dubious case to the press.
But just as notable are claims from several congressional Democrats that the Republican administration, when it wasn’t hiding information from lawmakers, was offering assurances that proved false. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for example, said in a statement on Saturday, “The administration has assured me three separate times that it was not pursuing regime change or taking military action in Venezuela. Clearly, they are not being straight with Americans.” [!]
Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts similarly told CNN, “When we had briefings on Venezuela, we asked, ‘Are you going to invade the country?’ We were told no. ‘Do you plan to put troops on the ground?’ We were told no. ‘Do you intend regime change in Venezuela?’ We were told no. So in a sense, we have been briefed — we’ve just been completely lied to.”
[…] The secretary of state’s defense amounts to a legalistic parsing of the words “invasion” and “regime change,” but for an administration that didn’t have any credibility to spare, this makes an awful situation worse.
[…] as members return to Capitol Hill after the holiday break, there’s also a key vote lined up.
Politico reported on Saturday:
Sen. Tim Kaine said he will force a vote next week to block further military action against Venezuela without congressional approval in the wake of President Donald Trump’s operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Kaine, who has so far been unable to get Congress to stop Trump’s Latin American military operations, called the move to oust Maduro without congressional approval ‘a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate’ the Western Hemisphere.
The vote will obviously be too late to stop the military strikes that have already happened, but if approved, the resolution would force the White House to seek congressional approval before further attacks, which the president has already said are a distinct possibility.
Politico’s report added, “The vote will also be a key test of support among Republicans for Trump’s aggressive move. While previous efforts to restrict Trump have failed for lack of GOP support, the administration’s actions could sway some Republicans who have expressed concerns about heightened tensions with Venezuela.”
“Trump is now leaning on the Monroe Doctrine — or at least his own version of it — to justify imperialistic ambitions from Greenland to South America.”
Related video at the link.
Oh FFS. Trump is just running another branding exercise based on lies.
It’s been generations since the Monroe Doctrine was a major part of the American political discourse, but the foreign policy has taken on a surprising significance in recent weeks.
In early December, for example, the White House unveiled a highly controversial National Security Strategy, which explicitly referenced the 200-year-old policy: “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere.” [!!]
Soon after, Donald Trump tapped Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry to serve as the administration’s special envoy to Greenland, which was weird for all sorts of reasons. Asked about his unexpected side gig, the Republican governor said, in reference to Greenland, “They’re in the Western Hemisphere, fits inside the Monroe Doctrine, and we’re gonna bring them some great Cajun food.”
But after Trump deployed U.S. forces to bomb Venezuela and capture Nicolás Maduro, the relevance of the doctrine took a massive leap. [social media post, with video: Trump: “All the way back it dated to the Monroe Doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal. But we’ve superseded it by a lot. By a real lot. They now call it the Donroe Document. I don’t know. It’s Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it.”]
[…] A day later, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, the president said Venezuela is “in our area,” which seemed to imply that it falls under his vision of the “Donroe Doctrine.”
He concluded, “The Monroe Doctrine was very important when it was done and other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it. I didn’t. I didn’t lose sight.”
I won’t pretend to know who put these thoughts in his head, but it’s worth pausing to understand what the centuries-old policy was all about. The Associated Press summarized:
Articulated in Monroe’s 1823 address to Congress, it was intended to ward off European colonization or other interference in independent nations of the Western Hemisphere. In return, the U.S. also agreed to stay out of European wars and internal affairs.
At the time, many Latin American countries had just gained independence from European empires. Monroe wanted both to prevent Europe from reclaiming control and to assert U.S. influence in the hemisphere.
A USA Today report noted that the policy “has been increasingly criticized by academics and policy makers for being used to justify interventions in Latin America.”
Trump is now leaning on the Monroe Doctrine — or rather, his own particular interpretation of the policy — to justify imperialistic ambitions from Greenland to South America.
“The effort carries significant risks,” a Washington Post analysis explained. “Washington could get pulled into the nation-building invasions that Trump has long sworn to avoid if the Venezuelan military or people are unwilling to go along with his plans. It also makes it harder for the United States to argue to Russia and China that they should steer clear of their neighbors. And it may reshape global affairs more broadly, as smaller nations that were long dependent on Washington’s guarantees for global trade and stability hedge their bets by building ties elsewhere.”
For that matter, the idea that this in any way reflects the kind of foreign policy restraint many voters thought they’d get from Trump has obviously been rendered ridiculous.
But as relevant as these angles are, it’s equally important for the political world to appreciate the fact that the world bears little resemblance to the one Americans saw in 1823. For Trump to try to shoehorn his misguided ambitions into a centuries-old model isn’t just absurd — it’s also a recipe for failure.
“Nicolás Maduro, the ousted Venezuelan leader, and his wife pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other federal charges. ‘I am still president of my country,’ Maduro said.”
Nicolás Maduro, the ousted Venezuelan leader, insisted on Monday that he was still his country’s president and had been “kidnapped” in the U.S. military raid on Caracas that captured him and his wife two days ago. Both pleaded not guilty to charges, including drug trafficking and other crimes, in a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan.
“I’m innocent. I’m not guilty,” Mr. Maduro said through an interpreter after Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein asked him for his plea. He continued, “I am a decent man. I am still president of my country.”
Two days after being ripped from a Caracas compound, Nicolás Maduro, the captive president of Venezuela, appeared in a Manhattan courthouse and pleaded not guilty to federal charges, declaring himself a “prisoner of war.”
Mr. Maduro, who was seized by Army Delta Force commandos on Saturday and transported to the United States, wore a navy shirt over orange prison garb and headphones for translation. He blinked in the bright lights of the courtroom as he was asked for his plea.
It would be tough to summarize more succinctly the new U.S. foreign policy in the Americas than the message the State Department just posted on X: “This is OUR Hemisphere.”
[…] In Caracas, the National Assembly ratified Jorge Rodríguez as its president. He is the brother of Venezuela’s new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez. Like his sister, he highlighted his allegiance to Maduro. He took the floor of the assembly and invited Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, and a son of Cilia Flores, the elder Maduro’s wife and co-defendant, to join him as he unveiled a portrait of Maduro and Flores. […]
@263 Lynna OM wrote:
[…] Who’s next on Team Trump’s target list? quoting Aaron Rupar @245.
I reply: All of us, here, may be small fish and not DIRECTLY on the tRUMP target list. But, we are certainly being injured and murdered by the actions of the magat cult running this country. The damage of doge is still increasing and will not be mitigated for years to come. The damage by fossil fueled industry is being ballooned out of control, etc.
AND, now, Tim Walz, is a casualty of the magat target list and all the magat LIES.
And, what about PZ’s articles on how diseased this country is becoming (and we don’t even have a way of knowing for certain how bad it is!
I’m not enjoying this ride down the Death Spiral. I want to get off it, but I can’t find a way to.
In June of this past year, Democratic Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were murdered in their homes by Vance Boelter, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who attended Trump rallies, hated abortion and LGBTQ+ people, and who claimed he was doing a “citizen’s arrest” of the Hortmans related to COVID vaccines.
However, this weekend, while he wasn’t bombing sovereign nations for their oil, Donald Trump took a moment to share an absolutely batshit conspiracy theory video claiming that Boelter was actually acting as an agent of Governor Tim Walz, who wanted Hortman killed after she voted for a measure that would make undocumented immigrants unable to get healthcare through MinnesotaCare.
This has long been a very popular theory on the right, especially since they’ve decided to fully commit to the patently ridiculous narrative that all political violence (and all violence in general) comes from the Left. Sure, every actual statistic on earth shows that right-wing extremism has been responsible for the majority of terrorist incidents since 9/11 […]
[…] The conspiracy theory is absurd, of course […]
The conspiracy theory has gotten a boost lately, with many claiming that maybe Walz also had Hortman offed because she was close to “exposing” the daycare fraud issue that Minnesota news has been covering since at least 2014 and that Walz himself had been working to investigate and set up guardrails against. [!]
Indeed, this nonsense was the crux of Trump’s second Truth Social post accusing Walz of being a murderer. [social media posts]
In response to Trump’s posting, Hortman’s two children put out statements pleading with the president to not post insane conspiracy theories about their parents’ death.
Via NBC:
“I am asking President Trump to remove the video that he shared and apologize to me and my family for posting this misinformation and for using my mother’s own words to dishonor her memory,” Colin Hortman wrote.
Sophie Hortman echoed the sentiment, calling the video “a painful, false twisting of my mother’s final vote.”
“We must create a society in which we do not harbor hatred and violence toward our political opponents, and this video promotes a false narrative which fuels the flames of political division,” Sophie Hortman wrote.
There’s a certain bitter irony here, given that Boelter was motivated to murder the Hortmans by his own conspiratorial beliefs about the COVID vaccine — which Governor Walz nodded to in his own condemnation of Trump’s posting.
“Dangerous, depraved behavior from the sitting president of the United States. In covering for an actual serial killer, he [Trump] is going to get more innocent people killed,” he wrote. “America is better than this.”
Sadly, America is not better than this. Many of us are, but if you go on over to Xitter or any right-wing message board, it is beyond clear that a very large chunk of the population thinks that this is entirely acceptable behavior for the president of the United States.
It’s worth noting that Trump refused to call Walz to offer condolences after the Hortmans were murdered, as doing so would be a waste of his time.
On Monday morning, Tim Walz announced that he would not be running for reelection, citing the need to focus on helping Minnesotans during this time of crisis over his own political ambitions.
In a statement, he wrote:
In September, I announced that I would run for a historic third term as Minnesota’s Governor. And I have every confidence that, if I gave it my all, I would succeed in that effort.
But as I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all.
Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences.
So l’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.
I know this news may come as a surprise. But I’m passing on the race with zero sadness and zero regret. After all, I didn’t run for this job so I could have this job.
I ran for this job so I could do this job. Minnesota faces an enormous challenge this year. And I refuse to spend even one minute of 2026 doing anything other than rising to meet the moment. Minnesota has to come first – always.
That’s what I believe servant leadership demands of me. And as an optimist, I will hold out some hope that my friends on the other side of the aisle will consider what servant leadership demands of them in this moment.
So weird for a politician to be a basically decent guy who just really wants to do a good job for people, instead of a lunatic posting random, unfounded videos about his ideological opponents!
I get why he’s doing it, but the timing is very unfortunate as it does give the impression to Trump, to people like the batshit YouTuber Nick Shirley whose “exposé” on the daycare fraud (which involved going to daycare centers around the city and screaming “fraud!” when they wouldn’t open their doors for a bunch of random men with cameras) took right-wing America by storm, that they can just bully people out of office by making up insane conspiracies about them. [Social media post in which Nick Shirley claims, “I ENDED TIM WALZ,” and Elon Musk replies, “Thank God.”]
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) fired back at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his threat to demote the senator’s military rank on Monday following the Pentagon’s investigation, saying he “will fight this with everything I’ve got.”
Kelly said Hegseth wants to send a message to every U.S. service member that if they say something the Pentagon head or President Trump does not like, they will “come after them the same way.”
“It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that. If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in our country’s history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn’t get it,” Kelly said Monday in a statement on social platform X.
“I will fight this with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government,” he added.
Hegseth said Monday morning he is moving to demote Kelly’s military rank over taking part in a November video alongside five other Democrats with either an intelligence or military background, in which they told the military they can refuse illegal orders from the Trump administration.
Hegseth said the Pentagon kick-started the retirement grade determination proceedings, also known as officer grade determinations, with a “reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay.”
The Defense secretary said he also issued a formal letter of censure, which “outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly’s reckless misconduct.”
“This Censure is a necessary process step, and will be placed in Captain Kelly’s official and permanent military personnel file,” Hegseth wrote on X.
Hegseth’s move avoids a court-martial, which would have subjected the Senate Democrat to a military tribunal.
Kelly was notified of the Defense Department’s action and has 30 days to respond, Hegseth said, adding that the retirement grade determination process will be done within 45 days.
Kelly is a decorated retired Navy captain who was in the Navy for more than two decades and has deployed multiple times.
The Defense Department began the probe into the Arizona Democrat in November after stating the department received “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly, who previously hammered the probe as a “bunch of of bulls‑‑‑.”
At the request of Hegseth, the Navy sent a report on potential punishments against Kelly to the department’s Office of General Counsel.
Kelly appeared in the November video with Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Reps. Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (N.H.), Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.) and Jason Crow (Colo.), who reminded U.S. service members they can refuse illegal orders, but they did not specify which orders the Trump administration may have issued.
Some GOP senators have expressed reservations about the Pentagon’s probe that in December, escalated to an “official Command Investigation,” The Hill reported last month.
Kelly served in the Navy between 1987 and 2011 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, where he served as an instructor.
My conclusion: Kelly is an honorable man. Pete Hegseth is not.
I hope a lot of people step up to help Mark Kelly.
[…] Trump on Monday responded to news that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) will not seek reelection in November […]
“Minnesota’s Corrupt Governor will possibly leave office before his Term is up but, in any event, will not be running again because he was caught, REDHANDED, along with Ilhan Omar, and others of his Somali friends, stealing Tens of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “I feel certain the facts will come out, and they will reveal a seriously unscrupulous, and rich, group of “SLIMEBALLS.” […]
JFC!
Walz has been addressing the fraud cases for several years.
[…] Walz maintained in his statement Monday that his administration worked to address the fraud.
“We’ve fired people who weren’t doing their jobs. We’ve seen people go to jail for stealing from our state. We’ve cut off whole streams of funding, in partnership with the federal government, where we saw widespread criminal activity,” the governor said.
Walz is correct. Trump and some of his rightwing lackeys (like Nick Shirley) are taking advantage of the situation. They are lying and they have launched a media/social-media campaign to spread misinformation. It was a white woman, not a Somali resident of Minnesota that organized the fraud in the first place.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is escalating the Trump administration’s attacks on Minnesota by freezing all federal funding to the state’s child care providers.
Day care operators and advocates have few answers about how the sudden stoppage will impact their communities. They said the restriction is putting providers at risk of closure and low-income families at risk of being unable to afford child care.
Federal health officials this week announced they were freezing any further allotments under the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to all states, though Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill specifically targeted Minnesota in an interview on Friday.
“We are not going to spend money on Minnesota until we’re confident there is no fraud,” O’Neill said in an interview on Fox News, promising to hold Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) accountable.
The CCAP funding is used to subsidize services for about 23,000 children from low-income families in the state.
“The only families who are eligible to get this funding are already very low income and economically vulnerable families,” said Clare Sanford, government relations chair and board member for the Minnesota Child Care Association.
If the funding gets cut off, “families lose access to child care. Job loss follows pretty quickly after that, and then housing loss follows. I mean, it’s a real cascade of bad for these families,” Sanford said.
The move to freeze the child care funds was based on allegations stemming from a video posted by right-wing influencer Nick Shirley that haven’t been proven. [That have been debunked!!]
operators said they had “noticed an influx of GOV reservations made today that have been for DHS,” and that they were not allowing any ICE agents to stay at the property.
a Hilton spokesperson said […] “This hotel is independently owned and operated, and the actions referenced are not reflective of Hilton values. […] Hilton works with governments, law enforcement and community leaders around the world to ensure our properties are open and inviting to everyone,”
A nazi bar open to everyone is no longer inviting to everyone.
A Hilton spokesperson said: “We have been in direct contact with the hotel, and they have apologized for the actions of their team, which were not in keeping with their policies. They have taken immediate action to resolve this matter.” “Hilton’s position is clear: Our properties are open to everyone, and we do not tolerate any form of discrimination.”
[…]
Hilton Corporate Headquarters doesn’t have the hotel’s staff on its payroll. However, Hilton does have operational requirements for franchisees. Those who violate its policies may be subject to penalties and, in extreme cases, be removed from the system.
The United States was condemned at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday for what even its staunch allies called a violation of international law in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and the military incursion into a sovereign state.
The deputy French ambassador denounced the assault and Mr. Maduro’s apprehension, saying it ‘chips away at the very foundation of international order.’
The Hill:
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned on Monday that the long-standing NATO alliance would end if President Trump ordered an attack on Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
U.S. manufacturing activity slumped to a 14-month low in December, with new orders contracting further and input costs grinding higher as the sector continued to bear the imprint of President Donald Trump’s import tariffs.
Jeansays
birgerjohansson @255
I usually just ignore your youtube links because I don’t want to see videos from random sources and then have the algorithm present me with a ton of the same but I saw Maddow’s name and foolishly clicked on the link. This is very obviously AI and it’s not mentioned in the video description so it’s trying to use a respected public figure to present some “facts”.
I did not watch the video more than to see it was AI (many commenters also saw it) but it cannot be trusted for anything presented in it and the fact that you shared this link shows a worrisome lack of judgement on your part. Please stop sharing those links here.
Jeansays
Lynna re my #285,
I don’t know if you have any policy on this thread concerning sharing fake AI shit but that should be a big no no.
The kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave the Department of Justice a splashy opportunity to show off, with Attorney General Pam Bondi beating her chest over on X about how cool and great it was to illegally capture and remove a head of state. Now, the DOJ wants to use that as its latest reason to refuse to provide due process to the 100+ Venezuelan men renditioned to CECOT, the notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador.
The Department of Justice has been locked in battle with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg since March 2025, when he had the temerity to issue a court order the DOJ didn’t feel like following. You know the one, where Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to turn the planeloads of Venezuelan deportees around rather than sending them to CECOT in secret in the dead of night.
Since then, the DOJ has done everything in its power to stop Boasberg from investigating whether the administration was in contempt of his order and stymie the judge’s efforts to provide the CECOT deportees with the due process they are owed. Now, Maduro’s abduction has given the DOJ a brand new way to refuse to obey anything Boasberg orders.
You see, according to the DOJ, since they kidnapped Maduro over the weekend and have now brought him here to stand trial on a mishmash of drug trafficking charges, they need some extra time to respond to Boasberg’s Dec. 22 order requiring them to respond today, Jan. 5, with an explanation as to how they would facilitate the due process rights of the men sent to CECOT.
Trump administration officials do not want to do that, because they know full well that many of the men they deported because they were ostensibly hardened cartel criminals were actually just innocent migrants swept up in one of the earliest rounds of mass deportations. If those men get a hearing, as Boasberg has ordered, to prove they are not gang members, that’s a problem for the DOJ. So the administration’s latest laughable excuse is that since Maduro was captured over the weekend, they now need more time to respond to the judge’s order.
The motion, such as it is, provides no justification for the DOJ’s request to blow through Monday’s deadline. Indeed, this is the motion in its entirety:
Given substantial changes on the ground in Venezuela and the fluid nature of the unfolding situation, Defendants respectfully move for an extension to respond to this Court’s Order (ECF 214) directing them to propose a remedy by Monday, January 5. Over the weekend, the United States apprehended Nicolas Maduro. As a result, the situation on the ground in Venezuela has changed dramatically. Defendants thus need additional time to determine the feasibility of various proposals. Defendants therefore request a 7-day extension to evaluate and determine what remedies are possible.
The men renditioned to CECOT were sent there thanks to President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. Spoiler alert: There is no world in which throwing random Venezuelan migrants out of the country and sending them to a foreign gulag is proper under the AEA, but even if Trump did properly invoke it, Boasberg had ruled the men still weren’t afforded a meaningful opportunity to show they were not gang members before the administration deported them under the AEA. [!]
But Maduro’s kidnapping presents the DOJ with a golden opportunity to say that no, really, they totally cannot bring these prisoners back or afford them any due process because now that we’ve kicked off an invasion of their home country, Venezuelan migrants are all alien enemies now. They don’t come out and say it as such, but it’s clear the DOJ wants to say that now that they kidnapped Maduro, this somehow changes the calculus under the AEA, and they do not have to provide the men they deported 10 months ago with any due process.
This is especially gruesome because Boasberg’s Dec. 22 order doesn’t even require the administration to agree to bring anyone home from CECOT, saying that “the Government could also theoretically offer Plaintiffs a hearing without returning them to the United States so long as such hearing satisfied the requirements of due process.”
Literally just a lousy hearing. That’s all Boasberg is demanding.
The DOJ is trying to make sure they don’t even have to take that incredibly minor step. So, they sat on their hands until Sunday night before filing their demand for an extension. […]
Rule 7(m) requires consultation with opposing counsel before filing this sort of motion “in a good-faith effort to determine whether there is any opposition to the relief sought and, if there is, to narrow the areas of disagreement … A party shall include in its motion a statement that the required discussion occurred, and a statement as to whether the motion is opposed.”
Did the DOJ do those things? No, it did not. So, first thing Monday, Boasberg ordered the DOJ to file a Rule 7(m) notice by 5 PM on the same day, proving they have conferred with the plaintiffs’ attorneys. But their delay tactics have basically already succeeded on some level, since it is clear they won’t be telling Boasberg anything else today.
This shoddy motion lets the DOJ drag their feet on this particular order […]
It’s like the Trump administration sees this as a “do not get out of jail free” card—one that it can slap down to keep these men imprisoned forever.
“Spot checking and sometimes debunking quotes, memes and fake news stories about, or ascribed to, Rachel Maddow.”
Maddow debunks weird spate of fake news, A.I. slop stories about her and MSNBC, updated in December. Still relevant.
Excerpt:
[…] If you have a question about whether a quote or event is really Rachel, write to the show on BlueSky at @MaddowBlog.bsky.social and we’ll hunt it down (and maybe even add it to this page!).
What is the deal with these YouTube accounts full of fake A.I. of Rachel Maddow’s voice talking about Russia and Ukraine (mostly)? We have no idea, but they spring up like mushrooms as quickly as YouTube takes them down. […]
The good news is that all of the real Rachel Maddow YouTube video that comes from us is under the MS NOW umbrella account.
Obviously when she is on another show, or speaking at another organization’s event, that’s going to be a different account, but as a general rule, if you’re unsure about a video you’re looking at and the account name is not MS NOW, proceed with caution.
[…] for the sake of making the record clear, Rachel does not have a Blogspot and does not have an official Telegram channel.
[…] if you see a video of Rachel that is not posted by the official account, and the video seems a little jittery, and her mouth is not quite making the right shape for the words, and the background is not the show background you automatically recognize by now… then there is a strong possibility that you are looking at an artificial intelligence-generated deep fake.
Our only consistent advice is to pay close attention and use trusted sources. Listen to the intonation and cadence of the speaking. Notice any weird lexicon. In this video they make the Rachel avatar say things like “thirteen dollars million.” That is likely because the A.I. doesn’t know how to look at “$13 million” as a single expression so it reads two separate words. [Sheesh. Video at the link.]
Nope. No “shocking twist,” no “jaw-dropping turn of events,” no “explosive new program.” As much as Rachel loves Stephen Colbert, the idea that they have announced a show together is a false news figment of Facebook posts.
[…] Let’s face it, on Facebook most people don’t even read what they’re commenting on. Most people read the headline and react. And so these fake stories take on a life of their own. […]
As far as I can tell, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. are full of A.I. slop … and that’s getting worse day by day.
I urge people who post to this thread to be diligent when it comes to checking sources. Do not repost A.I. slop.
“Russia Once Offered U.S. Control of Venezuela for Free Rein in Ukraine”
“The exchange offer was recounted at the time in congressional testimony by Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.”
Moscow’s mixed reaction to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela has stirred memories of a barter reportedly offered by Russia seven years ago, during another moment of heightened tension between Washington and Caracas.
At the time, Russia signaled that it was willing to allow the United States to act as it pleased in Venezuela, in exchange for Washington giving the Kremlin a free hand in Ukraine, according to Congressional testimony from Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.
The Russians “were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Ms. Hill told a Congressional hearing in October 2019, more than two years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The proposals were informal, through commentators and newspaper articles, she said, but the gist was that if the United States wanted the freedom to maintain a sphere of influence over neighboring countries, then it ought to agree to Russia doing the same.
“You want us out of your backyard,” said Ms. Hill in summarizing the Russian position. “We, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine.”
Ms. Hill said that she went to Moscow in person to reject the idea. The proposal came amid tensions between Caracas and Washington that prompted Moscow to deploy 100 military personnel and new weapons to shore up the rule of President Nicolás Maduro.
Mr. Maduro’s removal marks the latest blow to a regime supported by Moscow, with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria toppled a little over a year ago.
Officially, the Russian foreign ministry condemned the move as a violation of international law. But the main Russian priority is the war in Ukraine […] The Kremlin is trying to strike a difficult balance, neither making any major concessions on Ukraine nor alienating the White House.
Some senior Russian officials and commentators have expressed satisfaction that the United States seemed to be ditching international law in exchange for a policy of “might makes right,” an attitude hearkening back to an imperial era, more than a century ago, that both President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have looked on fondly.
“The law of the strongest is clearly stronger than ordinary justice,” Dmitri Medvedev, the formerly liberal president of Russia turned war hawk wrote on social media, while adding in an interview with the official Tass news agency that Washington now has “no grounds, even formally, to reproach our country.”
this morning’s emergency security council meeting on Venezuela […] was called by Colombia, and can help us get a sense of the public lines coming from a diverse group of countries
[…]
It’s easy in these moments to get exasperated by the UN, but the Charter does two key things that have helped define the post-1945 world: it outlaws the use of aggressive warfare as a tool for remaking international order, and it underwrites postcolonial sovereignty. US actions this week breach both.
[…]
Russia’s up now, hoping no one looks too hard at their nameplate as they talk about sovereignty violations.
[…]
Mike Waltz is up now […] going with Marco Rubio’s line: there’s no war with Venezuela, this was a law enforcement operation. He explicitly cites the Noriega precedent. FWIW he could call it a friendly game of capture the flag, and it would still be a sovereignty violation.
[…]
there’s a sharp difference between the Trump administration’s justifications & the Bush administration’s justifications at the UN. First, the Bush administration tried to get UN authorization to invade, & second, they did so by drawing on past UN resolutions on Iraq. In the Bush administration’s argument, Iraq was in violation of international law and Security Council resolutions, *therefore* the Security Council should authorize military action. Waltz’s argument is explicitly anchored in *US* law, US interests, and stabilizing the region. Explicitly, we might say, a Teddy Roosevelt and not a Franklin Roosevelt argument. No mention of the 80 dead Venezuelans in his address; shameless mention of Venezuela’s natural resources. […] Mike Waltz has left. Apparently he had something more important to do. Tammy Bruce, his deputy/resident Fox host is in the seat now. […] The US seat’s now got a third and likely quite junior person in it.
[…]
It’s bonkers that this is happening midtown literally while Maduro is being arraigned downtown.
[…]
South Africa is hitting this point hard—that we risk tipping back into a pre-1945 world of frequent war, and that moving into a complex future will require the protection of international law.
[…]
These meetings are useful for learning what countries think it’s important to say in public. This doesn’t necessarily translate to action and is often hypocritical, but helps us see what values countries think it’s important to publicly advance.
[…]
On the balance, I think only Argentina and the UK—an unlikely team—demurred in describing the US’s actions […] Most states raised both the repressive nature of the [Maduro] regime to Venezuelans & the grave danger of US actions.
some context of why the “Noriega precedent” doesn’t apply: when the U.S. invaded Panama, a U.S. soldier, Lt. Robert Paz, had been killed by Panamanian forces, and the Panamanian government had declared war on the United States. These are two very different situations.
Rando 1: “If this whole thing were to be looked at as a ‘law enforcement’ operation, the issue of 80 dead to make an arrest should be a huge scandal. Remember Waco? Remember 82 people dead in the Branch Davidian compound?”
Rando 2: “When the LAPD arrests a dude at a gas station, they don’t take over the gas station and use it to gas up all the cop cars”
There are two arguments hanging in the balance here, both of which have some merit: (1) it doesn’t do the UK government any good to publicly antagonize the US government, so why do it? (2) it doesn’t do the UK government any good to curry favor with the US government, so why not stand on principle?
The trouble with an unpredictable frenemy is that you can’t count on your actions producing a predictable response, so your response has to depend not on what you think they’ll do, but what you think will stand you in the best possible future stead regardless. I suspect [social media] reactions to the UK’s position here have as much to do with the Starmer government seemingly having no principles they want to stand on as they do with this specific situation. […] the UK government’s general current posture is what if linguini was a TERF and also xenophobic.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Onion
Nicholas Maduro charged with Felony Oil Possession.
folks are talking about Article 5 of the NATO alliance. So much is misunderstood about this key clause—an attack upon one equals an attack upon all.
Ooops, that is incomplete: a) it requires consensus, like all NATO decisions of any consequences; b) each country can respond as each deems necessary. In an intra-alliance spat, such as Greece vs. Turkey, which has happened, NATO can’t respond because it can’t come to a consensus. So, the Danes could try to bring the issue to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s decision-making body, but the US would block consensus.
[…]
BUT there is something else here: that any failed attempt to invoke Article 5 could break the alliance. Any member that has been attacked that fails to get help will have good reason to withdraw—what’s the point if help will not come when it is requested? So, the threat to try to get the alliance to invoke A5 is an attempt to say: if you don’t support us, the alliance is dead.
This is why countries, when attacked, haven’t tried to invoke Article 5—cyber attack on Estonia, Syria hitting Turkey, Russia breaking sea cables, etc—because a failed effort may be fatal to the alliance.
In semi-normal times, one could look at the Danish hints at A5 discussions* as a way to increase the stakes to get more support. The problem is: these times aren’t normal. Trump might just leap at an opportunity to break the alliance. […] if his advisers tell him that initiating a Greenland crisis might be a pathway to breaking NATO, Trump might just grab that chance. And then Putin’s investment in Trump will pay off in the biggest way possible. […] The very foundations of security in Europe and beyond are at stake.
* Or the Danish PM is referring to NATO to make the obvious point—that there is no need for the US to take over Greenland since it is already under the US security umbrella via Denmark’s membership in NATO. Too bad Trump is a bad faith actor and this bit of reality is irrelevant.
Venezuela will not have new elections in the next 30 days, President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Monday, projecting a longer-term engagement two days after U.S. forces captured that nation’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.
“We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote,” Trump said about the possibility of a vote in the next month. “No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health.”
Fair elections in the next 30 days would be hard, likely impossible if the US won’t put people on the ground to help implement it. The real concern is more likely that a candidate that Trump doesn’t approve of would win.
Moreover, he said, the U.S. may subsidize an effort by oil companies to rebuild the country’s energy infrastructure — a project he said could take less than 18 months.
“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” he said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
And there we go, no oil company would bite on paying for rebuilding themselves so the US will pay for it to be done. Trump can’t possibly admit that this might have been a bad idea now, so he presses forth with more expensive plans.
Trump said Rodríguez has been cooperating with U.S. officials but insisted there was no communication between her camp and the American side before Maduro’s ouster.
“No, that’s not the case,” he said, adding that a determination will be made soon about whether existing sanctions against Rodríguez will be left in place or lifted.
When asked if there was “any deal with any official in Venezuela to remove” Maduro, Trump replied, “Well, yeah, because a lot of people wanted to make a deal, but we decided to do it this way,” adding that it was without the help of Maduro’s inner circle.
I think it’s likely that Trump is telling the truth here. From what I have seen the offer from Venezuelan officials wasn’t sweet enough. Essentially they offered to force Mauro into retirement in some safe 3rd party country and take power themselves without changing anything. Trump wanted control of the oil industry at the very least.
“You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States”
– No reference to UN Charter legal justification
– Claims Panama as precedent (which the UN condemned)
– Energy reserves as justification is illegal
– Sharp contrast with US Ambassador Pickering presentation in 1989
Note the odd contrast with Ambassador Waltz’s remarks yesterday to Fox News:
“I will remind everyone of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which is […] a nation’s inherent right to self-defense.”
[Paraphrasing Trump] Not at war with the country the U.S. just bombed and whose leader the U.S. just abducted. But at war with alleged drug smugglers in boats. Got it.
One of these is a real war and one is a make believe war.
The unlawful US military attack on Venezuela means the existence of an international armed conflict with Venezuela and the application of the law of war, including the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
And if there’s no war with Venezuela (and hence no application of the law of war), does that mean that the US military killing Venezuelan and Cuban security personnel was just murder?
White House has filed its War Powers report for the attack on Venezuela. I used to help draft these reports and this is an unusual specimen. […] notable for what it omits.
In contrast to the report for the 1989 invasion of Panama (the “precedent” for this op), it does not detail attacks upon or actual threats to Americans. Further (unlike in 1989) it does not provide int’l law justifications for the US invasion of VZ.
Unusually for recent executive branch justifications for the use of military force, the White House invokes the Take Care Clause of Article II of the Constitution as a source of authority.
to take care that the laws are faithfully executed
The invocation of the Take Care Clause is ironic. […] the Take Care Clause constrains presidential war powers, including because the “laws” to be faithfully executed include Article 2(4) of the UN Charter—which the US flagrantly violated by invading VZ.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, speaking today.
[…] “Finally, it is necessary to reaffirm that in Mexico, the people rule and that we are a free, independent, and sovereign country. Cooperation, yes; subordination and intervention, no.”
[…] Multiple Democratic lawmakers pointed to Trump’s admission aboard Air Force One that he had briefed oil companies ahead of the U.S.’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—and before he notified members of Congress. [..]
Video verified by CNN shows anti-aircraft fire over the Caracas. In separate video verified by CNN audible gunfire could also be heard […] Venezuela’s Ministry of Communication and Information said police fired at drones that were “flying without permission.” […] It did not say who might have been flying the drones.
A White House official told CNN they are closely tracking the reports of gunfire out of Venezuela, but noted that “the US is not involved.”
Discussions between paramilitary groups associated with the regime and heard by CNN indicate […] a drone that had been flying in the area was fired upon by members of the Miraflores Police and palace security, but the situation was now “under control.”
The Iranian uprising has now reached 100 cities on its eighth day. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched a missile and air defense drill tonight. Worried about Israel. The Shiite religious hall known as a Husseiniya has been set on fire in Qom, the religious centre linked to Iran’s ruling clerics. Protesters, mainly young, are taking over an IRGC Basij force base in Neyriz, Fars Province.
An intelligence report says Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has prepared a contingency plan to flee to Moscow if nationwide unrest escalates and security forces begin to defect or disobey orders.
Young protesters have burned down a Revolutionary Guard Basij base in Tehran’s Punak area. Violent clashes have broken out between protesters and regime forces in southern Tehran’s Naziabad area.
Mark Chadbourn: “A few [armed protesters]. Seem to be picking stuff up from the police and army.”
The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/05/children-killed-iran-protests-security-forces
At least three children are reported to have been killed and more than 40 minors arrested after eight days […] So far, 990 people have been arrested and at least 20 killed […] security forces had raided and attacked the Khomeini hospital in the city of Ilam, western Iran, where injured protesters had been taken. […]
“State forces are firing directly at gatherings and protests without regard for whether those targeted are children or adults. The crackdowns are brutal: teargas and military-grade weapons are being used, and detainees are severely beaten before being transferred to undisclosed locations.”
On Day 9 of the Iran protests, a huge crowd has gathered outside the Yasuj Governorate. Tens of thousands have gathered in Marvdasht, chanting Death to Khamenei. […] Explosion at Iran’s biggest dairy factory. Cause not revealed. […] A bus transporting IRGC Basij personnel has exploded in Naziabad, southern Tehran.
Netanyahu used Putin to convey messages to Iran that Israel does not plan to attack, diplomatic sources tell KAN News. MOSSAD’s Farsi service claims thousands of security forces and Basij members have abandoned their posts in Iran. Could be stirring the pot propaganda, could be true. We’ll see.
Protesters in Iran have set fire to a regime seminary in Khorramabad. Iranian state media is showing caches of brand new weapons seized from protesters. A petrol/gas station in Tehran is burning.
Last desperate roll of the dice: bribery. Government spokeswoman Fatma Mokhgarani has announced that all Iranians will receive payments equal to 1 million tomans (approximately $7) per person per month for the next 4 months to ease economic pressure. Inflation is out of control. $7 is nothing.
StevoRsays
@ ^ CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain :Thanks for that.
.***
The leaders of Denmark and Greenland on Sunday called on US President Donald Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland.
The appeals come after Trump again insisted that the US needs to control the resource-rich Arctic territory for national security, a day after US forces attacked Venezuela and captured President Nicolas Maduro.
..(Snip)..
Frederiksen also strongly urged the US to stop the threats against a historically close ally and “against another country and another people, who have very clearly said that they are not for sale.”
Meanwhile, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in a statement: “When the President of the United States says that ‘we need Greenland’ and links us to Venezuela and military intervention, it’s not just wrong. It’s disrespectful.”
… (Snip)..
Jesper Moller Sorensen, Denmark’s ambassador to Washington, also weighed into the diplomatic spat. He reposted the map on X and wrote, “Just a friendly reminder about the US and the Kingdom of Denmark: We are close allies and should continue to work together as such.”
Not sure about the tense used in the last quote. “Are ..” were? Maybe? Trump seeems no ally of any former USA ally really – esp in Europe – to me.
Jeansays
Youtube links to two takes I haven’t seen anywhere else on the real reason for the Venezuela invasion by Rachel Maddow (the real one not a fake AI version) and Lawrence O’Donnell. I think both of these are not incompatible and are likely to be somewhat close to the truth since that’s not what the Trump regime has put forward as their reason.
My therapist is like, [“]what’s unique about your situation is the trauma for everyone else, it ends.” […] I’ve got a president that fuckin’ pardoned all the people that assaulted me, called them patriots. 50% of the country thinks I’m a traitor […] I get death threats every […] day. I lost my career. I lost my friends.
/That guy voted for Trump in 2016, and in Feb 2025, spoke at a CPAC-alternative conference for Republicans who don’t support Trump. Insider quoted him in 2023 saying the Republican Party is “a party of violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-immigration.” that “just needs to be destroyed” and replaced.
I haven’t been able to find an English language version, so this is through google translate. There’s not a lot of information beyond the headline, though. It’s really just announcing the meeting. We’ll see what comes of it.
StevoRsays
Sure haven’t been many commemorations or media attention paid to the anniversary of Jan 6th this year have there?
Maddow calls out the real reason Trump invaded Venezuela. Rachel Maddow runs through the litany of excuses and justifications the Trump administration has presented to explain the military invasion of Venezuela, and points out that none of what has been floated holds up under scrutiny. Every principle the Trump administration claims to be defending comes with examples of the administration not caring at all about that principle. Even the popular idea that it was all for oil doesn’t really make sense upon closer examination. But there is one reason that is consistent with Trump’s behavior through the first year of his second term in office.
Trump’s ICE prison escalation collides with American resistance. Rachel Maddow shows the disturbing parallels between Donald Trump’s plans for incarcerating immigrants in camps, and the incarceration Japanese-Americans faced in World War II, but this time Americans are speaking out and standing up.
Why Donald Trump is still freaking out over Senator Kelly’s simple statement. Pete Hegseth, former cable news weekend host and Donald Trump secretary of defense, is moving to demote Senator Mark Kelly and also cut his military retirement pay because Kelly reminded members of the military of their duty to refuse to obey unlawful orders. Senator Kelly talked with Rachel Maddow about why that particular message bothered Donald Trump so much that he’s still trying to punch Kelly for saying it out loud in public.
Video is 7:51 minutes.
StevoRsays
@ ^ Lynna, OM : Yup Trump has censored Kellyt for speaking truth too :
On Monday (Jan. 6), Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that his organization “is taking administrative action” against Kelly, a former Navy fighter pilot who has four space shuttle missions under his belt.
The department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), with reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay,” Hegseth wrote via X on Monday.
“To ensure this action, the Secretary of War has also issued a formal Letter of Censure, which outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly’s reckless misconduct. This Censure is a necessary process step, and will be placed in Captain Kelly’s official and permanent military personnel file.”
..(Snip)..
Kelly has been notified of the action and has 30 days to submit a response, according to Hegseth. The “retirement grade determination process” will be complete within 45 days, the secretary added.
Correction to comment 297: Oil executives say, no, Trump did not contact them before he invaded Venezuela. Rachel Maddow confirmed the oil executive’s version of the timeline.
“The GOP leader had plenty of time to come up with an excuse for his refusal. He didn’t come up with much.”
Five years after an insurrectionist mob, fueled by Donald Trump’s election lies, attacked the U.S. Capitol, many of those who remember and lived through the assault are pushing back against Republican efforts to send the violent riot down an Orwellian memory-hole.
To that end, House Democrats are holding a hearing to highlight the Trump administration’s threats to free and fair elections; Democratic members have published a report, “One Year Later: Assessing the Public Safety Implications of President Trump’s Mass Pardons of 1,600 January 6 Rioters and Insurrectionists”; and Democrats are speaking out to remind the public that the crisis that began on Jan. 6 has never really ended.
As it turns out, GOP officials are also making some news related to the anniversary, although of a very different sort.
After the Jan. 6 attack, Congress agreed to install a permanent plaque to honor the law enforcement personnel who helped protect the U.S. Capitol against pro-Trump rioters. By statute, the plaque was to be placed on the western side of the building by March 2023 and list the names of those who served.
That deadline lapsed almost three years ago. The plaque is done and ready to be installed, but it’s reportedly sitting in a Capitol basement utility room surrounded by tools and maintenance equipment.
Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin confirmed during a congressional hearing last year that the only thing standing in the way of installing the plaque is the approval from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office — approval the Louisiana Republican has not extended for reasons he’s been reluctant to explain. (Austin also needed approval from Senate leaders, which he has already received.)
On the eve of the Jan. 6 anniversary, the House speaker elaborated on his position. The Associated Press reported:
[Speaker Johnson’s] office said in a statement late Monday the statute authorizing the plaque is ‘not implementable’ and proposed alternatives also ‘do not comply.’
The GOP leader has had quite a bit of time to come up with a coherent explanation for his refusal to honor the officers who protected the Capitol. This, evidently, is what he’s come up with.
Meanwhile, two Jan. 6 police officers, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and current Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges, filed a lawsuit last summer to force congressional leaders to follow the law. Donald Trump’s Justice Department weighed in on the case last month, telling a federal court to reject the litigation, though the case is still pending.
For their part, many congressional Democrats have replicas of the plaque hung outside their Capitol Hill offices. If those same Democrats are in the majority after this year’s midterm elections, no one should be surprised if the real plaque is installed where it’s supposed to be in early 2027.
TPM has never much indulged the lazy-editor trope of anniversary coverage of major events, but in the midst of a fierce rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, it feels fitting to mark its fifth anniversary, if only to preserve clarity amongst ourselves about what that day represents: the starkest fork in the road that this country had faced since its civil war.
Jan. 6 felt that momentous then, not just as a culmination of the conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, but a clear and present choice about what path the country would take from there. Not an end point, as I argued at the time, but a dangerous new starting point that threatened us with a dark and uncertain future in which democracy and the rule of law would succumb to lawlessness, tyranny, and a uniquely American brand of authoritarianism.
The results of the 2024 election made clear which fork we took, and so we now remember the attack on the Capitol not as a mere warning sign or as a glorious moment when democracy bent but did not break but rather as a last chance to avoid a calamitous path that has taken us over a cliff. We haven’t hit bottom yet.
I offer this brief reflection not as a jolt of doomerism but because, even in my own mind, the relentlessness of American exceptionalism in which we’ve been drenched all our lives continues to be the default setting. On good days, that manifests as a certain kind of optimism and can-do spirit that we’ll get through this. On bad days, it’s a deep denial of how far we’ve already fallen. Either way, our national penchant for self-congratulation is a bad prism through which to view our present circumstances.
Looking Back Five Years on …
– TPM’s Hunter Walker, who was outside the Capitol that day: “The stunning realization of just how out of control things had become stalled me out for a second. My mind raced to process what was playing out in front of me. I don’t think I have ever fully returned to the state of reality I had prior to those insane scenes. I don’t think any of us have.”
– Former TPMer Igor Bobic, who captured historic video footage of the attack from inside the Capitol, is among those featured in a new oral history of Jan. 6: “I remember opening my iPhone camera and debating for the briefest second, as I’m sprinting down these marble stairs, whether I should put it in video or photo. Because I knew that we’re not allowed to take videos in the halls. In that split second, I kept it on the video camera.”
– Former TPMer Ryan Reilly, who has become the leading journalist on the Jan. 6 attack: “Five years after he and his allies tried and failed to overturn the results of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump is using his time back in the White House to take a series of actions aimed at erasing or rewriting the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol, with more likely to come.”
– Politico’s Kyle Cheney: “Jan. 6 remains crucial to understanding Trump’s second presidency, as much as it helped define his first. The ethos of Trump’s second term was forged in the final days of his first.”
– AP: The ongoing struggles of police officers who defended the Capitol are compounded by the revisionist history of Jan. 6.
– AP: “Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.”
[…] Quote of the Day
“We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”–deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller
It has never been easy for me to write about January 6.
