On paper, the Americans are getting what they’ve long demanded. A Europe that spends much more on defense and is much less reliant on Washington for its security. But Donald Trump may not like what American pressure is creating
Leader after leader from Europe took to the podium of the Munich Security Conference on Friday and talked about boosting military budgets […]
Emphasizing what’s on offer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz slipped into English to press home the point. Speaking directly to American delegates in the hall at the summit he said: “Dear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage, it’s also the United States’ competitive advantage. So let’s repair and revive transatlantic trust together. We, the Europeans, are doing our part.”
But they also underlined that Europe will become a power in its own right, able to stand up both to Russian aggression and to American threats.
[I snipped excerpts from Macron’s speech.]
Americans in Munich underlined that they are happy with increased defense spending as the U.S. refocuses to concentrate on its own hemisphere and the Asia-Pacific.
[…] That’s a marked difference from the tone last year, when U.S. Vice President JD Vance blew up the Munich conference with his no-holds-barred attack on European values and politics.
Now, both sides are saying that they remain committed to NATO. But the last year — from Vance’s speech to Trump’s threat to subsume Canada, his disparagement of allies that fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and especially his repeated calls to annex Greenland — has left its marks. [Understatement]
[…] As leaders gathered in Munich, he [Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson] wrote on X that the Western alliance is far too important to be allowed to fall apart. “The relationship between the U.S. and Europe is wounded, but should be maintained,” he wrote, adding, “We need to be honest about the fact that our relationship has suffered a blow. This does not at all mean we should abandon the transatlantic relation.”
EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius also talked in terms of reshaping the Western alliance […]
“We took for granted that transatlantic relations means the U.S. will be in Europe and spend its resources here,” Kubilius said, but he also repeated his call for a European rapid reaction force of up to 100,000 troops able to replace American soldiers if they’re called home.
Europeans also underlined that they will continue backing Ukraine with cash and weapons while American support under Trump trickles to almost nothing. Macron stressed that there can be no agreement to end the war without taking Europe into account.
[…] there are possible flash points ahead, and European leaders drew lines in the sand when it comes to trade tariffs and Make America Great Again efforts to sculpt European politics in a Trumpian image by supporting populist parties.
[…] “The culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours,” Merz said. “Freedom of speech ends here with us when that speech goes against human dignity and the constitution. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade.”
In his speech, Macron underlined how Europe differs from a Trump-led America on everything from free speech to tech regulation and respect for science. […]
Every Wednesday, deportation flights left for Colombia. Every Wednesday, we waited in fear for our names to be called. Officers unsuccessfully tried to deport us twice. The constant threats took a toll on my health. I began experiencing regular panic attacks […] I also suffer from chronic migraines, which worsened over time because the facility would not provide the medication […]
My daughter’s health deteriorated even faster. […] She contracted a cough, which only got worse. […] she regressed behaviorally, wetting herself after years without accidents and begging to breastfeed again despite being 6 years old. When we sought mental health care, a psychiatrist blamed me for her distress and accused me of poor parenting.
Then my daughter’s eye was injured. A facility staff member accidentally struck her eye with a mop. […] the injury was falsely recorded as a fall. Despite my daughter’s continued complaints of blurred vision, light sensitivity, and hearing problems, doctors dismissed us. After over a month of delays, an ophthalmologist who evaluated my daughter warned that she […] needed further evaluation, as well as a referral to an ENT specialist because the injury could also be affecting her hearing. […] officers insisted that it was not their responsibility—even though the injury had been caused by a staff member.
[…] my husband and daughter began experiencing stomach illnesses. Both suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. My husband was placed in the medical unit. He was pale and visibly unwell. For a moment, I believed that because he was so sick, ICE would not deport us. I was wrong.
[…] My daughter was still coughing and vomiting. When I explained that they were too sick to travel, the agents accused me of inventing my husband’s illness, refused to let me call our lawyers, and denied my request to see a doctor. Despite my daughter’s untreated eye injury and serious cough, the officers insisted she was fine and said her health was not their responsibility.
[…]
The bus ride to Louisiana was over 18 hours. We were not able to use the bathroom […] I fainted and hit my head. After I begged for medical help, the paramedic who evaluated me suggested I go to a medical center. But ICE officers refused, telling me I had no right to see a doctor.
[…]
Today we live in hiding in Colombia. Armed groups still control our region. We cannot safely access medical care. My daughter continues to suffer from serious vision and hearing problems but has not been able to see a specialist. Her stomach issues also have not improved, and a doctor in Colombia has diagnosed her with a severe bacterial infection. I continue to suffer from chronic migraines and anxiety, without medication. My husband and I are terrified every day that we will be murdered and our daughter will be kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. My daughter is only 6 years old.
[…]
We don’t know what our future will hold. But we are grateful for the time we had in America, and we will keep fighting for a better future for our daughter.
“The Ukrainian president sat down with POLITICO for an exclusive interview at the Munich Security Conference.”
That’s live coverage that is presented via video. Not yet complete.
Other coverage from a different Politico source:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored the Trump administration to apply more pressure on Russia to end the full-scale invasion of his country — and suggested Congress might need to act to bolster any postwar security guarantees.
Zelenskyy, in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns at the Munich Security Conference, said only the U.S. had the political and financial power to bring a stop to the war.
“Be honest, today only Ukraine [is] defending Europe,” Zelenskyy said at the POLITICO Pub on the summit’s sidelines. “Today, only Europe gives money to Ukraine and helps Ukraine. Today, only [the] United States can stop Putin.”
Zelenskyy, speaking just days before the fourth anniversary of the war, criticized the U.S. for trying to force the Ukrainians to concede territory in the Donbas region without demanding