Even standing in the crowd that day to cover the chaos, I found that sending out the first reports was a struggle. First, thanks to the sheer mass of the raging mob or perhaps some heavy law enforcement tech, the internet was jammed. It was a challenge to send out videos and posts documenting what was happening in front of me. But, along with dealing with those concrete logistics, I had to overcome the sheer disbelief. Was I really seeing people climbing the walls? Were Nick Fuentes Groyper flags really hanging from the windows of the U.S. Capitol? What had happened to the police?
[…] In the immediate aftermath, I found it hard to capture the scope of the thing. As an eyewitness and a journalist, I felt a distinct burden. I had to convey not just how far we’d strayed from any notion of law and order but also the horror of how much more violent it very easily could have been.
That urgency became a dull weight as it quickly began to seem that so much of the country was eager to move on or ignore the harsh truths of the day. […] there was a full-on campaign dedicated to rewriting and reversing the basic facts of what happened. The attack on our government was quickly paired with an assault on our collective memory that painted the day as, alternately, harmless, a set up, or even heroic. The task of these propagandists was made even easier because so much of Official Washington demonstrated an unwillingness to identify and punish the members of Congress, assorted grifters, and dark money groups that formed the political arm of the January 6 movement.
Like so many other investigators, attorneys, and whistleblowers, I swam against this tide for years. Along with other journalists, including here at TPM, I dutifully tried to fact check the most egregious lies, to expose the many direct lines between the rioters on the ground and President Trump, and even to release evidence that the official probes failed to publicly present. On other dark anniversaries, I also tried to counter the blatantly, ridiculously false narrative that this was some kind of peaceful and positive protest by recounting the terror I felt in that crowd. Ultimately, those efforts failed. The narrative, at least for now, has been fully and dramatically rewritten with Trump’s pardon pen.
January 6 wasn’t the first tragedy of the Trump era. By the time he spurred the crowds to surge towards the Capitol, the president had already presided over child separation and a shambolic pandemic response that left countless dead. It also, clearly, was not the last Trumpian outrage. His second term has seen systematic dismantling of the federal workforce, the fraying of the social fabric, and the subversion of the nation’s longstanding legal traditions. […]
It showed the stunning level to which Trump and his allies were willing to disregard democracy and their almost limitless, utter shameless capacity to lie. It also revealed the degree to which they had mobilized the internet’s most extreme subcultures to — in some cases literally — break through every last barricade protecting our democratic traditions.
[…] And the aftermath proved how many of our checks and balances have essentially checked out.
Within the past week, Trump’s violent and often absurd assaults on the old order have gone international in a new way with his invasion of Venezuela, kidnapping of that country’s dictator, and declaring America will now be seizing the oil fields and running the show there. As ever, it shows no signs of stopping, with similar threats now ramping up against Greenland and Mexico. It’s hard for me not to think there’s a throughline between the excesses of that day and the current military spree.
January 6 was, for me, the moment we lost the plot. It was a milestone in the erosion of our core values. It left Trump’s violent authoritarian movement emboldened and able to continue onward. […]
Many observers have looked at Trump’s actions in Venezuela and argued they are simply a more blatant version of an age-old American imperialism. They’re not wrong. Yet, somehow, Trump manages to take our country’s worst tendencies and magnify them to an absurd degree.
As I once again found myself faced with this anniversary and struggling to get the right words out about January 6, I sought inspiration from one of the old greats, Hunter S. Thompson. I pulled out his Gonzo Papers and happened upon a 1990 column where he assessed the legacy of Richard Nixon. Thompson recounted how, in a 1974 op-ed, he tried to skewer the grossest tendencies of political class by floating what he described as an admittedly “tongue-in-cheek” and “outlandish scenario” where the country would address its issues in the Middle East by “just seizing the oil” in the Middle East. Soon after, Thompson noted the Nixon administration turned what he thought had been a far-fetched vision of “invading the Middle East to seize the Arab oil” into “a definite policy option.”
“Nixon was a monument to everything rotten in the American dream — he was a monument to why it failed,” Thompson wrote. “He is our monument.”
Of course, in the years after Thompson published that piece, the idea of an oil-driven invasion became a reality. Nixon, in hindsight, becomes an early innovator of brazen ideas Trump is taking in absurd new directions.
Trump and his gilded, misshapen White House are monuments to the fevered night sweats that have shaken us from the American dream. He is our monument — and January 6 is his national holiday.
I do not have access to this news report from Variety.
Here is a summary from Talking Points Memo:
After a decades’ long quest, Republicans have succeeded in shutting down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose board voted yesterday to close up shop after the GOP Congress zeroed out its funding last year.
lumipunasays
Hello. It’s been a year. (Which one, they’ll ask me)
lumipunasays
As noted by Lynna at 49 upthread, Finnish authorities seized another commercial ship, suspected of sabotaging underwater infrastructure, in the Gulf of Finland almost a week ago. This time it was a container ship rather than tanker, but otherwise the case is eerily similar to the previous one (which also took place between Christmas and New Year), The investigation is going to grind on slowly. As of now, one member of the 14-strong crew is detained and a few others are forbidden from leaving Finland.
Beneath the surface of one of South Florida’s busiest maritime hubs, Port Everglades, scientists found 10 million corals thriving in and around the main channel traversed daily by cargo and cruise ships, now threatened by a major federal dredging project.
The discovery, detailed in a new scientific analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Shedd Aquarium, shows that coral populations near the port in Fort Lauderdale have persisted, and in some cases grown over the past decade, even as most reefs across Florida have collapsed from disease, coastal development and rising ocean temperatures.
“There are still a lot of corals out there, and they need to be protected,” said Ross Cunning, a research biologist at the Chicago-based Shedd Aquarium who co-authored the study. [map]
Thousands of them are endangered staghorn corals—fast-growing reef builders that create habitat for marine life and help protect coastlines from storm surge. According to another recent study, also co-authored by Cunning, staghorn corals have all but vanished elsewhere in the region and are considered functionally extinct.
Most were wiped out in the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas during a marine heat wave in 2023 when prolonged high temperatures triggered the ninth mass coral bleaching event on Florida’s coral reef, forcing the corals to expel the algae that fuels them and turn white. For more than 40 consecutive days, ocean temperatures exceeded 85 degrees Fahrenheit, exposing reefs to heat stress two to four times greater than in all prior years on record, the study found.
[…] only small pockets of staghorn colonies remain farther north, including near Fort Lauderdale, where reefs around Port Everglades now represent one of the species’ last natural strongholds in the continental United States.
The millions of corals documented in the analysis by NOAA Fisheries and the Shedd Aquarium lie in, or near, the path of a proposed federal dredging project. The plan, known as the Port Everglades Navigation Improvements Project, is a major federal initiative, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, aimed at deepening and widening the port’s shipping channels to accommodate newer cargo ships and bulk carriers that transport raw materials, including oil, gas, coal and grain.
[…] “The project would result in the largest impact to coral reefs permitted in U.S. history,” Andy Strelcheck, NOAA Fisheries’ Southeast regional administrator, wrote in a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, obtained by Inside Climate News.
Army Corps officials say the project is necessary to relieve mounting pressure on Florida’s already constrained ports. In an email to Inside Climate News, they said neither Port Everglades nor Port Miami alone can handle the region’s growing population and energy needs, noting that Port Everglades supplies nearly all of South Florida’s petroleum.
Still, they have acknowledged some of the risks. In their email, corps officials said the project “has the potential to impact corals both directly, in the proposed new channel, and indirectly through turbidity and sedimentation caused by construction.”
To dredge the channel, heavy machinery will be used to cut through rock and seafloor, breaking it into rubble that creates clouds of fine sediment. That material will then be suctioned up along with seawater and loaded onto large barges, known as scows, which carry a slurry of sediment, rocks and debris. Depending on where that sediment-laden water is released, it can create sediment plumes that can smother corals and possibly even trigger disease, Cunning said.
[…] The project could also harm other vulnerable marine life, including endangered species such as mountainous star coral and the last known U.S. breeding populations of queen conch—a large marine snail prized for its meat and pink shell that was recently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act after decades of overfishing and habitat loss.
“They’re actually even more sensitive than coral might be to having sediment fall onto them,” said Rachel Silverstein, a marine biologist and CEO of Miami Waterkeeper […]
In 2016, Miami Waterkeeper and partner organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, sued the Army Corps to halt the dredging project until the agency could demonstrate it would not harm endangered species or destroy critical coral reef habitat. […]
The groups have since agreed to temporarily pause the lawsuit while the Corps conducts additional environmental studies before any dredging begins. […]
Last fall, Miami Waterkeeper and other plaintiffs sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries objecting to the Army Corps’ request for authorization to incidentally harm more than 100 dolphins over the course of the project, including three species—the common bottlenose dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin and Tamanend dolphin—due to behavioral disturbance and permanent hearing loss resulting from construction activities.
“The Corps plans to use high explosives to remove rock in the Project area, creating large underwater blasts, which can harm marine mammals due to noise impacts,” the authors of the letter, including Silverstein, wrote. According to the letter, the Army Corps estimates the project would require roughly 280 blast events over its anticipated five-year duration, with construction expected to begin within the next three years.
[…] Between 2013 and 2015, the Army Corps led a similar expansion of Port Miami.
Throughout the dredging project, Silverstein said, she went diving in the channel several times to observe how the reef was being impacted. “When I got to the bottom, I thought that I was on the sandbar. I couldn’t see any corals,” she said.
As Silverstein continued to swim, she began to see the tips of sea fans and seaweed poking out of the sediment. “Then I realized we were on the reef, but it had been buried,” she said.
Consultants hired by the Army Corps initially reported that just six corals were killed. But Silverstein said, “the impacts to corals was far greater than what was being reported.”
A 2019 study that assessed the full extent of the damage later found that more than 560,000 corals were killed during the project. […]
With Port Everglades supporting an even higher density of coral, scientists say they are determined to avoid a repeat of that outcome.
[…] An estimated 10 million corals live within about a mile of the proposed dredging site. That total includes hard corals of all sizes and species, including more than 40,000 colonies listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), such as staghorn corals.
[…] Baker said he would recommend focusing rescues on older, reproductively mature corals that could be used to spawn in land-based facilities and “produce new recruits that could then be used to replenish the area afterwards.”
So far, Army Corps officials say they are committed to relocating all corals larger than 3 centimeters before dredging begins and outplanting them at nearby natural reef enhancement sites and artificial reefs. […]
“The scale of that project is so massive that unless we begin it now, we’re going to just narrow the window of available time to rescue corals and not be able to get enough of them,” he said.
Even with that level of preparation, scientists caution that relocation is no guarantee.
“The fate of relocated corals is still not always great,” Cunning said. “We can’t just assume that all the corals that are relocated are going to survive.”
Sure, invading a country and illegally abducting its leader is nightmarish and immoral, but what if you could make some serious coin by betting on it?
Some lucky duck seems to have had insider info that the United States was going to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and boy, did it pay off—literally.
In the days immediately leading up to Maduro’s capture, a newly created anonymous account on Polymarket, a popular betting website, made seven bets totaling just over $32,500 that Maduro would be taken by Jan. 31. The final bet was placed mere hours before President Donald Trump announced the kidnapping on Saturday.
At the time of the bet, it seemed like a long shot. But then it conveniently turned out to be very true, netting our anonymous friend a payout of $436,759.61 for the “prediction.” […]
If it seems like betting on this sort of thing is well past “unseemly” and more firmly in the territory of “horrifying scourge,” you’re not wrong. Polymarket and other prediction markets are a plague, nothing but state-sanctioned gambling with limited oversight.
These markets have pushed for years to be allowed to bet on things like election outcomes […]
You’ve probably already guessed that the Trump administration has adopted what is always quaintly called a hands-off approach to regulating these things. Ostensibly, both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission should be providing regulatory guidance here […]
Prediction markets do not function much differently from mobile sports betting apps. However, sportsbooks are regulated at the state level while prediction markets are regulated at the federal level, meaning they can be in every state—even where app-based sports betting is illegal. […]
Thanks to all of these hands being off, prediction markets notched almost $28 billion in trading volume from January to October 2025, with people betting on everything from the day a sports superstar retires and election outcomes to government jobs reports and corporate layoffs.
Of course, if one happens to have foreknowledge about what the government will do, then those prediction markets are ripe for exploitation.
[…] Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York proposed that these platforms be covered under the STOCK Act, which blocks insider trading by members of Congress.
This should definitely happen, but it doesn’t solve the problem of an administration apparently prone to tipping off its pals—and not just in prediction markets.
Witness the president going on social media to encourage people to buy stocks, and gosh, golly, only hours later, pauses a bunch of tariffs—leading to the stock market soaring. […]
And on the flip side, wouldn’t it be great to be able to exit any market positions that might be hurt by government action? Well, Trump’s got you covered. Two days before he unveiled new tariffs that drove the market down, an agency official somehow knew to sell off $50,000 in stock.
This isn’t an isolated incident. ProPublica found that more than a dozen executive-branch officials and congressional aides are very, very good guessers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi shed between $1 million and $5 million in Trump Media shares on April 2, just before Trump’s post-closing bell announcement about his “Liberation Day” tariffs—a move that crushed the markets.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is also a terrific prognosticator, somehow knowing to dump shares in nearly three dozen companies right before a Feb. 11 Trump announcement imposing reciprocal tariffs.
But the real MVP of apparent insider trading is none other than the president himself.
From August to October 2025, Trump bought at least $82 million in bonds, investing in industries that coincidentally benefited from his government policies. Chipmakers, tech companies, and big banks—Trump kept hoovering up bonds while simultaneously using his power to favor those companies.
Trump also bought millions in Intel bonds after the government took a 10% stake in the company. Similarly, he reportedly snapped up $6 million in Boeing bonds just as the Defense Department happened to be awarding the company multibillion-dollar contracts.
Trump’s griftiness is cynical, all-encompassing. Everything is about taking advantage of his position to line his pockets, awarding your taxpayer dollars to corporations and then turning around and getting richer off the move.
And, hey, if his team can seemingly slip a little tip about an illegal invasion to a needy friend, all the better.
This appears to me to be AI because the lips don’t sync, neither do the hand movements and frankly what’s being presented as Rachel Maddow doesn’t “feel” like Rachel Maddow. [video]
The channel “Maddow’s Brief” has as of this writing (3am) 9 videos dating all the way back to 4 days ago.
Welcome to Maddow’s Brief.
We don’t just read the headlines; we connect the dots. This channel is dedicated to a deep-dive analysis of the complex, critical, and often overlooked trade relationship between the United States and Canada. From the shifting dynamics of the USMCA to the politics of pipelines, tariffs, and cross-border supply chains, we break down the “how” and “why” behind the North American economy.
If you are looking for context, history, and a sharper understanding of the forces shaping our borders, you are in the right place.
Smart analysis. Historical context. The stories that matter.
Subscribe to get the full brief. — “Maddow’s Brief”
At the time of this writing the channel has 27K subscribers. The video itself has 775,777 views and 38K thumbs up.
A month ago Rick Wilson at The Lincoln Project spoke about the coming AI vs. IRL content creator problem. [video]
There are AI YouTube channels that proport to be him that have him saying things he has never said and open him up for liability. Plus they are stealing his image, his intellectual property etc., and monetizing it. It’s the same for Rachel Maddow (and everyone else they do this to).
Rick begins to talk about fighting back against this (3:43 minutes), until YouTube deals with the coming AI onslaught. [video]
. . . if YouTube wants to remain a hub for content creation, they’re going to have to wrangle this AI problem down very quickly. They’re going to have to handle this in a way that is responsible and more than just like filling in a form online.
Now your help matters a lot. And you guys reporting these scam sites matters, a lot. It will make a big, big, difference. And they’ll pop up again, and they’ll do it again. And we’re going to have to play whack-a-mole until Google, er, YouTube, gets their act together on this.
Then at 5:51 minutes Rick’s producer, someone noticeably much younger and is, therefore, more computer/tech savvy gives a tutorial on how to report these AI sites. The steps she outlines in the video are posted below the video. [video]
1. Go to the channel page, find the channel description, and click “more.”
2. Scroll to the bottom of the channel’s description, and find the button with the flag that says “report user.”
3. You’ll get a menu of reporting options. Click “report user” again on this menu.
4. Now, you’ll be given a survey asking why you’re reporting the channel. Choose “impersonation.”
5. In the drop down, say “this channel is impersonating someone else.”
6. It’ll ask you who the channel is impersonating. Enter our channel URL
7. Finally, it’ll ask you for additional notes, and you can say something like “this is an AI Rick Wilson.” Click Submit and you’re done!
For number six I put (without the spaces) www . youtube . com / @ msnow
MSNow link
As I have been out there in the wilds of YouTube I have come across AI Rick Wilson channels and reported them. This is the first AI Rachel Maddow I’ve come across.
I reported it.
If Rick is right, these channels are just the trickle before the flood, if YouTube doesn’t take care of this now.
“Hedge-funder Paul Singer, whose firm acquired Citgo at a bargain price, has much to gain from Nicolás Maduro’s ouster.”
[…] The extraordinary attack, which legal experts said violated US and international law, has set up a potential windfall for a prominent Trump-supporting billionaire, investor Paul Singer.
In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. He donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition.
[I snipped details of other contributions from Singer.]
Since Trump was first elected in 2016, Singer has met personally with Trump at least four times. “Paul just left and he’s given us his total support,” Trump declared after meeting with Singer at the White House in February 2017. […]
In November 2025, Singer acquired Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Singer, through his private investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, bought Citgo for $5.9 billion. The sale to Amber Energy, a subsidiary of Elliott Investment Management, was forced by creditors of Venezuela after the country defaulted on its bond payments.
Elliott Investment Management is known as a “vulture” fund because it specializes in buying distressed assets at rock bottom prices. Citgo owns three major refineries on the Gulf Coast, 43 oil terminals, and a network of over 4,000 independently owned gas stations. […]
Advisors to the court that oversaw the sale valued Citgo at $13 billion, while Venezuelan officials said the assets were worth as much as $18 billion. Maduro’s government had sought to appeal the court’s approval of Singer’s bid for Citgo. But now that Maduro has been ousted, it seems unlikely that appeal will continue. [!]
Singer acquired Citgo at a bargain price in large part due to the embargo, with limited exceptions, on Venezuela oil imports to the United States. Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.
Trump has sought to justify military action against Venezuela as an effort to disrupt narcotics trafficking. But Venezuela produces no fentanyl and is a minor source of cocaine that reaches the United States. Trump also recently pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking.
Further, Trump has long made clear that he was interested in Venezuela for the oil. In remarks to the North Carolina Republican Party in 2023, Trump said that when he left office in 2021, Venezuela was “ready to collapse.” Trump said, had he remained in office, the US “would have taken [Venezuela] over” and “gotten all that oil.”
In remarks on Fox News Saturday, Trump made clear that one of the motivations for Saturday’s attack was to increase the production and export of Venezuelan oil. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of crude oil in the world. Trump said that, moving forward, the US would be “very strongly involved“ with the Venezuelan oil industry.
Industry observers anticipate “a rapid rerouting of Venezuelan oil exports, re-establishing the US as the major buyer of the country’s volumes.” Jaime Brito, an oil analyst at OPIS, said access to Venezuelan oil imports “will be a game changer for US Gulf Coast…refiners in terms of profitability.”
If that happens, Paul Singer, thanks to a well-timed transaction, will be one of the largest beneficiaries.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller doubled down on President Trump’s renewed threats to make Greenland a U.S. territory […]
In an interview on CNN’s “The Lead,” the top White House adviser reaffirmed the “formal position of the U.S. government” that “Greenland should be part of the United States” and brushed off questions about the potential for military actions against the semiautonomous Danish territory.
“The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There’s no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you’re asking, of a military operation,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper, who asked repeatedly if Miller would rule out military action against Greenland.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller added. [!]
[…] Miller’s wife, podcaster and former Trump administration official Katie Miller, further stoked concerns when she posted on the social platform X a map of Greenland with an American flag design filling its borders, adding, “SOON.”
[…] “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?” Miller asked when discussing the potential for the U.S. to try to take over Greenland.
“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States,” Miller continued. “And so that’s a conversation that we’re going to have, as a country.”
By statute, the plaque was to be placed on the western side of the building by March 2023 and list the names of those who served. […] the Louisiana Republican has not extended for reasons he’s been reluctant to explain
Justice Dept is fighting against the Jan 6 lawsuit [to put the plaque up]. […] they argue the plaque lists *police departments* that responded to the attack, not the 3,000+ individual officers. Thus, the Justice Dept argues, the plaque might not adhere to the law [authorizing the plaque]. [Now] the House Speaker breaks an extended silence and says the plaque must be re-considered
MacFarlane didn’t make clear whether DoJ made the argument days or a month ago, but it was recent.
Scott MacFarlane: “Some House Democrats have printed out images of the Jan 6 plaque… and hung the images outside of their offices. [Photo]”
The CPB said that without funding, its board determined that “maintaining the corporation as a nonfunctional entity would not serve the public interest or advance the goals of public media. A dormant and defunded CPB could have become vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse, threatening the independence of public media and the trust audiences place in it, and potentially subjecting staff and board members to legal exposure from bad-faith actors.”
As it closes, CPB is distributing its remaining funds, and also supporting the American Archive of Public Broadcasting in digitizing and preserving historic content. The CPB’s own archives will be preserved at the University of Maryland, which will make it accessible to the public.
Jan. 6 defendants, including those pardoned by President Trump last year, are holding a march Tuesday to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Capitol attack.
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted on seditious conspiracy and other charges before being pardoned by Trump, is among the organizers of Tuesday’s march. He said the event will focus on seeking justice for the late Ashli Babbitt and others injured on Jan. 6, 2021. Babbitt was shot and killed by U.S. Capitol Police during the riot.
“Join us as we march for Ashli on January 6th. We also march in memory of those who passed away. 5 years ago a beautiful life was taken from us. A veteran and a patriot,” Tarrio wrote on social platform X, sharing a flyer for the event. “So I ask those that are able to attend please do so.”
He added later, “This will be a PATRIOTIC and PEACEFUL march. If you have any intention of causing trouble we ask that you stay home.”
[…] Watch the live stream above. [video at the link]
Looks sort of dismal, and sparsely attended, though there were enough people to make a bit of a show. Some people held up Ashli Babbitt photos, some shouted “Freedom,” and many wore MAGA gear. Lots of American flags. A group carried a banner that said “Thank you for our pardons President Trump.” Might be an almost equal number of reporters and news items present.
With all of this chaotic remaking of the new world order going on, did everybody forget about those Epstein files? […]
Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi had until last Saturday, January 3, to explain to Congress any redactions or withheld documents. But that didn’t happen […] now Deputy AG/Trump’s former(?) personal lawyer Todd Blanche is whining that there are simply too many Epstein files, 5.2 million documents, for them to get released. CBS says the DOJ has gone through less than one percent of the files. Funny, because just last July Kash Patel and Dan Bongino went on Fox blinking like hostages to say there were NO Epstein files, no clients, Epstein didn’t kill himself, nothing to see here! And now there are too many […] Very credible.
Dumbshit Todd Blanche now claims that there are more than 400 attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida, and the Southern District of New York all working “around the clock” to try to sort through the files, to “protect victims,” and there still will not be any more released until January 20 or 21. And yet the DOJ still somehow managed to bungle and release documents with victims’ names unredacted anyway, and with people redacted who should not have been, like the Andrew formerly known as prince, and photos with Trump himself. And the DOJ is also withholding other stuff for no apparent or explained reason, like financial records, and grand jury minutes that a federal judge had already approved for release at the DOJ’s own request.
Eight of Epstein’s victims are now calling for the impeachment of Trump, Bondi, and Patel […] And 18 furious survivors have also signed an open letter calling for Congress to have open hearings, and blasting the DOJ for having no communications with victims at all.
[…] another option might be to listen to the more than one thousand survivors and believe them, like Maria Farmer, who reported Epstein and Trump for creepy behavior to the FBI twice, in 1996 and 2006, and was ignored. Or Sports Illustrated model Stacey Williams, who “has described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched,” and described the pair’s activities as “trophy hunting,” with herself being the trophy. Or listen to Trump, who has always wished Ghislaine Maxwell well and never said a single word of support for Epstein’s victims.
[…] a functioning Department of Justice could more closely examine the many names that have come out since then. Ghislaine Maxwell offered up a few to Blanche, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who does not even deny hanging out with the guy (and sure is nonstop obsessed with children’s genitals and teenagers’ sperm). […]
But here’s a bit that seems glossed over that is worth talking about: more emerging evidence of Epstein’s close ties to tech bros, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sergey Brin of Google, and others. Being mentioned of course does not mean that any of these people partook in the activities on offer at Kid Rape Island or any other Epstein venues. But there’s no doubt these guys sure as shit kept in contact with Epstein for many years after his 2008 conviction.
Remember Jes Staley, Epstein’s personal banker who visited pedo island on his 90-foot boat, and the New Mexico Zorro ranch that Epstein hoped to turn into some kind of breeding farm for his superior genes, Elon Musk-ily? Files reveal that not only did Staley know about Epstein’s conviction, he even visited Epstein while Epstein was serving his sentence! And it was a profitable visit. Epstein referred many of his friends to Staley, who then brought them into JP Morgan as clients, including Brin, Musk, and Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates of Microsoft. […]
And in Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition to Todd Blanche last year, she noted that she met Elon Musk at a three-to-four-day party for Google co-founder Sergey Brin around 2010 or ‘11, on the island of […] Dr. Pigozzi, who’s revealed in other context clues to be Dr. Jean Pigozzi, an Italian businessman. Pigozzi was also photographed in 2011 at a tech dinner with Epstein, along with tedious hack/New York Times columnist David Brooks, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, Google software engineer Lori Park, and Marissa Mayer, who went on to serve as CEO of Yahoo from 2012 to 2017.
[…] Also Epstein’s calendar showed that Elon Musk was planning to visit his island December 6, 2014, though it’s unknown if that visit ever happened, and Musk says it didn’t. Though in 2019 he did admit to visiting Epstein’s house “years ago” with Talulah Riley, which would mean some time after 2008, when they met. […]
Grok, X’s chatbot, started letting users alter images with its AI, which they quickly employed to produce Child Sexual Abuse Material and other assorted deepfake nudies. France is investigating.
And there’s Peter Thiel. In between investigating the antichrist and being JD Vance’s sugardaddy and funding his political rise, he and Epstein were quite close. In 2015 and 2016, as in seven years after Epstein’s first arrest, Epstein put $40 million into a fund Thiel co-owns, Valar Ventures, which is worth more than $170 million today. […]
There’s Bill Gates, who Staley also claims Epstein introduced him to. Epstein appeared to attempt to extort Gates in 2017 into donating to a charitable fund that Epstein was setting up at JPMorgan (and that Epstein would get a cut of), by threatening to reveal an affair Gates allegedly had in his late 50s with a very young looking 20-something Russian bridge player. […]
There’s Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and donor to Democrats, who admitted to visiting Pedo Island to do fundraising for MIT, though he claims nothing untoward happened, and he has been pushing for full transparency. Hoffman has had to hire extra security, he says, after Elon Musk falsely claimed he was an Epstein client. […]
Are there any tech guys who didn’t have some kind of connection to Epstein after his arrest? […]
Epstein, of course, made his fortune as a confidence-man scammer by implying he was more connected than he actually was, until he actually was well-connected. He leveraged tenuous connections into real ones that involved rich people like Leon Black and L Brands CEO Les Wexner giving him billions of their dollars to play with, even though Epstein never graduated college and only had five years of experience as a trader at Bear Stearns.
[…] it is mighty weird and notable how so many of these men remain close to Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party to this day. Sure makes you wonder if the files-coverup going on right in front of everybody’s face is only about Trump, or if there are other associates who Trump might have made quid pro quos with to protect […]
It’s a big cabal, and one thing is for sure, the rich really are different from you or me. […] Won’t somebody think of the needs of billionaires and the sucking vortexes where their souls ought to be?
Sky Captain @324, thank you. Good to know that “The CPB’s [Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s] own archives will be preserved at the University of Maryland, which will make it accessible to the public.” Still a tragedy that CPB is shutting down.
No place was hit harder than Cuba by the shock waves that Saturday morning’s U.S. military seizure of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro sent throughout Latin America and the world.
Within hours of the operation — long before the government in Havana acknowledged it — phone calls and texts across the island spread the news that dozens of elite Cuban security forces had been killed guarding Maduro.
But by the time it finally released a statement late Sunday saying that 32 of its military and security personnel were dead in Caracas, the Cuban government had bigger problems on its hands.
Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear over the weekend that the collapse of Cuba’s communist government was not only a likely side benefit of Maduro’s ouster but a goal.
“I don’t think we need [to take] any action,” Trump said as he flew back to Washington from his extended Florida holiday break. Without Maduro and the oil supplies Venezuela provided, he said, “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall.” [video]
Rubio went further, indicating that the United States might be willing to give it a push. “I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. But, he added, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”
Their words resonated with many in the Miami-centered exile community, where the struggle to free Cuba from communist rule has dominated politics for decades. On Saturday, South Florida Cuban exiles — some wearing red Trump hats and Cuban flags as capes — joined hundreds of revelers at spirited, impromptu celebrations from Little Havana to Doral, a city nicknamed “Doralezuela” because of its large population of Venezuelans. Cuban American leaders, most of them Republican, issued statements as Venezuela coverage dominated local TV stations.
[…] “If you’re asking if the Cuban government will just collapse on its own because the economic pain is bound to increase” without shipments of Venezuelan oil, “I’m very skeptical,” said Michael J. Bustamante, associate professor of history and director of the Cuban studies program at the University of Miami.
To keep the lights on and cars running, Cuba has long been dependent on Venezuelan oil supplies, for which it has exchanged security and medical personnel in a sympathetic contract with leftist allies in Caracas.
“I could very well be proven wrong, but Cuba has been here before” and survived, Bustamente said, referencing what is known in Cuba as the “special period” that began in 1991 with the abrupt cutoff of outside assistance after the demise of the Soviet Union.
[…] Aside from an economic uptick during the Obama administration, when the resumption of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana led to increased tourism and slender openings for private ownership and outside investment, the Cuban economy has never really recovered from the Soviet fall.
The nation has been on a steady slide into economic chaos for years, owing to U.S. sanctions and what even many of its supporters see as mismanagement by a sclerotic Cuban Communist Party. […]
More at the link, including details concerning help from Russia, oil from Mexico, and more.
In the weeks before it aired, the White House publicly pressured CNN to book Miller […] Washington Post reported that Miller is under consideration for an expanded role overseeing post-Maduro operations
[…]
“The United States of America launched an assault force into Venezuelan territory,” he said, calling it a “daring midnight assault into Caracas.” Assault forces do not conduct extraditions. Midnight raids into foreign capitals do not occur under judicial authority. Miller made no reference to courts, warrants, or cooperation with Venezuelan institutions. […] Miller said. “Every single kill was an enemy kill.” He added that reported casualty numbers were “probably lower than the actual number that were killed.” That language describes a battlefield.
[…]
When Jake Tapper summarized the situation—“You invaded the country”—Miller responded, “Damn straight we did.”
[…]
Can a senior White House official admit to invading a sovereign nation, killing foreign nationals, and asserting control over another country’s government on live television without facing institutional consequences? So far, the answer is yes.
Miller: The US is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower. It’s absurd we’d allow a nation in our backyard to become a supplier of resources to our adversaries. Tapper: Sovereign countries shouldn’t be able to do what they want? M: *yells* [Video clip]
Marcy Wheeler (Empty Wheel):
In that batshit insane interview? Stephen Miller repeatedly ([video] after 4:15) calls Venezuela an island. I don’t rule out that Miller doesn’t know the difference between Venezuela and Greenland.
I don’t like that youtube provides stolen material to the public. But, this video seems to have the approval of those that created it. and, this one’s a must see! https://youtu.be/7I_n09nS6aU
The move comes after [DHS] said Monday that the location had denied reservations from ICE agents. The hotel’s owner responded with a follow-up statement that it does “not discriminate against any individuals or agencies” as well as an apology to those affected.
But on Tuesday, conservative provocateur Nick Sortor posted a video on X showing himself attempting to check in […] When Sortor requested a government rate for DHS employees, a person at the front desk said the location was not accepting reservations from the agency, even after Sortor presented the person with the earlier statement. The controversy is sparking backlash among some conservatives and drawing calls for a boycott, similar to those levied against Bud Light and Target.
birgerjohanssonsays
Proteins that spread Parkinson’s pathology in the brain identified (mGluR4 and NPDC1)
.
Jupiter’s moon Europa lacks the undersea activity needed to Jupiter’s moon Europa lacks the undersea activity needed to support life, study suggestssupport life, study suggests
Scores of now-pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists will gather from 11:45am for a march to the Capitol starting at the Ellipse.
One insurrectionist who says he’s attending: Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to prison until 2045 until Trump intervened.
GottaLaff: “That this is even a thing is insane. This is the US under Trump: Convicted violent seditionists, felons have the freedom to “gather” at the scene of their crimes”
My one real comment on the Jan 6 5 yr anniversary is that it was carried out by rich people. The poor hick stereotype is incorrect. It was rich people, suburban millionaires and their backers. We know this from who was arrested. It cost money to go to DC, stay at fancy hotels, fund this, etc.
People talk about the Brooks Brothers riot and stuff, same thing here. Car dealership owners, realtors, etc. And we know from posts/reporting rich people were hanging out in expensive DC hotels leading up to it. For some reason people haven’t hammered in on the class aspect here. Rich tried a coup.
This kind of elite’s wealth derives not from their salary […] but from their ownership of assets. […] We’re not talking about international oligarchs; these folks’ wealth extends into the millions and tens of millions rather than the billions. There are, however, a lot more of them than the global elite that tends to get all of the attention. […] Gentry are, by definition, local elites.
On Saturday morning, as Americans learned that Donald Trump had deployed U.S. forces to bomb Venezuela and capture Nicolás Maduro, the president’s Republican allies in Congress did what they always do: They played the role of partisan cheerleaders.
In one especially memorable instance, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer appeared on Fox News and said: “God bless this president of peace, Donald J. Trump.” What the Minnesota congressman might not have realized, however, was that during his on-air appearance, he was part of a split-screen: On the left, viewers saw Emmer; on the right, they saw American bombs dropping on Venezuela.
[…] Emmer nevertheless appeared on Fox Business a day later and pushed a nearly identical line. [Video. Sheesh … these guys!]
“Donald Trump is the president of peace, and what he’s doing is stabilizing the region,” Emmer said with a straight face.
[…] The day after Trump’s deadly military operation in Venezuela, he spoke with reporters and threatened Colombia, Mexico, Iran, Greenland and Cuba.
This came on the heels of Trump approving a strike in Nigeria the day after Christmas.
It helped wrap up a year in which the Republican administration also launched preemptive military strikes on targets in Iran, initiated a bombing campaign in Yemen, targeted the Islamic State group in Syria, struck Islamic State targets in Somalia and launched dozens of deadly strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
A variety of phrases come to mind, but “the president of peace” isn’t one of them. […] if Emmer believes the administration is “stabilizing the region,” he has reality backward. Indeed, there’s ongoing political turmoil in Venezuela […]
Finally, it’s also worth emphasizing that Emmer was supposed to be above such nonsense. This might seem like ancient history, but it was in October 2023 when he secured the votes he needed to become the next speaker of the House. Just two hours after his intraparty victory, however, Trump issued a public condemnation of the the Minnesota Republican, labeling the him “a Globalist RINO” who was “totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters.”
Emmer had reached out to Trump directly ahead of the conference vote to make his case and apparently said he was Trump’s “biggest fan.” The lobbying did not have the intended effect: Trump trashed the GOP lawmaker anyway, in large part because Emmer did not vote to overturn the 2020 election. [!]
A mere four hours after Emmer became the speaker-designate, he became the former speaker-designate as part of an unprecedented turn of events.
As the dust settled, Trump gloated about having taken down Emmer. “He’s done. It’s over,” the then-former president reportedly said in reference to the House majority whip. “I killed him.”
It was roughly at this point that Emmer had a decision to make. He could position himself as a principled congressman, someone who was able to maintain professional relationships with members of both parties — but that would put his career in Republican politics in jeopardy. After all, along that same path lie the careers of former lawmakers such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney.
And so Emmer made a different choice.
He held a fundraiser for Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He agreed to serve as the Minnesota state chairman of Trump’s 2024 campaign. He transformed into yet another tiresome partisan who peddles ridiculous talking points and helps lead smear campaigns against political opponents.
Emmer’s far-right transformation may very likely protect him from any kind of MAGA backlash. But the congressman’s reputation as a credible figure on Capitol Hill is clearly gone forever, and his indifference to this development speaks volumes about the contemporary GOP.
Followup to comments 60, 62, 63, 276, 278, 280 and 281.
[…] Several years ago, federal prosecutors in the Biden Justice Department uncovered evidence of wrongdoing, and dozens of suspects, including some Somali Americans, were charged.
It was not, however, much of a national story. Minnesotans learned of the controversy ahead of the 2022 elections; Democrats, including Gov. Tim Walz, fared well anyway; and when Republicans tried to generate interest in the controversy when the governor was nominated for vice president, it went largely overlooked.
In recent months, however, the right has breathed new light into the story — Paul Waldman recently made the case in an MS NOW piece that it fit nicely into Donald Trump’s desire “to foment racist and anti-immigrant hatred” — and the right’s propaganda machine turned up the volume to an astonishing degree, telling conservative voters that this 2022 controversy was a pressing and ongoing national scandal.
The drumbeat grew so loud that Walz, who was well on his way to winning a third term in the fall, announced that he’s no longer running for reelection.
Soon after the governor announced his decision, the president celebrated the news online — while suggesting that Walz’s exit wouldn’t be sufficient. Trump’s missive read:
Minnesota’s Corrupt Governor will possibly leave office before his Term is up but, in any event, will not be running again because he was caught, REDHANDED, along with Ilhan Omar, and others of his Somali friends, stealing Tens of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars. I feel certain the facts will come out, and they will reveal a seriously unscrupulous, and rich, group of ‘SLIMEBALLS.’ Governor Walz has destroyed the State of Minnesota, but others, like Governor Gavin Newscum, JB Pritzker, and Kathy Hochul, have done, in my opinion, an even more dishonest and incompetent job. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!
There’s no point in fact-checking every individual error of fact and judgment in Trump’s ridiculous rant — suffice to say, the lie-to-claim ratio was roughly one-to-one — though it is worth emphasizing that no evidence has emerged to suggest Walz engaged in any corruption whatsoever.
What’s more, let’s not forget the president has been amplifying unusually ugly conspiracy theories about Minnesota quite a bit of late, despite numerous appeals that he act with basic human decency.
But looking ahead, the key element worth watching is how, exactly, the administration intends to target the Democratic governor moving forward. [!] [Video]
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, for example, told Fox News on Monday night that the president “believes that Gov. Walz is criminally liable, and I think the Department of Justice is going to find out.” [!]
In other words, as far as the White House is concerned, Walz’s departure from the 2026 race was the first step, not the last, in its larger partisan crusade.
Conservatives amended state constitutions to affirm broad rights for people to choose their health care. Now abortion rights proponents are taking them at their word.
[…]
In both Ohio and Wyoming, these claims have seen early success in courts. […] The Alabama, Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma amendments [have] materially identical terms […] vague and broad terms in order to maximize support […] “You can’t write it to get broad support and claim afterwards that it has this narrow application,”
[…]
In two other states that adopted similar constitutional amendments last decade—Arizona and Oklahoma—abortion-rights activists are challenging the constitutionality of their state’s abortion restrictions. Litigants in neither case have cited their state constitutions’ similar health care freedom amendments—even though both are textually similar to Ohio’s. Alabama has a similar constitutional protection but voters ratified a constitutional amendment in 2018 establishing that “nothing in this constitution secures or protects a right to abortion.”
After Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. radically revised the vaccines schedule for American children, public health officials were disgusted. Donald Trump, however, was delighted.
“This Schedule is rooted in the Gold Standard of Science,” the president claimed in a piece posted to his social media platform, despite the fact that changes do not appear rooted in any kind of science or evidence whatsoever.
Twelve minutes earlier, Trump had published some related thoughts on public health. His missive was an all-caps screed on which I’ve changed the capitalization to make it easier to read:
Pregnant women, don’t use Tylenol unless absolutely necessary, don’t give Tylenol to your young child for virtually any reason, break up the MMR shot into three totally separate shots (not mixed!), take Chicken P shot separately, take Hepatitas [sic] b shot at 12 years old, or older, and, importantly, take vaccine in 5 separate medical visits!
This comes months after Trump and RFK Jr. held a bizarre event at the White House where Trump said “don’t take Tylenol” 11 times, suggested physicians might be corrupt and, as part of a weird anti-vaccine screed, even declared, in reference to infant vaccinations, “It’s too much liquid.” […]
This week [Trump’s] latest round of bizarre and baseless [healthcare] advice came just days after he also conceded that his MRI exam in October wasn’t actually an MRI exam and that he routinely ignores the advice of physicians on daily aspirin use, in part because he’s “superstitious” and in part because he wants “nice, thin blood pouring through my heart.”
These three concurrent stories — Trump’s celebration of a misguided vaccine schedule, his foolish advice about Tylenol and his indifference to doctors’ recommendations about aspirin — are effectively different parts of the same story. Mr. “Inject Disinfectants” continues to believe that he (a man who’s reportedly avoided physical exercise because he believes the human body is born with a finite amount of energy) has the credibility and expertise needed to give Americans guidance on matters of public health.
People would be wise to trust medical professionals instead
[…] The Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will be cutting off over $10 billion in funds to five states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. Those states will lose $7 billion in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds, known as TANF.
They’ll also lose almost $2.4 billion in grants from the Child Care Development Fund. Oh, and also $870 million in social services grants.
Why is this happening? Well, all the fraud, of course! No, you can’t see any evidence, but according to HHS, since the GOP managed to gin up a moral panic over alleged fraud in Minnesota, President Donald Trump and his administration are now entitled to cut off funding anywhere else they like—and what they like is hurting blue states.
The administration also likes hurting low-income families, which is why it’s targeting programs that fund services for hundreds of thousands of poor people. That’s just a little bonus that comes along with attacking states run by those Trump perceives as enemies to be crushed, rather than states in the union that have all the same rights and privileges as states run by Republicans. […]
A big thank you to GeorgeHF for these AI Rachel YouTube channels.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Rachel Maddow Reveals
The Maddow Report
Rachel Maddow Updates
The Maddow Signal
Rachel Uncensored
Maddow Insights
Federal Uncut
FameRush
Embedded links are available at the main link.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @334 quoting MS NOW:
Several years ago, federal prosecutors in the Biden Justice Department uncovered evidence of wrongdoing […] the right has breathed new light into the story
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Trump built COVID programs that were WILDLY prone to fraud, then fired the [Inspectors General] who were busy finding it, first chance he got, then spun a claim that there’s more fraud in blue states than red.”
The White House launched a website Tuesday praising President Trump for his handling of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, simultaneously blaming Democrats for having “masterfully reversed reality” and saying Trump “corrected a historic wrong” in pardoning those charged with crimes related to the storming of the building.
The website, which became public on the fifth anniversary of the riot, is Trump’s latest defense of Jan. 6, where he told a crowd of his supporters the election was stolen and directed them to march to the Capitol.
At the time, the mob that stormed the Capitol threatened to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence after Trump’s criticized his running mate for not seeking to block former President Biden’s win in the 2020 race.
Trump, who did not respond to the violence at the Capitol for hours even after lawmakers in both parties were evacuated from the building, still falsely maintains that he won the 2020 election.
The new website blames Democrats for “certifying a fraud-ridden election” [!] and fumes over the work of the House Jan. 6 committee. It also accuses U.S. Capitol Police of escalating tensions.
“With his triumphant return to the White House, President Trump wasted no time righting one of the darkest wrongs in modern American history. On Inauguration Day 2025, he issued sweeping pardons and commutations for the vast majority of January 6 defendants—patriotic citizens who had been viciously overcharged, denied due process, and held as political hostages by a vengeful regime,” the website states.
[…] “Trump recognizes that he has not shaken Jan. 6,” Raskin [Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former member of the House Jan. 6 committee] told The Hill after an event to mark the anniversary.
“The fact that they’re having to put up a little propaganda site on the White House web demonstrates how insecure they are about the situation.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who led the Jan. 6 panel, said of Trump, “He’s known for not telling the truth. That’s a good example.”
[…] A report from House Judiciary Committee released Monday detailed that 23 of those pardoned by Trump have since committed additional crimes, including violent assault, possession of child sexual abuse material, and plotting to kill an FBI agent who investigated the attack. […]
“The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters,” the website states.
“What’s amazing about the website is that it doubles down on the big lie, so that it goes back to the big lie,” Raskin said.
“It continues to excoriate Mike Pence, right where he says Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done, which was what he said on January 6 itself. And he’s saying it again. He’s continuing to say it … . He accuses the Capitol Police of being the aggressors in the violence. And so he has attempted to whitewash the violence, but you’re talking about the most photographed and documented violent assault on the Capitol in American history.”
[…] “Capitol Police aggressively fire tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters, injuring many and deliberately escalating tensions,” the website states. […]
Sky Captain @339, Marcy Wheeler makes a good point.
In other news, The Washington Post reports: Venezuela’s government launched a far-reaching crackdown after Maduro’s ouster, detaining journalists and civilians and sending armed gangs to the streets. [Conclusion: Trump made things worse in Venezuela.]
For a brief moment, some Venezuelans allowed themselves to celebrate.
When they learned Saturday that strongman Nicolás Maduro had been seized by U.S. Special Forces, many group chats filled with messages of joy and relief. Some people cried. One family in Caracas opened a bottle of champagne they had bought months earlier and saved for a special occasion. After more than a decade of living under Maduro, there were cautious hopes for a different future.
By Monday, however, those feelings had been replaced by more familiar ones: fear, dread and uncertainty.
[…] The crackdown unfolded as Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s vice president, was sworn in as interim president Monday at the National Assembly. Senior military officials publicly pledged their loyalty to her — a signal that while the country had a new leader, the old power structure remained in place.
At least 14 journalists and media workers were detained Monday — including 11 working for international outlets, according to the National Press Workers Union. Most, the union said, were held for several hours and later released, but several reported that military counterintelligence officers searched their phones. Many of the detentions took place near the National Assembly as Rodríguez took the oath of office in a ceremony overseen by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who heads the legislature.
Authorities also moved against ordinary citizens — empowered by a “state of external commotion” decree that ordered Venezuela’s national, state and municipal police forces to immediately search for and arrest anyone “involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America.” The decree, which entered into force Saturday but was published in full Monday, also suspended the right to protest and authorized broad restrictions on movement and assembly.
[…] Across Caracas, pro-government paramilitary groups known as “colectivos” — a hallmark of the informal security state built by former president Hugo Chávez and inherited by Maduro after his death — set up checkpoints, including along the Cota Mil highway that runs north of the city. Residents described being pulled over, questioned and forced to hand over their phones. Some said the armed men scrolled through their messages and social media, looking for anything that could be construed as support for the U.S. raid. […]
“8 European leaders say only Denmark and Greenland can determine the future of the giant Arctic island.”
Eight of Europe’s top leaders have rallied to defend the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland amid growing threats from President Donald Trump’s administration that the U.S. could seize the mineral-rich Arctic island.
In a statement, the European leaders insisted Greenland’s security must be ensured collectively by NATO and with full respect to the wishes of its people.
“Security in the Arctic must be … achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders,” the leaders wrote in a statement hours after Trump said Washington “needs” Greenland.
The statement was signed by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. It was backed by the leaders of the Netherlands, Greece, Luxembourg and Slovenia.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever also said he supports Frederiksen’s call for “respect for sovereignty among NATO allies,” writing in a social media post: “The West is strongest when it stands united and works together, not when it divides itself.”
Greenland’s government on Tuesday requested an urgent meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss the his country’s “significant statements” about the Arctic nation.
Earlier on Tuesday, Frederiksen met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to discuss security in the Arctic, noting that she appreciated “Canada’s strong support to the Kingdom of Denmark in the current situation.”
The show of support comes after Trump doubled down on his claims to the Danish-held territory […]
European leaders began meeting on Tuesday in Paris for the latest round of talks on peace for Ukraine, focusing on security commitments for the country in a potential cease-fire with Russia
National leaders and representatives of more than 30 countries gathered at the Élysée Palace for the meeting of the Coalition of the Willing to also discuss how a potential cease-fire would be monitored, and what steps they would commit to take if Russia breached it.
Israel’s air force struck areas in southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday and early Tuesday, including in the country’s third-largest city.
A strike around 1 a.m. Tuesday leveled a three-story commercial building in the southern coastal city of Sidon, a few days before Lebanon’s army commander is scheduled to brief the government on its mission of disarming militant group Hezbollah in areas along the border with Israel.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in a statement Tuesday condemned the attacks as counter to both international efforts to deescalate hostilities and Lebanon’s efforts to extend the government’s authority into areas long dominated by Hezbollah and to disarm militants.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene in Sidon said the area was in a commercial district containing workshops and mechanic shops and the building was uninhabited.
At least one person was transported by ambulance and rescue teams were searching the site for others, but no deaths have been reported.
Israel’s military said Tuesday they targeted weapons storage sites and infrastructure belonging to the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas. They acknowledged the sites were located in civilian areas but blamed the groups for operating there. […]
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is facing international condemnation after it debuted a ‘spicy mode’ last week for its AI chatbot, Grok. The feature allows users to digitally remove clothing from images and has been deployed to produce what amounts to child pornography — along with other disturbing behavior, such as sexualizing the deputy prime minister of Sweden.
Let’s say you committed some light treason by storming the U.S. Capitol five years ago. Would you be grateful for your presidential pardon and simply be on your way?
Of course not. After all, you’d be as deep in the conspiracy theories and violent fantasies as President Donald Trump himself, so nothing will ever be enough. Why are those who prosecuted us not being prosecuted now? they ask. Why aren’t we swimming in oodles of cash?
Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has cleaned house at the Department of Justice and FBI, expelling many of those who investigated and prosecuted insurrectionists—and even those who accurately described the insurrection as a “mob of rioters.” [!]
But with few, if any, deep-state Democrats left to blame, some of the most conspiracy-minded types aimed their anger at Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for not proving that a vast conspiracy kept Trump from victory in 2020. The fact that not even Bondi and Patel, devout believers in the Big Lie, can get this done highlights that, in the words of Gertrude Stein, “There’s no there there.”
So, if the insurrectionists can’t have their alternate reality, what do they want instead? Money, of course.They’d like reparations from the government, paid for by your tax dollars, all because they were duly investigated and prosecuted with the full panoply of due process. Helming this effort are Mark McCloskey—one half of the St. Louis couple who pulled guns on Black Lives Matter protesters—and Ed Martin, the current pardons attorney who formerly represented Jan. 6 defendants. [All the best people.]
[…] The rioters also continue to promote the contradictory ideas that the Capitol siege was both a proud and patriotic stand against tyranny, and also nefariously manufactured by federal agents in the crowd. Logic is not a strong suit with this group.
A normal DOJ would not entertain any of this, but this is no normal DOJ, so we have the head of the Civil Rights Division screeching online about how the DOJ is “working to bring to justice those who weaponized” Jan. 6, and tenderly assuring the violent insurrectionists that “[n]o statute of limitations” will hinder her efforts. Great to have a high-level DOJ official saying they will disregard the law in order to best reward people who engaged in a treasonous assault on the seat of American democracy.
In the end, nothing that the Jan. 6 rioters are given will ever be enough—because nothing will ever be enough for Trump. They all want more money, more revenge, and more unfettered freedom to commit whatever crimes they want. […]
OMG. This MAGA approach that includes the possibility of rightwing men benefitting from the invasion of Venezuela by getting Venezuelan women/girlfriends is just more than I can take.
Not to mention the rapidly metastasizing conspiracy theory that now Maduro will confess to the truth that he helped a leftwing cabal steal the 2020 election from Trump. [head/desk]
[…] a few of these fellas now think that they’ve found a solution to their woes: the very same Venezuelan women they were, just a moment ago, trying to have deported.
Social media posts:
“Trade proposal: 100 white liberal women for every 1 Venezuelan woman”
“One thing people often forget… Venezuela used to be the top producer of beauty pageant winners. Now they have a surplus of desperate women looking for daddy Yankees.”
“President Trump all be assigning F**kSquads of Venezuelan women to All American Frogs […]”
“Venezuela has six million women of childbearing age. Most of them are desperate for money. If we employ them as surrogates, we could easily make 60 million more Americans in one generation, and fight poverty in the global south.”
[…] Venezuelan women would be interested in them […] because those women are desperately poor or because Trump would force them. It says a lot.
[…] The big dream, for many of these definitely sane folks is that they think this whole thing is actually all about proving that the 2020 election was stolen. And this one, unsurprisingly, is coming from inside the (White) house.
[…] Right-wing grifter and noted plagiarist Benny Johnson claims to have spoken to someone who says that Maduro told him directly that he stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, which just seems very believable.
Well, Nicolás Maduro knows where all the bodies are buried. Venezuela is effectively just a proxy state that was being run by Russia and China and Iran. They were running operations here against America using, yes, the election rigging technology, also using chemical warfare, this in the form of fentanyl, and biological warfare in the form of flooding our nation with Third World criminal aliens, migrants to collapse our systems. Right? And this is what they’re doing. This is the Cloward-Piven model.
You flood welfare states with criminal aliens that need to suck up all the welfare and resources, and you eventually get to a point where your debt is so big, becomes untenable and it collapses.
Just to be clear, that is not the Cloward-Piven strategy. The Cloward-Piven strategy was to overload the system with an increase in welfare claims, which was meant to ultimately lead to the creation of a universal basic income and an end to poverty. Not making anything “collapse.”
So whether it’s killing people, millions of people with fentanyl, which is a chemical weapon or biological weapon, or destroying democracy with electronic weapons, like the electronic voting systems. […]
Nicolás Maduro might be Trump’s final revenge for the election theft of 2020. If he begins to sing like a canary — which he will, they always do — then who will he give up? Soros? China? Left-wing NGOs? Left-wing billionaires? Who was funding his regime? How they stole the election? He’ll sing. He’ll tell them everything. They got his wife. This is why they took him alive. I learned all this from my conversation, and it really checks out, quite frankly. It really checks out.
It checks out, you guys! It checks out.
This is also the popular theory on the Great Awakening QAnon board, because of course it is. I’m sure we’ll get some even more interesting theories in the coming days, as the spaghetti slides off the wall, but they’re already off to a pretty cringe-inducing start.
Santiago Mayer (Voters of Tomorrow): “Between MTG resigning, LaMalfa passing away, and Jim Baird being hospitalized, the GOP no longer has a functioning majority in the House of Representatives. They have 217 seats to Dems’ 213. Massie is almost always a no, which brings them down to 216. They literally have a one vote majority.”
President Donald Trump said interim authorities in Venezuela will turn over between 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States.
Trump said that the oil will be sold at market price, and the resultant “money will be controlled by me … to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”
Let the bribery begin. It will be interesting to see just how much Trump manages to twist around to businesses in his favor.
This is probably illegal also. There are laws that govern donations to the US and the money still has to go through the budget process. Trump will use this as a way to get around that and spend the money as gifts to people he favors.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
* @348: Eh, counting Fetterman among Dems is… optimistic. So two-vote majority.
Jenny McCarty, an ecologist and watercolor artist […] is selling stickers that cover up the controversial and allegedly illegal new designs on the front of the passes, which include Trump’s face next to a painted rendering of George Washington. McCarty’s stickers are adorned with her own artwork of landscapes and animals […] All profits made from their sales will be donated to the National Park Foundation and the National Parks Conservation Association
[…]
in the event that new guidance is released […] an easy solution might involve placing the passes in clear credit card cases and adhering the stickers to the front of them. “So worst-case scenario, you could remove your parks pass and show that it hasn’t been altered in any way[“]
The Department of the Interior recently updated its “Void if Altered” rules for 2026, explicitly flagging stickers and other coverings as alterations that could invalidate the pass. […] [Staff] can make a judgment call on whether to accept them, assuming that all security features—a mountain-shaped foil hologram, some imprinted micro text, and the word “interagency” across the front of the pass in invisible ink—are all still visible. […] [DOI] did not respond to questions about the levels of fraud that led to the introduction of security features on park passes in 2017 or any details about fraud since then.
[…]
In December, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit arguing that including Trump’s face on the America the Beautiful pass violates federal law governing how pass artwork is selected. […] there hasn’t been any movement on the lawsuit
Commentary
Lmao yeah, there’s a line of hundred cars behind you, and the ranger is just like, “Nah this doesn’t work.” Haha, they do not get paid enough to care about that.
Not to mention they all have twice the work thanks to the guy in office.
There’s an argument that this is unconstitutional under Wooley v. Maynard (1977), in which SCOTUS held that New Hampshire couldn’t forbid someone from covering up the state’s motto on his license plate. The motto, ironically, was “Live Free or Die.”
[Re: US v. O’Brien too, on burning draft cards?] Ooh interesting possibility, yes.
whheydtsays
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #350…
Fetterman is in the Senate, so he doesn’t have any effect on the House majority count.
birgerjohanssonsays
Geology. The Strange Circles of Åland (It’s not impact craters)
[…] “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump said speaking to congressional Republicans during an all-day policy meeting on Tuesday. “I’ll get impeached,” he continued, before claiming that the reason “we” don’t impeach Democratic presidents is because Democrats are “meaner than we are.”
President Donald Trump dedicated a moment of his 90-minute rambling speech at Tuesday’s Republican summit to insisting that he should be thanked for the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela Saturday.
“You know, at some point they should say, ‘You know, you did a great job. Thank you, congratulations,’” he said. [video]
Trump praised the early hours operation, saying it was “amazing” and boasting that no Americans were killed. Though he did mention that “a lot of people”—including 32 Cubans—were killed during the multicity mission.
Trump also seemed to take issue with Maduro imitating his dance moves.
“You know, he’s a violent guy. He gets up there, and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit,” he said.
Maduro was taken into custody with his wife, Cilia Flores, and was arraigned in New York City Monday morning. He pleaded not guilty to U.S. prosecutors’ claims that he participated in a drug-trafficking operation and partnered with cartels designated as terrorist groups.
When news broke of Maduro’s capture, the reaction among Venezuelans was—as it undoubtedly would be in matters of international intervention—extremely mixed.
Venezuelans who fled to the United States during Maduro’s and former President Hugo Chavez’s terms took to the streets with flags and cheers, but it also brought uncertainty for their futures. […]
The feeling of hesitant support reverberates within the GOP as well.
GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia says she’s worried that Trump’s plan to “run” Venezuela until it can rebuild oil infrastructure and carry out an election is a rerun of past interventions.
“I don’t think our nation wants to be into nation-building and to be trying to create a government for another country, especially after the Afghanistan situation,” she told The Hill.
U.S. involvement in another country’s politics for economic gain—in this case, oil—is exactly what the opposing opinion finds problematic too.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Monday, 72% of Americans are worried that this will lead to the country getting too involved in Venezuela. […]
During an emergency U.N. meeting, several countries—including U.S. ally France—said that the raid was a violation of international law.
In a text conversation with Daily Kos, a young woman living in Táchira, a Venezuela city on the Colombian border, shared that sentiment.
She asked to remain anonymous out of fear of government retribution. In fact, multiple Venezuelans declined to comment out of fear of punitive action from internal and external governments.
“We may or may not agree with how the country has been run, but agreeing to be governed by the U.S. or any other government, and to have our resources stolen, is another matter entirely,” she told Daily Kos. “And I think this is a national feeling. You don’t have to be Chavista or opposition; you just have to love the country, as we were taught, and as we grew up studying the history of our liberators. We do not want to be a colony of anyone.”
So while Trump celebrates his actions in Venezuela, he might need to hold off on demanding praise from an international audience.
President Donald Trump forced Republicans Tuesday to sit through a daylong policy event at the Kennedy Center, in which he gave a 90-minute rambling of his half-baked greatest campaign hits.
Whether bragging about how awesome he is at passing dementia tests or attacking transgender children, Trump’s torturous speech seemed driven by his desperate desire for an unlikely GOP win in the midterm elections—hoping it might spare him from facing a third impeachment. [video]
Trump received a wary response when he asked if anybody minded him going off-script. [video]
They were right to be cautious, as Trump wandered from subject to subject [Many, many times he couldn’t finish a sentence. He didn’t jus wander from subject to subject. He speech was a series of glitches.], frequently starting with what seemed like a real policy before devolving into half-formed versions of familiar rhetoric—like his lazy “transgender for everybody” line. [video]
Having overseen an increase to millions of Americans’ health care costs—and still unable to present a coherent health care plan—Trump demanded Republicans to “figure it out!” [video]
Trump also returned to his favorite boast: that he doesn’t have dementia! After bragging that he was “the only one” in the history of the White House to ever take a cognitive test, he claimed that both former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom would not be able to pass the test. [video] [PZ posted about the cognitive tests today.]
“How we have to even run against these people,” Trump said, returning to the midterms. “Now I won’t say cancel the election—they should cancel the election—because the fake news will say ‘he wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator. Nobody’s worse than Obama and the people that surrounded Biden.” [video]
And after 90 minutes of this nonsense, Trump concluded his remarks with, well, whatever this is. [video]
The U.S. government assesses that about 75 people were killed during Saturday’s military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, including dozens of fatalities that resulted from a gun battle at his compound in Caracas, according to officials familiar with the matter.
One person said that at least 67 people were killed in the predawn strike, while another said that about 75 to 80 people were left dead. The officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said the assessments account for Venezuelan and Cuban security forces as well as civilians caught in the fray. The figures roughly match an estimate that Venezuelan officials have shared in recent days.
The sizable death toll adds meaning to President Donald Trump’s public remarks that the operation he approved was “effective” but “very violent.”
About a half-dozen U.S. troops were injured in the operation, with some suffering gunshot wounds in the firefight at Maduro’s compound. Some were transported to Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, where they underwent surgery, two other officials said.
The Pentagon said in a statement Tuesday that two U.S. service members were still recovering from injuries suffered during the operation. Five others who were hurt have returned to duty. […]
“Israel Tells Doctors Without Borders to End Its Work in Gaza”
Doctors Without Borders, the international medical aid group, said Tuesday that Israel had ordered it to cease operations in the Gaza Strip after it failed to comply with new restrictions that include registration of all Gazan employees and limits on criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war.
The move threatens one of the best-known humanitarian operations in the devastated enclave. Though Israel has sought to downplay the group’s importance, Doctors Without Borders says it runs or supports more than 20 percent of the remaining hospital beds, operates clinics for people with traumatic injuries and chronic illnesses, treats malnourished children and other patients, and distributed 700 million liters of water last year.
With 40 to 50 international doctors in Gaza at any time, about 1,000 permanent Palestinian workers, and another 1,000 Gaza medical workers whose Ministry of Health salaries it augments, Doctors Without Borders says it performed more than 22,000 operations and treated more than 100,000 trauma cases in 2025.
“If we can’t work, it will have catastrophic consequences for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” said Claire San Filippo, the group’s emergency coordinator for Gaza.
Ms. San Filippo said that the group was told on Sunday that it could no longer bring supplies into Gaza and told on Tuesday that it could no longer bring doctors, nurses or other international aid workers into the territory. She said it was given until the end of February to cease all activities in Gaza and pull out all its international workers.
The group was one of dozens providing humanitarian aid in Gaza that objected last year after Israel announced a new requirement to supply Israel with the names and identification numbers of their Palestinian workers.
[…] Doctors Without Borders was among more than three dozen humanitarian groups told on Dec. 30 that they would have their licenses to operate in the Gaza Strip suspended on Jan. 1 and would have to clear out by March under the new rules. Now, Israel is moving to enforce that.
[…] Last week, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a military unit responsible for facilitating humanitarian aid in Gaza, downplayed the organization’s importance in addressing the medical crisis there. It wrote on social media that Doctors Without Borders had brought in only 95 truckloads of aid since the cease-fire took effect in October, operates only a few hospitals and runs just “five out of 220 medical clinics in Gaza.”
The group says it supports six hospitals, runs two field hospitals, runs four primary health clinics and supports a fifth, runs two wound-care clinics, runs an inpatient feeding center for malnutrition cases, runs six mobile clinics, and delivers one out of every three babies born in Gaza. And Ms. San Filippo said scores of its trucks had been held up from entering Gaza by Israel.
[…] [Israel backed charges against Doctors Without Borders] mainly by reciting a long list of instances in which the group or its members had called Israel’s war in Gaza genocidal, criticized the “systematic destruction” in Gaza or expressed support for an arms embargo on Israel. […]
The Israeli government strongly rejects the characterization of its war against Hamas in Gaza as genocide, arguing that it always sought to target militants who frequently fought from areas crowded with civilians. Several leading rights groups, however, disagree, citing the vast devastation in Gaza, a nearly three-month Israeli blockade on aid last year, and the enormous civilian toll from Israeli airstrikes.
Ms. San Filippo called the Israeli policy’s curbs on criticism of Israel an “outrageous overreach.”
“Bearing witness is a principle of Doctors Without Borders, no matter where we work,” she said. “If the descriptions of what our teams witness, see with their own eyes — the widespread destruction of the Gaza Strip, the wounded people, the spread of diseases as a result of the destruction of basic infrastructure, death, and the human consequences of genocidal violence — are unpalatable to some, the fault lies with those committing the atrocities, not with those who speak of them.”
The Israeli report also suggested that the Doctors Without Borders office in Gaza could have been infiltrated by Palestinian militants. […] Doctors Without Borders said it would “never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity.”
A federal judge Tuesday ordered Trump ally Lindsey Halligan to explain why she continues to call herself the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia even though another judge determined in November that she had been unlawfully appointed to the position.
U.S. District Judge David Novak of Richmond issued a three-page order demanding to know why Halligan is still serving in the post. Halligan, who unsuccessfully prosecuted former FBI Direct James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, is also referred to as U.S. attorney by the Justice Department in official documents.
The judge’s order is unusual because he issued it on his own, not at the request of defense attorneys. It came in a case involving a carjacking and attempted bank robbery suspect who was indicted last month.
Novak gave Halligan seven days to respond in writing “explaining the basis for … identification of herself as the United States Attorney, notwithstanding Judge Currie’s contrary ruling. She shall also set forth the reasons why this Court should not strike Ms. Halligan’s identification of herself as United States Attorney from the indictment in this matter.”
The judge’s order goes on to say Halligan “shall further explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.” Novak also alluded to potential disciplinary action and demanded that Halligan sign her response.
[…] In late November, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie found that the Justice Department had violated the Constitution by appointing Halligan as U.S. attorney. That finding led to the dismissal of criminal cases against Comey and James.
Currie ruled that all actions “flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, were unlawful exercises of executive power.” She issued a separate, similar ruling in the James case, saying Halligan had exercised power she “did not lawfully possess.”
Novak acknowledged Tuesday that the November ruling regarding Halligan’s appointment had been appealed but said that since the order had not been paused, it remains the “binding precedent of the district and is not subject to being ignored.”
Other judges in the district have previously expressed their frustration with Halligan, including one who now places an asterisk next to Halligan’s name on every court document and next to it refers to Currie’s ruling from November.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Ongoing Iran protests, adding to 97, 128, 219, 299.
Clashes at the Grand Bazaar in Tehran where merchants were historically loyal to Khamenei and the regime. Protesters have blocked the streets in Tehran’s Gomrok area as they attempt to take control of all streets in Iran’s capital.
Things are going from bad to worse in Iran’s economy which is only going to fuel the protests. Exchange rates are up, gold is soaring, and the currency has hit a new low of 147,000 tomans to the dollar.
Central Tehran is burning. Protesters in Abadan stormed and ransacked the Afagh Khorasan grocery store which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. Protesters have now taken over Abadan Police Station. Police are on the roof, waving in support.
Reports that Abdanan, Ilam province, has now fallen to the protesters. Security forces defected as tens of thousands took to the streets. Waiting for confirmation.
* Abdanan is a city with population 23k (so practically everyone in the streets). Distinct from Abadan, a city of 231k.
* A toman coin is a unit equal to 10,000 rials.
Rando 1: “I was trying to google the exchange rate, and you don’t see this every day: 1 rial = 0.00 pound sterling.”
Wikipedia – Iranian Rial
The rial exchange rate started 2025 at 817,500 rials to the US dollar […] In December 2025, the rial dropped to a record low of 1.42 million rials to the US dollar, resulting in the resignation of the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran […] on 29 December 2025, who took office in December 2022 with the rial trading at 430,000 to the dollar.
The Iranian protests have now spread to 120 cities. The regime is currently cutting off internet connectivity. Islamic regime buildings have been set on fire in Fardis, west of Tehran. Mass protests have taken place across the entirety of Tehran today. Feels close to a breaking point.
An image that captures what’s happening in Iran: a female protester raises a ripped-down surveillance camera.
[…] protestors are no longer cowed by the regime’s thugs. In Sari, Mazandaran Province, security forces tried to abduct a protester. A crowd of mainly young demonstrators rushed the regime unit and rescued him.
Rando 2: “Iranian women have been brutally systematically oppressed for so long. Seeing them rip down a tool of regime control is pretty fucking beautiful.”
GottaLaff: “We can STILL do this, too, you know.”
Mark Chadbourn: “There’s a lesson for America from Iran’s burgeoning protests. When they were about freedoms they got traction but didn’t hit critical mass. This time, the economy collapsed, and everyone was burned, including the security forces. Look to the effects of Trump Tariffs in the coming months.”
JMsays
@360 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain:
Mark Chadbourn: “There’s a lesson for America from Iran’s burgeoning protests. When they were about freedoms they got traction but didn’t hit critical mass. This time, the economy collapsed, and everyone was burned, including the security forces. Look to the effects of Trump Tariffs in the coming months.”
In Iran it’s also about water. The country is suffering from a serious drought with no signs of relief. The government has managed it badly for years, pumping water out of all reserves at a high rate to support crops. The situation is so bad that no matter who is in power Tehran may have to be evacuated for lack of water.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
^ That rial to sterling graph had 6 decimal places and STILL dropped off a cliff after Dec 29th from ~0.000017 to basically zero.
JMsays
@355 Lynna, OM:
GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia says she’s worried that Trump’s plan to “run” Venezuela until it can rebuild oil infrastructure and carry out an election is a rerun of past interventions.
“I don’t think our nation wants to be into nation-building and to be trying to create a government for another country, especially after the Afghanistan situation,” she told The Hill.
I would have no problem with nation building if that was what we did. In neither Iraq or Afghanistan was a serious attempt at nation building made and Venezuela won’t even get the problems papered over. Trump’s already talking about leaving the leaders who work with the cartels in power (if they give the US enough oil).
If there was going to be serious nation building there would be both a public plan that was book sized and a classified document with further information. There would already be plans for who was taking over which parts of the government, who would have ultimate power, who had to go from the current government, run down of what public infrastructure had to be replaced, documentation of where money for loans and donations for public infrastructure, other rebuilding and otherwise keeping the country floating would come from.
It would cover raising the many units that would have to enter the country, where their bases would be, who would be in command, who would liaison with local officials and so on. Real nation building means a lot of boots on the ground for decades and a commitment up front to do it.
Militant Agnosticsays
Shermanj @329
Thank you
That was hilarious – I loved the Whiskey War references.
birgerjohanssonsays
Happy Stormiversary
Jimmy Kimmel :
“Trump Delivers Scatterbrained Speech to GOP, He Guns for Greenland & 5th Anniversary of Insurrection ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=w4-Vnatjopc
birgerjohanssonsays
@ 365
“Real moments in presidementia” starts at 4.31 -a must-see!
On Monday, the department announced an overhaul to its childhood vaccine schedule by recommending fewer of them. […] On the official HHS fact sheet announcing the changes, [there was an editing error].
Ensures that all the diseases covered by the previous immunization schedule will still be available to anyone who wants them through Affordable Care Act insurance plans and federal insurance programs
in a deal finalized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development […] The idea was to stop multinational corporations, including Apple and Nike, from using accounting and legal maneuvers to shift earnings to low- or no-tax havens. Those havens are typically places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, where the companies actually do little or no business. […] The Trump administration in June re-negotiated the deal
[…]
Tax transparency groups have criticized the amended OECD plan. “This deal risks nearly a decade of global progress on corporate taxation only to allow the largest, most profitable American companies to keep parking profits in tax havens,”
birgerjohanssonsays
New Countries For Old Man
Stephen Colbert:
Jan 6 Is A Permanent Stain On Trump’s Legacy | The Pokémon President | Colbert Out-Rates The Don
A hunger strike is a slow, painful journey towards death. It dismantles you piece by piece. Muscles shrink. Vision fades. The heart falters. Organs begin to fail. Every beat is a warning. Every hour drags you closer to death, whether you want it or not.
A hunger strike begins when every other door is slammed shut. When the system makes it clear your life has no value, as long as you stay quiet and obedient. When it looks straight at you and tells you you’re already dead.
So you answer with your body.
At least eight imprisoned pro-Palestine activists in the UK have refused food. One has been on hunger strike for more than two months. Others have passed 50 days without eating. Some have already been taken to hospital. They are scattered across prisons, cut off from each other, torn from their families, buried under the word “terrorist” so cruelty can be dressed up as law.
They are Heba Muraisi, Qesser Zurah, Amu Gib, Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Lewie Chiaramello, Jon Cink, and Umer Khalid.
United Nations human rights experts have expressed grave concern for hunger strikers’ lives. They warned the activists face heightened risks of organ failure, neurological damage, and death without proper medical care and called on the UK government to ensure timely emergency care, to engage with the activists’ demands and to address rights issues linked to prolonged pretrial detention and restrictions on protest activity.
I have been inside this story before. Violent words are meant to strip you of your humanity so the public doesn’t have to feel the sting of your suffering.
When Jeremy Corbyn raised the hunger strike in Parliament, some MPs laughed. Laughed. Not whispers. Not quiet discomfort. But open mockery. Smirks from padded seats while people’s bodies were breaking down in cells. While people were collapsing, being dragged to hospital wards, organs failing.
My fears were justified. Israel’s daily deadly attacks have continued; more than 400 people have been killed so far by its army. Many others have died in circumstances caused by Israel’s decimation of the Strip.
And yet the level of global attention began to decline. In November, I noticed that engagement with what I wrote about Gaza started to diminish, whether on social media or media outlets – something other Palestinian journalists and writers also observed. The world’s interest waned because the global public was easily convinced that the war had ended.
It became clear to me that the real goal of the ceasefire was not to stop the violence or death, nor to protect people or limit bloodshed and genocide. The real goal was to stop the world from talking about Gaza, about the crimes being committed there, and about the daily suffering of people.
Gaza has now become mostly invisible, as other news and other “hot spots” have taken the global media spotlight.
‘What starts world wars’: Trump ramps up Greenland obsession, floats military action. “The stuff we’re playing with here is kind of the core of what starts world wars. I don’t think that’s an overstatement,” says Chris Hayes on Trump’s push to acquire Greenland. Sen. Chris Murphy joins to discuss.
Video is 7:10 minutes
Chris Hayes also mentioned that the release of the Epstein files is being slow-rolled again. And, Chris mentioned Trump’s alarming speech at the GOP Summit (see comments 355 and 356). Chris excerpted a telling moment.
‘Life and death stakes’: Hayes blasts Trump threats against Cuba, Mexico, Greenland. “It is literal life and death stakes—both domestic and global battles—over whether Trump can be restrained before he takes more, before he does more damage, before he destroys more. Because he will try to take more,” says Chris Hayes on Trump’s imperial push.
[…] Late Monday afternoon Trump broke new ground with an announcement published to his social media platform. It read, in its entirety:
I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States! I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
According to a New York Times report, 50 million barrels of oil could have a market value of as much as $3 billion. [!]
[…] Did officials in Venezuela actually agree to “turn over” these resources to the U.S., or did Trump just make all of this up? For now, we don’t know. When might this happen? For now, we don’t know that, either. If this is happening, is Venezuela getting anything in return for this oil? For now, we don’t know that. By what legal authority is the American president taking control of a foreign country’s natural resources? For now, we don’t know that, either.
But while the public waits for additional details to learn whether Trump’s announcement is real or not, pay particular attention to the nature of the American president’s plan: Trump is prepared to sell a foreign country’s oil to create a massive pool of money that will in turn be “controlled by” him. [!]
That can’t happen.
In the United States, the president can’t create his own pile of money that Congress never approved, and then start allocating the funds at his discretion. […]
what Trump has sketched out in his vague online statement sounds an awful lot like a slush fund, which would be plainly illegal.
This fight is just getting started, and it’s poised to be a doozy.
New York Times: The Great Unraveling Has Begun. By Oona Hathaway
President Trump’s decision to launch a secretive predawn military operation in Venezuela to grab President Nicolás Maduro is a blatant assault on the international legal order. The action threatens to end an era of historic peace and return us to a world in which might makes right. The cost will be paid in human lives.
Last year marked the 80th anniversary of the 1945 United Nations Charter, a document signed by 51 nations at the close of World War II. The signatories pledged to act “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The great powers have not gone to war with one another since, and no U.N. member state has disappeared as a result of conquest.
But over the past decade, that peace has begun to unravel. Today, it is on the precipice of collapsing altogether. If that happens, the consequences will be catastrophic. We can already see the devastating cost: According to my calculations, from 1989 to 2014, battle-related deaths from cross-border conflicts averaged less than 15,000 a year. Beginning in 2014, the average has risen to over 100,000 a year. [!] As states increasingly disregard limits on the lawful use of force, this may be just the beginning of a deadly new era of conflict. [map]
The relative peace of the last eight decades should not be taken for granted. For centuries, war was perfectly legal. It was, in fact, the main way in which states resolved their disputes. Countries could force one another into treaties at the point of a gun and then enforce those very same treaties with war if they were broken. States that won wars had the legal right to keep what they took — land, goods, people. States rose and fell, took land and lost it, and the people living in the territory over which they fought suffered the consequences.
That system of legal war began to end after World War I, when, in 1928, states renounced the act of war in the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. That commitment was reaffirmed in 1945 in the U.N. Charter, which placed the commitment to renounce war at the center of a new international legal order. Territorial conquest and gunboat diplomacy, once legal, became illegal; economic sanctions replaced war as the main tool of international law enforcement; and waging war could be criminally prosecuted, as it was in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II.he peace was never perfect. Conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia were early and terrible failures. The number of states in the world multiplied as decolonization took hold, and civil wars, which are not regulated by the charter, became more frequent. Yet the pact accomplished something remarkable: Conquest, once common, became rare, and fewer people died as a result of nations joining in conflicts outside their own borders.
That can be seen in data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which researchers use to track organized violence and resulting deaths. The data show that battle-related deaths from conflicts that cross state borders — including those between states, like Russia’s war on Ukraine, and conflicts where a state joins an internal armed conflict in another state, like the United States’ strikes on the Islamic State in Iraq — were relatively low from the 1990s through the mid 2010s.
There were a few exceptions. In 1991, over 20,000 people died as a result of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the response from the international community. In 1992, over 20,000 died in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in 1999 and 2000, tens of thousands died in the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. There was a rise in deaths, too, in 2003, when the United States launched the war against Iraq.
[I snipped a lot of relevant history.]
Now Mr. Trump has ordered the U.S. military to bomb Venezuela, an operation in which local authorities say at least 80 people were killed. That attack, in combination with the U.S. military’s strikes on more than 30 alleged drug smuggling boats, demonstrate a total disregard of the Charter’s constraints on war and the revival of the principle that might makes right.
The military operation is not justified by the right of self-defense. Drug trafficking is not an “armed attack” on the United States — the standard in international law for a legal act of self-defense. Even if Mr. Maduro illegally seized power and is guilty of criminal conduct, those facts do not create a lawful justification to use military force against Venezuela. Nonviolent means — economic and diplomatic sanctions — are the only legal response under international law. […]
There may still be time to stop this trajectory. When Russia invaded Ukraine, over 140 states condemned the invasion as illegal, helping avert what would probably have been a death blow to the legal order. This is what it takes to preserve the international legal system when a powerful state violates the rules. So far, however, only a handful of states have been willing to forcefully stand up to Mr. Trump. If states fail to act together to preserve the prohibition on the use of force — the bedrock of the postwar legal order — the toll will be registered in many more lives lost in conflicts that no longer have any guardrails to stop them.
[…] As the United States fails to abide by the underlying principle of the international legal system it once championed, the already ailing system faces total collapse.
NEW: U.S. military forces boarded an oil tanker in the Atlantic south of Iceland that was en route to Murmansk, Russia, after being foiled by the U.S. blockade of Venezuela, the WSJ reports. The tanker had been stateless a week ago but was quickly reflagged as a Russian vessel. Russia had reportedly dispatched naval assets, including a submarine, to escort the vessel, but it’s not clear whether they had arrived on the scene before the U.S. launched its operation to seize the vessel.
“Where exactly does the president intend to get the money to buy a massive arctic island that isn’t for sale?”
For months, as Donald Trump has talked about trying to acquire Greenland, the president and his team have been asked repeatedly whether they’re prepared to use military force to obtain the arctic island. They routinely respond with variations on the same answer: Trump isn’t willing to take any options off the table.
Naturally, observers around the world — most notably in Greenland and Denmark — have perceived the menacing comments as a threat, which is hardly unreasonable under the circumstances. But it has also raised related questions about what other options might be on the table.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported, and MS NOW confirmed, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in a classified briefing this week that the White House is less interested in military action and more interested in trying to buy Greenland — which, by all accounts, is not currently for sale.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off the idea, telling reporters that Rubio might’ve made the comment “in jest.” The Louisiana Republican repeated the line Wednesday morning, explaining at a Capitol Hill press conference that he thinks he remembers hearing the secretary of state talk about a possible Greenland purchase, but the GOP leader said he “took it as a joke.”
Readers, it was not a joke. [video]
Asked to clarify comments he made to lawmakers behind closed doors on Monday, Rubio told reporters late Wednesday morning that it’s “always” been Trump’s “intent” to try to buy Greenland.
Less than an hour later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said largely the same thing, explaining during a briefing that the president is “actively” discussing the purchase of Greenland. [video]
As policy priorities go, all of this seems plainly ridiculous. And yet it also raises a host of new and related questions: Where exactly does Trump intend to get the money to buy a massive arctic island that isn’t for sale? Is he going to ask Congress to appropriate the funds? Would GOP lawmakers be willing to write an enormous check?
And how embarrassed is the House speaker right now after his “took it as a joke” line has been publicly discredited by his ostensible allies?
The entire endeavor is descending quickly into farce.
A farce is preferable to a success in this case.
birgerjohanssonsays
Professor Fired Over Charlie Kirk Post Wins $500,000 and Gets Job Back.
“Could the U.S. military operation be the president’s ‘Wag the Dog’ moment?”
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think I know the name of the person who is arguably the biggest beneficiary of Donald Trump’s inexplicable war in Venezuela.
There’s a good case to be made that the single biggest winner in this whole situation is a person named Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 official at the Interior Department, the same agency she served in during Trump’s first term.
Her family owns a ranch in Nevada. Nearby, a company wanted to build a huge lithium mine. But it turns out lithium mines take a ton of water. So in 2018, Budd-Falen’s husband sold the water rights from their ranch to the mining company for $3.5 million.
The only catch of that agreement was that the full deal could only go ahead if the mine was approved by the Interior Department.
In 2019, Budd-Falen met with executives from that mining company in the cafeteria of the Interior Department. The mine later got approved — and on a fast track, so it could skip the pesky environmental reviews and all the rest. Budd-Falen’s family was paid millions.
That brings us to 2025. Right before Christmas, High Country News and the veteran reporters at Public Domain on Substack published a scoop about this top-ranking official with Trump’s Interior Department and what really does appear to be the simplest possible explanation of what corruption looks like. If there were a public-corruption children’s picture book, it would be this kind of story.
Budd-Falen’s story hit these smaller publications before the holidays. Then, last weekend, The New York Times jumped on it, adding its own reporting, and the story blew up. “The Trump Administration Approved a Big Lithium Mine. A Top Official’s Husband Profited,” the Times headline read.
According to Budd-Falen’s husband, the meeting in Washington at the Interior Department cafeteria was purely a social occasion. He told the Times that the meeting had nothing to do with his wife’s agency doing something that would make millions of dollars for her family. The mining company said the same and claimed it did not meet with Budd-Falen in her “formal capacity.” […]
That story was prepped for Saturday. This little-known Interior Department official was about to be very famous — like, at least as famous […]
So if you had to name the one person who benefited the most from the insane breaking news that the U.S. military had just invaded Venezuela and taken its president, I think Budd-Falen might be a good nominee.
But that Trump Interior Department official is not the only contender in the cui bono sweepstakes.
You would also have to consider Ghislaine Maxwell and everyone else who has a stake in the more than 5 million additional documents that the Justice Department has yet to release from the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files, even though they were required by law to have released everything by Dec. 19.
DOJ did release some things that day, then a little more in the following days. On Dec. 23, they released a prosecutor’s email that stated, in part:
For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.
They released that shortly before Christmas, and they haven’t released anything since, except word that there are literally millions of additional documents they say they will eventually sort through.
Last weekend, there were protests outside the minimum-security federal prison in Bryan, Texas, where Maxwell was inexplicably moved by the Trump administration after new questions arose about the president’s involvement with Epstein and his administration’s efforts to keep information about him from the public.
So, as the Justice Department drags into its third week of not releasing the Epstein information it’s required by law to release, everyone with a personal stake in what’s in those files is also benefiting from this change of subject. [Change of subject to Venezuela.]
Frankly, hepatitis also benefited from this change of subject. On Monday, Trump’s crackpot Department of Health and Human Services announced it is gutting the vaccine schedule for kids, explicitly not on the basis of any data but on what they described, essentially, as vibes about vaccines.
HHS has not been able to produce any data that backs up any of its conspiracy theories and fantasies about why vaccines are bad, but it’s removing them from the childhood vaccination schedule anyway. They did so in an anonymous call to reporters, in which no one was allowed to be quoted by name.
Now, if I were going to take a sledgehammer to the most successful public health efforts in a millennium, I might try to do that on a busy news day as well. [shenanigans for sure]
This week also marks one year since the deadly, horrific Southern California firestorm, to which a newly inaugurated Trump responded by inexplicably dumping out more than a billion gallons of water from California reservoirs into flooded fields that did not need it and that weren’t prepared for it. He said that was his solution — and it wasted enough water to supply 7,000 households for a year.
And of course, Tuesday marked five years since rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an anniversary the administration probably did not relish the arrival of.
On his first day in office, Trump pardoned all the rioters, including those who assaulted and tried to kill police officers. Many have since been rearrested on charges ranging from child rape to vehicular manslaughter to threatening to kill Democratic politicians.
By law, there is supposed to be a plaque displayed at the Capitol to honor the police officers who fought that day to defend the United States Congress from the mob. It’s not there. House Republicans refuse to put it up.
But I’m sure the Trump administration would much rather talk about inexplicably invading Venezuela than the anniversary of the day a mob stormed Congress to try to physically force an overthrow of the election results so Trump could stay in power.
Mayor Jacob Frey said the woman was 37 and noted that ICE had claimed self-defense in shooting her. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everyone directly. That is bullshit,”
[…]
Sen. Tina Smith said on social media that the shooting victim was a U.S. citizen. “ICE should leave now for everyone’s safety,”
[…]
More than 100 protesters gathered […] blowing whistles and banging drums […] officers in camouflage sprayed a green gas on protesters
be wary of short context-free video clips shared virally.
[…]
DHS’s first official statement is out, and they call the woman who was shot a domestic terrorist who they claim was trying to kill an ICE agent. As a reminder, Tricia McLaughlin’s post-shooting statements have been proven to be false MULTIPLE times in the past.
[…]
Here’s the video. It’s hard to watch. It’s extremely clear that it does not even remotely align with what DHS claims. The shooter is clearly not in the path of the car. But I want to see his bodycam, because he’s not visible at the moment of the shooting.
Someone who claims to have witnessed the incident says
– car was blocking ice
– they told them to move
– “something happened”
– ICE shot into the car as it was driving away
– passenger got out of the car covered away and said friend was dead
A bullet hole is seen on the windshield
[…]
Emily Heller […] said she woke up to a commotion outside her home. She said she saw a car blocking traffic […] she heard ICE agents telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here.”
“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in—like, his midriff was on her bumper—and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,”
Max Nesterak (MNReformer) posted a 4:26 video. The first 20 seconds described here. The victim’s car was perpendicular to the agents’ vehicle and blocking only their lane. The victim slows and stops. Another vehicle passes in the other lane as the victim waves them through, then does the wave again seemingly to the agents. Two agents walk out of their vehicle to the victim shouting “Get out of the car! Get out of the f—— car!” One grabs the victim’s door. The car reverses and goes forward to turn away as the agent tries to pull the handle. Another agent had been standing in front of the victim’s car (revealed to the camera during the turn). He was at the driver’s side corner when he fired. Her turning radius was limited by an adjacent vehicle on her right (also perpendicular) that had its door open, and an apparent civilian who had been standing by the victim’s front passenger door. Three shots were recorded. The car accelerates and crashes.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey gave a heated press conference Wednesday after reports and video surfaced showing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shooting and killing a Minneapolis woman.
“They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust. They’re ripping families apart,” Frey said. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: That is bullshit. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying—getting killed.”
[Video]
Frey’s anger did not end there, as he called for federal agents to leave the city.
“I have a message for ICE. To ICE: Get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here,” he said. [video]
Minneapolis officials have repeatedly warned the Trump administration that his federal shock troops are dangerous and unwanted in the city. Today’s events only underscore how fascistic the administration’s policies really are.
Tuesday night brought fresh evidence that a blue wave is building for the 2026 midterm elections, after Democrats won a pair of special elections for vacant state legislative seats in Virginia. In each election, Democrats improved on the margins won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Democrat Mike Jones won the state Senate seat vacated by Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi. Jones defeated Republican John Thomas, 70% to 30%, marking an 8-percentage-point improvement on Harris’ performance in 2024, according to VoteHub. […]
These smokes are toxic, which is attributed to the production of zinc chloride (ZnCl2). […] “Due to its potential pulmonary toxicity,” zinc chloride producing smoke grenades “have been discharged from the armory of most western countries (…).”
[…]
the Department of Homeland Security are believed to have used HC smoke grenades against protesters during various protests in 2020. At the time, journalists photographed numerous smoke canisters labeled “HC”, and measured unusually high levels of zinc and chloride in the area.
I couldn’t find an article that both mentioned the color and merited citing, but it’s distinctive in riot control. The MN story’s phrasing “sprayed a green gas on protesters” is odd. HC’s described as smoke grenades.
[…] We wondered why Trump would say “storage ship” instead of “tanker,” which led us down an interesting rabbit hole: Just to add an extra level of surrealism, an anonymous “senior administration official” told CNN that “the oil has already been produced and put in barrels. The majority of it is currently on boats and will now go to US facilities in the Gulf to be refined.”
[…] this makes no goddamn sense at all; our cursory searching indicates that this is bullshit, since your average oil supertanker has a capacity of around a million to two million barrels. Physically shipping even 30 million 55-gallon barrels of oil is pretty fucking improbable. But sure, all you need is 30 million oil drums, the pallets to load them on, and a whole lot of “storage ships” that are not actual tankers. […]
[…] Trump loves superlatives and big numbers, so you can see why he’d want to get at Venezuela’s oil reserves, the world’s largest, at around 300 billion barrels (with a B). But there’s a much smaller number that could undermine Trump’s Venezuelan oil fantasies: 57, which is how many dollars a barrel of US benchmark crude fetched at the end of trading Friday.
Oh wait, make that $56, the price to which US oil fell Tuesday after his obvious lie. Venezuelan crude, by the by, currently trades at just $55 per barrel […]
As the Washington Post points out (gift link), getting Venezuela’s oil production back to peak levels could cost as much as $100 billion, and unless world oil prices go up a hell of a lot, the investment just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Oil companies learned after the US brought the blessings of democracy to Iraq that it’s kind of important to have stability and a modicum of peace before you risk billions, even to get at huge reserves.
Even here in the USA, oil companies have been holding back from drilling new wells, because there’s so little profit in it. […]
Industry experts say oil companies wouldn’t be inclined to invest tens of billions of capital rehabbing Venezuelan oil fields without being sure of at least a decade of production. There’s no government in Venezuela to make such a guarantee, and although Trump may promise to secure long-term stability for US oil investments, companies know better than to just take his word for it.
[…] US oil companies aren’t exactly champing at the bit to jump into Venezuela, even with the pretext that they could recoup some of their losses from the nationalization of its oil industry 50 years ago.
“They’re saying, ‘you gotta go in if you want to play and get reimbursed,’” said one industry official familiar with the conversations.
The offer has been on the table for the last 10 days, the person said. “But the infrastructure currently there is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operable.” [!!]
Then there’s the basic fact that Venezuelan oil is, to use some technical language, shitty and bad. It’s heavier than the “light sweet crude” produced in most of the US, requiring more processing to become vehicle fuel, at a time when the world’s vehicle fleets are rapidly electrifying, a trend that’s simply not going to reverse […]
China, currently the top buyer of Venezuela’s remaining oil production, has gone all in on renewable energy and EVs to eliminate its need for imported oil. And even in South America (where Chinese EV factories are popping up all over), recently discovered oil fields in Guyana are the hot new draw for oil investment, since its oil is lighter and its taxes are lower than Venezuela’s. [!]
The Energy Transition Is A Peace Movement
It’s actually a very good thing that Venezuela’s heavy crude oil is more expensive and difficult to process, and that US oil companies may just nope out altogether. Not only would that be a Big Black Eye for Trump, it would also be good news for the planet, since Venezuela’s oil is “among the dirtiest oils in the world to produce when it comes to global warming,” according to UC Santa Barbara political science professor Paasha Mahdavi. Like Canada’s tar sands oil, it’s far more carbon-dense per barrel than the oil the US pumps, so putting more of the shit into the air would worsen global warming substantially.
Currently, thanks to sanctions and the deterioration of its oil infrastructure, Venezuela produces about a million barrels of oil per day (BPD), roughly one percent of world production. That’s well below its peak of 3 million BPD in the 1970s. But as Mahdavi points out, even increasing production to 1.5 million BPD would produce 550 million tons of atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide, more than the CO2 emissions of entire nations like the UK or Brazil.
The other thing to keep in mind is that fossil fuels remain a dying industry, and the faster the world transitions away from them, the less incentive there’ll be for imperial adventures aimed at taking smaller nations’ oil. […]
[…] Right at the moment treaties and charters and constitutions offer limited protection at best; we should work to restore the national and global consensus that makes them valuable, but we should also work to push out the kind of energy that can’t be hoarded or controlled.
Why does Trump hate solar and wind energy so passionately? It’s because they’re somewhat outside his or anyone else’s control. A nation that builds its prosperity on oil makes itself a target; a nation that depends on imported oil to survive makes itself a vassal. A nation (say, China) that rapidly builds out its own supply of energy from the sun—energy that can’t be embargoed or effectively attacked, energy that is by its nature decentralized, energy so spread out that no particular bit of it is all that valuable—is a nation that can go its own way.
Consider the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adds Rebecca Solnit: One of Vladimir Putin’s assumptions appears to have been that European nations, dependent on Russian fossil gas, would go along without too much complaint. Instead, despite some short-term increases in coal, Europe doubled down on speeding up its energy transition, and renewables keep providing ever-greater shares of the EU’s energy.
[…] just as a wide transition to clean transportation will remove “gas prices” from future presidential campaigns, renewable energy isn’t just good for the planet, it’s also good economics, and far better for the countries using it. As Bill McKibben says, “it’s going to be hard to figure out how to fight wars over sunshine.”
beholdersays
@ badland
Because you asked nicely, and continuing this on the other thread is off topic:
I don’t believe Mobster Don is preferable to a hypothetical Killer Kamala admin. I regard them both as irredeemably evil because they were willing and able to provide financial, material, and diplomatic support for a genocide, without which Israel would be unable to continue its genocidal campaign within hours.
“The problem here is insurgency, terrorism and guerillas,” said Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and an expert in security affairs.
“There is no way you’re going to be able to send in the civilian contractors” who make up the core workforce for international oil operations, he said.
“Venezuela has the jungles of Vietnam and the mountains of Afghanistan.”
In an interview Monday with NBC News, Trump predicted that American companies could get expanded oil operations in Venezuela “up and running” in fewer than 18 months. Most experts put the timeline for expanding operations at a minimum of three to five years.
But any expansion of oil operations in Venezuela would put the workers on the ground in danger, regardless of how much political influence the U.S. has with the government in Caracas, said Douglas Farah, president of the national security consulting firm IBI Consultants.
Pushing into new territory “is the way you’re going to run into all the different armed groups that are outside of the capital, and outside, probably, the control of Delcy Rodriguez or whoever else may be holding influence in the region,” Farah said, referring to the interim president.
Groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and Colombia’s FARC dissidents operate in the forested mountains that straddle Colombia and Venezuela.
“You’re looking at groups that have had decades of combat experience and decades of extraction of natural resources,” Farah said.
In addition to a long tradition of unregulated gold mining in the Orinoco region of western Venezuela, guerilla groups have more recently begun mining rare earth minerals like coltan.
Moreover, given the vast distances and the difficult terrain, oil infrastructure “is going to be very difficult to secure without a significant number of U.S. troops on the ground,” he said.
Trump said Monday that he would be willing to send U.S. forces into Venezuela if he felt Rodriguez and the remaining Maduro government “went against making Venezuela great again.” […]
even beyond the immediate danger to employees that going into Venezuela would present for U.S. oil companies, experts said, the economic incentives that a company would typically need in order to justify such a risk-laden investment are absent here. [!]
Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips have already lost billions of dollars worth of equipment and technology seized by the Venezuelan government in 2007.
That year, the government of then-President Hugo Chavez decreed that foreign oil companies could own no more than a 40% stake in any oil project in the country, with the rest held by a state-run oil company.
The only major U.S. firm to accept the terms was Chevron, which remains in Venezuela to this day.
Exxon and ConocoPhillips are still trying to recover some of the money they lost.
There’s also the problem of the specific type of oil Venezuela’s fields produce. Known as heavy, sour crude, the oil is thick like molasses and rich in sulphur.
This combination is terrible for equipment and pipelines, said Matt Randolph, an internationally recognized expert in oil and gas.
In Venezuela, “the oil is so corrosive, it eats metal,” [!] he told NBC News.
“That’s why you need $100 billion in investments for infrastructure,” he said, “because as it sat there, it has just rotted away.”
[…] Trump himself has said his plan would require billions of dollars in investment up-front from the oil companies. “It’ll be a lot of money,” he said Monday. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
But the promise of huge revenues is complicated by the reality of global oil prices.
Last year, both U.S. crude oil and internationally sourced Brent crude oil posted their largest annual price drops since 2020.
“Oil prices have to be significantly higher than they are now for production to grow in Venezuela,” Randolph said.
Meanwhile, in the years since Exxon and ConocoPhillips left Venezuela, U.S. oil companies have invested more than half a trillion dollars in extracting Canadian oil.
“Any increase in production of Venezuelan oil just drives down the value of Canadian oil,” Randolph said.
If U.S. oil companies were to return to Venezuela, he said, “they would be competing with themselves.”
They might also find they are subject to production quotas dictated by OPEC, the global organization of oil-producing nations. Venezuela is one of OPEC’s founding members.
[…] Farah, of IBI, said it was difficult to imagine circumstances that would make Venezuela an attractive option for an oil company.
“The broader question in Venezuela now is, given the quality of oil and how degraded their infrastructure is, who would want to go in to invest there, anyway?” he said.
President Trump on Tuesday urged House Republicans to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment — the 50-year-old policy barring federal funding for most abortions — as GOP leaders search for a deal to lower health insurance costs before the midterms.
The big picture: Trump’s comments signal a notable softening on a long-held Republican policy as party leaders worry about voter backlash over rising Affordable Care Act premiums during an election year.
Really surreal moment. I would guess that Trump is looking for someplace where the Republicans can give on a medical issue to try and counter balance their issues with medical care. It won’t work because it’s far too narrow of an issue to counter balance their general attack on the ACA and medical care. Worse, it’s something that a lot of Republicans consider a big deal so it will anger their own base if the Republicans take it up.
I don’t expect this will go anywhere, even if Trump pushes a bit on the issue the House and Senate will ignore him. It’s more interesting as one of those bits that shows Trump being highly disconnected from reality.
There is another video of the moment of the ICE shooting that […] contains graphic imagery. From the angle of that video, it’s very clear the officer who opened fire was not in the path of the car at the time. [BNO News shared this clip that ends before the graphic portion.]
[…]
[Photo] The EXACT moment of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis: [The shooter at arms length from the driver door pointing a pistol at the side window area as the vehicle moves.]
[…]
There are stuffed children’s toys stored in an opening on the dashboard on the passenger side of the car. […] likely she was a mother. In this video, the seated woman can be heard saying what sounds like the woman killed is her wife and they have a six-year-old child
[…]
In a not unsurprising but nonetheless absolutely chilling statement, Trump sanctions the killing:
The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. […] hard to believe he is alive
Trump is absolving ICE agents for the murder […] His evidence? A slowed down version of the clip […] I will post below.
Rando: “I see he forgot to mention that she didn’t start driving erratically until after she was shot.”
That clip is from a window down the street (rightward of the footage I described @392), behind a tree, and obscured by the adjacent vehicle, only showing the victim’s car emerge to turn (as the shooter pivots around the corner of the car) then zoom off and crash.
Minneapolis Police Chief says that the FBI is investigating jointly with state law enforcement, who are examining whether any state laws were violated in the shooting.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
I think the footage @392 via Max Nesterak is the same as the BNO News clip @400 (which I couldn’t see). Nesterak’s footage later approaches the car for a graphic moment, which I’d missed.
the National Weather Service’s forecast graphic, riddled with spelling and geographical errors that the agency confirmed were linked to the use of generative AI. […] not the first of its kind to be posted by the NWS in the past year […] NWS said AI is not commonly used for public-facing content, nor is its use prohibited. The agency said it is exploring ways to employ AI
[…]
The Weather Service often creates experimental forecasting products, said John Sokich, who worked there for 45 years before retiring in January 2025. “But it’s their policy to ensure that type of experimentation is labeled. They have a rigorous process for testing a product before it becomes operational.” Sokich added that he thought not labeling these images as experimental was “just an oversight.” In the past year, hundreds of employees have been fired, retired or left NWS
Militant Agnosticsays
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @395
I couldn’t find an article that both mentioned the color and merited citing, but it’s distinctive in riot control. The MN story’s phrasing “sprayed a green gas on protesters” is odd. HC’s described as smoke grenades.
During the My Lai Massacre Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Junior placed a green smoke grenade by a sounded Vietnamese woman to mark her location for evacuation. I think a green smoke meant safe to approach while red smoke meant do not approach. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson and his 2 door gunners saved the lives of several people at My Lai.
Militant Agnosticsays
Lynna @396
Just to add an extra level of surrealism, an anonymous “senior administration official” told CNN that “the oil has already been produced and put in barrels.
I expect that not only do these numbskulls think that oil is placed in 55 drums for shipping, they also think that oil is in underground caverns and the only limitation on production is how fast it can be pumped.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, […] “Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation, and took actions to defend himself and defend his fellow law enforcement officers.”
ICE officers are trained to never approach a vehicle from the front and instead to approach in a “tactical L” 90-degree angle to prevent injury or cross-fire, a senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News. Officers are also instructed not to shoot at a moving vehicle and only to use force if there is an immediate risk of serious injury or death, the official said. ICE officers are also instructed that firing at a vehicle will not make it stop moving in the direction of the officer.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: “I suspect that this is a career person who is actually well trained and not authorized to speak publicly, and not an admin political official who will defend the ICE officer no matter what.”
Garrett Graff (Journalist): “ICE officers are already some of the least trained and least educated law enforcement in the federal government—and then the Trump admin cut both standards even more last year.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406.
Chris Hayes (MS NOW): “It has been an obvious, sometimes even almost stated project of Trump 2.0 to engineer a redo of the post George Floyd protests of 2020, this time with much more state violence. And now a federal agent has shot and killed a woman in a car at point blank range a mile from where Floyd was murdered.”
According to a witness who spoke to the Minnesota Star Tribune, a doctor at the scene attempted to help the woman who was shot, but was kept away by federal agents. When an ambulance finally arrived, it was blocked from reaching her by law-enforcement vehicles, and paramedics had to reach her on foot.
the agency has begun preparations in the event the guard is activated, including equipment checks and notifying service members.
“To Minnesotans, on the National Guard, they’re there to protect you and protect your constitutional rights,” Walz said. “These are our neighbors. They don’t wear masks. They don’t bust in from somewhere else. They’re not here to cause hassles to you or what we saw today, the tragedy.”
[…]
The governor called on Americans to come together to confront the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in cities across the country. […] “Stand with us against this.”
[“]We have repeatedly warned that this federal mobilization was putting residents at risk. I encourage Minnesotans to remain calm. This mobilization was about putting on a show from the beginning—let’s not give it to them.”
The Trace is tracking incidents in which federal agents shoot someone or hold them at gunpoint during an immigration enforcement action under Trump’s crackdown. […] Our numbers are likely an undercount
The article’s text tallied 28 incidents and was dated Dec 8th, but the fancy map says 40 and includes today’s shooting.
An off-duty ICE agent shot and killed a man in Los Angeles on NYE. DHS claimed the victim was an “active shooter.” He was in fact firing his gun into the air to celebrate the New Year.*
(*Which is a dumb thing to do. But it does not make him an active shooter. Or justify his death.)
the Danish defence ministry confirmed the existence of a 1952 rule requiring soldiers to “immediately” counter-attack invading forces without awaiting orders. The defence ministry also said that the rule “remains in force”
Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending US support for 66 organizations, agencies and commissions […] Most of the targets are UN-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor and other issues that the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and “woke”
PassBlue: “The UN entities the US is leaving [Screenshot of the list]”
One net effect of this will just be to make life a little harder for Americans in ways, they can’t quite put their finger on, because some of these organizations do the invisible work of multilateralism that enables contemporary life; another will be to hold up progress on most shared global goals. But most notably, some of these withdrawals will hit the same populations that were already hard hit by slashing US aid even harder.
Followup to comments 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406, and 408.
[…] Once the administration started beating its chest and bragging that this was the “largest immigration operation ever”—and once Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived to oversee her precious thugs—it was ready to hurt, if not kill, Minneapolis residents for the crime of living in a Democratic and diverse city.
Noem, for her part, seems to be partially blaming Minnesota’s weather for one of her minions murdering someone.
“Our ICE officers were out in an enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis,” Noem said on Fox News. “They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them, and those surrounding them, and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.”
[That’s a whole string of lies from Noem!]
You won’t be surprised to learn that the video of the shooting shows nothing of the sort—not a sad, stuck vehicle in sight, nor any ICE officer being attacked. But Noem got exactly what she wanted: a way to flip the script, lying that Minneapolis residents violently attacked them.
Trump has already weighed in and done just that: inventing an upside-down world where an ICE agent was “violently, willfully, and viciously” run over and “it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.
[Another string of lies, somewhat different lies from Trump!]
There is, of course, no report that an ICE agent was run over […] Even Noem didn’t say that, instead stating that the video showed someone “attempting to run over our law enforcement officers.”
Normally, we’d say the administration should get its story straight, but it really doesn’t matter when both stories are lies.
So what happens now that they’ve gotten the violence they crave?
It’s hard not to see this as linked to the Supreme Court’s December decision blocking Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Chicago. That decision upheld a lower court decision saying that the National Guard cannot be federalized unless the president is unable—with the regular military—to faithfully execute the laws.
However, as the Supreme Court’s brief order explained, there are very rare circumstances in which the president could send in the military without violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal troops from acting as domestic law enforcement.
[…] After the Supreme Court decision, Trump sullenly pulled the National Guard back from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. But it certainly wasn’t like he was going to stop forcing a military crackdown on blue cities.
Trump desperately wants to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he threatened to do in 2020 during uprisings following the police murder of George Floyd—which, of course, was also in Minneapolis.
With that, it’s no surprise that this shooting occurred less than a mile away from George Floyd Square. Trump has already declared that he is allowed to invoke the Insurrection Act if the courts won’t let him send in the National Guard, and … the courts won’t let him send in the National Guard.
Minnesota’s National Guard may be there nonetheless, though not in the capacity Trump wants.
Gov. Tim Walz has activated the State Emergency Operation Center, which would coordinate any law enforcement action, and issued a warning order for the Guard to begin preparing.
“To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: You’ve done enough,” Walz said, before announcing that the Minnesota National Guard is on standby.
“I remind you, a warning order is a heads-up for folks, and these National Guard troops are our National Guard troops,” he said. […] what we have now is a blue city on edge, enraged, and fearful—and Trump likely has a brand-new justification for a military crackdown. And, really, that’s what he wanted all along.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says European allies have not given him sound guarantees that they will protect his country in the case of a new Russian aggression.
“I am asking this very question to all our partners and I have not received a clear, unambiguous answer yet,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
The EU is working towards stepping up but they want to leave themselves some political wiggle room. Ukraine is looking for firm commitments and boots on the ground, they are well aware that any fuzzy bits can easily be exploited a decade or two down the road for another round of land grabs.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406, and 408, 410.
“Can I go check a pulse?”
“No! Back up! Now!”
“I’m a physician!”
“I don’t care.”
An armed masked agent states that their own medics are on the way and asks the crowd to “just relax.” “How can I relax? You just killed my fucking neighbor,” Heller can be heard […] Emergency responders couldn’t get their vehicle to Good, Heller said. “They didn’t even have a stretcher. They just carried her out by her limbs.[“]
NBC: “It took about 15 minutes for EMS to arrive, Heller estimated, because vehicles were blocking the street.”
ordinary citizens […] patrol the streets too, warning neighbourhoods of incoming ICE raids, documenting what happens and sometimes offering legal advice
A friend in Minneapolis just sent me this video. Looks like thousands have come together for a vigil after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. [Video clip]
Although federal officers do have immunity in some circumstances, that protection applies only if their actions were authorized under federal law and “necessary and proper” in fulfilling federal duties. When federal officers violate federal law or act unreasonably when carrying out their duties, they can face state charges. […] States have a long history of prosecuting federal officials for allegedly using excessive force on the job.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has directed security forces to show restraint on economic protests. He distinguished between peaceful demonstrators and armed “rioters.”
[…]
Protesters have taken full control of a second city in Iran, Bojnord[*]. Protesters in Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, have taken control of the regime’s seminary, a stronghold.
* Mark Chadbourn: “Big resistance in the Kurdish areas.”
The governor’s office in Asqaneh, North Khorasan Province, is burning. Protesters have torn down the largest flag of the regime in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. Protesters have seized another regime governorate headquarters, this time in the city of Ashkhaneh, Samalqan County, North Khorasan Province. Unconfirmed reports that a third city, Karaj, is now in the hands of protesters. The statue of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani has been set on fire in Kashan.
An address by the eldest son of the Shah Reza Pahlavi to Iranian armed forces was broadcast from loudspeakers in Bandar Abbas. It called on them to scan a QR code on TV to register their defections. “It is your last chance.”
He is one of the mainstream figures of the Iranian opposition, which oppose the Islamic Republic of Iran. […] his father was overthrown and the monarchy was abolished […] Ideologically, he supports liberal democracy in Iran and has advocated a free referendum in Iran to determine the nature of the future government. Pahlavi has repeatedly called for protests against the Islamic Republic, and its removal. He has also advocated for Iran to become an ally of the West and Europe.
From the article, he seems not so much a leader as a celebrity on the sidelines trying to be relevant. In October, Israel was caught running a social media bot campaign exaggerating his influence and promoting monarchy.
One important characteristic of the 2025-2026 protests is that it has Reza Pahlavi, […] as one of its leaders. Many protesters want him to return to Iran. The exiled son of Iran’s last shah [in June] offered himself up as interim leader to take over running the country, as he called on the West to give its full-throated backing to regime change. [Politico citation]
He offered an amnesty to those working inside the state machinery who defect and help to bring it down, “provided that they commit now to join with the people.” A new “secure platform” is being set up for dissidents and internal opponents to coordinate their efforts to overthrow the dictatorship and help bring about a “free and democratic” society, he said.
[…]
Pahlavi, 64, has spent the past 46 years outside Iran after the Islamic revolution toppled the monarchy in 1979. The shah’s rule included its own feared state security police, and Pahlavi has many critics among opposition campaigners who do not want to see a return to monarchy. But he also has a passionate support base of monarchists inside and outside Iran
Uhhh… he can say good things, but maybe don’t tempt a would-be king with authority.
I snipped a line from the “Iran Domino” blog post @219: “The main problem facing the people’s revolt is that there is no obvious leader-in-waiting. […] Reza Pahlavi, desperately wants to be that figure, but he’s loathed by many in the country.”
KGsays
I don’t believe Mobster Don is preferable to a hypothetical Killer Kamala admin. I regard them both as irredeemably evil because they were willing and able to provide financial, material, and diplomatic support for a genocide, without which Israel would be unable to continue its genocidal campaign within hours. – beholder@397
If the Gaza gencoide was the only vital issue, that would be an almost reasonable response. But it clearly is not. The destruction of USAID alone is reckoned to have already led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. The drive toward fascism in the USA is clearly aimed at making it impossible ever to elect a US government which is not “irredeemably evil”. In the longer term, the attacks on climate science and medical science are likely to cause immense suffering, and millions if not billions of unnecessary deaths and in the former case, enormously increased the probability of complete civilizational breakdown. I could go on, but the conclusion is obvious: by choosing to vote third party, you have a share in the responsibility for all the additional suffering, premature death, and other disasters which a second Trump term has caused or will predictably cause. But you’re too much of a moral coward to admit it.
U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to block defense contractors like RTX from paying dividends or buying back shares until they speed up weapons production, a rare presidential strike at Wall Street norms that sent defense stocks lower and signaled sweeping changes for America’s military-industrial complex.
Trump and the Pentagon have criticized the defense industry for what they say are high costs and slow production and have promised dramatic changes to make production of war equipment more nimble.
There are real issues that have plagued defense contractors for years. Trump’s solution is a big executive order that does a lot of things that should be done through congress passing laws. The order has Hegseth playing favorites, picking individual companies to punish. A bunch of what is in his executive order about changing contracts now and in the future may be illegal but the government has more power on defense contracts then other contracts. Parts are sensible ideas but actually implementing them via executive order is likely over reaching.
Enforcing delivery on time better is a good idea but doing it will require the DOD not change orders either and history has shown that doesn’t work for development contracts. The DOD needs to restructure how it orders things to make much of this possible.
StevoRsays
@397. beholder (being unreasonably polite to you here for Lynna’s sake.)
@ badland – Because you asked nicely, and continuing this on the other thread is off topic:
No. It would be on topic there and it is off topic here.
I don’t believe Mobster Don is preferable to a hypothetical Killer Kamala admin. I regard them both as irredeemably evil because they were willing and able to provide financial, material, and diplomatic support for a genocide, without which Israel would be unable to continue its genocidal campaign within hours.
Except Kamala was NOT able to do so nor was she willing. She and Biden called for restraint, criticised Netanyahu, sanctioned extremist Israeli settlers and withheld some weapons – measures Trump reversed.
You imply that you think Trump and Kamala are equally “irredeemably” evil.
Let’s compare their records and the evidence shall we?
Trump
.* Responsible for the January 6th insurrection and attempted coup.
.* Convicted felon, multiple counts.
.* Known rapist – proven in Civil court, multiple other allegations that are very probably true and the tip of the iceberg metaphorically speaking
.* Demolished any chance of Climate action, attacked and lied about Climate science and reality doming an incalculable number to death and suffering needlessly and avoidably.
.* Ally of Netanyahu, Putin, PRC dictator Xi, probable Russian asset, wanna-be evil dictator who jokes about dropping feces on protesters and advocates violence against political opponents, protesters and journalists.
.* Responsible for millions of deaths due to his Covid 19 lack of actual serious responses and lies about the deadly virus and pandemic.
.* Responsible for the deaths, suffering and deportations of an unknown number of innocent migrants, refugees and, y’know, human beings and the terrorism and thuggery of ICE eg “Alligator Alcatraz” and smugly, sadistically cartoonishly proud of it.
.* Blatantly racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic and, oh yeah, a literal Hitler fan.
.* Is actively trying to destroy Democracy and impose Fascist tyranny on the USA and broader world.
.* Kidnapped a leader of a foreign state and his wife in Venezuela, blatantly stealing that nation’s oil.
.* Very probably a child rapist named in the Epstein files and is a known friend of that known sex offender.
That’s just part of Trump’s summarised kakistocratic record too as we all know and – thanks to you in part – are living through now planet-wide.
OTOH we have Kamala Harris who was the Democratic party’s Presidential nominee who ran on a typical relatively progressive certainly non-Fascist Democratic party platform. Killed no one, raped and sexually assaulted no one, is a rational science-accepting human being who followed Democratic norms and conventions even though she was unfairly robbed of the presidency by voter suprression, third party spoilers incl the Abandon Biden/ Harris self-destructive fools and maybe Musk too.
That you think their level of “evil” is comparable at all let alone equal is absurd beyond superlatives.
Your choice of descriptions wrongly and without any justification using “killer” in front of her name is obscene, probably defamatory and utterly false and anyone can tell they are Megaparsecs apart in ethics and on the scale of good to evil with Kamala at the good end and Trump at its furthest ethical opposite.
You call her a “killer” yet refuse to note and accept and call out Trump as a genocidaire and only attack the Democratic party and its leaders as your focus and that says everything we need to know about you and your real politics here.
StevoRsays
For the record for folks to see for themselves the actual on topic thread where this discussion starting with beholder’s shifting his off topic response to here in #397 is here :
Oh and beholder has still refused to definitely state that out of Kamala vs Trump, Kamala was the ethically and politically correct choice and refuses to directly answer that simple question.
‘They decided on a narrative’: Chris Hayes rips DHS ‘lies’ after deadly ICE shooting. “A 37-year-old American citizen, the mother of a young child is dead tonight. She was shot in the face by an agent of the federal government, and that government has spent the day telling despicable lies about her,” says Chris Hayes on the deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
‘ICE is hurting our people’: Minnesota Lt. Gov. Flanagan reacts to fatal shooting. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan joins “All In” to discuss an ICE officer’s fatal shooting of a Minnesotan woman, identified by authorities as Renee Nicole Good.
‘Point blank in the face’: Eyewitness details deadly ICE shooting. Emily Heller tells Chris Hayes what she saw when an ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis. “There was no doubt in mind that she was fatally shot immediately,” says Heller.
Video is 7:01 minutes.
StevoRsays
Owen Jones on the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good linked here :
Bushfire risk and continuing heatwave in Adelaide and throughout much of eastern Australia currently. Today was our second consecutive day above 40 degrees Celsius – 43.3 (109.94°F) in Adelaide.
Tomorrow is predicted to be a worrying bushfire risk day here locally whilst in Victoria people are already losing their homes and hopefully not more as I type this :
Firefighters continued to battle a number of bush and grassfires, with the most severe at Mt Lawson State Park in Victoria’s north-east, also called the Walwa fire.
By Wednesday afternoon, it had burned through around 1,000 hectares of land, a figure that was likely to grow, as communities including Bungil, Granya and Thologolong were urged to leave immediately.
About 305 firefighters were working to contain the out-of-control blaze, assisted by about a dozen aircraft and 30 bulldozers establishing control lines.
Oh and another conseqeucne of Global Overheating and escalating feedback for more and worse fires and heat :
Australia’s trees must contend with many lethal factors, from intense megafires to introduced diseases and invasive species.
But beyond these specific pressures, new research indicates the underlying natural death rate of trees in major forests across the country is rising.
This increase in tree deaths is due to higher average temperatures from climate change, according to a study published in the journal Nature Plants, and it has scientists concerned that forests will sequester less carbon dioxide in years to come.
“The president plans to use tariff revenue that doesn’t exist to increase the Pentagon budget to wildly unnecessary levels.”
As this week got underway, Donald Trump whined online that the “Fake News Media refuses to talk about” the $600 billion in revenue generated by his trade tariffs. And later the president, who’s earned a reputation for making up numbers that make him happy, told House Republicans that the administration has “taken in $650 billion.” [Lies from Trump]
These numbers were a little closer to reality than earlier claims (last September, he told U.S. military leaders that his tariffs had taken in “trillions of dollars”), but the reason that news outlets “refuse to talk about” Trump’s made-up statistics is that they’re not true. According to the Trump administration’s own estimates, tariffs generated roughly $200 billion in revenue in 2025.
Complicating matters, Trump continues to make new plans to spend money he doesn’t have. The president published this message to his social media platform on Wednesday afternoon:
After long and difficult negotiations with Senators, Congressmen, Secretaries, and other Political Representatives, I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars. This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe.
He added that this massive increase in military spending is possible “because of Tariffs, and the tremendous Income that they bring.” [Delusion and/or lies emanating from Trump]
Trump concluded his message by boasting that, under his vision, he can boost the Pentagon’s budget by an additional $500 billion while simultaneously paying down the national debt. [JFC! The depths of delusional thinking.]
At this point, we could talk about the fact that the “long and difficult negotiations” Trump referenced didn’t happen in reality. [LOL !!. Trump wants us to believe he was actually working.] We could also talk about the fact that the Pentagon does not need, and did not ask for, $1.5 trillion. We could note that the national debt has climbed by roughly $2 trillion since Trump returned to power [!!] and the idea that he can lower that total while cutting taxes for the wealthy and vastly increasing military spending is plainly bonkers.
But as important as these elements are, there’s another dimension to this that shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle.
It’s true that Trump’s tariffs are bringing in money — that’s not surprising, as tariffs are for all intents and purposes taxes, and taxes generate revenue — but the president’s claims about the totals reflect someone who’s either terribly confused about fiscal basics or brazenly lying.
That’s just part of the problem, however. Making matters worse is the fact that Trump has told Americans that he intends to use tariff revenue 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.
In recent months, 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.
Now, the president intends to also use this same pile of money to increase military spending by $500 billion.
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 six times, especially when you don’t have that dollar.”
Last summer, Trump boasted online, “[O]ur Country is doing very well and can afford just about anything.” This bogus assumption has led to him to make all kinds of promises that he’ll never be able to keep.
Followup to comments Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406, and 408, 410, 415, and 421.
More character assassination of the victim of ICE in Minneapolis. An ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Macklin, an unarmed woman. Trump administration lackeys and ICE goons claim that she was using her car as a weapon. Video of the incident shows those claims to be lies.
[…] Paul Sperry, a “reporter” with the right-wing RealClear Investigations, started to dig into Good’s history to find ways to justify her killing. He landed on the fact that Good once donated to Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Federal records reveal Renee Nicole Macklin—the fatally shot protester whom an eyewitness said drove ‘the main car leading the protest’ to impede ICE agents (inclg clipping the agent who shot her) in Minneapolis today—was a supporter of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders,” Sperry wrote on X, suggesting that the one $2.70 contribution she made justifies being shot to death.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance tried to disparage Good as being a leftist, writing in a post on X, “Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over?”
Again, multiple videos show that Good was not trying to run the officer over, so the entire premise of Vance’s sick post is a lie. But what’s more, if Vance thinks being political is cause for being shot to death, then by his logic was Charlie Kirk’s killing justified, too?
The character assassination after her literal assassination at the hands of a federal agent got even worse from there.
Fox News’ Jesse Watters used his show to point out that Good had pronouns in her bio and was a lesbian, which in Trump’s America now is justification for being killed by federal agents. [despicable “news” coverage from Fox] [video]
Other Republicans said Good shouldn’t have been at the ICE enforcement operation in the first place—as if now protesting is illegal in the United States.
“She never in a million years should have been there to begin with,” another RealClear Investigations “reporter” named Mark Hemingway wrote in a post on X.
Good was in a public place to observe the behavior of ICE agents—who have been lawlessly rounding people up and violently arresting them, then later lying about their conduct after people get hurt. Given how the Trump administration is blatantly lying about an incident that was caught on video, imagine what ICE would get away with if their actions weren’t being observed.
Ultimately, the most popular justification for Good’s life being snuffed is that she just should’ve complied with law enforcement.
“If you impede the actions of our law enforcement as they seek to repel foreign invaders from our country, you get what’s coming to you. I do not feel bad for the woman that was involved,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) said in an appearance on Newsmax. [video]
Setting aside how absolutely vile Fine’s comment is, video shows that ICE was giving Good conflicting orders.>/b>
“The video shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the driver of the vehicle turned her wheels to avoid the ICE agents who surrounded her, screamed profanity at her, and gave her conflicting orders. They escalated the situation, they put the public in danger, they killed her without justification, and they kept firing at her after her car had turned past them.
Everyone should ask why the Trump Administration keeps lying about this—why they are telling you to disbelieve your own eyes,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote in a post on X. “An American citizen […] gunned down by masked agents sent there to make people afraid. The Vice President’s lies are despicable.”
What’s more, even if she wasn’t complying, agents are legally barred from using deadly force against someone simply for not complying with orders. [!]
“It was an outright murder,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told reporters. “This officer needs to not only be fired and suspended, but based on the video, he needs to be charged with murder.”
[…] In a Wednesday briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt didn’t quell any concerns of the U.S. military involving itself in more foreign affairs either. “All options are always on the table for President Trump, ” Leavitt said in terms of whether or not he would use military intervention to seize Greenland.
Some hardcore right-wingers like accused rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate have jumped on board with this.
“I volunteer to fight in the battle of Greenland,” the misogynistic influencer turned failed boxer tweeted earlier this week. According to Tate, Greenland “WAS PROMISED TO THE USA 3000 YEARS AGO” (yes, in all caps).
“Fuck them eskimos,” he eloquently added during a shirtless podcast rant posted to X.
This sentiment of taking what’s owed while beating their chest also appears on extreme right-winger Nick Fuentes’ X account.
“Your oil, our choice. Forever 🇺🇸,” he tweeted Wednesday, referring to the president’s openly aired motivations for the U.S.’s control of Venezuela. Fuentes notably pulled inspiration from his “Your body, my choice. Forever,” slogan that spread across social media in 2024.
However, even the extreme antisemitic influencer stepped away from support of the president when it comes to meddling in “nation building.”
“Initially seemed like a solid operation to cleanly, bloodlessly, and quickly remove Maduro from power last night,” he tweeted. “But this new policy of ‘running Venezuela’ with US soldiers sounds like a massive over-commitment. I have zero confidence in nation-building. Big mistake.”
Laura Loomer, however, has taken a more blanketed approach to all of Trump’s foreign takeover aspirations.
“American supremacy is America First. Our foreign policy should alway [sic] be about AMERICAN SUPREMACY!” she tweeted Wednesday. “The President of the United States should always be the Supreme Leader, and it should be known to all world leaders.”
The military assault on Venezuela, the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, the launch of the White House’s new revisionist website about January 6—these three events convey a powerful and unsettling message from Donald Trump and his crew: Violence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want. […]
Text quoted above is an excerpt from longer essay written by David Corn.
Five Senate Republicans voted Thursday to advance a bipartisan resolution on the War Powers Act to block President Trump from using military force against Venezuela, a proposal that if enacted would unravel the administration’s plan to take control of Venezuela’s oil exports.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the sponsor of the bipartisan measure, voted with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) to discharge the resolution out of committee and bring it to the floor.
A vote to pass the resolution itself is expected next week — or possibly later Thursday, if there is bipartisan agreement to speed up its timing on the floor.
The resolution still needs to pass the House — where a similar measure failed in a close vote last month — and it faces a certain veto from Trump.
There likely aren’t enough votes in either chamber to override Trump, something that requires a two-thirds majority.
Even so, Senate passage of the resolution to block further use of military force “within or against Venezuela” without authorization from Congress is a major symbolic victory for lawmakers alarmed over Trump’s threats to project power throughout the Western Hemisphere. [True]
[…]
[…] We begin with ICE murdering a Minneapolis woman in the face […]
Her name was Renee Good, because of course it was. […]
Indivisible will be having a phone call tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. That seems like something we should all join! (Mobilize )
The immediate and flabbergasting lies of Tricia McLaughlin and Kristi Noem. I’m so dumb that when I saw Noem was doing a second presser, I thought she might be distancing DHS from the shooter. How can you even stand how dumb I am? No link to that unutterable filth.
Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois has introduced impeachment articles for Noem. […]
Here’s the full video, obtained by the Minnesota Reformer. It’s longer than what we linked yesterday and has more aftermath. It’s okay if you don’t watch it. [video]
[…]
“A sheet of ice two miles thick (and also some remarkable people)”
When President Trump first started fantasizing about seizing Greenland for the U.S., it sounded farcical—a little Gilbert and Sullivan, or maybe The Mouse that Roared. In the wake of America’s attack on Caracas, however, it now seems as likely as not that we’ll soon be landing troops in Nuuk, a truly hideous prospect that we should all try to head off. Here’s my small effort:
First off, I think it’s a very real possibility.
Here’s Stephen Miller on Monday, talking with Jake Tapper:
TAPPER: Can you rule out the US is going to take Greenland by force?
MILLER: Greenland should be part of the US. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US is the power of NATO
TAPPER: So force is on the table?
MILLER: Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over future of Greenland
And here’s our leader himself, speaking to a press gaggle on Air Force One while a beaming Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-Obsequious) grinned by his side:
Trump: We need Greenland. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships.
Reporter: What would the justification be for a claim to Greenland?
Trump: The EU needs us to have it.
None of this makes any actual sense—Greenland is not covered with Chinese and Russian ships, the EU does not want us to have it (European leaders united today to say “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” which seems pretty clear), and Denmark asserts control over Greenland in pretty much the same way Washington asserts control over, say, Alaska or Vermont.
In fact, though, Denmark has been slowly loosening that control over the decades—not because it wants to sell it to America, but because it recognizes that the people who live there, most of whom are Inuit, should have the greatest say in how it’s managed. Greenlanders have exercised that say in ways that would be uncongenial to the White House: for instance, civil partnerships for gay people have been standard since 1996, and gay marriage legal since 2016 when the island’s parliament approved it by a 28-0 vote. Under the Kinguaassiorsinnaajunnaarsagaaneq pillugu inatsit law, sex changes have been allowed since 1976. In other words, Trump’s claim that Greenlanders “want to be with us” is palpable nonsense—a poll last January found that 85 percent of the population opposed the idea. [!]
Discerning Trump’s “real” reason for wanting Greenland is a pointless exercise; he’s a sad, ancient baby, and babies just want. He seems to think that the point of a ruler is to acquire more territory, and that he more or less owns by divine right the land masses adjacent to our country. (MAGA bloggers this week were busily talking about “vassal states” across the hemisphere). [!] There are minerals there, but hard to get at. Oh, and there’s petroleum in and around Greenland as well, and that usually sings a siren song to this child of the oil-driven 20th century.
Really, however, there’s only one truly vital strategic asset in Greenland, one thing that could change the world. And that’s the ice that covers almost all its landmass.
I’ve been up on this ice sheet—I’ve hiked up glaciers from the tideline, climbing and climbing till the sea disappears behind you and all you can see in every direction is white. It is uncannily beautiful.
I helped organize a trip there in 2018 so that two very fine poets could record a piece from atop this ice sheet. Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner came from her home in the Marshall Islands, which is already slipping under a rising sea (and which has long known about U.S. imperialism; part of the atoll is still radioactive and off limits, thanks to U.S. bomb testing in the 1950s); Aka Niviana is a native Greenlander whose home has begun to melt, a melt that if it continues will guarantee the submersion of Polynesia, and much else.
They stood there on that ice, in a chill summer wind, and recited their long and majestic poem for a camera; my job was to stand just outside its range with a pair of sleeping bags that they could wrap themselves in between takes. “Rise: From One Island to Another,” as their work was called, has won both prizes and large audiences on YouTube; it will, I think, be one of the documents of this global warming era that someday people will look at in a kind of outraged awe, one more proof that we knew exactly what was coming and did nothing about it.
We were camped above the Eagle Glacier—Jason Box, the American-born climatologist now living in Denmark who helped lead the trip had named it that because of its shape when he first visited five years earlier, “but now the head and the wings of the bird have melted away. I don’t know what we should call it now, but the eagle is dead.” And that’s true of so much of the island; we watched as one iceberg after another came crashing off the head of glaciers, each one raising the level of the ocean by some infinitesimal amount.
Greenland holds 23 feet of sea level rise, should we eventually melt it all. That will take a while, but we’re doing our best. It’s been losing mass steadily for the last quarter-century—it lost 105 billion tons of ice (billion with a b) in 2025, and the ice was melting well into September, unusual in a place where winter usually descends in late August. The people of Greenland, by the way, recognize all this: they passed a law in 2021 banning all new oil exploration and drilling—the government described it as “a natural step” because Greenland “takes the climate crisis seriously.” (More than two-thirds of their power comes from renewables, mostly hydro).
I found those Greenlanders I met to be hardy, thrifty people very much in tune with their place. I spent a memorable afternoon with Box planting trees outside the former American air base in Narsarsuaq in an effort to, among other things, soak up some carbon dioxide. And I spent an equally pleasant afternoon drinking beer with him and the rest of our party at a microbrewery in Saqqannguaq (one of several in the country) which brews “with the purest drinking water on earth, coming from the Greenlandic ice cap” and hence “free of toxins, chemicals and micro plastics.” Highly recommend the IPA, reminder of yet another imperial adventure.
Obviously seizing Greenland would be a terrible idea because it would break up NATO and put America at loggerheads with the liberal democracies of Europe (though that may be the single biggest incentive for the administration). Obviously it would be a gross example of modern colonization, obliterating the rights of the people who live there. Obviously it would raise tensions around the world even higher, and send the strongest possible signal that Beijing should just go grab Taiwan. Lots of people are talking about those things, though there’s not the slightest sign that anyone in power is listening. (Stephen Miller’s wife has tweeted out a map of Greenland decked out in red and white stripes).
But in a rational world what we’d mostly be talking about is all that ice. That’s what, for the other 8 billion people on the planet, actually matters about this island. It could easily add a foot or more to the level of the ocean before the century is out, all by itself (the Antarctic, much bigger but slower to melt, will eventually add much more). A foot is a lot—on a typical beach on, say, the Jersey shore, which slopes up at about one degree, that brings the ocean about 90 feet inland.
And the fresh water pouring off Greenland seems already to be disrupting the great conveyor belt currents that bring warm water north from the equator, maintaining the climates of the surrounding continents. That too could raise—by significant amounts—the level of the sea, especially along the coast of the southeast U.S. (and also plunge Europe into the deep freeze even as the rest of the planet warms).
The stakes are so enormous that they make the Trumpian greed for this land seem all the punier and more puerile. Here’s how Jetnil-Kijiner and Niviana put it in their poem:
We demand that the world see beyond
SUVs, ACs, their pre-package convenience
Their oil-slicked dreams, beyond the belief
That tomorrow will never happen
And yet there’s a generosity to their witness – a recognition that whoever started the trouble, we’re now in it together.
“The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said the FBI’s decision to take over the investigation into the deadly shooting in Minneapolis will keep state officials from accessing evidence.”
Minnesota authorities said Thursday that the FBI was taking over the investigation into an immigration officer’s deadly shooting of a woman in Minneapolis, freezing them out of the inquiry and blocking them from accessing evidence. [What fresh new fuckery is this?]
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday, setting off protests in Minneapolis that continued overnight and into Thursday morning.
Authorities initially said the investigation into what happened was being conducted by the Minneapolis Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), a state agency, and the FBI. The Minneapolis Police Department described them both as “leading the investigation.”
On Thursday morning, however, the BCA said in a statement that it had been told by the FBI that the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis “had reversed course: the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” [!]
As a result, the BCA said, the agency “reluctantly” pulled out of the investigation.
[…] The decision by federal officials to unilaterally take over the investigation marks a break from past instances when local, state and federal authorities worked together on high-profile inquiries. After a police officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd in 2020, igniting widespread racial justice protests, the FBI and BCA carried out a joint investigation.
[…] Video from the scene raises doubts about some parts of the administration’s defense of the shooting. Footage showed that while the vehicle moved toward the ICE agent while he stood in front of it, the agent was able to move aside and fire at least two of his three shots from the side of the vehicle, a Washington Post analysis found.
Emily Heller, who witnessed the shooting, also told The Post that the ICE agents appeared to give conflicting instructions to Good, indicating they wanted her to move her car before advancing on the vehicle.
[…] After protests stretched overnight, hundreds of demonstrators angered by Good’s death gathered Thursday morning outside a government office building to heckle and scream at federal officers as they drove in and out of the parking lot.
“No more Minnesota nice; we don’t want your fascist ICE,” they chanted.
A line of officers stationed at the parking lot entrances admonished those filling the roadway to step back. Officers deployed tear gas at one point and arrested at least a few people. […]
[…] Renee Nicole Good, 37, was an award-winning poet, a mother of three and a movie lover, according to online records and family members. She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk and won an Academy of American Poets Prize for undergraduate students in 2020.
[…] Good had a 15-year-old daughter and two sons, ages 12 and 6 […]
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) said video of the incident shows “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”
“There was a time when a Republican president wouldn’t tell private companies what to charge, what to pay or how much to make. Those days are over.” [Sounds Russian.]
Related video at the link.
A few days before Christmas, Donald Trump acknowledged that insurance subsidies were poised to end for tens of millions of Americans, but the president suggested he had some ideas about addressing the underlying issue. In fact, Trump announced his belief that private insurance companies’ profits are beyond what they’re “entitled” to.
He went on to say that he would soon tell private insurers to lower prices “way, way down,” before adding that he also expects his administration to “have a certain control over the drug companies.” [WTF?]
There’s no reason to assume that the White House will follow through on any of this, or that it even has the legal authority to try. But the circumstances were unusual: While Republican Party orthodoxy has emphasized the free market for generations, Americans saw a GOP president declare his intention to dictate to private companies what they should charge and how much they should make.
As 2026 gets underway, Trump is applying this same perspective to other businesses. The New York Times reported:
Ahead of a scheduled signing of executive orders [on Wednesday afternoon], President Trump said that he would move to cut pay for the executives in the defense industry, and ban stock buybacks and the issuing of dividends for those companies. It is unclear how that could be enforced, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for details.
Specifically, the Republican said by way of his social media platform that he envisions what would be effectively a salary cap for executives at defense contractors: “No Executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars” unless they make the changes to production plants that Trump wants to see.
That was followed by a related message specifically targeting Raytheon, a private company that makes missiles and bombs, which the president said he expects to invest more of its profits in production.
While there’s ample room for conversation about the merits of such demands, let’s not miss the forest for the trees: That he’s even making these demands reflects an approach to capitalism that Republicans have fundamentally rejected in the recent past.
What’s more, it keeps happening. The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip published a provocative analysis on this last summer:
A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s. Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China. Recent examples include President Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the ‘golden share’ Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct.
Ip’s report added that it would be wrong to characterize this as “socialism,” because it more closely resembles “state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.”
The Journal published a related analysis around the same time, noting that the American president “has no qualms about acting as the micromanager in chief,” which includes “telling corporate bosses how to run their companies.”
The president calling for the ouster of Intel’s CEO because of something he saw on Fox Business was certainly a dramatic example, but as the article noted, it was part of a pattern. “Trump has told Detroit carmakers not to raise prices and demanded Walmart ‘eat the tariffs.’ He has pressured the Washington Commanders football team to change its name and wants Coca-Cola to use cane sugar instead of corn syrup.”
[…] Trump isn’t challenging corporations and executives on behalf of workers, he’s doing so on behalf of his own whims and quest for power. (In fact, as he tries to exert influence over the private sector, the White House is making life harder, not better, for workers.)
During the 2024 race, when many business leaders lined up behind the GOP ticket, they likely thought Republican rule would mean corporate tax breaks and fewer regulations. […] those same business leaders have also ended up with more than they probably bargained for.
[…] As he tries to dictate to America’s private sector, Trump is also imposing erratic policies on trade tariffs and immigration that are bad for employers.
The incumbent president has also launched an aggressive campaign to undermine public confidence in the Federal Reserve; told businesses to accept lower profit margins; targeted the nation’s system of higher education, which employers rely on to train their workforces; demanded that employers alter their hiring practices to reflect Trump’s contempt for diversity of all kinds, and has even made it more difficult to rely on the integrity of government data, which businesses rely on for decision-making. [All true.]
[…] I’m not going to talk today about how we got here and strategies for getting out. All I want to do right now is to say that we should be clear about what is happening. American fascism is on the march, and anyone who balks at saying that clearly, who makes excuses and pretends that Trump and the people he brought in aren’t monsters, is deeply unpatriotic. If we are to have a chance at saving democracy, our first duty must be clarity. No sanewashing, no bothsidesing. Only facing the horrible truth can set us free.
The top federal prosecutor in the Northern District of New York is serving in the position unlawfully, a judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield’s ruling against acting U.S. Attorney John Sarcone III is the fifth time that a judge has ruled that a top prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi was serving in the position unlawfully.
Similarly to other cases, Schofield ruled the Justice Department had tried to use impermissible work-arounds to keep Sarcone in office despite a 120-day limit for U.S. attorneys whose nominations had not been confirmed by the Senate.
This gets in the way of the Letitia James investigation and harassment campaign by the Trump DOJ. Not much to say other then the DOJ has already tried to dodge around how US attorney’s are appointed and it has not worked yet.
Hehe, I’ve wondered when that hyphen would show up. =)
Not that it bothered me. You’ve been saving yourself a keystroke. Actually, I’ve second-guessed myself a number of times.
Wiktionary acknowledges the dropped hyphen. Merriam-Webster doesn’t. Random language sites say it’s grammatically incorrect but defeatedly admit it’s out there informally. American Heritage accepts it without qualification, which is ironic.
James Parton […] was dismayed by what he saw as the excessive permissiveness of Webster’s Third published in 1961 [applying labels such as “nonstandard” or “informal” too sparingly]. […] Parton tried to buy [Merriam] so that he could undo the changes. When that failed, he contracted […] to publish a new dictionary. The AHD was edited by William Morris and relied on a panel of 105 prominent writers and speakers, selected for their linguistic conservatism. However, Morris was inconsistent in applying the panel’s guidance, frequently overriding it with his own editorial judgment.
birgerjohanssonsays
British language is being impoversished by conformism.
Sky Captain, I think that hyphen hides out in my subconscious somewhere. Occasionally it emerges, and most of the time it refuses to be seen. I should check The New Yorker Style Guide.
In other news:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he would seek a 50% increase for the military budget in 2027, asking for an unheard-of $1.5 trillion to build what he called his “Dream Military.”
Trump insanely claimed in a Truth Social post that the $500 billion increase he wants Congress to approve would be paid for by his economy-destroying tariffs—which are merely a consumption tax that disproportionately hurt the poorest Americans.
It’s an absurd claim on its face. Trump’s tariffs generated $289 billion in 2025, nowhere close to the half-a-trillion dollars Trump is asking for. Meanwhile, he expects tariff revenue to also pay for $2,000 checks to middle- and low-income Americans, subsidies for farmers hurt by said tariffs, and bonuses for military families.
Even more infuriating is that the budget increase Trump is demanding would likely be used for his pet projects, including the Golden Dome and Iron Fleet—in which he wants a new series of battleships built and named after himself. [True. head/desk]
The Golden Dome project is, for lack of a better phrase, dumb as hell. The United States does not have neighbors firing missiles into our airspace. And creating a “Trump class” of battleships is just the egomaniac in chief trying to look like a tough guy.
Trump is asking for this obscene increase in military funding while also cutting safety net benefits and refusing to extend subsidies that help millions afford their health care plans.
For reference, the cost of extending the enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans would cost $35 billion annually—or about 7% of the extra $500 billion Trump wants for defense. [!]
Ultimately, it’s unlikely Trump will get his massive military spending boost. With the filibuster in place, Senate Democrats would likely block the additional needless spending Trump wants.
Republicans could attempt to pass the added funds through budget reconciliation, a process by which a simple majority of senators can advance a bill, though there are added restrictions on what a bill can include. But that would likely require Republicans to find $500 billion in spending offsets. Good luck to them explaining why everyday Americans must shoulder cuts to the social safety net in order to fund absurd military projects.
At the end of the day, calling for an insane increase in military spending while also claiming there isn’t enough money to help Americans afford food and health care is just the latest data point proving Trump doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. [True]
Lynna, please follow up on your confusing presentation of “follow up,” “follow-up” and “followup” on this thread.
Yes, “follow-up” is hyphenated when used as a noun (a subsequent action) or an adjective (describing something), but it is two separate words, “follow up,” when used as a verb (the action of checking in). Writing it as one word, “followup,” is generally considered incorrect in standard English.
Examples:
Verb (two words): “I need to follow up on the report”.
Noun (hyphenated): “I sent a follow-up email”.
Adjective (hyphenated): “We scheduled a follow-up meeting”.
A few dictionaries, such as the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, list followup, written as one word, as an alternative to follow-up with a hyphen. However, others such as Merriam-Webster list only follow-up as standard.
I have been using the non-standard “followup” in order to save a keystroke. That is not a good excuse.
Some people are sighing and accepting “followup” as a trend they cannot stop. :-)
Public schools across Minneapolis are closed today and tomorrow after armed Border Patrol agents swarmed onto the campus of a high school as school let out yesterday, just hours after other DHS goons murdered US citizen Renee Good and the government lied about it. The school district said it was cancelling all classes, extracurricular activities, and adult education “out of an abundance of caution” to protect the safety of students. Because remote e-learning is only allowed for weather emergencies, not ICE stormings, classes were cancelled altogether.
The Kids Are Targets Too
Administrators at Roosevelt High School said the DHS thugs had tackled people, handcuffed two members of school staff, and sprayed bystanders with chemical agents. Here’s video of part of the raid, showing a Border Patrol agent firing pepper spray at a student who threw a snowball, and a teacher trying to herd students away from the federal goons. At the 26-second mark, you can see top Border Patrol creep Gregory Bovino walk onto the campus in the background while being interviewed by a local reporter, or possibly a DHS propaganda flack. [video]
Minnesota Public Radio has a photo of Bovino bravely getting an earful from a protester near the school while two big masked agents flank him; one has his hand on his assault rifle just in case.
A school administrator who requested anonymity told MPR News,
“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down. […]
“They don’t care. They’re just animals,” the official added. “I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
As of blogtime, the Trump administration doesn’t appear to have demanded the school official be turned over for prosecution as a domestic terrorist.
The same anonymous school official said that armed officers wearing Border Patrol insignia rolled up on the high school in several SUVs and broke out the window of at least one vehicle, after which neighbors and volunteers who monitor DHS raids also converged on the school as well. The Border Patrol goons “started coming on the property of the school and pushing people and tackling people and shooting pepper spray and pepper balls. And they handcuffed two of our employees,” the witness said. Some students went to a nearby library to take shelter.
Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP also reports that Green Central Elementary School, a few blocks away from where Good was killed, went into lockdown after the shooting.
“That was way too close to school to feel comfortable,” said Celia Mejia, whose daughter attends the school.
She and other parents raced to Green Central Elementary, which went under lockdown, to pick up their kids.
When asked how frightening the situation was, Julia Haas, who took her child home early, said, “As a parent, very, and as a human being very. Nobody should have to deal with this ever.”
Well look, lady, if people would just cooperate with the ethnic cleansing agenda there’d be nothing to worry about, and could you please show your papers while you’re at it? A student at Roosevelt told the station that Border Patrol vehicles blocked off parts of the road in front of the high school, presumably because all students and faculty in Minnesota are potential domestic terrorists whose movements must be restricted.
In a carefully worded email to families, Roosevelt Principal Christian Ledesma described the DHS assault on the school in the most inoffensive terms he could apparently come up with, saying the school
“instituted a lockout due to law enforcement presence outside of our school involving a vehicle that stopped near our building” after the school’s regular dismissal time. Staff and students “witnessed law enforcement engage with people at Roosevelt,” Ledesma added.
Wouldn’t want to say “tackled” or “gassed” and get people all worked up. […]
DHS Thug Stomps Out Memorial To Renee Good, Because He Can.
Wednesday afternoon, a uniformed federal cop kicked away candles at an impromptu memorial for Renee Good, then got in the face of a citizen who objected, pushing the man away. Americans who object to Trump’s ethnic cleansing campaign, or to the murder of other Americans, are nothing to these creeps. […]
President Donald Trump plans to build his controversial ballroom as tall as the White House’s main mansion itself, the project’s chief architect told a federal review committee Thursday — a significant change of plans that breaks with long-standing architectural norms requiring additions to be shorter than the main building.
Architect Shalom Baranes told the National Capital Planning Commission that the president’s plans call for the building to be about 60 feet high on its north side and 70 feet high on its south side. That differs from representations made as recently as August, when a National Park Service official said the building would be 55 feet tall, according to an environmental assessment.
“The heights will match exactly,” Baranes told the panel.
Baranes also disclosed that the project’s footprint would be about 45,000 square feet, roughly half the size that the administration has described since announcing the project in July. Of that, the ballroom itself would total about 22,000 square feet and would be designed to accommodate roughly 1,000 guests. White House officials have repeatedly said the building would span 90,000 square feet of White House grounds, which Baranes said includes a second floor — a clarification introduced as federal oversight bodies begin an accelerated review of a project for which core specifications continue to evolve.
[…] The White House said meeting with committee staffers and submitting conceptual renderings — rather than detailed blueprints — satisfied the judge’s instruction to start engaging with both commissions by the end of the year. [planning and fine arts commission, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation]
[…] Lawmakers and watchdog groups have repeatedly called for more transparency on the estimated $400 million project being funded by private donors — many without disclosing their contributions. Many of the donors the White House has identified — including Amazon, Lockheed Martin and Palantir — have business before the administration, such as seeking future federal contracts or eyeing potential acquisitions.
President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” [OMFG] brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” [eyebrow-raising]
“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”
When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.
“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide. [!]
[…] Even as he characterized the norms of the post-World War II order as unnecessary burdens on a superpower, Mr. Trump was dismissive of the idea that the leader of China, Xi Jinping, or President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could use similar logic to the detriment of the United States. On topic after topic, he made clear that in his mind, U.S. power is the determining factor — and that previous presidents have been too cautious to make use of it for political supremacy or national profit.
The president’s insistence that Greenland must become part of the United States was a prime example of his worldview. It was not enough to exercise the U.S. right, under a 1951 treaty, to reopen long-closed military bases on the huge landmass, which is a strategically important crossroads for U.S., European, Chinese and Russian naval operations.
[…] He seemed unconcerned that the last major nuclear arms control agreement with Russia was set to expire in four weeks, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear powers free to expand their arsenals without limit, for the first time in half a century.
“If it expires, it expires,” he said. “We’ll just do a better agreement,” […]
On the domestic front, Mr. Trump suggested that judges only have power to restrict his domestic policy agenda — from the deployment of the National Guard to the imposition of tariffs — “under certain circumstances.”
But he was already considering workarounds. He raised the possibility that if his tariffs issued under emergency authorities were struck down by the Supreme Court, he could repackage them as licensing fees. And Mr. Trump, who said he was elected to restore law and order, reiterated that he was willing to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military inside the United States and federalize some National Guard units if he felt it was important to do so. […]
President Trump insisted more than once during an interview with The New York Times that he “always” respects the results of elections — even as he repeated his attacks on the trustworthiness of a system that twice landed him in the White House.
“I always respect the results of elections,” he said at one point, before quickly adding that U.S. elections are always “rigged” and “dishonest.” He added a claim that if Democrats “didn’t cheat, they couldn’t win.”
Mr. Trump’s pronouncement — one day after the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by supporters who embraced his claims that the 2020 election was rigged — came in response to a simple question. If Democrats won the 2026 midterms, would he abide by the result?
Mr. Trump, who has not accepted that he lost the 2020 presidential election despite having failed in dozens of courts to challenge the results, has consistently sought to undermine faith in the voting process. Over the years, he and his supporters have accused his opponents of using mail-in ballots, the lack of a national voter ID law and other processes to steal votes from him. But experts reject claims there is widespread voter fraud.
His efforts to erode public confidence in the electoral process this week included an effort to formally rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol using the White House’s official website. On the same day, Mr. Trump told congressional Republicans that he feared Democratic victories in the coming midterm elections because they could lead to him being impeached for a third time.
Mr. Trump has stopped short of calling for an end to elections. Doing so, he told House Republicans, might make him look like a dictator. And after all, as he told the Times reporters who spoke to him at length in his office on Wednesday, it was nice to win.
“I won the last election by, I made it too big to rig,” he said.
Then he renewed his claim that he won the 2020 race.
“I shouldn’t complain, I won three times. I mean I won three times,” Mr. Trump said. “I did great the second time, and I didn’t get credited with that.”
Avelo Airlines will stop flying deportation charters for the Department of Homeland Security, ending its service for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after less than a year. Since publicizing its new business arrangement in April, the low-fare carrier faced protests, boycotts and backlash from travelers, flight attendant unions, local politicians and immigration activists.
Federal agents shot two people were shot this afternoon in Portland, Oregon, the city government said.
Portland police responded to a report of a shooting on Southeast Main Street just before 2:20 p.m.
“Officers confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting,” the city said. “Portland Police were not involved in the incident.”
At 2:24 p.m., police got information that someone was asking for help and officers “found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds,” the city said.
The conditions of the injured people were not known, the city said. Officers used a tourniquet when responding to the injured, it said. The two injured people were taken to the hospital, the city said.
“Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents,” the city said.
Police Chief Chief Bob Day called for patience.
“We are still in the early stages of this incident,” Day said in a statement. “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”
Text quoted in comment 453 is confusing. Here is reporting from The New York Times:
Federal agents shot two people in Portland, Ore., Thursday afternoon, officials said, prompting city and state leaders to demand an end to an immigration crackdown in the city while also urging residents of a community known for political dissent to remain calm.
Details were scant, but city officials announced that the police responded to a report of gunshots in southeast Portland at 2:18 p.m. Pacific Time. Officers were told a man had been shot and was requesting help; the police found a man and a woman with gunshot wounds, according to a police press release.
It was not clear what condition the two victims were in. Mayor Keith Wilson said they were “shot and injured by federal agents.”
Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Portland’s City Council president, said during a council meeting Thursday afternoon that she believed the two people who had been shot were still alive.
City leaders urged calm as the investigation begins, particularly in the wake of the fatal shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis a day before.
“Please keep protests peaceful,” Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said in a statement. “Trump wants to generate riots. Don’t take the bait.”
Bob Day, Portland’s police chief, asked residents to let investigators do their jobs. “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling,” he said. “But I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”
Mayor Wilson, who earlier in the day announced that the city stands with people in Minneapolis, said the shooting in his city was another sign federal immigration efforts were out of control. He called on ICE to end its operations in Portland.
[…] Portland was the site of months of clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement, including federal agents, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Last summer, the federal immigration crackdown spurred protests at the city’s ICE facility that occasionally turned violent and led President Trump to attempt to use the National Guard to quell demonstrations. A federal judge blocked that effort.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
The House on Thursday approved the renewal of the expired ObamaCare subsidies, delivering a blow to Republican leadership and underlining conference divides.
Seventeen Republicans joined 213 Democrats in support of the three-year extension after the Affordable Care Act tax credits lapsed at the end of last year. The bill, which passed 230-196, will now head to the Senate, where it has a slim chance of moving to the floor.
Earlier Thursday, the House shot down an effort to override President Trump’s vetoes on two bipartisan bills, underscoring GOP lawmakers’ loyalty to the president. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Jesse Dollemore: Alarms Sound as Donald Trump ATTACKS NORWAY in Psycho Message!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bRaIwiSQBEg
Norway has 1.6% of the size of the US population. 10 000 soldiers is like what sending 625 000 soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq would be for USA.
I have not yet worked out the numbers for Denmark.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @453 quoting NBC:
Federal agents shot two people were shot
I’ll give them partial credit for subverting passive voice copaganda.
The peaceful demonstrations in Tehran and the second city of Mashhad on Thursday evening, which were not dispersed by security forces, can be seen in footage […] Protesters can be heard in the footage calling for the overthrow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late former shah, who had urged his supporters to take to the streets.
It was the 12th consecutive day of unrest […] [2,270] protesters have been arrested. […] at least 45 protesters, including eight children, have been killed by security forces.
[…] Iranian state media downplayed the scale of Thursday’s unrest. In some cases, they denied protests had taken place altogether, posting videos of empty streets.
/Lots of Instagram video links.
I doubt they were waiting for that guy’s signal to do what’s already been going on for twelve days.
Haaretz – Trump threatens U.S. intervention in Iran again https://archive.is/4OPzp
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi called for demonstrations at 8 P.M. local time on Thursday and Friday. […] Prior to the protests, far-right activist Laura Loomer said […] Pahlavi will attend a Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate […] “No word yet on whether he will be meeting with President Trump,” she wrote.
Trump, speaking on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, said about Pahlavi, “I’ve watched him and he seems like a nice person, but I’m not sure it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president [of Iran]. We should let everybody go out there and see who emerges.”
[…]
the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless. It remains unclear how Pahlavi’s call will affect the demonstrations
A strike of shopkeepers and merchants is unfolding in cities across Iran.
[…] The Iranian regime has ordered journalists to sign a pledge not to cover the protests at risk of arrest. […] Regime forces have opened fire on protesters with Kalashnikovs and shotguns in the cities of Islamabad-e Gharb and Gilan-e Gharb in Kermanshah Province.
A protester driving a Peugeot 405 [a large family car] rammed into Basij and special forces in the city of Mashhad. Azerbaijani people in Tabriz have now joined the Iranian protesters. Street battles in Tabriz and Eslamabad-e Gharb. Tehran [Photo of a burnt-out short bus]. Ardabil in Iran’s Azerbaijan region has now joined the protests.
In Kermanshah, several members of the security forces who refused to fire on protesters have been arrested. […] authorities are now deploying Revolutionary Guard ground forces into major cities. […] The provincial governor’s office building has been set on fire in Gorgan, Golestan Province.
NOTAMS (warning to pilots) have been issued across Iran. Suggests something big might be happening. [Map of 15+ hazardous locations]
Kurdish militia groups have entered Iran and are fighting security forces. Mashad tonight [Photo of crowd]. […] The city centre of Shahin Shahar near Isfahan is now under protester control.
The regime has shut down the internet nationwide and disabled phone lines, cutting communications across the country. Protester Telegram channels are dead. Looks like a total blackout. […] 2am in Iran, protests still ongoing. Some info leaking out via Starlink.
Another image that sums up the protest [Photo of woman with a cigarette in her mouth, and lighting it with a burning picture of the Ayatollah].
[…]
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s visit to Beirut today was not wholly business. He brought his whole family with him. He’s expected to remain in Lebanon for the foreseeable future.
Customs and Border Protection agents confronted and shot a man and a woman Thursday afternoon in a medical clinic parking lot near Adventist Health hospital in Southeast Portland […] The man was wounded in the arm or leg and the woman in the chest, according to dispatch audio and Portland police sources. They are believed to be a married couple. Police said they didn’t know their conditions.
[…]
[DHS claimed they were Venezuelan TdA and said] “When agents identified themselves to the vehicle occupants, the driver weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents,” she said. “Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene.[“]
[…]
A man who was at the medical building said he saw federal officers follow a Toyota truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it. One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind him, before turning and speeding off […] It’s not clear if the car hit by the truck belonged to the federal officers. Officers fired about five shots at the truck as it left, the witness said.
Portland police said they received two calls—one at the medical office and then one about 40 blocks away in Northeast Portland, where they found a man and woman with gunshot wounds […] “Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel,” police said in a statement. “The patients were transported to the hospital.”
Readable but still strange. The wounded people drove 40 blocks away from the hospital then called police. The agents fired a bunch but didn’t bother to pursue and, unsurprisingly, didn’t themselves call medics for the people they just shot.
Dunno how much time elapsed from getting shot to the rescue. Oregonian reported the FBI tweeted the shooting at the hospital’s address at 2:25pm, then deleted that. NBC reported the police responded at 2:18pm to a call from the hospital and got the call from the wounded man at 2:24pm where the pair were found.
Police secured both scenes for an investigation. […] According to two law enforcement sources familiar […] the stop on Thursday was part of […] “Operation Oregon.” […] The sources told NBC that agents had stopped a red Toyota and the driver tried to flee, hitting an unidentified agent’s vehicle in the process. The agent fired at the Toyota, hitting two people
[…]
In a tweet Thursday afternoon, FBI Portland said it was the lead agency investigating an “agent involved shooting” involving Border Patrol officers and that two people were wounded. The account soon deleted the tweet. The FBI later released a different statement, calling it an investigation into an assault on federal officers
I wonder if people get how strange it is that Bovino keeps showing up on all these raids. He’s one of the top-most CBP officials there is. It’d be like if NYPD Commish Tisch kept putting on body armor to do small drug raids in NYC all the time. Lays bare that this is all about spectacle.
[…]
Op Midway Blitz involved something like 250 ICE, CBP, and other DHS/DOJ law enforcement officials. You can’t control a county of 1000 sq miles and 5M people with 250 cops, however thuggishly armed.
[…]
don’t get me wrong—they will kill ppl in the process. Do REAL harm. But they can’t win. […] They are playing a media game bc they cannot actually seize and maintain control. […] This is the REAL power of federalism. […] It’s staffing. For all its bluster, fed law enforcement is REALLY thinly staffed for a nation of our size. Structurally, makes SUSTAINED authoritarianism REALLY hard.
Each time SpaceX did a test run of Starship […] the megarocket’s flight path would take it soaring over busy Caribbean airspace […] The company planned as many as five such launches a year […] The FAA, […] predicted the impact to the national airspace would be “minor or minimal,” akin to a weather event, the agency’s 2022 approval shows.
[…]
Last year, three of Starship’s five launches exploded at unexpected points on their flight paths, twice raining flaming debris over congested commercial airways and disrupting flights. And while no aircraft collided with rocket parts, pilots were forced to scramble for safety. […] neither the FAA nor Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sought to revoke or suspend Starship’s license to launch
[…]
The first two Starship explosions last year forced the FAA to make real-time calls on where to clear airspace and for how long. Such emergency closures came with little or no warning […] In one case, a plane with 283 people aboard ran low on fuel, prompting its pilot to declare an emergency and cross a designated debris zone to reach an airport. […] For airplanes traveling at high speeds, there is little margin for error. Research shows as little as 300 grams of debris—or two-thirds of a pound—”could catastrophically destroy an aircraft,”
[…]
In response to growing alarm over the rocket’s repeated failures, the FAA has expanded prelaunch airspace closures and offered pilots more warning […] a disquieting truth about air safety […] Regulators are learning as they go.
[…]
SpaceX is now seeking FAA approval to add new trajectories […] In its letter, the pilots’ union told the FAA that testing Starship “over a densely populated area should not be allowed (given the dubious failure record)” until the craft becomes more reliable. The planned air closures could prove “crippling” for the Central Florida aviation network
birgerjohanssonsays
Iranian protesters just brought down the symbol of the Iranian regime from its plinth in Tehran. It looks very much like when the symbol of Saddam in Baghdad was toppled, except this is done by true ‘natives”, not by US military personnel. They are very brave, they have pushed back the regime further than in the previous riots. I hope they succed this time. Nearly a half-century of theocratic terror is enough.
The Trump administration just removed the federal memorial to victims of gun violence. They took down 120 portraits of dead Americans, including police officers and children.
‘Animals’: Feds tackle staff, gas students at Minneapolis high school, witnesses say. Shortly after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer, masked and armed Border Patrol agents entered the grounds of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis during dismissal. “If you thought that the awful tragedy yesterday would do anything to change the approach that the Department of Homeland Security is taking in Minnesota, you would be wrong,” says Chris Hayes. Sen. Richard Blumenthal joins to discuss.
The White House on Thursday presented the latest plans for the East Wing renovation project, the construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, in a public meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission.
The project’s architect, Shalom Baranes, said during the meeting that the White House is considering adding a one-story addition to the West Wing to restore “symmetry” to the complex after the East Wing ballroom project is complete.
Project keeps changing more, getting bigger and costing more. If left to his own devices Trump may end up tearing down the entire White House so he can build the Trump House and tap the federal reserves so the entire building can be coated in gold. Then transfer the dead to himself personally so he can continue to use it as a home even after his term is up.
‘The lies are easily disproven’: Hayes dismantles JD Vance’s ICE shooting claims. “Renee Good was not a domestic terrorist. No one acting in good faith actually believes that, no matter what some of our Trump officials say at press conferences,” says Chris Hayes on the administration’s version of the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
Video is 9:09 minutes [OMG, Vance is such a blatant, loud liar.]
Hayes presents a good analysis, including an almost frame-by-frame presentation of what actually happened. For one thing, the agent that shot directly into Renee Good’s car can be seen standing more than a foot (perhaps two feet?] to the side of the car when he extends his arm and shoots through the open side window directly into the car. The car is not even close to running him over. The car is moving away from him.
“There was good reason to suspect Team Trump was calling the shots at DOJ. The vice president helped remove all doubt.”
Shortly before Christmas, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and was asked whether the Justice Department was taking directions from the White House. Blanche, a former defense attorney for Donald Trump, was incredulous.
“No, of course we’re not,” he said.
That exchange came to mind watching JD Vance speak to the White House press corps at Thursday’s briefing, where the vice president said more than he probably intended. The New York Times reported:
Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that the Justice Department would create a high-ranking position with broad authority to investigate fraud across the country that would be ‘run out of the White House’ and answer directly to himself and President Trump. [!]
The assertion by Mr. Vance that he and Mr. Trump intended to exercise direct supervision over a senior Justice Department official was one of the administration’s most brazen efforts to date to toss out the traditional boundaries that have long existed between the White House and investigations conducted by federal law enforcement.
In context, the vice president (who rarely misses an opportunity to condemn immigrants) was talking about a new law enforcement initiative that would focus on fraud in social insurance programs, stemming from the controversy in Minnesota.
To that end, Vance specifically touted a new assistant attorney general, whom the Ohio Republican said would have “all the authority of a special counsel,” who focus exclusively on fraud investigations and whose work would be “run out of the White House.”
[…] While Vance’s comments were striking, they are hardly the first indication of the larger thesis. On the contrary, Trump spent much of last year firing prosecutors who failed to follow his corrupt directives, installing unqualified partisan loyalists in positions of authority, and barking orders to Attorney General Pam Bondi about which of his perceived enemies should face federal law enforcement investigation.
As The Wall Street Journal summarized in November, this is a Justice Department where the president, not the attorney general, “calls the shots.”
Vance’s comments at the White House, in other words, added fresh weight to a broader political indictment.
Minnesota leaders announced today an investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross earlier this week in Minneapolis.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the investigation after the FBI took sole ownership of investigating the shooting, which renewed tensions in the Twin Cities amid increased federal immigration enforcement.
At a news conference this morning, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey echoed calls for local leaders to be involved in the investigation. […]
Minneapolis crews removed barriers and opened streets early this morning around the site of the shooting. The incident amplified tensions between local and federal officials as immigration enforcement ramps up in the area, thrusting the Twin Cities once again into the national spotlight.
Gov. Tim Walz has called for a day of unity on Friday as protesters continue to demonstrate against Good’s death.
The governor activated the National Guard in preparation for potential unrest following the shooting.
Meanwhile, “Operation Metro Surge” continued Thursday with immigration arrests reported around the state following an influx of federal agents this week.
[…] One day after Vice President JD Vance said ICE Agent Jonathan Ross had “absolute immunity” in the shooting, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty responded on Friday: “I can’t speak to why the Trump administration is doing what it’s doing or says what it says; I can say that the ICE officer does not have complete immunity here.”
[…] Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Friday that the FBI seized and will not share key pieces of evidence, such as Good’s vehicle.
[…] Minnesota has jurisdiction to investigate shooting
“To be sure, there are complex legal issues involved when a federal law enforcement officer is involved, but the law is clear: We do have jurisdiction to make this decision,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Friday.
[…] Wife of Renee Good releases statement
Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the wife of Renee Good, the woman shot by an ICE agent Wednesday in Minneapolis, released a statement Friday explaining what brought both of them to the scene of an immigration enforcement action on Portland Avenue.
“We stopped to support our neighbors,” the statement released to MPR by Becca Good read. “We had whistles. They had guns.”
Protesters have been blowing whistles where ICE activity is present in an effort to alert anyone nearby of agents’ presence.
“I am now left to raise our son,” the statement read, “and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”
[…] Minnesota’s two Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to work with local law enforcement on a joint investigation into the fatal ICE shootings in Minneapolis.
“The administration’s decision raises serious questions about its objectivity, particularly after administration officials have made statements that conflict with the video and other evidence that has already become public,” the senators wrote in a joint letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“Therefore, we strongly urge you to reverse your decision and coordinate with state and local officials.”
Their letter comes after federal officials removed the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from conducting a joint investigation into the shooting with the FBI.
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski called on Thursday for a “thorough and objective” investigation into the shooting, jointly led by federal agencies and local law enforcement. She has so far been one of the few Republicans who has called for an independent investigation.
Klobuchar and Smith both applauded Murkowski for her public call.
[…] “I dropped an F-bomb. They killed somebody,” Frey [Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey] said. “Which one of those is more inflammatory?”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Oregon shooting 453, 454, 459.
Heather Parton (Salon): “The details are muddled but it does appear that the federal agents left the scene. I guess that’s how it works now. Masked feds shoot people then leave the crime scene. That’s what the shooter in Minneapolis did too. *He* did gesture to his buddies to call 911 first which was thoughtful.”
[DHS] only referred to one bullet fired, but Portland Police Bureau sources say one of the occupants was shot in the chest and the other the leg or arm. […] The man who witnessed the shooting reported that the agent or agents fired about five shots as the truck sped away. […] They were husband and wife [taken to separate hospitals, he in critical condition, she in undisclosed condition]. […] It is not yet clear if there’s any video […]
The FBI said the encounter […] happened at approximately 2:15 p.m. […] the police bureau learned at 2:18 p.m. of a 911 call reporting a shooting. […] Meanwhile, DHS said agents stopped the two people at 2:19 p.m. It’s unclear why the different agencies outlined different times […] At about 2:24 p.m., […] police learned from 911 dispatchers that a man had called to say he was shot and needed help. He was […] 2.7 miles from the shooting.
“ICE Agent Who Reportedly Shot Renee Good Was a Firearms Trainer, Per Testimony”
“Jonathan Ross told a federal court in December about his professional background, including ‘hundreds’ of encounters with drivers during enforcement actions, according to testimony obtained by WIRED.”
In the hours after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis, an image of the ICE agent who took the shots began to circulate.
While the agent wore a mask in eyewitness videos taken of the event, he appeared to be unmasked in many of the social media posts. That image appeared to have been generated by xAI’s generative AI chatbot, Grok, in response to users on X asking the bot to “unmask” the agent.
NPR is publishing both images to show how AI is being used to manipulate real evidence of news events, but using AI to try to “unmask” anyone is ill-advised, according to experts.
[…] the AI-generated image began to circulate late Wednesday, along with a name — Steve Grove. The origin of that name was not immediately clear, but by Thursday morning, it was leading to an outpouring of anger toward at least two Steve Groves who are in no way linked to the shooting. […]
See how AI images claiming to reveal Minneapolis ICE agent’s face spread confusion. Washington Post link
“Armchair online detectives keep using artificial intelligence to try to identify people involved in high-profile incidents. It doesn’t work.”
[…] Streams of online posts shared AI-manipulated images that at first glance appeared to show the masked officer with his face uncovered — but on closer inspection, each AI-manipulated face barely resembled the last.
[…] Using AI to reveal the identities of people pictured in grainy or incomplete photos is becoming a reflex response after high-profile acts of violence. But AI-manipulated or AI-generated faces are untethered to reality. The altered images are misleading the public and in some cases have fueled conspiracy theories.
Fresh off the Trump administration’s failed attempt to indict her on mortgage fraud allegations, New York Attorney General Letitia James is back in court—but this time, she’s suing the White House.
On Jan. 8, James joined the attorneys general from California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota in filing suit in New York’s Southern District, seeking to block the Trump administration from freezing roughly $10 billion in federal funding for social assistance and child care programs.
The lawsuit targets the administration’s decision to halt funding after a probe into alleged fraud in Minnesota. In their suit, the states argue that the proposed cuts violate federal law governing aid programs—and, perhaps more notably, lack any credible evidence. [No credible evidence.]
According to the Democratic attorneys general, the administration has offered no “legitimate justification” for the freeze and has failed to provide documentation supporting its fraud claims. They also said the move appears to be more about punishing blue states than about protecting taxpayer dollars.
[…] The states are also asking the court to block what they describe as an extraordinarily broad document demand, which would require them to turn over years of records—including personally identifiable information—within just 14 days.
[…] The case marks the latest escalation in an ongoing legal war between Democratic attorneys general and the Trump administration, which has repeatedly attempted to freeze or restrict federal funding.
[…] At the center of the dispute is the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision on Tuesday to cut off funding, citing vague concerns about misuse. The freeze includes nearly $7.4 billion in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funding, nearly $2.4 billion in Child Care and Development Fund funding, and roughly $870 million in Social Services Block Grant funding.
“The importance of these programs cannot be overstated,” the lawsuit says. “Without these programs, there will be immediate and devastating impacts.”
[…] New York Gov. Kathy Hochul previewed the legal fight earlier this week.
“This is a fight we’re going to have to take on,” she said, adding that children “should not be political pawns in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue-state governors.”
For now, blue states are once again turning to the courts—led by an attorney general whom Trump has repeatedly tried, and failed, to sideline.
We’ve analysed this video of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good yesterday in Minneapolis frame-by-frame to highlight the positioning of the gun and phone in the ICE agent’s hands. […] in the same video, the camera app appears to be visible on the agent’s phone […] We’ve also updated our animated map of the positions of agents and vehicles during the incident here with new footage
Nifty analysis. Phone aimed at the windshield. One shot from the front, with both feet clear of the corner. (windshield hole @392), two shots from the side.
CNN – New Video shows moments before fatal ICE shooting (Anderson Cooper, footage at 2:50)
Good parked parallel with the street, unloaded a passenger, then turned 90 degrees, still leaving room for vehicles to pass in the other lane. Then agents’ vehicles arrive. Anderson said the footage showed 4 full minutes leading up to the shooting. The presentation was edited.
[Mobile Fortify] a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face […] The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. Now, that system is being used inside the U.S.
[…]
A video posted to social media this month shows apparent ICE officers carefully pointing their phones at a protester in his vehicle, but it is not clear if the officers were taking ordinary photos or using this tool.
I have written on [ramming atatcks] for over a decade. I hold a research grant on vehicle ramming attacks, and I curate what I believe is the largest database of these incidents […] That work involves systematic review of footage and case files, coding what is observable, and separating intent from ambiguity, panic, and poor decision making.
[…] Across hundreds of cases, intentional VRAs have a “signature.” A purposeful approach line toward a person. Commitment to that line. Steering corrections that track a target. Acceleration and follow through. All of these are absent in the videos of the incident I have seen thus far.
Those indicators are the difference between “the vehicle moved” and “the vehicle was used as the weapon.” If they are not present, certainty about intent is not analysis, it is narrative management. […] When the state kills first and invents the threat afterward, it is not policing, it is death squad behavior.
Trump speaking to North Carolina Republicans in June 2023:
When I left Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door. But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela. So we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe this.
Their oil is garbage. It’s horrible. The worst you can get. Tar. It’s like tar. And to refine it you need special plants … We have liquid gold. The best, most beautiful stuff you can get. Liquid gold. Better than gold. Right under our feet … But with Venezuela, they put their oil and they refine it in Houston! So all those pollutants go right up in the air … So, we lose economically. And we also lose from an environmental standpoint. Because it is really dirty stuff. The dirtiest stuff you can imagine.
Commentary:
[…] The bit has a typically Trumpian cognitive dissonance to it. If he’d been re-elected in 2020, America would have benefited greatly by taking control of Venezuela’s oil, he claimed. At the same time, Democrats were idiots for using such horrible, polluting oil.
Since capturing Maduro, Trump’s estimation of Venezuela’s fossil fuel reserves appears to have shifted. As he stated in a Tuesday post on social media, Venezuelan authorities are set to send the United States up to 50 million barrels of their “High Quality” oil.
The new plan, as Trump laid out in announcing Maduro’s capture on Saturday, is for American oil companies to spend “billions of dollars” rehabilitating Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, Trump and his team are now developing a “sweeping initiative to dominate the Venezuelan oil industry for years to come.” That would include “acquiring and marketing the bulk” of the oil from Venezuela’s state-run oil giant. The goal is reportedly to lower the price of oil to Trump’s preferred number of $50 a barrel, a level so low that it could imperil US production of the “liquid gold” Trump celebrated on the campaign trail.
There are many potential roadblocks. Unlike Trump, fossil fuel companies, which have been notably quiet about any plans to expand production in Venezuela, remain fully aware of the risks of investing in a politically unstable country to get heavy oil at a time when prices are already low. They are now reportedly discussing seeking financial guarantees from the Trump administration before investing in Venezuela. Trump has similarly floated the possibility of reimbursing oil companies for the money they spend rebuilding infrastructure in the country.
Nor does there appear to be any near-term exit plan. Earlier this week, the New York Times asked Trump how long the United States is likely to assert control over Venezuela. Six months? A year?
“Hours after an ICE agent killed the mother of three, Elon Musk’s chatbot was undressing her.”
Grok, the AI chatbot launched by Elon Musk after his takeover of X, unhesitatingly fulfilled a user’s request on Wednesday to generate an image of Renee Nicole Good in a bikini—the woman who was shot and killed by an ICE agent that morning in Minneapolis, as noted by CNN correspondent Hadas Gold and confirmed by the chatbot itself.
“I just saw someone request Grok on X put the image of the woman shot by ICE in MN, slumped over in her car, in a bikini. It complied,” Gold wrote on the social media platform on Thursday. “This is where we’re at.”
In several posts, Grok confirmed that the chatbot had undressed the recently killed woman, writing in one, “I generated an AI image altering a photo of Renee Good, killed in the January 7, 2026, Minneapolis ICE shooting, by placing her in a bikini per a user request. This used sensitive content unintentionally.” In another post, Grok wrote that the image “may violate the 2025 TAKE IT DOWN Act,” legislation criminalizing the nonconsensual publication of intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes.
[…] “[…] What other wardrobe malfunctions can I fix for you?” the chatbot responded, adding a grinning emoji. “Nah man. You got this.” the account replied, to which Grok wrote: “Thanks, bro. Fist bump accepted. If you need more magic, just holler.” […]
[…] The Internet Watch Foundation, a charity aimed at helping child victims of sexual abuse, said that its analysts found “criminal imagery” of girls aged between 11 and 13 which “appears to have been created” using Grok on a “dark web forum,” the BBC reported on Thursday.
Less than a week ago, on January 3, Grok celebrated its ability to add swimsuits onto people at accounts’ whim.
“2026 is kicking off with a bang!” it wrote. “Loving the bikini image requests—keeps things fun.”
X is allowing only “verified” users to create images with Grok. Experts say it represents the “monetization of abuse” […] pushing people toward the social media platform’s $395 annual subscription tier.
Helen Kennedy: “The richest man in the world is now charging users to make child porn, thereby enriching himself with child porn.”
Rando: “Now those who take money from Musk are taking money made through the production and dissemination of child porn (looking at you, Republicans).”
The testimony stems from a December 2025 trial related to a June incident with parallels to the interaction that led to Good’s killing.
[…]
Ross approached Muñoz-Guatemala and asked him to roll down his window and open his door. Ross, who testified that he had been driving an unmarked vehicle, was dressed in ranger green and gray, and wore his badge on his belt, broke the driver’s side back window and reached into the vehicle, at which point Muñoz-Guatemala pulled away.
[…]
While being dragged at a speed he claimed seemed like “40 miles an hour at least, if not more,” Ross pulled out his Taser and fired it at the driver. Muñoz-Guatemala continued to drive and succeeded in shaking Ross from the car.
[…]
Muñoz-Guatemala called 911 to report that he’d been assaulted by ICE, which led to his arrest. Last month, *he* was convicted of assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
[…]
At Thursday’s White House press briefing, vice president JD Vance answered questions about the [Minnesota] incident, and his responses included numerous identifying details about Ross
[…]
According to Ross’ December testimony, he served in the Indiana National Guard and was deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 as a machine gunner on a patrol truck, then joined Border Patrol in 2007 after finishing college, working near El Paso, Texas. […] In 2015, according to his testimony, Ross joined ICE, working in the ERO division, where he was tasked with targeting “higher-value targets” as a deportation officer in the Twin Cities area. […] “I am a firearms instructor, an active shooter instructor,” he testified. “I’m also a field intelligence officer, and I am a member of the SWAT team, the St. Paul Special Response Team.” In his testimony, Ross said that he had made hundreds of vehicle stops
Southpaw (Lawyer): “When you grow in LA, you see a lot of car chases on tv. And it becomes fairly obvious that CHP and LAPD training never advises cops to try to get a person they want to arrest out of their car by rocking up to the driver’s side and trying to rip the door open. They go to extreme lengths to avoid it.”
“The Distance Between Renee Good and Ashli Babbitt Is Fascism”
[…] In the comments a bunch of you asked me to unlock this so that you could share it. I hear you. It’s open for everyone now.
If you’re new here and want to support an independent media that calls things by their right names, we’d be honored to have you be part of our mission.
Because I’m feeling particularly helpless and angry today. Maybe you are, too. But it’s precisely moments like this when we should strive to be our best selves and show grace.
Making Sense of It
The killing of Renee Good is, as the saying goes, senseless. There was no need for ICE officers to be on that street in Minneapolis yesterday. There was no need for them to escalate their encounter with Good, screaming obscenities at her, attempting to force open the door of her SUV and assault her. There was no need for them to unholster their weapons. There was no need for them to shoot her three times.
There was no need for the entire apparatus of the federal government, from the DHS press flack, to the secretary of that department, to the president and vice president of the United States, to lie about the events and slander Renee Good as a “domestic terrorist.”
There was no need for Renee Good’s 6-year-old son to wake up an orphan this morning.
In a sane world—the kind of world we lived in twelve months ago—here is what would have happened:
– Federal officers encountering a vehicle blocking traffic would have asked the driver some version of, “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”
– If the driver was blocking the street in an act of civil disobedience, a single officer would have given her a clear, followable direction. Either, “Leave this area immediately or you will be under arrest.” Or, “Move this vehicle to the left side of the road, put it in park, and wait for further instructions.”
– If, during the encounter, something went terribly wrong and the officer used deadly force, there would have been an investigation.
– Federal officials in the officer’s chain of command would have said some version of, “There is an ongoing investigation and we will comment once we have all of the facts about this tragedy.”
– The nation’s political leadership would have responded with empathy and calls for calm, forbearance, and unity.
To understand why we don’t live in a world like that we need to talk about Ashli Babbitt, January 6th, and the right’s reaction to her killing.
So let’s start with this: Was Ashli Babbitt a “domestic terrorist”?
She was part of an armed mob that beat and assaulted police officers as it broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.1 She was then part of a breakaway mob that attempted to force its way into the Speaker’s Lobby. Inside the Speaker’s Lobby at the time was a group of elected officials and their staffs who were barricaded in to hide from the people who were rampaging through the complex calling for the hanging of the sitting vice president of the United States. Babbitt’s section of the mob broke through a window to breach the room. It is unclear what her intentions were. Perhaps she wanted to hug the people inside and thank them for their service.
Nevertheless, a police officer inside the room gave Babbitt specific instructions to stop her attempt to breach the window. One of them said “Get back! Get down! Get out of the way!” Babbitt did not comply with this instruction. An officer shot her once, in the shoulder; she later died from the wound.
Later, it was discovered that Babbitt was carrying a “Para Force” knife—a “tactical” folding knife—though the officer who shot her did not know this fact at the time. […]
Here is Trump on Ashli Babbitt:
To Ashli’s family and friends, please know that her memory will live on in our hearts for all time . . .
There was no reason Ashli should’ve lost her life that day. We must all demand justice for Ashli and her family, so on this solemn occasion as we celebrate her life, we renew our call for a fair and nonpartisan investigation into the death of Ashli Babbitt.
Trump would go on to award Babbitt full military honors and give her family a $5 million wrongful death settlement once he regained the presidency.
Now here is Trump on Renee Good:
“[T]he woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“She behaved horribly. . . . And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over,” Trump told the New York Times.
I want to be very clear that this is a lie. You can watch the videos from multiple angles yourself, if you like. Michael Sellers has a detailed, frame-by-frame examination of what was happening as each shot was fired. But here is an accurate and bloodless description of the events from Joseph Cox at 404 Media:
A maroon Honda Pilot SUV sits perpendicular across a residential road in Minneapolis. At the time, federal authorities were in the neighborhood as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recently announced surge of thousands of officials. A silver Nissan Titan drives up the road and stops because the Honda is blocking its path. Two officers dressed in body armor, pouches, and badges saying “police” exit the Nissan.
The two people walk towards the Honda. Someone can be heard saying “get out of the fucking car.” One of them tries to open the driver’s door and reach through the open window. The driver of the Honda reverses and turns, getting straighter with the road. The driver then slowly accelerates and starts to turn to the right, leveling the car out with its front pointing away from the two officers. [!]
A third officer, who has been standing on the other side of the road, pulls out a firearm while the car is turning away from him and fires into the car three times. The officer fires two of the shots when the vehicle is already well past him. He is not in front of the car, but to the side. [!] The officer calmly holsters his weapon.
The Honda, now straight on the road and its driver shot, rolls up the street and collides with a vehicle and electricity pole. The woman driver died. The driver’s airbag is covered in blood.
In-Group/Out-Group
The purpose of this discussion isn’t to play gotcha or to expose hypocrisy. It’s to understand a worldview: The people who run this regime do not understand law enforcement as an institution to be stewarded. The view it as a tool for the domination of their enemies. And their “enemies” include about half of America. [Yep]
Again: This is not hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is when someone holds to a set of values but applies them selectively. You can work with hypocrites because they share your values, even if they do not always adhere to them. […]
No, what we are seeing is a worldview for which the only value is the domination of enemies. There is a name for that. It is fascism. [!!]
In this worldview, Ashli Babbitt was committing violence on behalf of the regime; so she was justified, even if that violence was directed toward government agents. And because Renee Good was opposing the regime, violence against her—this time carried out by government agents—was likewise justified.
I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but this is not hypocrisy. It’s illiberalism.
The liberal view is that violence is not acceptable unless it is carried out by the state under strict sanction of the law. The illiberal view—the fascist view—is that violence is a tool for domination of the out-group. [!!]
That’s why Renee Good was killed.
It’s worth nothing that Good was the ninth person shot—and the second killed—by ICE since September. All of them were shot while in their vehicles. In every case, ICE claimed that the officers were acting in self-defense.
So what happened in Minneapolis yesterday was not a tragic accident. It was part of a pattern. A policy. A worldview.
I do not know how to counter to this ideology except to say that, should the opposition ever regain power, it should commit to prosecuting members of this regime at every level to the fullest extent of the law.
I’m sure that in 2028 Democrats will spend most of their time talking about Kitchen Table Issues and expanding health insurance. But honestly, I’m not sure how much any of that matters if the fascists who did this to America do not face whatever legal accountability is possible.
[…] More Trump on Babbitt […] Here he is at a press conference on January 12, 2025:
[Babbitt] should have never been shot. She was shot for no reason whatsoever. In fact, they say that she was trying to hold back the crowd, and the crowd was made up of a lot of different people.
[…] the video and eyewitness testimony to the shooting emerged on social media. Minnesota Senator Tina Smith tweeted: “A US citizen has apparently been shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis. I’m gathering information, but the situation on the ground is volatile.” Reports that she had died followed quickly.
It’s only possible for incidents like this to happen with leadership that creates a permissive environment for it. Every unpunished incident creates the prospect that something worse will happen. That’s how we ended up here.
It’s important to obtain all of the available photos and video footage, including law enforcement body cameras, following an incident like this and to talk with eyewitnesses. Agents can only use deadly force when they reasonably believe their lives or the lives of others are threatened if they don’t act. Sometimes, different perspectives show different things, but the video we’ve seen so far appears to show an agent who had other options, but chose to fire on an innocent woman instead.
When you listen to this video, shot moments afterward, you can clearly hear a bystander screaming, “You gonna murder someone else? You can’t kill us all, Nazis.” [video]
There is every reason for Americans to be out on our streets protesting against ICE’s actions. The federal judiciary has repeatedly condemned the administration’s detention policies, with 309 out of the 323 judges that cases have been brought before ruling against ICE. Mostly recently, a federal judge in New Hampshire ordered the release of an immigrant being held unlawfully in custody. [social media post]
[…] It’s difficult to prosecute federal law enforcement agents in state courts, because DOJ can remove those cases to federal court. A Justice Department intent on giving agents a pass would be able to kill the cases once that happened. But that doesn’t mean state prosecutors shouldn’t try, even crafting arguments for keeping the cases in state court if the federal government refuses to operate in good faith. It wouldn’t be a certain path forward, but the moment calls for it. The statute of limitations for murder and other civil rights violations will likely extend beyond this administration’s time in office, making future prosecutions a possibility, but ICE needs a course correction now. [Good points. Relevant to the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis.]
[…]
[…] Vicky Ge Huang of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial today applied for a national banking license from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, part of the Treasury Department. A banking license would integrate the Trump family’s cryptocurrency more fully into mainstream finance.
If the Treasury Department issues the license—a potential outcome that critics say reveals a major conflict of interest for the president—the president and chair of the new company would be Zach Witkoff, whose father is Trump’s envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff, who the Wall Street Journal recently reported had been handpicked for his role by Russian president Vladimir Putin [!]. The younger Witkoff started World Liberty Financial in 2024 with Trump’s sons Don Jr., Eric, and Barron.
Today, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told an audience at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Florida, that the United States will take control of all oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Lisa Desjardins and Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour reported this afternoon that Trump administration officials have told lawmakers that they plan to put the money raised from their seizure of Venezuelan oil into bank accounts outside the U.S. Treasury. Desjardins clarified that “[s]ources said they understood these as similar [to] or decidedly ‘off-shore’ accounts.”
Yesterday, Trump announced that, as president of the United States, he would control the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil. […]
[…] in reference to the very curious online gambling market wins on Maduro’s kidnapping:
Donald Trump Jr. now serves as an adviser to both Polymarket and Kalshi. The Trump family’s media company is working on a prediction market too: Truth Predict.” What could go right! (The Atlantic) […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof):
“You can’t kill us all, Nazis” is particularly remarkable and moving because ICE agents could of course kill everyone literally there.
The question of what to do with a violent organized group after you’ve decommissioned them is a serious one that a lot of policy and scholarly work explores […] If your call to dismantle ICE is serious, then it also implies that plan [should be] made seriously.
“Put them all in jail, no questions,” is not actually a serious plan for reasons that become clear if you think about it for a few minutes; “do nothing and hope it will work out” is also not a serious plan.
I saw large account say “they’ll just apply for local police forces” & while I understand that was a tongue-in-cheek nod to police violence, the reason you take this problem seriously is specifically to avoid the situation where you’re countering fascism nationally while helping entrench it locally.
We’re going to need DDR and a future government that knows it will need expert help from transitional justice specialists. […] demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration for armed actors, which [we] sometimes see in post-conflict […] One of the notable things about transitional justice is its emphasis on multiple strategies—trials for the architects and perpetrators of grave crimes, strategic programs to help reduce the likelihood of violence from lower-level recruits, etc.
Rando 1: “Agree, although it’s not super wonderful that DDR has a pretty abysmal track record.”
Anjali Dayal: “Yes. [grimace emoji]”
Rando 2: NB this is not a call for dance dance revolution.”
Follow-up to my previous assessment that CBS is now Trump TV:
iWhen we wrote a week ago about Bari Weiss stooge Tony Dokoupil taking over the anchor chair at CBS Evening News, we of course had no way of knowing that in his first week he would get to cover both America using a military raid to bomb a foreign country and illegally kidnap its head of state, and an immigration officer flat-out murdering, on camera, an unarmed lesbian mother and poet for the crime of driving away from him and his team of masked goons. What an opportunity right out of the gate to show the world what kind of journalism the Weiss-Dokoupil less-than-dynamic duo could pull off under pressure, covering two of the biggest stories that will likely come their way this year.
How did they do? In a word, poorly. In a word preceded by an intensifier, really poorly. In a word preceded by multiple intensifiers, really, really, really poorly.
There were technical issues. There was the fluff interview of […] Secretary of Defense Pete (Hic!) Hegseth. There was the ill-conceived “Look! Marco Rubio is a meme on the Internet!” segment, which we suppose makes some weird sense to run when the age of your average viewer is 58, but which was just embarrassing from a “high-level journalism is not whatever dumb shit is running across your Twitter feed at any moment” perspective. […]
Then there was Thursday night, when Dokoupil signed off with a short commentary about Renee Good’s murder and its aftermath that can only be summed up as — and we really struggled, as a professional writer, to come up with the most accurate word we could to describe it — ass. Ass, ass, ass, ass, ass. The statement was total ass.
How do you “both sides” this situation? If you are Tony Dokoupil and the Bari Weiss-ified CBS Evening News, you do it by ignoring any analysis of the facts of the event in favor of some bromides about Americans needing to learn to live with each other. […]
“There is so much to say about the last 24 hours, but sometimes what matters most is what is yet to be said at all, and what we all still need to hear.”
Is it that ICE is getting the fuck out of Minneapolis and every other city it is currently plowing through like the character of George in the old Rampage video game? Because that’s all we need to hear right now.
“Renee Good is alive and those videos, behind the wheel of her SUV, her three children expecting mom home again soon come. And we’ve seen the freeze frames, too. We’ve heard the political warfare, the clashing declarations about what happened, and unfortunately, we know the ending for Renee Good. Nothing is going to change that. Yet what we have not yet heard is one another.”
Oh, we’ve heard one another plenty. We heard the president, the vice president, and multiple other high government officials trash this woman with apocalyptic fan fiction out of an airport thriller: She was a “domestic terrorist” who tried to run down an ICE officer because she’s part of a trained cabal of bleeding-heart antifa operatives who hate America’s laws, and so she bears culpability for her own death, which she invited by daring to oppose the Trump administration.
We’ve heard more than enough.
“I spoke to people today who haven’t slept since it happened, who want ICE out now, who don’t like masked men on their street, don’t want their neighbors arrested, don’t want families ripped apart.”
But …
“I’ve heard, too, not on the streets protesting but in passionate notes in my inbox, from people who want to see our immigration laws enforced, legally and peacefully and with safety for all, including the officers who, in many cases, are also parents themselves. These are both deeply American sentiments.”
Are those emails from other people in Minneapolis or any other city that ICE has invaded […] Or are they from conservatives with brains pickled in rightwing media who write over and over “THIS IS WHAT I VOTED FOR!” […]
See, on the one hand, Dokoupil walked around Minneapolis and got residents to comment on camera how furious and traumatized they are by ICE’s very public, very cruel actions in their city. On the other hand, he also got emails from people […]
“But our job now is maybe the most American thing of all. It’s to find a way to live with people who are genuinely different from us. To try to be fair to them, and in doing so, to make things better, and keep things decent. Because in America, no one is going to do it for us.”
This is the airheaded Bari Weiss/radical contrarian centrist view of the world, where there must be two sides to every story, neither of which can be given more moral weight than the other. In this world, Good was standing in the way of the Real Americans and their avatar Donald Trump. So, her punishment (summary execution in the street by a cop) is simply one more disagreement about our views of what America should be.
So thanks for the condescending lecture about how we should treat each other, Wonder Bread. Next time, leave it in your Drafts folder.
The relevant clip of Dokoupil farting word sounds out of his yap hole starts around the 18:06 mark in this video. Or you could spare yourself and do something more worthwhile with two irretrievable minutes of your life, like swan-dive into a swimming pool full of broken glass. [video]
[…] On Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani put aside their differences and got together to announce the launch of the 2-Care program, which will make child care free for two-year-olds across the city, along with a promise to fully universalize the city’s 3K program, which currently provides free childcare to three-year-olds. It’s just the latest step on the path to making universal child care a reality in New York City and eventually the whole state.
Hochul also announced the formation of an Office of Child Care and Early Education that will be focused on making that happen. After all, New Mexico just pulled it off, so why not New York?
[…] The cost of child care is, in fact, absolutely ridiculous — and enough to make people seriously rethink even having children. On average, in New York it costs from $12,000 to $20,000 per child, and that is in addition to all of the other child-related costs. And sure, you can say “Well, gee! That is New York! Surely it is cheaper in other places!” — but the state where it’s cheapest is Mississippi, and it costs an average of $7,696 there. Personally, I think that’s still pretty expensive in a country where most people don’t have a spare $1000, nevermind $7,696, to throw around.
Hochul plans to spend $8.6 billion on child care related costs throughout the state, which sounds like a lot until you consider that this money would be spent either way — if not through taxes, then on the free market — and that universalizing childcare is the most efficient way of doing that. […]
“EXCLUSIVE: Inside the frantic global race to find an escape route for Maduro.
“A previously unreported Christmas Eve meeting in Vatican City was one of many failed attempts to find safe harbor for the Venezuelan leader before the U.S. raid.”
On Christmas Eve, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, second in command to the pope and a longtime diplomatic mediator, urgently summoned Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, to press for details on America’s plans in Venezuela, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post. [photo of meeting is available at the link]
For days, the influential Italian cardinal had been seeking access to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the documents show, desperate to head off bloodshed and destabilization in Venezuela. In his conversation with Burch, a Trump ally, Parolin said Russia was ready to grant asylum to Maduro and pleaded with the Americans for patience in nudging the strongman toward that offer.
“What was proposed to [Maduro] was that he would go away and he would be able to enjoy his money,” said a person familiar with the Russian offer. “Part of that ask was that [President Vladimir] Putin would guarantee security.” [!]
But it was not to be. A week later, Maduro and his wife would be seized by American Special Operations forces in a raid that killed about 75 people and be flown to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
The previously unreported meeting in Vatican City was one of many failed attempts — by the Americans and intermediaries, the Russians, Qataris, Turks, the Catholic Church and others — to head off a building diplomatic crisis and find safe harbor for Maduro before Saturday’s U.S. raid to capture him. […]
This story is based on interviews with nearly 20 people, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks and intelligence. It includes new details about the far-reaching global efforts to steer Maduro into exile and avoid U.S. military intervention, as well as the Trump administration’s decision to work with Venezuela’s sitting vice president, rather than the opposition leader Washington had long supported. […]
Russia and the Vatican
The Vatican has long been a spoke in the wheel of international negotiations with Venezuela’s isolated government. A decade ago, the Holy See tried and failed to work out a deal between Maduro and the fractured opposition. More recently, the Vatican had sought dialogue with the Venezuelan government through its senior clerics in the country, and Pope Leo XIV had cautioned the Americans against the use of force.
[…] Venezuela represents an important foothold for Moscow in Latin America. When Chávez rose to power in 1999, Venezuela made major purchases of Russian weapons, including tanks, Sukhoi fighters and surface-to-air missiles. Russia also offered significant loans to Caracas, provided financial lifelines to help the country weather U.S. sanctions and remains a player in the Venezuelan oil industry.
In his Dec. 24 meeting with Burch, according to the documents obtained by The Post, Parolin said Russia was prepared to receive Maduro. He also shared what is described in the documents as a “rumor”: that Venezuela had become a “set piece” in Russia-Ukraine negotiations, and that “Moscow would give up Venezuela if it were satisfied on Ukraine.”
Analysts say Russia had already reduced its support for Venezuela in recent years as its focus shifted to the war next door. Loans to help Venezuela buy Russian weapons effectively stopped in 2018. When Maduro visited Moscow in May, he signed a strategic partnership agreement with Putin, but the relationship was viewed by most observers as more ideological than substantive.
[…] The person familiar with the Russian offer, however, said Moscow was also willing to grant asylum to the other senior Venezuelans, and it appeared that Maduro was simply digging in his heels, believing the U.S. would not act.
“I think it was hubris,” this person said.
Another factor may also have been at play. The assessment among some in Washington was that Maduro would never go to Russia because it was too restrictive — and he wouldn’t have access to the money from the Venezuelan gold trade he is believed to have stashed offshore, according to a person familiar with the deliberations of the Trump administration.
[…] Early last year, Trump’s presidential envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, took a leading role in negotiating with Venezuela, sometimes with the help of Qatar and sometimes directly with Rodríguez’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez, a psychiatrist, former minister of information and current president of the country’s national assembly. In those talks, Venezuela repeatedly shot down U.S. proposals for Maduro to leave power, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
[…] Over the following months, Qatar received multiple Venezuelan requests for talks with the United States, according to a person familiar with the outreach, but the Trump administration indicated it was not interested.
[…] A potential asylum deal for Maduro in Turkey had been in play since at least November, according to the person familiar with Trump administration deliberations, including “guarantees” he would not be extradited to the United States.
But the now-jailed former leader and his wife indignantly pushed back […]
At the Vatican on Friday, Leo expressed concern that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue” was being replaced by “diplomacy based on force.”
“War is back in vogue,” he warned, “and a zeal for war is spreading.”
Much more at the link, including analysis regarding Chavistas, María Corina Machado, Batista (a beef magnate), Richard Grenell, Jorge Rodríquez, Chevron oil company, and Delcy Rodríqiez.
“The display to honor officers who protected the Capitol will be temporarily installed on the Senate side of the building.”
On Monday night, as much of the political world prepared to acknowledge the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office made an announcement: The Louisiana representative conceded that federal law required Congress to install a permanent plaque to honor the law enforcement personnel who helped protect the U.S. Capitol against pro-Trump rioters, but he had determined the statute that authorized the plaque is “not implementable.”
At that point, it was widely assumed that the plaque would remain out of sight for the foreseeable future. Those assumptions, however, proved wrong. Roll Call reported:
A long-delayed plaque honoring officers who defended the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack will temporarily hang in the Senate side, after a resolution was adopted by unanimous consent Thursday afternoon.
‘We owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them,’ Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said on the floor.
To briefly recap, after the insurrectionist violence five years ago, Congress agreed to install a permanent plaque to honor the law enforcement personnel who helped protect the U.S. Capitol against pro-Trump rioters. By statute, the plaque was to be placed on the western side of the building by March 2023 and list the names of those who served.
That deadline lapsed almost three years ago. The plaque is done and ready to be installed, but it’s sitting in a Capitol basement utility room surrounded by tools and maintenance equipment.
That is, it was sitting in a Capitol basement utility room. Now, thanks to a resolution championed by Tillis and Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the Architect of the Capitol has been directed to “prominently display” the plaque in the Senate wing of the Capitol “until the plaque can be placed in its permanent location.”
If only one Senate Republican had balked at the proposal, the effort would have failed, but no one objected. The measure does not need the support of the House or the White House.
[…] As for its future location, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi told NBC News this week that the plaque would be properly installed after the 2026 midterm elections should Democrats win back the majority in the chamber.
“Just wait 10 more months. [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries] will be speaker, and we will place it in the place of honor,” the California Democrat said on the anniversary of the riot.
Asked where it would go, Pelosi added, “Speaker Jeffries will decide that.”
“Russia and China have spent years trying to disrupt U.S. alliances. In 2026, the incumbent American president is doing their job for them.”
As Donald Trump considers a maximalist foreign policy vision rooted in his whims and “psychological” needs, it’s worth appreciating the degree to which the rest of the world has taken note of the president’s erratic radicalism. Consider some of the developments from the past week:
– The leaders of France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark issued a joint declaration this week that warned the United States that they would “not stop defending” the values of sovereignty and territorial integrity following Trump’s threats related to Greenland.
– The U.S. faced a rare rebuke at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council this week, where even our allies said Trump’s military offensive in Venezuela violated the U.N. charter and “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”
– German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has a largely ceremonial role, warned of a major global realignment this week, insisting that there had been a “breakdown of values by our most important partner, the USA, which helped build this world order.”
– The Netherlands announced this week that it’s scaling back its participation in U.S.-led missions to counter drug trafficking in the Caribbean because of its opposition to the Trump administration’s deadly military operations against civilian boats. That came on the heels of a related announcement from Great Britain, which said it would stop intelligence sharing with the U.S. about boats in the Caribbean for the same reason.
If we look back just a few weeks earlier, Denmark’s military intelligence service for the first time also described the U.S. as a potential security risk.
In isolation, each of these stories was and is important, but taken together, the emerging picture is one in which much of the world is not only afraid of what’s become of the United States, but is also forging new partnerships and alliances that leave us behind.
As The Washington Post’s Max Boot put it in a late-November column, much of the world has started to see the U.S. as a “rogue nation,” and as a result, traditional allies “are looking elsewhere.”
The New York Times had a related report in June, noting, “New trade deals. Joint sanctions against Israel. Military agreements. America’s closest allies are increasingly turning to each other to advance their interests […]
Six months later, this dynamic continues to intensify.
At a campaign-style event in Pennsylvania last month, the American president repeated one of his favorite boasts. “We’re respected again as a country,” Trump declared. He had 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.”
This has been a rhetorical staple for the incumbent president across both of his terms. It’s also 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 only foreign citizens who’ve lost respect for the Trump-led U.S. — it’s also foreign officials, who are increasingly looking at what’s become of us with a combination of fear, disappointment, contempt and confusion.
Russia and China have spent years trying to disrupt U.S. alliances. In 2026, the incumbent American president is doing their job for them.
After reviewing this week’s federal court dockets, we’re glad we found a profession that values clarity. […] If we became an attorney, we may be faced with an existential question of who we truly are.
That was the case this week as a federal judge in Virginia sought information as to why the U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District says she is the U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District after another judge rules she was not. Meanwhile, a New York judge ruled the Northern District’s top federal prosecutor is not the top federal prosecutor so he’s not allowed to investigate the state’s top prosecutor. Even a detained dictator [Maduro] doesn’t think the man the court approved as his lawyer is actually his lawyer even after a federal judge says he was. Meanwhile, another lawyer apologizes for not acting lawyer-like and an indicted attorney takes a break from practicing the law.
While everyone in the U.S. court system may be questioning their career choices, we’re steadfast in our belief that we were born to find the most fascinating court records you may have missed.
birgerjohanssonsays
NB The shooting is even worse than we believed.
.
-Media seems to have aquired the footage and audio of the suit camera carried by the ICE agent that fired the bullets. The moments of the shooting is redacted but the rest is damning!
Re: birgerjohansson @492: The MeidasTouch host introduced it as from the phone.
Bellingcat: “New footage from the ICE agent’s phone who shot at Renee Nicole Good […] We’ve placed that footage in a synced [collage] with the other currently available footage.”
That footage is tumbly because it was in his hand. He didn’t fall to the ground as one might imagine were it a bodycam.
shows him walking around Good’s vehicle as she sits in the driver’s seat with a dog in the back of the car. Good, a mother of three, is seen smiling at the officer, who has since been identified as Jonathan Ross, saying, “I’m not mad at you.”
Another woman, who identified herself as Good’s wife in other videos, is also seen outside the vehicle speaking to the officer. “We don’t change our plates every morning. Just so you know, it’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later,” the woman says, while telling the officer she is a U.S. citizen.
Other vehicles are seen driving past as the exchange takes place. The footage shows the officer capturing the vehicle’s license plate on camera and continuing to circle the vehicle as Good’s wife continues their interaction. Another officer then approaches on the driver’s side and orders Good to get out of the vehicle.
Good is seen putting the vehicle in reverse, turning her wheel to the right, away from the officer, and driving forward as the officer yells “Woah” and gunshots ring out. The footage does not capture the shooting itself and cuts off shortly after as the officer is heard calling Good a “f—ing b—h” before the vehicle speeds away, crashing
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Court Watch – The Existential Crisis of Being A Lawyer
The blog ate my link/excerpt attempts. An absurd summary of cases this week, wherein a bunch of lawyers were said to not be lawyers, including this guy.
Updates and a summary of how Trump has been trashing the White House:
When Donald Trump decided to pursue a giant White House ballroom, the president handpicked architect James McCrery, who runs a small firm known for its work designing Catholic cathedrals. It wasn’t long, however, before trouble emerged: The more Trump started micromanaging the endeavor and expanding the scope of the vanity project, the more the shambolic process reportedly did not sit well with McCrery.
And so, last month, Trump hired a new architect to oversee the initiative — one who presumably would be comfortable with the president’s appetite for an ever-expanding project.
It’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post reported:
President Donald Trump plans to build his controversial ballroom as tall as the White House’s main mansion itself, the project’s chief architect told a federal review committee Thursday — a significant change of plans that breaks with long-standing architectural norms requiring additions to be shorter than the main building.
The same report noted that the new architect, Shalom Baranes, told the National Capital Planning Commission that as part of the White House overhaul, officials are also considering a one-story addition to the West Wing’s colonnade — a subject about which the president talked to The New York Times a day earlier.
Trump told the newspaper that he was calling the project the “Upper West Wing.”
At this point, it’s worth pausing to take stock.
The president decided early on in his second term to pave the Rose Garden. He took a borderline unhealthy interest in interior decorating, including the addition of a cartoonish amount of gold to the Oval Office.
The president installed a flagpole that he seemed awfully excited about; he boasted about “ripping” apart the tile in the bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom; he installed a mirror-and-bronze lettering at the entrance to the West Wing; and he turned the Oval Office study into a depot for “TRUMP 2028” merch, like some cheap gift shop.
Then his ambitions took a more destructive turn: The president tore down the entirety of the East Wing (despite having promised not to do that) to make room for a wildly unnecessary giant ballroom.
In September, Trump installed what was described as a “Presidential Walk of Fame” that featured images of American presidents. Then he added tacky plaques with text written by Trump himself, which smeared some his predecessors with cheap nonsense.
He said he wanted to paint the entirety of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex, so that it would look like, in the words of Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, “a big white blob.” (Late last week, the president indicated that this is still a priority.)
Evidently, the to-do list is still growing.
If we were talking about a Trump-owned property, all of this would merely be a curiosity, but we’re not. This is the White House — which is supposed to be our house.
[…] the incumbent Republican president is actually trashing the place.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of almost 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2288074
Did the president boast about a foreign strike that didn’t happen, or did he disclose a strike he wasn’t supposed to talk about? Now we know the answer.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2288044
Nicholas Grossman: “The US wasn’t attacked by Venezuela, someone based in Venezuela, or anyone else. There’s no self-defense argument, and the US didn’t even try for UNSC authorization.”
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2288037
Latest government inflation, GDP figures are worthless, and will be for months
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2287999
US offered Ukraine 15 years of security guarantees, Zelenskyy says
Haven’t you heard? DJT has outlawed bad weather. No more blizzards. No more hurricanes. No more tornadoes. No more atmospheric rivers. They make him look bad. Similar to the way he has outlawed diseases and pandemics.
New York Times link
“C.I.A. Conducted Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela”
“The attack last week, on a dock purportedly used for shipping narcotics, did not kill anyone, people briefed on the operation said. But it was the first known U.S. operation inside Venezuela.”
Trump wastes little time embracing Putin’s latest dubious claim
Russia claimed that Ukraine targeted Putin’s private home with a drone attack. Ukraine strenuously denied it. Trump accepted Putin’s story as true anyway.
Related video at the link.
The more Trump focuses on electricity prices, the more rising costs matter
“As electricity costs climb, Trump could try to avoid blame for the problem. He prefers to push an alternate reality in which the problem doesn’t exist.”
Related video at the link.
Trump Admin Scores Visa for Founder of Russian Propaganda Outlet
“Tenet Media’s Lauren Chen is back—even though the illegal-influence and money-laundering investigation remains open.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ukraine-russia-war-still-going-despite
Washington Post link
“How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump”
“Customer service deteriorated by key measures as the agency enacted sweeping cuts in Trump’s second term, internal data and interviews show.”
Much more at the link.
A Different Bias
“The truth about Putin’s Belarus nuclear gambit”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DqIr1FF9nK0
I am picturing Russians placing an old tactical nuke on a trebuchet. Because Russian military tech is rusting away.
Meidas Touch :
Fox News has problems spinning Trump’s health as ‘good’.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=D2gsZcapCv8
Men embodying women in VR report strong emotional reactions to verbal harassment
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-men-embodying-women-vr-strong.html
Researchers develop efficient, reusable compound for capturing carbon dioxide from air
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-efficient-reusable-compound-capturing-carbon.html
Naturally occurring molecule (CaAKG) shown to restore memory function in Alzheimer’s models
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-naturally-molecule-shown-memory-function.html
Inhibiting PGAM-Chk1 binding in the senescent cells of mice appears to slow aging
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-inhibiting-pgam-chk1-senescent-cells.html
NASA is sending four astronauts on a ten-day journey making an U-turn behind the moon. This is less ambitious than the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and closely mimic the Soviet Zond missions.
The Soviets were planning to send two cosmonauts around the moon about the same time as Apollo 8, but decided it would look too unimpressive after NASA beat them.
@birgerjohansson
Thank you for those interesting science links, especially the Mouseheimer one.
Trump eyes outlandish lawsuit against the Fed’s Powell, alleging ‘incompetence’
“We’re going to probably bring a lawsuit against him,” the president said, referring to an unlikely civil suit against the Federal Reserve chairman.
Related video at the link.
DOJ pushed to prosecute Kilmar Abrego Garcia only after mistaken deportation, judge’s order says, by Associated Press
Trump’s weirdness about his press secretary gets ickier
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dsssax6ne5ghruk6velxnbp4/post/3mb5ow3u2kl2v
See also: Russia exaggerates war progress to sway Trump’s peace plan, ISW reveals.
Washington Post link
“As Russia’s war grinds on, its society is fraying”
“The Kremlin presents the country as strong, united and on an inevitable path to victory, but as peace negotiations drag on, Russian society is deteriorating.”
NBC News:
Associated Press:
NBC News:
Link
Related video at the link.
MS NOW:
New York Times:
Good news.
New York Times:
MS Nows: Border czar Tom Homan didn’t receive normal background check during bribery probe
White House spiked the investigation into Homan and it isn’t clear if he had any background check at all. Trump had already picked Homan and the transition team knew their role was to figure out how to get Homan thru the process, not to determine if he should have the job.
A great Red Blues performance by Blue Moon Marquee and Northern Cree
Rollin’ and Tumblin’
Lynna @19
Beyond satire: “Why Right-Wing ‘Thought Leaders’ Think it’s “Gay” to Have Sex with Women”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=knPgR8zQYRE
Trump is using his first veto of his current term to kill funding for a major drinking water project in Colorado.
Rando: “Let’s see if congress has any spine at all.”
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #32…
At least in the House, it looks like a good place to use a discharge petition.
British Christmas TV Special covers an Illegal Swedish tradition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bgxmLfPb7Xs
“Iceland has hottest Christmas Eve ever with temperature of 19.8C”
.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/30/iceland-record-temperatures-christmas-eve-met-office-seyisfjorur
This is totally normal and nothing to worry about.
Tilting at windmills: Trump laments death of bald eagle in the US … which was really a falcon in Israel
.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/30/trump-wind-turbine-bald-eagle-falcon
I see DJT is true to his brand.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/you-can-t-gaslight-people-mtg-calls-out-billionaire-trump-on-economy-hype-2479007811621
Video is 9:31 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/team-trump-ensured-tom-homan-skipped-normal-background-check-amid-bribery-probe-2478999619706
Video is 11:28 minutes.
Trump reportedly wants to give right-wing media $100M to recruit racists
Cartoon: The marketplace of ideas
Cartoon: Worst gift ever
https://www.wonkette.com/p/2025-were-still-alive-she-said
2025: We’re Still Alive, She Said
https://www.wonkette.com/p/new-years-adam-tabs-tues-dec-30-2025
This will confirm the disgust and anger PZ and all of us have for the destruction of science by the magat admin:
https://digbysblog.net/2025/12/30/heartbreakingly-shortsighted/
Since the beginning of 2025, “all, or nearly all, federal agencies that supported research in some way have decreased the size of their research footprint,” Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist who has been tracking the federal funding cuts to science, told me. Less funding means less science can be done and fewer discoveries will be made.
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: Kennedy Center changed board rules months before vote to add Trump’s name”
The new rules say only trustees appointed by the president can vote, barring other members, including Democrats who hold seats, from decisions. […]”
GOP gets WIPED OUT in Shock Election Loss In IOWA!!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=t-LCX-LS7_4
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: Future of D.C. golf courses uncertain as Trump administration terminates lease”
“National Links Trust, the nonprofit that has run the courses since 2020, objects to Interior Department’s assertion that it hasn’t fulfilled its obligations.”
Hossenfelder alert
“Why Quantum Computers might never work”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WeVGJr6h-CQ
DNA Of The Only Human Remains Ever Found In Beringia Puzzles Researchers
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5SdoXG-XBeQYours Birger Johansson
Finland seizes ship sailing from Russia after suspected cable sabotage
“At the moment we suspect aggravated disruption of telecommunications and also aggravated sabotage,” Helsinki Chief of Police Jari Liukku told reporters.
Posted by NBC News, but Reuters is the source.
@46 Lynna, OM: It’s a good sign of how far his brain has declined that he cares more about the golf courses in DC then he does about most real global and internal issues. The golf courses in DC are fine but not pretentious enough and don’t have Trump in their names, so they are a huge issue for him.
In his first term he might have made a move to take them over but he would have delegated it to one of his sycophants. He understood that he had to at least appear to be focused on the big issues and things Americans cared about.
Justice Department is reviewing 5.2 million pages of Jeffrey Epstein files
The department is seeking to enlist roughly 400 employees in the effort, which is expected to run from Jan. 5 to Jan. 20, two sources familiar with the plan told NBC News.
CNN: House Judiciary Committee releases video and transcript of Jack Smith deposition
There are links in the article to the transcript and video if watching 8 hours of Congressional figures trying to bait a highly experienced prosecutor into saying something embarrassing interests you. Given how long it took to release and neither the Democrats or Republicans cared that much I’m assuming there are no obvious mistakes on either side and no good sound bites.
Followup to Sky Captain @32.
Trump’s vindictive veto will deprive 50,000 Americans of clean water
https://www.wonkette.com/p/2025-the-year-big-oils-investment
“2025: The Year Big Oil’s Investment In Trump Paid Off”
“Also the year Trump outlawed science, Project 2025 happened to the planet, and China became the climate’s best hope.”
Trump & China 😃
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ATGMe6iwD/
6 Extremely Racist Old Hollywood Stars
.https://youtube.com/shorts/KSFxiqm831U
Noo! Hepburn too! And Johnny Carson.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/2025-the-year-in-trump-making-peace
Cartilage – in the ear or elsewhere – does NOT grow back.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxhiNYl7SwARzjtdc1vOZHfYFuCs5wraST
Ukraine slams India’s Modi for endorsing Putin home attack claims
“Kyiv denies Moscow’s accusation it targeted the Russian president’s residence.”
Putin is sabotaging Trump’s efforts to save him.
.
Scotland: A mixed flock of donkeys and horses. Diversity is cool.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CrpE4yMYm/
Aaron Rupar:
NPR – What to know about Nick Shirley, the YouTuber alleging day care fraud in Minnesota
Gov. Tim Walz: “This is Trump’s long game. We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue – but […] He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans.”
[Video] Adam Mockler (MeidasTouch) – MAGA Fraudster BLOWS HIS STORY in EPIC BACKFIRE (12:18)
Rando: “This is so stupid. Unless a kid is coming or going, there’s no kids in the hallway or lobby when you come into our daycare. They have their own little classrooms. And our daycare has an afterschool program so there’s classrooms that are empty 7am-3pm until school lets out. What a moron.”
Steve Dill (Fmr prosecutor & reporter): “Daycare centers don’t let strange men enter their premises, especially those who ask for ‘the children.'”
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/minneapolis-daycare-fraud-allegations-viral-video-national-attention/89-91413882-b0f9-4ec4-a4a4-4b4e3aeab39dNBC – Minneapolis daycare denies fraud allegations
Rando: “just the goddam dumbest, most racist, overblown horseshit I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s another slice of Veritas-style full-throat deception”
The Hill – GOP caucus steered YouTuber Nick Shirley to day care sites
Kat Abughazaleh (Congressional candidate): “The GOP’s midterm strategy is literally just Comet Pizza.”
Rando:
Excerpt from text quoted by Sky Captain @60:
Nick Shirley actually created some fake news.
And, of course “the state GOP has been “working with” Shirley”!
FFS. It is going to take some time for all of the debunking efforts to get to the public. And even then many of the MAGA cult followers will not see or hear the debunking.
How a viral video prompted investigations
Gov. Walz: We take fraud seriously. Here’s what we’re doing to stop it.
Tim Onion:
Rando:
Commentary
Jess Calarco (Sociologist):
The US *did* have universal child care briefly during WWII (1943-1946), when men were shipped out, and women worked factories etc. … until congress let funding run out.
^ “demonizing an entire community” = Somalis. I was reading another article where Trump called Walz the r-word over all this.
Just had a great steak dinner now I’m watching my annual Marx Bros marathon. I’ll have some cheery cheesecake later.
NYT – Oil tanker fleeing the Coast Guard now listed in Russian ship database
Drug death rates.
.
“Bondi DELETES TWEET After Accidentally Praising…BIDEN?!”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/7Ti-1WAkcYc
They are as incompetent as they are evil.
Breaking: Trump almost got something right. So close!
.https://youtube.com/shorts/Citm2iq77p8
The 4.5 Billion Year Journey | How Earth Survived Hell to Become Home
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=M_YD9ReqOIk
Follow-up to 60 and 62.
ABC – HHS freezing child care payments to all states until they prove funds ‘being spent legitimately’
If they mean photos of kids, that sounds like slurping up dodgy biometrics for ICE.
A thoroughly Woke and Anti-fascist New Year to one and all!
@ ^ KG : Yes please and seconded!
For the cost of a single F16 fighter jet Chandra contriubutes so much more and better but faces losing its funding and being ended far too soon as this hyperlinked YT Short notes.
Oh and via that link and mentione din it is this site :
Source : https://www.savechandra.org/
Why Trump’s ‘Patriot Games’ are drawing such skepticism
“This fall’s competition between high school athletes isn’t exactly poised to be a unifying moment for the country’s 250th birthday.”
Arstechnica: NJ’s answer to flooding: it has bought out and demolished 1,200 properties
Blue Acres is really a generous program, buying up land that has value only because the federal government backs the flooding insurance. New Jersey has slowly ramped up pressure on the areas that have been flooded over and over, pressuring them to take Blue Acre buyouts.
The idea is good, these are areas that are not going to habitable eventually or will require constant government subsidies. Buy the land out at a price favorable to the owners and move them someplace further inland. At some point shut off sales to anybody but the state and let the few remaining people die of old age. Convert all of the land into new coastal wet lands as it is bought so it’s clear the entire town is going away.
Of course the Trump administration is cutting funding.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents The Great Meritocracy Race
CNN: Trump says he’s withdrawing National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland
The loss at the Supreme Court has left him with nowhere to go. He frames it as his decision but the courts would force his hand in short order.
There is a bunch of Trumpian wining along with the order. The threat that he might send them in again under different form is the only parts that matters. Figures in the administration have talked about using the Insurrection Act but that would on questionable legal grounds also. That law gives the president broader authority to act but only to suppress serious unrest. That law is talking about situations where the state government fails to stop rioting or secure the rights of citizens.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/who-are-the-heroes-of-2025-its-a
“Who Are The Heroes Of 2025?”
“If you’re doing anything tiny to fight fascism, you’re on it.”
Washington Post link
“About 40 killed, 115 injured in New Year’s bar fire at Swiss ski resort”
“Officials ruled out the possibility of an attack and are investigating the cause of the blaze, which left many of the injured with ‘significant, severe burns.’ ”
New York Times:
Bulgaria adopts the euro
“The introduction of the euro is the final milestone in Bulgaria’s integration into the European Union,” president says, but public opinion isn’t so convinced.
U.S. has sharply cut proposed pasta tariffs after a review, Italy says
“In October, the United States said that 13 Italian pasta companies would face an extra 92% duty — on top of the regular 15% rate on most European Union imports.”
Have a safe, healthy caring new year for 2026, I dare you. Here is my contribution for now.
Years before reading the article linked below, I knew that the big problem with transportation today is that it is 19th technology. It is a big, deadly wound that has had only a few tiny ineffectual bandages put in it since the first ‘horseless carriages’.
Example: phoenix, arizona has a huge freeway wrong way driver problem causing innumerable accidents. But, they have spent millions on wrong way cameras at freeway exits, etc. They don’t prevent accidents, they just warn law enforcement that there is going to be an accident! And, the result in reducing accidents has been insignificant. I have often wondered why they don’t use those one-way in ground spike arrays like you see in parking garages, etc. It may be that lawyers warn cities they will get sued when some idiot runs over them and flattens all 4 tires.
1) The roads that are poorly designed and put pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars and trucks on collision courses with each other and even with buildings.
2) The never ending trend for ever bigger, heavier faster vehicles that can’t help but cause more injury, death and destruction whenever there is a crash. And, no amount of cameras can make up for the lack of visibility of your surroundings caused by the ‘oh, so cool’ design of cars. Also, the ridiculous profusion of gimmicky controls and screens that baffle most drivers and take people’s attention off the road.
3) and MOST IMPORTANT and DANGEROUS COMPONENT: ‘the nuts holding the wheels’. People are not inherently careful or thoughtful when piloting vehicles (or doing anything else, for that matter). The majority of Ebike injuries caused by ‘numbskulls’ not wearing a helmet is huge. The ongoing large huge number of fatalities from people not wearing seatbelts.
Rebecca Watson always writes a good, thoughtful article:
https://skepchick.org/2025/12/e-bikes-arent-the-problem/
Russia rings in new year with mass drone strike on Ukraine, Putin says he’s confident of victory
#80 Lynna, OM posted about the Mamdani Inauguration.
I reply: YES! we need more as caring as he is. His religion is irrelevant to his honest, decent desire to help people instead of caving to criminal corporations or magat hate.
U.S. finds Ukraine did not try to kill Putin in alleged drone strike, source says
“Ukraine had been aiming to hit a military target in the same region as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s country residence, a source with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.”
Link
LOL
A lingering question about Mamdani’s inauguration is… Why did they specifically ban Raspberry Pis from it?
Adding to Lynna @81.
Aljazeera – Bulgaria set to adopt the euro—why is this causing controversy?
Text quoted by Sky Captain @89:
I suspected as much. Thanks for that additional information.
Top cartoons from a terrible year: ICE edition
5 celebrities who inspired epic Trump tantrums in 2025
Details recounting nonsensical attacks against Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, and Tom Hanks are available at the link.
Some of those celebrities have won awards that Trump covets, but has not won. Also, I think Trump is just jealous of their popularity. Trump is particularly incensed when celebrities choose to endorse political candidates other than himself.
My conclusion is that Trump does not know how to pick his fights.
Law and Crime: ‘Exacerbated by the government’s conduct’: Obama judge kills Trump DOJ’s case against immigrant TikToker shot by ICE, says feds ‘deprived’ him of access to lawyers
More details about something mentioned before by Lynna, OM. This makes clear that the case was dismissed for basic procedure mistakes by ICE and the DOJ, not some constitutional issue relating to immigration and ICE enforcement. They blocked access to his lawyers multiple times and delayed producing discovery evidence till after the due date. They government messed up their duty until it made a fair trial impossible.
The president delivers a … not very heartwarming…New Year’s Eve message.
.https://youtube.com/live/DTjbw12xFXY
OK. He is losing the remaining inhibitions and revealing what is really going on in his mind.
I am no MD but people tell me this is consistent with some neural condition like frontal lobe dementia.
New years good news roundup from Daily Kos.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/12/31/2360402/-New-Year-s-Eve-GNR-saying-goodbye-to-2025-Good-News-Roundup
Stupid Evil – our best ally?
“The Chart Trump Would Rather Was Buried”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=g2cOhKVx6pQ
NBC news: Protests in Iran over economy turn deadly
Semi-official news agency reports 3 deaths and 17 injuries. An unknown number of arrests but the protests are wide spread, disorganized and have become a real problem for the government, so probably a lot.
The protestors want the religious government out but are too disorganized to be clear about what they want to replace it. They want a functioning economy and something less religious.
Well, this is a serious worry and under rated threat that might be hitting us all very soon as Anton Petrov notes Megaconstellations May Be Just 2 Days Away From Causing a Kessler Syndrome (15 mins long) posted 3 hours ago FWIW.
Cartoon: 3 more years
Criminally ill: Systemic failures turn state mental hospitals into prisons
New York Times link
Much more at the link.
@98 StevoR
A Youtuber makes an easily verifiable doomsday prediction too close to the predicted time. I’m sure this headline will age well.
Re: StevoR @98:
Not quite. Co-author of the paper, Sam Lawler, wrote a thread about it last month.
/Thread also pointed out Starlink is even more haphazard than she’d thought.
25 minute video of the decay of the Russian military industry.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=AzD4LBpAa9A
Aaron Rupar:
Commentary
The purported MRI a while back was instead a CT scan that ruled out cardiovascular issues, per his doctor at the WSJ link. Doc said his ill-advised daily aspirin is 325mg, and Trump said he’s done that for 25 years.
First day running New York City.
Scott Horton (Attorney):
Kentucky Health Department warns of potential measles exposure at Ark Encounter
Commentary
Trump has bad New Year as GOP Members JOIN DEMOCRATS?!
9 state senators in Montana have been purged
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=KjUgtuFf1Wk
I first read the name of Trump’s doctor as Barbrady, like the officer in South Park.
.
Iran Collapse Is Far Worse Than You Think: Protests Everywhere, No Water, No Electricity
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UWaweFaLZ-A
I will never grow tired of hearing about Russians failing.
“Russia deploys cavalry against Ukrainian robots with machine guns”
This sounds very Putinesque.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gDIW8K3B254
Anton Petrov
Megaconstellations May Be Just 2 Days Away From Causing a Kessler Syndrome
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=b66ZZ05wKC0
Predictable disasters: climate change, overfishing, forest destruction and now this.
Republicans Panic as Terrifying Secret Orders Go Public!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=rO5X4V9QdGg
It seems every American is now a terrorist.
Yule Boasting.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HQi419Bn9/
Oops!
I read Trump’s ambassador to Canada has just been expelled.
How the alt-right misuse The Lord Of the Rings
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JwGc4ZuBG/
In the meantime, it’s going well in the other place:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/grok-users-asked-chatbot-to-generate-sexual-content-ai-trainers-at-elon-musks-xai-claim/articleshow/124075812.cms
Dominic Cummings Lets Slip How Brexiteers Ignored Northern Ireland
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aA4FdgJSOtc
I have LOTS of things to say about Dominic Cummings and his ilk, but I don’t want Lynna to ban me.
Britain: “Leopards ate my face!”
Jeremy Clackson GETTING WHAT HE VOTED FOR?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aQf-adp0YwI
Gammon Right Winger ANGRY With King Over Diversity!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OqsmSYdK0bM
Yup. The feudal billionaire on the throne is too woke and lefty.
Also, I like that this Youtuber references Robespierre in his name.
…Also, I think Americans should adopt the British usage of “gammon” for angry, red-faced vulgo-conservatives.
Ugh, just got into an argument with someone on Bluesky who posted a very obviously faked YT video of Brian Cox arguing against space exploration. The discussion is in German an I now had three people telling me I should just watch the English original instead of the AI translation…
Followup to Sky Captain @105.
Amid health questions, Trump changes his story in weird and unexpected ways
“I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart,” the president said. “Does that make sense?” Actually, no.
Tesla loses title as world’s biggest EV maker as sales fall for second year in a row, by Associated Press
Check out the latest contender for worst lawyer in Trump’s crappy DOJ
Cartoon: Agreement!
WSJ:
Mar-A-Lago Supplied Women To Jeffrey Epstein For Years (despite the women reporting on his lewd and inappropriate behavior)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1IYmX-tovT4
Trump knew about Epstein sleaze 2003
The Business Strategies That Make Walmart A Ghoul And Costco A Mensch, by Mark Sumner
Lessons in capitalism.
‘We are locked and loaded’: Trump threatens Iran over treatment of protesters
“The president’s sudden interest in the rights of protesters is hardly in line with the vision he has espoused for decades.”
Dr. Oz recklessly downplays the importance of getting flu shots
“The more people get flu shots, the better off they’ll be. The CMS chief, a physician by trade, ought to understand this.”
TV. David Attenborough at 99 | Wild London review – honestly, telly does not get any better than this
.https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jan/01/wild-london-review-honestly-telly-does-not-get-any-better-than-this
Donald Trump Attacks Kennedy Family on Truth Social Hours After Death of JFK’s Granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg
“The president took to Truth Social hours after the Kennedy family announced their tragic loss to share posts from MAGA supporters mocking the political dynasty”
I snipped tributes to Tatiana for people like Maria Shriver (Caroline’s cousin).
Correction to comment 131. “I snipped tributes to Tatiana for people like Maria Shriver (Caroline’s cousin).” Should be: “I snipped tributes to Tatiana from people like Maria Shriver (Caroline’s cousin).
Good news.
Arizona cancels medical debt for almost half-a-million residents
Survived 4 Fires: Strv 122 Crew’s Raw Truth in Combat (the Swedish variant of the Leopard 2 tank)
.
Thr narrator’s voice is grating, but the information appears genuine.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7LD5Gh5vRIc
@ 133
It is about the war in Ukraine.
.
Unrelated: I just learned Russians are sending in infantrymen one by one in Pokrovsk, to avoid detection. Their generals really do not care how many of their men die, they just want to report about successful infiltrations.
Not good news.
Parents who delay baby’s first vaccines also likely to skip measles shots
“Ahead of possible changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, a new report highlights growing confusion over the best time to protect infants from serious infectious diseases.”
@134 birgerjohansson:
Another side effect of modern technology. It’s possible now to put every single soldier on their own individual secure radio communication channel. It allows for a level of small scale tactical coordination that would have been impossible before the year 2000 or so.
Doing this with single soldiers or teams of 2 or 3 soldiers is the method for infiltration the Russians have developed over the summer. A 10 man squad just gets destroyed because they always get seen, but very small groups have a chance of sneaking in. Then once the Russians have infiltrated enough men they start moving the men to secure some sort of line and attack Ukrainian positions so the Russians can bring up more troops faster. It has not worked in Pokrovsk because the Ukrainians are constantly sweeping to clear out infiltrators but it has worked in other areas.
Yahoo Entertainment: This Trump Mar-a-Lago NYE Video Is Blowing Up for All the Wrong Reasons
It’s equal parts funny and disturbing. Vanilla Ice is just demonstrating just how out of touch Trump is. Whoever planned the party brought in somebody that is something like 30 years out of date because Trump is comfortable with them. Stephen Miller acting like he has no frame of reference for what is going on is probably an accurate image.
Mediaite: Steve Bannon Compares Trump to Hillary Clinton in Stunning Attack
This is Bannon being a little consistent about his isolationist position. The sort of aggressive intervention that Trump is threatening Iran with is more consistent with the sort of neoliberal policy of Hillary Clinton. What Hillary would have done in this specific situation is pure conjecture and Bannon bringing up Hillary is trying to make the idea sound bad by association. It’s more interesting to see him rejecting the idea so strongly.
Just when you thought Elon Musk’s creepy AI couldn’t get any worse
Cartoon: Trump behind bars
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jack-smith-goes-back-to-washington
Alert: Ukraine warns Putin plans false flag attack inside Russia to derail peace talks
“Ukraine’s secret service warns of a staged high-casualty attack, potentially targeting a church in the run-up to Russian Orthodox Christmas.”
What horrors keep Republican voters awake at night?
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D6cFYMqd1/
Elon Musk demands ‘hotness’ exemption for teenager threatened with deportation
Associated Press:
This makes the new total 35. The USA has struck civilian boats in international waters 35 times.
MS NOW:
MS NOW:
The courts left Trump no choice.
The Hill:
Followup to comments 4, 42, 58, and 86.
New York Times:
New York Times:
USA Today:
Washington Post:
Link
California’s ban on openly carrying guns is unconstitutional, appeals court rules
“U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, said in the 2-1 decision that the state’s law could not stand under the Supreme Court’s 2022 landmark gun rights ruling.”
Excelelnt thought-provoking powerful bitof analysis here –
Israel’s Australia Antisemitism Report Just Gave the Game Away by Kernow Damo. Under 15 mins long.
Trump PAC threatens his own supporters with ‘punishment’ if they don’t send money fast enough
Promise checks that will never come, then blame Dems.
So looks like the US is at war with Venezuela:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live
Impeachment when?
@ ^ Yup Aussie ABC coverage here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-03/venezuela-explosions-low-flying-aircraft/106196656
Technically Trump’s already been impeached twice FWIW. Should’ve ben convicted twice too but for the Repug’s in Congress..
Lynna, OM@135,
It amazes me that none of the raving right factions have yet accused RFK Jr. of being an agent of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy, aiming to kill as many American babies and children as possible. After all, he comes from a well-known Democrat family.
Trump claims that they have captured Maduro. Much as I despise Maduro, I think America getting dragged into another war for a wag the dog scenario is not a good thing.
It’s been only 3 days in 2026, I suggest we try turning it off and back on again.
German news sites report both Democrat and Republican polititions call the attack on Venezuel illegal. I’m not expecting them to actually do anything against Trump and his fascist warmongers…
@ rorschach : I occassionally try saying “Computer, end program.”
It hasn’t worked so far..
(Must confess I yoiked this from an old~ish fb meme but still.)
Apparently Trump is gunna give a press conference on the Venezula attack and kidnapping of Maduro and his wife at 11 am USoA time.Which is .. v late night / early morning ours. (Aussie typing.)
Bloody timezones & the USA being so far behind the rest of the planet in those among so many more aspects.
I don’t think I’m going to sleep much tonight.
Time Team lives on, with new episodes on Youtube. Here is a summary of last year.
“Time Team 2025: A Year of Incredible Discoveries”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MnLDpEs45T4
The Forbidden Bagpipe Hymn the Clans Once Marched To just under a dozen mins.
Anyine else find their bones vibrate to this music?
My bones do. I think metaphorically but maybe kinda literally too.
Some sounds and music just.. impacts inside ya,.
Don’t it?
Does for me.
tRUMP corruption and insanity hits new high:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2026/01/03/trumps-selective-drug-enforcement-in-latin-america/
Given his pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, Trump’s kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro cannot be regarded as a legitimate fight against drug trafficking. Rather, it’s about getting a piece of the action.
3 mins, 30 secs approx.
Warumpi Band – Black Fella White Fella (1987)i TF ain’t this workn’?
Trump announces military strike on Venezuela, capture of President Nicolás Maduro
“The U.S. has built up significant military force in the region, but Trump does not appear to have sought permission from or informed Congress of Saturday’s military action.”
Warumpi Band – Black Fella White Fella (1987)/a>
Tennessee actually just did something amazing for women |
The state has created the first registry in the US to track repeat domestic violence offenders
.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/03/tennessee-actually-just-did-something-amazing-for-women
https://www.wonkette.com/p/what-are-we-changing-the-subject
“What Are We Changing The Subject From When We Bomb A Country’s Capital And Kidnap Its President?”
“Or did Trump just want ‘a win’?”
Recommended reading:
The Invention of Capitalism:
Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation: ,Michael Perelman
Washington Post:
Trump’s administration has now distributed photos of Maduro in handcuffs.
New York Times Editorial Board, “Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise”:
Trump is now speaking at a press conference held in Mar-a-Lago. He is stumbling. He looks and sounds old. He is reading hesitatingly from text on paper. Trump even mentioned Tren de Aragua. Then he went off script, starting a long riff about making Washington D.C. safe. He followed that with lies about other cities. Trump is rambling. Trump claims he “saved Los Angeles.” Tren de Aragua, again: “Sent by Maduro to threaten our citizens.” More rambling.
More later.
NBC News:
Ok I take it all back after watching the press conference. He does have dementia.
NBC News:
Now Marco Rubio is speaking at the press conference. Rubio is talking about guts and grit and so forth. “Stealth, lethality, precision […]” About Maduro, “He effed around and he found out.” Rubio also heaped mass quantities of praise on Trump.
NBC News:
https://www.ms.now/ms-now/watch/maddow-trump-will-see-the-illegality-of-venezuela-strike-as-a-plus-2479390787976
Video is about 16 minutes.
This video was made before Trump’s press conference.
Maddow: [Maddow covered lots of recent history, and Trump’s remarks, and then she went on to summarize.] “All of the purported explanations for what’s happened here don’t stand up to logical scrutiny. The president never articulated a coherent rationale for having done this. Seems like Marco Rubio’s dream, not Donald Trump’s dream. […]”
More in the video.
Trump called in to Fox and Friends before he held a press conference. Trump was enthusiastic about watching the invasion of Venezuela like he was “watching a TV show.”
J.D. Vance is pounding his chest on social media. Likewise for many Trump lackeys.
There’s some reporting that the Vice President of Venezuela is now in Russia.
from quote NYT editorial in #174 Lynna, OM
Except that the Trump lackeys in the supreme court made this irrelevant, because they ruled that Trump is criminally immune for any actions in official capacity as president, therefore this is legal according to the law of the land. Unclear if any military members could still be prosecuted.
Aaron Rupar: “Trump posts footage of the Maduro raid set to ‘Fortunate Son’—a protest song about the Vietnam War draft. [Video clip]”
Eric Columbus: “One line is ‘I ain’t no millionaire’s son’, but please don’t ask how Trump avoided Vietnam.”
Anthony Kreis (Constitutional law prof): “My God. He’s so stupid.”
James Ball: “I’m sure destabilising Venezuela and likely all of its neighbours will work wonders for refugee flows from that region. Genius.”
Andy Kim (Senator D-NJ): “Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel):
Brian Finucane (Just Security):
Rando 1: “What is the mechanism of correction for these fucking OLC opinions?”
Marcy Wheeler: “There isn’t one. But it’s one that the after times should get around to dealing with.”
Rando 1: “Oh… fantastic.”
The Onion (2018): “Trump claims he can overrule constitution with executive order because of little-known ‘No one will stop me’ loophole.”
Rebecca Ingber (Law prof):
https://bsky.app/profile/becingber.bsky.social/post/3mbjagfd33k2qRando 2: “So just to be clear, we executed a mission to invade a sovereign nation and then abduct its national leader. And then we bombed that nation in an act of *self defense* as we believed our invading forces would get attacked?”
JD Vance:
Elie Mystal (The Nation): “Actually, that’s exactly how JURISDICTION works unless you have an extradition treaty.”
Rando 3: “Yale needs to rescind his law degree.”
Michael Lehrhoff (Retired attorney): “Didn’t Trump just PARDON a Honduran leader who was CONVICTED of narcoterrorism???????”
Marcy Wheeler: “One nifty thing abt Maduro’s known 2020 indictment is it cited trafficking drugs THROUGH Honduras, whence Juan Orlando Hernández was just pardoned so he could help Peter Thiel destroy government.”
James Ball (The New World): “Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.”
Elie Mystal: “Reading the Maduro ‘indictment’ I’m suddenly reminded of WHY Gitmo existed and Obama didn’t shut it down. It’s because you can’t KIDNAP people, based on ‘evidence’ you violated rights to obtain, and bring them to trial in U.S. courts.”
CNBC – U.S. indictment against Venezuela President Maduro, wife is unsealed
Brian Finucane: “Did a Control + F for fentanyl, but no hits.”
Rando 4: “THEY HAD MACHINE GUNS?!?!”
Brian Finucane: “Today is the anniversary of the capture of Noreiga in Operation Just Cause.”
Rando 5: “This one was called Just ‘Cuz.”
Michael Paarlberg (PoliSci prof):
https://bsky.app/profile/mpaarlberg.bsky.social/post/3mbjd62ljvs2rMatt Novak (Gizmodo): “It feels like Democrats have three options: impeachment, shutting down the government on Jan. 30 to extract concessions, or strongly worded letters and long speeches.”
https://www.ms.now/weekends-with-alex-witt/watch/fmr-cia-director-brennan-this-u-s-invasion-of-venezuela-is-about-oil-wealth-and-regime-change-2479403075867
Video is 66:13 minutes
Followup to Sky Captain @60.
Minnesota department finds child care centers targeted in viral video operating normally
“The state Department of Children, Youth, and Families said it visited the nine facilities at the center of right-wing claims of fraud and found them ‘operating as expected.’ ”
Correction to comment 184: “Video is 66:13 minutes” should be “Video is 6:13 minutes”
In other news: EXCLUSIVE: Alaska’s court system built an AI chatbot. It didn’t go smoothly.
“A yearlong effort to build an AI probate assistant reveals the limits of government chatbot development.”
Oh FFS.
Rubio sends warning to Cuba’s leaders after Maduro’s removal: ‘I’d be concerned’
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ice-document-reveals-plan-to-recruit
EU urges respect for international law after US capture of Maduro
“We call for restraint,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said […]
New York Times link
“The Trump Administration Approved a Big Lithium Mine. A Top Official’s Husband Profited.”
“Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 at the Interior Department, didn’t disclose a $3.5 million water-rights contract between her husband and the developers of a Nevada mine, records show.”
Sweden’s Gotland-Class Submarine Upgrade Complete: HMS Halland Returns To Navy.
.
Part of the technology will be used in a future sub delivered to Poland, to boost its defence against Russia
(A sister ship was leased to the US Navy and operated as the opposing force in a naval exercise, successfully penetrating the defences around the carrier USS Ronald Reagan)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=j31QmVV70jA
Terry Talks Movies:
“Six Big Science Fiction Movies I WIll Never Watch Again” (and the reasons why)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p9i1-BsRHIk
Link
Reuters – World reacts to US strikes on Venezuela
Judah Grunstein: “China, Brazil, and South Africa are the most pointed and principled. Russia is firmer than the snippet I saw earlier suggested. France is unsurprisingly the strongest European reaction. Starmer and Von der Leyen competing for title of best-behaved lapdog.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel):
Russia blasts American intervention in Venezuela
This is the first US part of the Putin-Trump “peace” plan. The supposed peace discussions that Trump has been having with Putin is to see how they divide the world. Venezuela was easier to do than Ukraine (those pesky Europeans and the NATO chart) and was Rubio’s pet project.
It’s going to be a bit more problematic when it comes to Greenland which may be next if Cuba is not (the other Rubio project).
And the official protests from Russia on the Venezuela take-over are just for show. And China will want Taiwan soon.
Regarding Trump’s Venezuela press conference.
Anjali Dayal (Intl Relations prof):
Reuters – Venezuela vice president Rodriguez in Russia, four sources say
Anjali Dayal: “He’s monologuing his crimes like a Pixar villain—it’s not even that he can’t help himself, it’s that he has no conception of lawfulness, it’s like explaining cold fission to a sea cucumber. I think they’ve just made explicit threats to Cuba and Colombia, although it’s hard to parse their rambling. This is a very dangerous way for any government to behave and speak, no matter how powerful.”
Eliot Higgins (Bellingcat):
Sky Marchini (Economist):
Judah Grunstein: “They have not thought through how to expropriate the oil. […] Yeah, Chevron has worked with it for ages, and my understanding is that it has refineries tailored to Venezuelan oil, but no one else would bother. But also, general risk averseness will keep most US majors out of unstable and conflict-prone countries.”
Sky Marchini:
Rando: “This isn’t a war for oil or, if it is, it’s a war for oil only in the dumbest possible cartoonishly ignorant way”
Cheryl Rofer: “Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976. That’s 50 years ago. Marco Rubio was 4 years old.”
I should add that as a Canadian, I don’t feel safe at all because we definitely are on the Trump list of desired targets.
birgerjohansson @192: One of the rare moments in my internet experience in which I agree 100% with the presenter! I wonder if he shares my loathing for the LotR movies (couldn’t find out with a quick google search).
Jem @196: “And the official protests from Russia on the Venezuela take-over are just for show.”
Yes, that’s what I thought too. Especially when you see this from the Russians: “[…] Russia, which says with a straight face that disputes must be handled through dialog.”
Correction to comment 200: “Jem@196” should be “Jean @196
Updates:
Link
Trump says the USA is going to run Venezuela, and its oil companies are going to take over the Venezuelan oil industry. That’s perhaps a franker declaration of imperialist conquest and theft than Hitler ever produced when invading a country. But it rather conflicts with the previous pretence that this is about drugs, or “narco-terrorism”, or Maduro cheating in last year’s election. I suspect that Putin, and Xi, while making a great show of protest, will be delighted – they can drop their own pretences in relation to Ukraine and Taiwan respectively: the purpose of power is power. Starmer, of course, snivelling coward that he is, says he wants to establish “the facts”. Trump told him, and the world, the facts with regard to American motivation – although admittedly, it’s far from obvious that the plan to colonise and loot Venezuela can be carried through.
Sky Captain @197, thanks for that additional information regarding the “sludge” quality (lack of quality) of Venezuelan oil.
More questions surrounding the transition government in Venezuela:
Link
In my opinion, Trump is spinning news about Rodíquez, (if he is not lying and/or making shit up that in his demented mind he thinks is true).
Matt Novak (Gizmodo):
Matt Novak: “Upon closer inspection I was giving them too much credit by assuming it was pipe and drape. There’s no piping. They just tossed curtains haphazardly over [a ceiling joist].”
Commentary
Followup to comment 203.
New York Times link
Actual quotes from Trump’s Venezuela press conference.
Aaron Rupar:
Aaron Rupar:
@197 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain: There is money to be made on Venezuelan oil. It’s not as profitable as other oil but there is a lot of it and it’s close to the US.
The real problem is that the risk is incredible. As soon as the US has another president the risk that Venezuela just nationalizes the oil industry again starts to rise. Who is going to sink billions of dollars and probably a decade of work knowing there is a good chance they don’t get any of it back?
Britain: A Different Bias
LIVE: Nigel Farage’s Stupid Response to Trump Attack
.https://youtube.com/live/Co2QGv1S1TQ
Politico – Trump admin sends tough private message to oil companies on Venezuela
Eric Columbus: “Among many similarities to Iraq: we’ve heard many different reasons for the military action but there’s no single cohesive U.S. government story about why we’re doing it.”
Josh Marshall (TPM): “You can say it’s about oil. And part of it is. But the White House is actually being forced to strong-arm the oil companies to get involved.”
Let’s Talk Elections
“Democrats Have MAJOR Openings in THESE January Elections”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=nkBb9M11GXQ
Matt Novak (Gizmodo):
Popehat (Attorney): “Jesus Christ […] maybe the Republicans will start to put limits on Trump?”
Rando: “there are many reasons for their obsession with ‘moderate republicans’, but one of them that oft gets missed is they want someone they can use as a blast shield to take all the heat in their place. Stark example: trying to get Pence to invoke the 25th.”
Ridley Scott is making a postapocalyptic film based on the novel The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (I have read it, it is quite good). It will be released this year.
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel):
Good Op-ed by Aussie ABC’s Laura Tingle here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-04/venezuela-operation-us-blatant-disregard-international-law/106197628
Shorter than usual but still good 7 days of Science here – New Dinosaur Species Discovered With Bizarre Claws 8 mins.
^Nb. 7 Days-o’Sci clip also discusses microplastics in storm plus HST image of star and planet forming nebulae.
.***
The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder Preparing For War: White Christian Nationalism’s Extremist History 30 mins long.
Kyplanet Investigating every potentially habitable exoplanet – an hour and 15 mins long.
here’s hoping! Could be a good comet coming
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/comets/will-comet-c-2025-r3-panstarrs-be-the-great-comet-of-2026
Follow-up to 97, 128 regarding Iran protests.
Mark Chadbourn (Jan 1): “The statue of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been toppled in Ardabil in northwest Iran. It was only erected a few days ago.”
Mark Chadbourn – The Iran Domino (Jan 2)
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist, Jan 3):
* Footage of an improvised flamethrower.
Rando: “Iran’s population heavily armed in general?”
Mark Chadbourn: No.
Tangent from 205.
WSJ: “With Nicolás Maduro out of power, the Trump administration is racing to assemble an interim governing structure for Venezuela.”
Commentary
Rando: The Washington Post editorial board comes out in favor of the Venezuela attack/operation to capture Maduro.
Reuters: Nicolas Maduro’s heavy-handed rule in Venezuela is finally ended by Trump
Marisa Kabas: “This is billionaire-controlled media. […] The consent manufacturing has begun.”
Marisa Kabas: “Fox News is framing this as liberation for Venezuela. They’re showing people in Florida celebrating and thanking Trump. A Hispanic Fox News reporter in the ground in Florida is saying the US attack on Venezuela will make the country safe and make Venezuelans want to go back.”
I’d guess the latter, and that Trump and Rubio have had no meaningful contact with Rodíquez, but I’m not claiming any knowledge of her, or the others near the top in Venezuela. Trump may think (using that word in a very loose sense) that having removed Maduro, the Chavista regime will disintegrate andor kneel to him, but I doubt it: too many people have a clear interest in it continuing. It could even turn out that Trump and Rubio have done them a favour, as Maduro has been almost entirely concerned with maintaining his own power and enriching his family (remind you of anyone?). His removal may provide a chance for a “reset” under a more collective leadership, as well as acting as a focus for anti-US feeling even among Maduro’s opponents, although unless they can actually improve living conditions for the majority they are unlikely to recover much support.
I’m amused that Trump has dismissed the opposition leader María Corina Machado (who is an extreme conservative and Trump fan) as not having enough support to take over, although I’m sure she would actually be a useful (and initially popular) puppet if she were installed. She made the mistake of winning the Nobel Peace Prize (a ridiculous decision in my view) which belonged by right to Trump!
David Frum Bonus Episode: How Is Trump Planning to ‘Run’ Venezuela? (With Anne Applebaum)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5oSRcLWxzYA
Loving the euphemisms the media is coming up with to excuse and trivialise this kidnapping of a foreign leader and the murder of 40 people: “audacious” “Trump’s personal geopolitics”
And only the NYT dared to call it what it is “illegal and unwise”.
Miami Herald: Exclusive: Venezuelan leaders offered U.S. a path to stay in power without Maduro
So there was communication between Rodriguez and other Venezuelan officials, and figures in the Trump administration. The proposal was essentially that Maduro step down and a new temporary government would hold power during a transition. This is similar to what Trump is calling for, except the temporary government would be appointed by Trump instead of being Venezuelan figures.
The US rejected the Venezuelan plan because it doesn’t fix any of the problem, it just gives Maduro a path to retirement. It doesn’t deal with corruption or the drug trade or give the US control of the oil.
Posted by Sky Captain @220: Reuters: Nicolas Maduro’s heavy-handed rule in Venezuela is finally ended by Trump
Marisa Kabas: “This is billionaire-controlled media. […] The consent manufacturing has begun.”
Marisa Kabas: “Fox News is framing this as liberation for Venezuela. They’re showing people in Florida celebrating and thanking Trump. A Hispanic Fox News reporter in the ground in Florida is saying the US attack on Venezuela will make the country safe and make Venezuelans want to go back.”
CBS devoted three segments to letting “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth pound his chest and tell lie after lie.
It looks to me like CBS is now Trump TV. And the newly installed CBS Evening News anchor, Tony Dokoupil, pushed back so mildly against some of the stuff Hegseth said that he basically gave Hegseth free rein.
Video at the link.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pete-hegseth-cbs-evening-news-president-trump-venezuela/
I was wondering about this earlier, when I read about Venezuelan casualties. Maduro and the legality of the abduction is one thing, but what about the murder of Venezuelan citizens whose only crime seems to have been responding to an invasion of their country?
Arguably, Venezuela could indict Trump on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and then (assuming they had the physical ability) abduct him right back. What a lovely thought.
Part of me wonders if they’re actually going to put Maduro on trial. After all, that will give him the chance to speak in his defense and demand discovery of documents to support his arguments. I don’t know how clever Maduro is, but if he has even the slightest sense, he could make things very awkward for the administration.
Are they seriously going to argue that the leader of a sovereign nation is not allowed to acquire weapons?
Maybe so. At the end of the day, none of this really matters, because the US government is a terrorist organization and nobody has the strength to hold it to account, even as it flushes our future down the drains.
Happy new year, everybody! Take care of the people around you, because sure as shit nobody else is going to.
Rubio reframes Trump’s vow to ‘run’ Venezuela as confusion grows over U.S. role
“On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “run” means running policy, but won’t specify a timeline or rule out a U.S. occupation of Venezuela.”
Still doesn’t make sense to me.
Related video at the link.
El País:
Collette Capriles writes forThe New York Times:
Christian Science Monitor:
Yale Law School international law professor Oona Hathaway (interviewed by Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker):
Trump threatens Maduro successor
Washington Post:
Link
Re: LykeX @226:
EmptyWheel – DOJ’s politically illegitimate basis for political illegitimacy in Nicolás Maduro indictment
After Venezuela operation, Trump says the whole hemisphere is in play
“With brash threats aimed all around the region, the president and his team made it clear Venezuela might be just the beginning, sparking fear across the Western hemisphere.”
Re: Lynna @225:
Semafor – News organizations held off on reporting Venezuela raid
Commentary
The Hill – Trump administration informed Gang of Eight of Venezuela operation after it started
New York Times link
Images at the link.
Black Music Sunday: Songs for a happier […] new year
Lots of videos, and good commentary.
Music included:
Nina Simone – Feeling Good. (more than one version)
Pharrell Williams – Happy
Ella Fitzgerald – Blue Skies
Jenifer Lewis – Get Your Ass out and Vote
Nat King Cole and Patti Page – Blue Skies
Thank you, Lynna!
.
In an attempt to help you think of other things than DJT, I reached far into Youtube.
.
The Atheists of Ancient India (“Nothing exists after death!”)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=42HamrzqreE
Anime:
“Why ‘Planetes’ Is a Masterpiece Nobody Talks About” (hard science fiction)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jvmy-tl27p4
AnimeAmericaPodcast Reviews “Gushing Over Magical Girls” (BDSM warning)
“HOW DID THIS GET AN ANIME?! – What Am I Watching #23”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zlOyZ70vbC4
Me @ 222:
David Frum correctly called it “a special military operation” …and we know how those turn out.
Enheduanna – daughter of Sargon of Akkad- is the first known author in history.
Good news. ‘Let’s Talk Elections.’
“GOP Redistricting Scheme COLLAPSES in Supreme Court”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Iev8yF83sOc
This is very important for the 2026 elections.
NekoDecoPop reviews “Best Anime of 2025”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eiKALZKmi7g
If you have the time, this may be perfect distractions from the awfulness of our era.
.
If you like hard science fiction, you might like “Planetes” from two decades ago. It did not reach the audience in the way of Cowboy Bebop, but it deserves a second chance.
This needs much more attention.
“Iran Update”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4zaVDYhvtNM
I have followed how the priests hijacked the revolution, the purges, the mass executions for more than four decades (and, yes, I have not forgotten the path started with the CIA coup against the elected leader 72 years ago).
Poland joins thw Baltic states in cutting the physical ties to Russia and Belarus.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-UZb4TFwHfg
Dems FINALLY RIP Trump TO SHREDS for Disaster Invasion
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ei82q6RVJz8
Fantasy Films So Strange They Could Only Exist in the 70s
(Sorry for the AI voice)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TwLpnCXhT3g
Aaron Rupar:
Southpaw: Denmark is a NATO member state. Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela (and Cuba, formally) are OAS member states.”
Londo Mollari: “Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on 12 fronts.”
Mediaite – Trump team moved to oust Maduro because they were put off by videos of his dancing
LeadStories – Fact Check: Video does NOT show Nicolás Maduro saying ‘Come for me… cowards’ in response to Trump DOJ’s $50 million bounty
Question: Was Isildur able to curse the Oathbreakers because he had just taken Sauron’s ring? The books I read are not adressing the issue.
Re: birgerjohansson @246:
Internet chatter says it was cuz breaking oaths was a big deal in Tolkien’s world.
Oathbreakers were a Pre-Númenórean people, indigenous. Númenóreans (aka Dúnedain), were settlers. Isildur was born in Númenor. The Oathbreakers went from worshipping Sauron to swearing allegiance to Isildur founding King of Gondor, then broke that oath when called to fight beside him against Sauron.
The Númenóreans worshipped the god Eru Ilúvatar who per The Silmarillion gave the Gift of Ilúvatar (death) and—I couldn’t readily verify this—is the only one with “authority to hold dead men in Arda (Middle Earth)” as one rando put it. A redditor said, “the reason that Aragorn could command them was because oaths pass down to the oath-receiver’s heirs. […] Aragorn was able to prove his claim to the kingship to the army of the dead”.
Oaths! How do they Work?
Magats are posting fake videos of celebrating Venezuelans
These include old videos of people celebrating a soccer win.
Paul Lynott from Thin Lizzy died 40 years ago today.
Re: KG @221:
WaPo
Commentary
DOCO ALERT for Aussies here – presume this is screening nationally not just in SA. 8 pm ABC c2. :
‘.
Sounds potentially intresting & informative although I havn’t seen it yet myself.
Will likely be accessible on ABC iView later at least for Aussies and dunno if already on youtube or not.(Search found something but unsure if it is this show or not.)
Anyone here seen it or know more please?
Team Four Star has made a parody for you who grew up with Sailor Moon.
.
Toonami Abridged |
Sailor Moon (Part 2)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9MtkBVXY0M
There is not much benefit to operating in Venezuela – Chevron’s 20% stake in the Venezuelan national oil company has not paid off. American and Canadian Oil producer’s are laying off staff.
<Why US Oil Companies Won’t Go To Venezuela/a>
Some demand forecasts are predicting Oil demand to peak in 2030.
Re: StevoR @251: I’ve not seen it, but it can be watched here.
Horizon – Disease X: Hunting the Next Pandemic (58:49)
It’s over!
New Poll Shows 2026 ‘BLUE WAVE’ Will Wipe Out MAGA! ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fsmut_czpTg
Maddow’ Brief:
“From Bad to Worse: Trump’s Failed Tariffs Hand Canada’s Dominance & GM’s Downfall.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2JTu42aC6Xk
TheMilitaryShow:
“The Reason Behind Russia’s Arms Industry Collapse”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xc3lhMvNH2g
@246. birgerjohansson : “Question: Was Isildur able to curse the Oathbreakers because he had just taken Sauron’s ring?”
Not specifically onthe Oath breakers here but saw this clip on a similar kinda question here – Did Frodo curse Gollum to fall into the Cracks of Doom? (12 mins long) that was quite surprising and thought-provokingand put a few new twists on the story that I hadn’t realised before.
@254. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Thanks!
FWIW Venezuela: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver from 7 years ago so out of date and 20 mins long but still.
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/how-did-life-begin-on-earth-new-experiments-support-rna-world-hypothesis
Trump’s plan to ‘run’ Venezuela for its oil is already facing problems
“Restoring oil production amid chaos, corruption and nationalist resentment takes years — if it happens at all.”
Related video at the link.
In my opinion, Trump’s actions are going to make things considerably worse in Venezuela.
Source : https://phys.org/news/2026-01-astronomers-mass-distance-rogue-planet.html
Followup to Sky Captain, quoting Aaron Rupar @245.
Link
Looks like Trump’s adventures in Venezuela have given him an increased appetite for more of the same.
Sky Captain @250, that sounds very petty, both on Trump’s part and on the part of his lackeys. Ditto for the reaction to Maduro dancing. Therefore, it is probably true.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/everything-about-wtf-with-venezuela
“Everything About WTF With Venezuela […]!”
The Guardian link
“Canadian officials say US health institutions no longer dependable for accurate information”
“Misinformation from the Trump administration is cited as fuelling Canadians’ concerns over childhood vaccinations”
Limited, but good news:
Link
Venezuela heaped onto Stephen Miller’s sprawling portfolio
Link
Cartoon: A look ahead
Cartoon: Sorry, Satan
Democrats accuse Trump admin. of misleading Congress ahead of Venezuela operation
“In a sense, we have been briefed — we’ve just been completely lied to,” one House Democrat said.
Trump, fixated on the Monroe Doctrine, pushes ‘Donroe Doctrine’ twist
“Trump is now leaning on the Monroe Doctrine — or at least his own version of it — to justify imperialistic ambitions from Greenland to South America.”
Related video at the link.
Oh FFS. Trump is just running another branding exercise based on lies.
New York Times link
“Maduro Tells U.S. Judge He Was ‘Kidnapped’ ”
“Nicolás Maduro, the ousted Venezuelan leader, and his wife pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other federal charges. ‘I am still president of my country,’ Maduro said.”
@263 Lynna OM wrote:
[…] Who’s next on Team Trump’s target list? quoting Aaron Rupar @245.
I reply: All of us, here, may be small fish and not DIRECTLY on the tRUMP target list. But, we are certainly being injured and murdered by the actions of the magat cult running this country. The damage of doge is still increasing and will not be mitigated for years to come. The damage by fossil fueled industry is being ballooned out of control, etc.
AND, now, Tim Walz, is a casualty of the magat target list and all the magat LIES.
And, what about PZ’s articles on how diseased this country is becoming (and we don’t even have a way of knowing for certain how bad it is!
I’m not enjoying this ride down the Death Spiral. I want to get off it, but I can’t find a way to.
The Museum of Silence
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EpUjnQKdM/
.
A Different Bias
Why Grok’s New Scandal Demands Immediate Regulation
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XU3oE7s_9mE
shermanj @276: “AND, now, Tim Walz, is a casualty of the magat target list and all the magat LIES.”
True.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tim-walz-ends-bid-for-third-term
Kelly fires back at Hegseth over demotion threat: ‘I will fight this with everything I’ve got’
My conclusion: Kelly is an honorable man. Pete Hegseth is not.
I hope a lot of people step up to help Mark Kelly.
Followup to comments 276 and 278.
JFC!
Walz has been addressing the fraud cases for several years.
Link
Walz is correct. Trump and some of his rightwing lackeys (like Nick Shirley) are taking advantage of the situation. They are lying and they have launched a media/social-media campaign to spread misinformation. It was a white woman, not a Somali resident of Minnesota that organized the fraud in the first place.
Followup to comments 276, 278 and 280.
HHS escalates Minnesota fraud fight, prompting fear among day care providers
More at the link.
Minneapolis Hilton Hotel cancels immigration agents’ reservations, DHS says
The Hill
A nazi bar open to everyone is no longer inviting to everyone.
Skift
Hilton says, while facilitating discrimination.
New York Times:
The Hill:
Reuters:
birgerjohansson @255
I usually just ignore your youtube links because I don’t want to see videos from random sources and then have the algorithm present me with a ton of the same but I saw Maddow’s name and foolishly clicked on the link. This is very obviously AI and it’s not mentioned in the video description so it’s trying to use a respected public figure to present some “facts”.
I did not watch the video more than to see it was AI (many commenters also saw it) but it cannot be trusted for anything presented in it and the fact that you shared this link shows a worrisome lack of judgement on your part. Please stop sharing those links here.
Lynna re my #285,
I don’t know if you have any policy on this thread concerning sharing fake AI shit but that should be a big no no.
Maduro kidnapping is like Christmas for Trump’s malicious DOJ
Jean @286, I agree.
A bit more information here: Is that really Rachel?
“Spot checking and sometimes debunking quotes, memes and fake news stories about, or ascribed to, Rachel Maddow.”
Maddow debunks weird spate of fake news, A.I. slop stories about her and MSNBC, updated in December. Still relevant.
Excerpt:
As far as I can tell, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. are full of A.I. slop … and that’s getting worse day by day.
I urge people who post to this thread to be diligent when it comes to checking sources. Do not repost A.I. slop.
New York Times link
“Russia Once Offered U.S. Control of Venezuela for Free Rein in Ukraine”
“The exchange offer was recounted at the time in congressional testimony by Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.”
Follow-up to 283.
Anjali Dayal (Intl Relations prof):
Jared Cram (Lawyer):
Rando 1: “If this whole thing were to be looked at as a ‘law enforcement’ operation, the issue of 80 dead to make an arrest should be a huge scandal. Remember Waco? Remember 82 people dead in the Branch Davidian compound?”
Rando 2: “When the LAPD arrests a dude at a gas station, they don’t take over the gas station and use it to gas up all the cop cars”
Anjali Dayal:
The Onion
Nicholas Maduro charged with Felony Oil Possession.
Steve Saideman (Intl Relations prof):
NBC News: Trump says the U.S. isn’t at war with Venezuela
Fair elections in the next 30 days would be hard, likely impossible if the US won’t put people on the ground to help implement it. The real concern is more likely that a candidate that Trump doesn’t approve of would win.
And there we go, no oil company would bite on paying for rebuilding themselves so the US will pay for it to be done. Trump can’t possibly admit that this might have been a bad idea now, so he presses forth with more expensive plans.
I think it’s likely that Trump is telling the truth here. From what I have seen the offer from Venezuelan officials wasn’t sweet enough. Essentially they offered to force Mauro into retirement in some safe 3rd party country and take power themselves without changing anything. Trump wanted control of the oil industry at the very least.
Follow-up to 283, 290.
Ryan Goodman (Just Security):
Brian Finucane (Just Security):
Brian Finucane:
Brian Finucane:
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, speaking today.
Link
Much more at the link.
Link
CNN – Reports of misunderstanding between Caracas security units following gunfire
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
Mark Chadbourn: “A few [armed protesters]. Seem to be picking stuff up from the police and army.”
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/05/children-killed-iran-protests-security-forcesMark Chadbourn:
Mark Chadbourn:
@ ^ CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain :Thanks for that.
.***
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-urges-trump-to-cease-threats-to-take-over-greenland/a-75387453
Not sure about the tense used in the last quote. “Are ..” were? Maybe? Trump seeems no ally of any former USA ally really – esp in Europe – to me.
Youtube links to two takes I haven’t seen anywhere else on the real reason for the Venezuela invasion by Rachel Maddow (the real one not a fake AI version) and Lawrence O’Donnell. I think both of these are not incompatible and are likely to be somewhat close to the truth since that’s not what the Trump regime has put forward as their reason.
NPR – ‘This is not a peaceful protest!’
A timeline of video clips at the link with captions and a map that highlights locations as you scroll.
NPR had maintained a spreadsheet of federal charges and video used in court.
NPR – Two officers relive Jan 6 through their own bodycam footage (26:07)
/That guy voted for Trump in 2016, and in Feb 2025, spoke at a CPAC-alternative conference for Republicans who don’t support Trump. Insider quoted him in 2023 saying the Republican Party is “a party of violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-immigration.” that “just needs to be destroyed” and replaced.
Foreign Policy Committee Urgently Convoked to Discuss “The Kingdom’s Relations with the United States”.
I haven’t been able to find an English language version, so this is through google translate. There’s not a lot of information beyond the headline, though. It’s really just announcing the meeting. We’ll see what comes of it.
Sure haven’t been many commemorations or media attention paid to the anniversary of Jan 6th this year have there?
Colberts brilliant intro A New Dance Craze Sweeps Across The Americas from latest shiow seen earlier tonight.
(Nah, cannot sleep now..)
Owen Jones newest clip here – Trump Will Invade Greenland – And NATO Will Collapse (15 mins long) really not helping my insomnia here..
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-calls-out-the-real-reason-trump-invaded-venezuela-2479734851702
Video is 12:20 minutes. Excellent.
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-s-ice-prison-escalation-collides-with-american-resistance-2479740995856
Video is 4:29 minutes.
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/why-donald-trump-is-still-freaking-out-over-senator-kelly-s-simple-statement-2479723075702
Video is 7:51 minutes.
@ ^ Lynna, OM : Yup Trump has censored Kellyt for speaking truth too :
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/trump-administration-censures-former-nasa-astronaut-mark-kelly-over-illegal-orders-video
Correction to comment 297: Oil executives say, no, Trump did not contact them before he invaded Venezuela. Rachel Maddow confirmed the oil executive’s version of the timeline.
In other news: On Jan. 6 anniversary, Speaker Johnson rejects plaque to honor police officers
“The GOP leader had plenty of time to come up with an excuse for his refusal. He didn’t come up with much.”
See also: YouTube link to “LIVE: Democrats hold Jan. 6th special hearing on 5-year anniversary of insurrection”
Hossenfelder alert
AI Is Coming For Scientists’ Jobs. Seriously.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=v3_WouGjUUE
Link for text quoted in comment 310
The Moment We Lost The Plot, by Hunter Walker
Oh no, no, no.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down After 58 Years Due to Trump Eliminating Funding
I do not have access to this news report from Variety.
Here is a summary from Talking Points Memo:
Hello. It’s been a year. (Which one, they’ll ask me)
As noted by Lynna at 49 upthread, Finnish authorities seized another commercial ship, suspected of sabotaging underwater infrastructure, in the Gulf of Finland almost a week ago. This time it was a container ship rather than tanker, but otherwise the case is eerily similar to the previous one (which also took place between Christmas and New Year), The investigation is going to grind on slowly. As of now, one member of the 14-strong crew is detained and a few others are forbidden from leaving Finland.
lumipuna @315, thank you for the update.
In other news: Ten million corals are in the path of a federal dredging project in Florida
Cartoon: Private equity
Cartoon: Locked and loaded
Cha-ching! Trump creates brave new world of insider trading.
A Scam Rachel Maddow AI YouTube Channel
Trump’s Venezuela Move Could Deliver a Big Win for This MAGA Billionaire
“Hedge-funder Paul Singer, whose firm acquired Citgo at a bargain price, has much to gain from Nicolás Maduro’s ouster.”
Link
Re: Lynna @309:
Scott MacFarlane (CBS):
MacFarlane didn’t make clear whether DoJ made the argument days or a month ago, but it was recent.
Scott MacFarlane: “Some House Democrats have printed out images of the Jan 6 plaque… and hung the images outside of their offices. [Photo]”
Re: Lynna @313:
Variety – Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down
Watch live: Jan. 6 defendants hold march on fifth anniversary of Capitol riot
Looks sort of dismal, and sparsely attended, though there were enough people to make a bit of a show. Some people held up Ashli Babbitt photos, some shouted “Freedom,” and many wore MAGA gear. Lots of American flags. A group carried a banner that said “Thank you for our pardons President Trump.” Might be an almost equal number of reporters and news items present.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/hope-you-didnt-forget-those-epstein
Sky Captain @324, thank you. Good to know that “The CPB’s [Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s] own archives will be preserved at the University of Maryland, which will make it accessible to the public.” Still a tragedy that CPB is shutting down.
In other news: […] Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have made clear that the collapse of Cuba’s communist government is not only a likely side benefit of Maduro’s ouster but a goal.
More at the link, including details concerning help from Russia, oil from Mexico, and more.
Lawrence Hurley (NBC):
Mediaite – Stephen Miller went on CNN and admitted the U.S. invaded Venezuela
Aaron Rupar:
Marcy Wheeler (Empty Wheel):
I don’t like that youtube provides stolen material to the public. But, this video seems to have the approval of those that created it. and, this one’s a must see!
https://youtu.be/7I_n09nS6aU
Follow-up to 282.
Business Insider – Hilton says it is removing a Minnesota hotel from its system amid ICE controversy and calls for a boycott
Proteins that spread Parkinson’s pathology in the brain identified (mGluR4 and NPDC1)
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-proteins-parkinson-pathology-brain.html
.
Jupiter’s moon Europa lacks the undersea activity needed to Jupiter’s moon Europa lacks the undersea activity needed to support life, study suggestssupport life, study suggests
.https://phys.org/news/2026-01-jupiter-moon-europa-lacks-undersea.html
Kyle Griffin (MS NOW):
GottaLaff: “That this is even a thing is insane. This is the US under Trump: Convicted violent seditionists, felons have the freedom to “gather” at the scene of their crimes”
Nicholas Slayton (Journalist):
American Gentry (2020-09, before Jan 6th)
Link
Followup to comments 60, 62, 63, 276, 278, 280 and 281.
Link
AP News – Abortion stays legal in Wyoming as its top court strikes down laws, including first US pill ban (Today)
Bolts – How attacks against Obamacare turned into tools to protect abortion (2023)
Trump continues to pretend he’s qualified to give medical advice (he’s not)
Link
Followup to comment 288.
That website page has been updated.
Link
Embedded links are available at the main link.
Re: Lynna @334 quoting MS NOW:
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Trump built COVID programs that were WILDLY prone to fraud, then fired the [Inspectors General] who were busy finding it, first chance he got, then spun a claim that there’s more fraud in blue states than red.”
Brian Greer (Former CIA attorney)
/Law enforcement. Or “No one will stop me”?
WTF!?
White House unveils Jan. 6 webpage saying Democrats ‘staged the real insurrection,’ criticizing Capitol Police
Sky Captain @339, Marcy Wheeler makes a good point.
In other news, The Washington Post reports: Venezuela’s government launched a far-reaching crackdown after Maduro’s ouster, detaining journalists and civilians and sending armed gangs to the streets. [Conclusion: Trump made things worse in Venezuela.]
Europe’s top leaders rally to defend Greenland against Trump’s threats
“8 European leaders say only Denmark and Greenland can determine the future of the giant Arctic island.”
New York Times:
NBC News:
MS NOW:
Link
OMG. This MAGA approach that includes the possibility of rightwing men benefitting from the invasion of Venezuela by getting Venezuelan women/girlfriends is just more than I can take.
Not to mention the rapidly metastasizing conspiracy theory that now Maduro will confess to the truth that he helped a leftwing cabal steal the 2020 election from Trump. [head/desk]
https://www.wonkette.com/p/maga-creeps-think-venezuela-attack
Santiago Mayer (Voters of Tomorrow): “Between MTG resigning, LaMalfa passing away, and Jim Baird being hospitalized, the GOP no longer has a functioning majority in the House of Representatives. They have 217 seats to Dems’ 213. Massie is almost always a no, which brings them down to 216. They literally have a one vote majority.”
CNBC: Trump says Venezuela to give up to 50 million barrels of oil to U.S.
Let the bribery begin. It will be interesting to see just how much Trump manages to twist around to businesses in his favor.
This is probably illegal also. There are laws that govern donations to the US and the money still has to go through the budget process. Trump will use this as a way to get around that and spend the money as gifts to people he favors.
* @348: Eh, counting Fetterman among Dems is… optimistic. So two-vote majority.
Follow-up on meddling with national parks.
This artist created a work-around to Trump’s face on national parks passes
They are pretty, entirely replacing the front.
DOI cracks down on stickers covering Trump’s face on national park passes
Commentary
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #350…
Fetterman is in the Senate, so he doesn’t have any effect on the House majority count.
Geology. The Strange Circles of Åland (It’s not impact craters)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GtUlM1GcPRY
Thanks, whheydt. One it is! ^_^
Link
Trump demands praise for kidnapping Maduro
Followup to comment 355.
New year, same crap: Trump spews unhinged gibberish at GOP summit
Washington Post link
New York Times link
“Israel Tells Doctors Without Borders to End Its Work in Gaza”
Judge orders Lindsey Halligan to explain why she’s still serving as U.S. attorney after previous ruling against her
Ongoing Iran protests, adding to 97, 128, 219, 299.
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
* Abdanan is a city with population 23k (so practically everyone in the streets). Distinct from Abadan, a city of 231k.
* A toman coin is a unit equal to 10,000 rials.
Rando 1: “I was trying to google the exchange rate, and you don’t see this every day: 1 rial = 0.00 pound sterling.”
Wikipedia – Iranian Rial
Mark Chadbourn:
Rando 2: “Iranian women have been brutally systematically oppressed for so long. Seeing them rip down a tool of regime control is pretty fucking beautiful.”
GottaLaff: “We can STILL do this, too, you know.”
Mark Chadbourn: “There’s a lesson for America from Iran’s burgeoning protests. When they were about freedoms they got traction but didn’t hit critical mass. This time, the economy collapsed, and everyone was burned, including the security forces. Look to the effects of Trump Tariffs in the coming months.”
@360 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain:
In Iran it’s also about water. The country is suffering from a serious drought with no signs of relief. The government has managed it badly for years, pumping water out of all reserves at a high rate to support crops. The situation is so bad that no matter who is in power Tehran may have to be evacuated for lack of water.
^ That rial to sterling graph had 6 decimal places and STILL dropped off a cliff after Dec 29th from ~0.000017 to basically zero.
@355 Lynna, OM:
I would have no problem with nation building if that was what we did. In neither Iraq or Afghanistan was a serious attempt at nation building made and Venezuela won’t even get the problems papered over. Trump’s already talking about leaving the leaders who work with the cartels in power (if they give the US enough oil).
If there was going to be serious nation building there would be both a public plan that was book sized and a classified document with further information. There would already be plans for who was taking over which parts of the government, who would have ultimate power, who had to go from the current government, run down of what public infrastructure had to be replaced, documentation of where money for loans and donations for public infrastructure, other rebuilding and otherwise keeping the country floating would come from.
It would cover raising the many units that would have to enter the country, where their bases would be, who would be in command, who would liaison with local officials and so on. Real nation building means a lot of boots on the ground for decades and a commitment up front to do it.
Shermanj @329
Thank you
That was hilarious – I loved the Whiskey War references.
Happy Stormiversary
Jimmy Kimmel :
“Trump Delivers Scatterbrained Speech to GOP, He Guns for Greenland & 5th Anniversary of Insurrection ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=w4-Vnatjopc
@ 365
“Real moments in presidementia” starts at 4.31 -a must-see!
Mediaite – Not The Onion: HHS website says ‘All the diseases… will still be available to anyone who wants them’
Under Biden, America got 150 countries to agree a 15% global corporate tax. Under Trump, America gets an exemption
New Countries For Old Man
Stephen Colbert:
Jan 6 Is A Permanent Stain On Trump’s Legacy | The Pokémon President | Colbert Out-Rates The Don
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FB_RRS-yxAc
I am showing this because this is one of the versions at work in Ukraine (although this is just at a range in UK).
The CV90 35mm Cannon Live Firing – Powerful Penetration
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZZDzJxTPFlA
Markets Are Not Free.
Markets only exist because the state makes them possible
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=vAkkZXfxb9Y
“Markets are not natural, spontaneous or free. They are legal, institutional and political creations of the state.
Without law, money, regulation, wages, accounting standards and trust, markets collapse into monopoly, coercion and extraction.
The likes of Nigel Farage ignore the contributions made by WWII commonwealth soldiers, like this one.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/16tv2BG8be/
Re. @ 370
Lithuania Joins the Club: 100 New CV90 MkIVs to Secure the Baltic Front
[If Russia tries to link up with the Kaliningrad exclave, Lithuania will be the target]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2uFJSRyr1Tk
AI-Drafted Police Report Said Officer Turned into A Frog
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNutsZDzFso
This is a beautiful news item.
“Americans Discover European Labor Laws Aren’t Optional”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lvHPkr_Ca9Q
Palate Cleanser as Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blogger) used to do Walea Soft Coral Pygmy Seahorse (Hippocampus waleananus) 3 mins long. Tiny awe and beauty.
Critically endangered. Endemic to coastal oceanic waters inside Sulawesi.
Latest Owen Jones BBC’s Outrageous Greenland Reporting – This Is Ridiculuous – just under ten minutes long.
Midnight Oil
Gadigal Land (ft. Dan Sultan, Joel Davison, Kaleena Briggs & Bunna Lawrie) [Official Vi.. – just under 5 mins. The lyrics here.
@ ^ Truth. Also more truth sung here
Midnight Oil – Rising Seas (Official Video) – 5 mins 51 secs.
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/2/why-i-am-on-hunger-strike-in-solidarity-with-pal-action-detainees
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/2/the-ceasefire-did-what-it-was-meant-to-do-make-gaza-invisible
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/what-starts-world-wars-trump-ramps-up-greenland-obsession-floats-military-action-2479933507854
Video is 7:10 minutes
Chris Hayes also mentioned that the release of the Epstein files is being slow-rolled again. And, Chris mentioned Trump’s alarming speech at the GOP Summit (see comments 355 and 356). Chris excerpted a telling moment.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/life-and-death-stakes-hayes-blasts-trump-threats-against-cuba-mexico-greenland-2479930947577
Video is 9:00 minutes.
I think this is extra important during “47”.
“The perfect way to switch off from work: the secret to a daily de-stress routine”
.https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/dec/19/the-perfect-way-to-switch-off-from-work-how-to-detach-and-de-stress
Link
New York Times: The Great Unraveling Has Begun. By Oona Hathaway
Link
The link leads to a collection of news reports.
ICE agents killed a 37 yr old white woman who they claimed was using her vehicle to run them over. witnesses said she was driving away.
Happened in south Minneapolis this morning.
Tottenham soccer legend Martin Chivers has died at 80. 😪
Team Trump confirms: The administration wants to buy Greenland
“Where exactly does the president intend to get the money to buy a massive arctic island that isn’t for sale?”
A farce is preferable to a success in this case.
Professor Fired Over Charlie Kirk Post Wins $500,000 and Gets Job Back.
This little-known official may be the biggest beneficiary of Trump’s Venezuela attack, by Rachel Maddow
“Could the U.S. military operation be the president’s ‘Wag the Dog’ moment?”
ICE officer fatally shot woman in south Minneapolis
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
MPR News – Live updates: Mayor Frey disputes that ICE killed woman in self-defense
Max Nesterak (MNReformer) posted a 4:26 video. The first 20 seconds described here. The victim’s car was perpendicular to the agents’ vehicle and blocking only their lane. The victim slows and stops. Another vehicle passes in the other lane as the victim waves them through, then does the wave again seemingly to the agents. Two agents walk out of their vehicle to the victim shouting “Get out of the car! Get out of the f—— car!” One grabs the victim’s door. The car reverses and goes forward to turn away as the agent tries to pull the handle. Another agent had been standing in front of the victim’s car (revealed to the camera during the turn). He was at the driver’s side corner when he fired. Her turning radius was limited by an adjacent vehicle on her right (also perpendicular) that had its door open, and an apparent civilian who had been standing by the victim’s front passenger door. Three shots were recorded. The car accelerates and crashes.
Followup to Robbo @387.
‘Get the f-ck out’: Minneapolis mayor’s message to ICE after killing
Good news:
Link
About the green gas @392.
Wikipedia – Hexachloroethane
Australian Dept of Veteran Affairs – Adverse health effects from hexachloroethane smoke
I couldn’t find an article that both mentioned the color and merited citing, but it’s distinctive in riot control. The MN story’s phrasing “sprayed a green gas on protesters” is odd. HC’s described as smoke grenades.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/want-to-end-wars-for-oil-do-a-clean
@ badland
Because you asked nicely, and continuing this on the other thread is off topic:
I don’t believe Mobster Don is preferable to a hypothetical Killer Kamala admin. I regard them both as irredeemably evil because they were willing and able to provide financial, material, and diplomatic support for a genocide, without which Israel would be unable to continue its genocidal campaign within hours.
Link
Axios: Trump wants GOP’s flexibility on Hyde Amendment
Really surreal moment. I would guess that Trump is looking for someplace where the Republicans can give on a medical issue to try and counter balance their issues with medical care. It won’t work because it’s far too narrow of an issue to counter balance their general attack on the ACA and medical care. Worse, it’s something that a lot of Republicans consider a big deal so it will anger their own base if the Republicans take it up.
I don’t expect this will go anywhere, even if Trump pushes a bit on the issue the House and Senate will ignore him. It’s more interesting as one of those bits that shows Trump being highly disconnected from reality.
Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395.
Leah McElrath (PoliSci):
Yashar Ali (Journalist):
Rando: “I see he forgot to mention that she didn’t start driving erratically until after she was shot.”
That clip is from a window down the street (rightward of the footage I described @392), behind a tree, and obscured by the adjacent vehicle, only showing the victim’s car emerge to turn (as the shooter pivots around the corner of the car) then zoom off and crash.
Josh Kovensky (Reporter):
I think the footage @392 via Max Nesterak is the same as the BNO News clip @400 (which I couldn’t see). Nesterak’s footage later approaches the car for a graphic moment, which I’d missed.
WaPo – ‘Whata Bod’: An AI-generated NWS map invented fake towns in Idaho
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @395
During the My Lai Massacre Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Junior placed a green smoke grenade by a sounded Vietnamese woman to mark her location for evacuation. I think a green smoke meant safe to approach while red smoke meant do not approach. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson and his 2 door gunners saved the lives of several people at My Lai.
Lynna @396
I expect that not only do these numbskulls think that oil is placed in 55 drums for shipping, they also think that oil is in underground caverns and the only limitation on production is how fast it can be pumped.
55 gallon drums
Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401.
NBC – Noem says driver was ‘harassing, impeding law enforcement operations’
NBC – ICE agent released from hospital, Noem says
NBC – ICE officers trained never to approach a vehicle from the front
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: “I suspect that this is a career person who is actually well trained and not authorized to speak publicly, and not an admin political official who will defend the ICE officer no matter what.”
Garrett Graff (Journalist): “ICE officers are already some of the least trained and least educated law enforcement in the federal government—and then the Trump admin cut both standards even more last year.”
Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406.
Chris Hayes (MS NOW): “It has been an obvious, sometimes even almost stated project of Trump 2.0 to engineer a redo of the post George Floyd protests of 2020, this time with much more state violence. And now a federal agent has shot and killed a woman in a car at point blank range a mile from where Floyd was murdered.”
Atlantic – A Deadly Shooting in Minnesota
The Hill – Walz issues warning order to Minnesota National Guard
Governor Walz readies state resources, notifies National Guard to prepare to protect public safety in Minneapolis
The Trace – How many people have been shot in ICE raids?
The article’s text tallied 28 incidents and was dated Dec 8th, but the fancy map says 40 and includes today’s shooting.
Radley Balko (Journalist):
The Telegraph – Denmark ‘will shoot first and ask questions later’ over Greenland
The Guardian – Trump pulls US out of 66 international bodies
PassBlue: “The UN entities the US is leaving [Screenshot of the list]”
Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof):
Followup to comments 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406, and 408.
Link
Holy. Fucking. Shit. I was watching late television in Sweden and did not learn about the shooting in Minnesota until now when I logged in.
This is what happens when you have absolutely no vetting of new supposed law enforcement agents, and totally inadequate training.
While the British police has been roundly – and deservedly- criticized for their conduct, at least they know how to function without killing people.
The planetoid in Alien was supposed to have a spin rate/ day-night cycle of 4 hours. Real astronomy says “hold my beer”.
“Vera C. Rubin Observatory spots record-breaking asteroid in pre-survey observations”
.https://phys.org/news/2026-01-vera-rubin-observatory-asteroid-pre.html
There is no way an All Wheel Drive vehicle could get stuck in the amount of snow that was at the scene, even with shitty all season tires.
BBC: Zelensky says he does not have clear security pledge from allies
The EU is working towards stepping up but they want to leave themselves some political wiggle room. Ukraine is looking for firm commitments and boots on the ground, they are well aware that any fuzzy bits can easily be exploited a decade or two down the road for another round of land grabs.
Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406, and 408, 410.
HuffPo – ‘You Just Killed My F**king Neighbor!’
NBC: “It took about 15 minutes for EMS to arrive, Heller estimated, because vehicles were blocking the street.”
Aussie ABC – Minnesota ICE shooting takes life of a legal observer, according to local representatives
/via chrislawson
Alex Baumhardt (Journalist):
Slate – Minnesota could prosecute the ICE shooter. Trump can’t pardon him.
Ongoing Iran protests, adding to 97, 128, 219, 299, 360, 361.
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
* Mark Chadbourn: “Big resistance in the Kurdish areas.”
Mark Chadbourn:
Wikipedia – Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran
From the article, he seems not so much a leader as a celebrity on the sidelines trying to be relevant. In October, Israel was caught running a social media bot campaign exaggerating his influence and promoting monarchy.
Wikipedia – 2025–2026 Iranian protests
Uhhh… he can say good things, but maybe don’t tempt a would-be king with authority.
I snipped a line from the “Iran Domino” blog post @219: “The main problem facing the people’s revolt is that there is no obvious leader-in-waiting. […] Reza Pahlavi, desperately wants to be that figure, but he’s loathed by many in the country.”
If the Gaza gencoide was the only vital issue, that would be an almost reasonable response. But it clearly is not. The destruction of USAID alone is reckoned to have already led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. The drive toward fascism in the USA is clearly aimed at making it impossible ever to elect a US government which is not “irredeemably evil”. In the longer term, the attacks on climate science and medical science are likely to cause immense suffering, and millions if not billions of unnecessary deaths and in the former case, enormously increased the probability of complete civilizational breakdown. I could go on, but the conclusion is obvious: by choosing to vote third party, you have a share in the responsibility for all the additional suffering, premature death, and other disasters which a second Trump term has caused or will predictably cause. But you’re too much of a moral coward to admit it.
Reuters: Trump blocks defense company payouts until arms production speeds up
There are real issues that have plagued defense contractors for years. Trump’s solution is a big executive order that does a lot of things that should be done through congress passing laws. The order has Hegseth playing favorites, picking individual companies to punish. A bunch of what is in his executive order about changing contracts now and in the future may be illegal but the government has more power on defense contracts then other contracts. Parts are sensible ideas but actually implementing them via executive order is likely over reaching.
Enforcing delivery on time better is a good idea but doing it will require the DOD not change orders either and history has shown that doesn’t work for development contracts. The DOD needs to restructure how it orders things to make much of this possible.
@397. beholder (being unreasonably polite to you here for Lynna’s sake.)
No. It would be on topic there and it is off topic here.
Except Kamala was NOT able to do so nor was she willing. She and Biden called for restraint, criticised Netanyahu, sanctioned extremist Israeli settlers and withheld some weapons – measures Trump reversed.
You imply that you think Trump and Kamala are equally “irredeemably” evil.
Let’s compare their records and the evidence shall we?
Trump
.* Responsible for the January 6th insurrection and attempted coup.
.* Convicted felon, multiple counts.
.* Known rapist – proven in Civil court, multiple other allegations that are very probably true and the tip of the iceberg metaphorically speaking
.* Demolished any chance of Climate action, attacked and lied about Climate science and reality doming an incalculable number to death and suffering needlessly and avoidably.
.* Ally of Netanyahu, Putin, PRC dictator Xi, probable Russian asset, wanna-be evil dictator who jokes about dropping feces on protesters and advocates violence against political opponents, protesters and journalists.
.* Responsible for millions of deaths due to his Covid 19 lack of actual serious responses and lies about the deadly virus and pandemic.
.* Responsible for the deaths, suffering and deportations of an unknown number of innocent migrants, refugees and, y’know, human beings and the terrorism and thuggery of ICE eg “Alligator Alcatraz” and smugly, sadistically cartoonishly proud of it.
.* Blatantly racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic and, oh yeah, a literal Hitler fan.
.* Is actively trying to destroy Democracy and impose Fascist tyranny on the USA and broader world.
.* Kidnapped a leader of a foreign state and his wife in Venezuela, blatantly stealing that nation’s oil.
.* Very probably a child rapist named in the Epstein files and is a known friend of that known sex offender.
That’s just part of Trump’s summarised kakistocratic record too as we all know and – thanks to you in part – are living through now planet-wide.
OTOH we have Kamala Harris who was the Democratic party’s Presidential nominee who ran on a typical relatively progressive certainly non-Fascist Democratic party platform. Killed no one, raped and sexually assaulted no one, is a rational science-accepting human being who followed Democratic norms and conventions even though she was unfairly robbed of the presidency by voter suprression, third party spoilers incl the Abandon Biden/ Harris self-destructive fools and maybe Musk too.
That you think their level of “evil” is comparable at all let alone equal is absurd beyond superlatives.
Your choice of descriptions wrongly and without any justification using “killer” in front of her name is obscene, probably defamatory and utterly false and anyone can tell they are Megaparsecs apart in ethics and on the scale of good to evil with Kamala at the good end and Trump at its furthest ethical opposite.
You call her a “killer” yet refuse to note and accept and call out Trump as a genocidaire and only attack the Democratic party and its leaders as your focus and that says everything we need to know about you and your real politics here.
For the record for folks to see for themselves the actual on topic thread where this discussion starting with beholder’s shifting his off topic response to here in #397 is here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/01/06/a-stupid-person-is-in-control-of-the-us/#comment-2288859
Oh and beholder has still refused to definitely state that out of Kamala vs Trump, Kamala was the ethically and politically correct choice and refuses to directly answer that simple question.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/they-decided-on-a-narrative-hayes-rips-dhs-lies-after-deadly-ice-shooting-2480159811622
The Killing and the Lies.
Video is 7:57 minutes
https://www.ms.now/ms-now/watch/ice-is-hurting-our-people-minnesota-lt-gov-flanagan-reacts-to-fatal-shooting-2480165443676
Video is 6:56 minutes.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/point-blank-in-the-face-eyewitness-details-deadly-ice-shooting-2480150595917
Video is 7:01 minutes.
Owen Jones on the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good linked here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/01/08/her-name-is-renee-nicole-good/comment-page-1/#comment-2289022
Plus Owen Jones War With Iran “ALMOST INEVITABLE” – w Trita Parsi – under 30 mins long.
Bushfire risk and continuing heatwave in Adelaide and throughout much of eastern Australia currently. Today was our second consecutive day above 40 degrees Celsius – 43.3 (109.94°F) in Adelaide.
Tomorrow is predicted to be a worrying bushfire risk day here locally whilst in Victoria people are already losing their homes and hopefully not more as I type this :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-07/southern-australia-heatwave-emergency-bushfires-victoria/106207086
Oh and another conseqeucne of Global Overheating and escalating feedback for more and worse fires and heat :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2026-01-07/australia-trees-dying-heat-climate-change-forests-mortality/106202532
The glaring flaw in Trump’s plan to boost military spending to $1.5 trillion
“The president plans to use tariff revenue that doesn’t exist to increase the Pentagon budget to wildly unnecessary levels.”
Followup to comments Follow-up to 387, 392, 393, 395, 400, 401, 406, and 408, 410, 415, and 421.
More character assassination of the victim of ICE in Minneapolis. An ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Macklin, an unarmed woman. Trump administration lackeys and ICE goons claim that she was using her car as a weapon. Video of the incident shows those claims to be lies.
Link
Worse and worse:
Link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents a Calvinesque and Hobbesian look at invading Venezuela
The Trump Doctrine: Violence Is Us
“The message is clear—be afraid.”
Text quoted above is an excerpt from longer essay written by David Corn.
Senate advances resolution to block Trump from using military in Venezuela
Baby steps.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/renee-good-tabs-thurs-jan-8-2026
Greenland has a ‘vital strategic asset, by Bill Mckibben
“A sheet of ice two miles thick (and also some remarkable people)”
More at the link.
“The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said the FBI’s decision to take over the investigation into the deadly shooting in Minneapolis will keep state officials from accessing evidence.”
Washington Post link
Washington Post link
Trump replaces the GOP’s free-market orthodoxy with ‘state-run capitalism’
“There was a time when a Republican president wouldn’t tell private companies what to charge, what to pay or how much to make. Those days are over.” [Sounds Russian.]
Related video at the link.
Paul Krugman:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/day-of-infamy
NBC: Judge rules that a fifth federal prosecutor appointed by Pam Bondi is serving unlawfully
This gets in the way of the Letitia James investigation and harassment campaign by the Trump DOJ. Not much to say other then the DOJ has already tried to dodge around how US attorney’s are appointed and it has not worked yet.
Stanzi Potenza: The Insane World of BL (Boys Love) Media
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=As0PSGLsofo
.
Stanzi Potenza : Riggs and Murtough, only different.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Bin7qLGDv/
Re: Lynna
Hehe, I’ve wondered when that hyphen would show up. =)
Not that it bothered me. You’ve been saving yourself a keystroke. Actually, I’ve second-guessed myself a number of times.
Wiktionary acknowledges the dropped hyphen. Merriam-Webster doesn’t. Random language sites say it’s grammatically incorrect but defeatedly admit it’s out there informally. American Heritage accepts it without qualification, which is ironic.
Wikipedia – American Heritage Dictionary
British language is being impoversished by conformism.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1ADnuWVXki/
.
Denmark makes historic claim on North America. (There is even a Donald Duck story related to this, penned by Carl Barks)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Br56RsLW1/
Sky Captain, I think that hyphen hides out in my subconscious somewhere. Occasionally it emerges, and most of the time it refuses to be seen. I should check The New Yorker Style Guide.
In other news:
Link
Cartoon: Pyramid scheme
People fatally shot by UK police in 2024/25 : 2
People fatally shot by US law enforcement in 2025: 1280
Elon Musk at X: “The UK is a police state”.
Lynna, please follow up on your confusing presentation of “follow up,” “follow-up” and “followup” on this thread.
Examples:
Verb (two words): “I need to follow up on the report”.
Noun (hyphenated): “I sent a follow-up email”.
Adjective (hyphenated): “We scheduled a follow-up meeting”.
I have been using the non-standard “followup” in order to save a keystroke. That is not a good excuse.
Some people are sighing and accepting “followup” as a trend they cannot stop. :-)
Nazi Scumbags Go Wilding At Minneapolis High School
Washington Post link
New York Times link
Follow-up to comment 448.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/08/us/trump-nyt-interview
SailorMoon/Team FourStar Abridged
Forgive me Father… (shorts)
.https://youtube.com/shorts/DJ4RhdRHEkw
[The monster’s name “Boxy” in Japanese is close to the word for “priest” ]
More Team Four Star.
Sailor Moon. GAMERS RISE UP!
“This rampage is sponsored by Gamersupps ”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/Wjix59qRf9s
Washington Post:
Protests sometimes work. This is good news.
Breaking news from NBC
Text quoted in comment 453 is confusing. Here is reporting from The New York Times:
House greenlights ACA subsidies extension with backing of 17 Republicans
Jesse Dollemore: Alarms Sound as Donald Trump ATTACKS NORWAY in Psycho Message!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bRaIwiSQBEg
Norway has 1.6% of the size of the US population. 10 000 soldiers is like what sending 625 000 soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq would be for USA.
I have not yet worked out the numbers for Denmark.
Re: Lynna @453 quoting NBC:
I’ll give them partial credit for subverting passive voice copaganda.
Ongoing Iran protests, adding to 97, 128, 219, 299, 360, 361, 416.
BBC – Huge anti-government protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities
/Lots of Instagram video links.
I doubt they were waiting for that guy’s signal to do what’s already been going on for twelve days.
Haaretz – Trump threatens U.S. intervention in Iran again
https://archive.is/4OPzpWomp womp. Also yikes that he went to Mar-a-Lago.
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
Mark Chadbourn:
Rando: “[Another Ayatollah cigarette]”
Another less confusing version of 453, 454.
Oregonian – 2 shot by Border Patrol in Portland
Readable but still strange. The wounded people drove 40 blocks away from the hospital then called police. The agents fired a bunch but didn’t bother to pursue and, unsurprisingly, didn’t themselves call medics for the people they just shot.
Dunno how much time elapsed from getting shot to the rescue. Oregonian reported the FBI tweeted the shooting at the hospital’s address at 2:25pm, then deleted that. NBC reported the police responded at 2:18pm to a call from the hospital and got the call from the wounded man at 2:24pm where the pair were found.
NBC
John Pfaff (Law prof):
Cheryl Rofer:
ProPublica – How SpaceX rockets put passenger planes at risk
Iranian protesters just brought down the symbol of the Iranian regime from its plinth in Tehran. It looks very much like when the symbol of Saddam in Baghdad was toppled, except this is done by true ‘natives”, not by US military personnel. They are very brave, they have pushed back the regime further than in the previous riots. I hope they succed this time. Nearly a half-century of theocratic terror is enough.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EPp38mbkL/
A historic shift in US parenting.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AnWbZtWgP/
The Trump administration just removed the federal memorial to victims of gun violence. They took down 120 portraits of dead Americans, including police officers and children.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxfCmM0VKdTnhck4ZzqV3y8j8Avm9jeSoY
Meidas Touch
“Trump Loses It as GOP REVOLTS in CONGRESS”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sDDbfNdLZK0
Trump Threatens Greenland, Loses $20 Trillion Economy Instead
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=r3IpgZcZhUY
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/animals-feds-tackle-staff-gas-students-at-minneapolis-high-school-witnesses-say-2480392259987
Video is 8:08 minutes.
ABC News: White House ballroom architect says West Wing additions considered for ‘symmetry’
Project keeps changing more, getting bigger and costing more. If left to his own devices Trump may end up tearing down the entire White House so he can build the Trump House and tap the federal reserves so the entire building can be coated in gold. Then transfer the dead to himself personally so he can continue to use it as a home even after his term is up.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/the-lies-are-easily-disproven-hayes-dismantles-jd-vance-s-ice-shooting-claims-2480384067860
Video is 9:09 minutes [OMG, Vance is such a blatant, loud liar.]
Hayes presents a good analysis, including an almost frame-by-frame presentation of what actually happened. For one thing, the agent that shot directly into Renee Good’s car can be seen standing more than a foot (perhaps two feet?] to the side of the car when he extends his arm and shoots through the open side window directly into the car. The car is not even close to running him over. The car is moving away from him.
JD Vance says a bit too much about White House control over the Justice Department
“There was good reason to suspect Team Trump was calling the shots at DOJ. The vice president helped remove all doubt.”
Minnesota launches own probe of ICE shooting after FBI freezes out locals
Re: Oregon shooting 453, 454, 459.
Heather Parton (Salon): “The details are muddled but it does appear that the federal agents left the scene. I guess that’s how it works now. Masked feds shoot people then leave the crime scene. That’s what the shooter in Minneapolis did too. *He* did gesture to his buddies to call 911 first which was thoughtful.”
Oregonian – What we know so far about the Border Patrol shooting in Portland
WIRED link
“ICE Agent Who Reportedly Shot Renee Good Was a Firearms Trainer, Per Testimony”
“Jonathan Ross told a federal court in December about his professional background, including ‘hundreds’ of encounters with drivers during enforcement actions, according to testimony obtained by WIRED.”
I do not have access to the WIRED report.
AI images and internet rumors spread confusion about ICE agent involved in shooting
See how AI images claiming to reveal Minneapolis ICE agent’s face spread confusion.
Washington Post link
“Armchair online detectives keep using artificial intelligence to try to identify people involved in high-profile incidents. It doesn’t work.”
One of Trump’s biggest foes takes his ass to court—again
Cartoon: Make America safe again
Bellingcat:
Nifty analysis. Phone aimed at the windshield. One shot from the front, with both feet clear of the corner. (windshield hole @392), two shots from the side.
CNN – New Video shows moments before fatal ICE shooting (Anderson Cooper, footage at 2:50)
Good parked parallel with the street, unloaded a passenger, then turned 90 degrees, still leaving room for vehicles to pass in the other lane. Then agents’ vehicles arrive. Anderson said the footage showed 4 full minutes leading up to the shooting. The presentation was edited.
Possibly related:
404Media – ICE Is using a new facial recognition app to identify people, leaked emails show
Yannick Veilleux-Lepage (Intl relations prof):
Trump speaking to North Carolina Republicans in June 2023:
Commentary:
Link
Grok Deepfaked Renee Nicole Good’s Body Into a Bikini
“Hours after an ICE agent killed the mother of three, Elon Musk’s chatbot was undressing her.”
Wired – X didn’t fix Grok’s ‘undressing’ problem. It just makes people pay for it.
Helen Kennedy: “The richest man in the world is now charging users to make child porn, thereby enriching himself with child porn.”
Rando: “Now those who take money from Musk are taking money made through the production and dissemination of child porn (looking at you, Republicans).”
Re: Lynna @473: Here’s a readable link.
Wired – ICE agent who reportedly shot Renee Good was a firearms trainer
Southpaw (Lawyer): “When you grow in LA, you see a lot of car chases on tv. And it becomes fairly obvious that CHP and LAPD training never advises cops to try to get a person they want to arrest out of their car by rocking up to the driver’s side and trying to rip the door open. They go to extreme lengths to avoid it.”
The Bulwark link
“The Distance Between Renee Good and Ashli Babbitt Is Fascism”
Sky Captain @480, thank you.
Related news and analysis from Joyce Vance: “You gonna murder someone else? You can’t kill us all, Nazis.”
Excerpt:
Letters from an American
Follow-up to comment 319.
Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof):
Anjali Dayal:
Anjali Dayal:
Rando 1: “Agree, although it’s not super wonderful that DDR has a pretty abysmal track record.”
Anjali Dayal: “Yes. [grimace emoji]”
Rando 2: NB this is not a call for dance dance revolution.”
Follow-up to my previous assessment that CBS is now Trump TV:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/in-wake-of-renee-goods-murder-tony
Good news:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/actual-nice-thing-universal-child
Christopher Mathias (Reporter):
/The article @448 where he’s only constrained by his own morality.
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: Inside the frantic global race to find an escape route for Maduro.
“A previously unreported Christmas Eve meeting in Vatican City was one of many failed attempts to find safe harbor for the Venezuelan leader before the U.S. raid.”
Much more at the link, including analysis regarding Chavistas, María Corina Machado, Batista (a beef magnate), Richard Grenell, Jorge Rodríquez, Chevron oil company, and Delcy Rodríqiez.
Jan. 6 plaque, rejected by House GOP leaders, finds unexpected new home on Capitol Hill
“The display to honor officers who protected the Capitol will be temporarily installed on the Senate side of the building.”
Trump succeeds in uniting our traditional allies — against the United States
“Russia and China have spent years trying to disrupt U.S. alliances. In 2026, the incumbent American president is doing their job for them.”
CourtWatch – The existential crisis of being a lawyer
NB The shooting is even worse than we believed.
.
-Media seems to have aquired the footage and audio of the suit camera carried by the ICE agent that fired the bullets. The moments of the shooting is redacted but the rest is damning!
Meidas Touch:
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=er1rMAt_mqM
Fwd: “We’ve got a cat Igloo”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/ytjPtK0llvo
For some cheerful Non-MAGA content I found som music by Swedish artist Zara Larsson – “Can’t Tame Her”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GNcX0qqnE2Y
.
Also, Gay Man Accidentally Goes To Hell.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/fL0WvjE8uNA
The Right’s Charlie Kirk Rules Don’t Apply to Renee Good, Apparently
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0eKEBWKRR14
-But we already knew they were super-hypocrites and moral tapeworms.
.
Stephen Mills
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxzYT3ir-Mwm7GQyFAccgXex7_SLDYZBgY
Re: birgerjohansson @492: The MeidasTouch host introduced it as from the phone.
Bellingcat: “New footage from the ICE agent’s phone who shot at Renee Nicole Good […] We’ve placed that footage in a synced [collage] with the other currently available footage.”
That footage is tumbly because it was in his hand. He didn’t fall to the ground as one might imagine were it a bodycam.
NBC – Cell phone video apparently taken by ICE officer
Court Watch – The Existential Crisis of Being A Lawyer
The blog ate my link/excerpt attempts. An absurd summary of cases this week, wherein a bunch of lawyers were said to not be lawyers, including this guy.
Law&Crime – Nicolas Maduro’s lawyer weirded out as Reagan-era attorney he ‘did not authorize’ shows up to represent client
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 496
Thank you I stand corrected.
.
Romesh Ranganathan’s Tips On How To Identify Racists On Facebook | “I have more kids just to piss off the neighbors!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q5qWmlvBZaI
Updates and a summary of how Trump has been trashing the White House:
Link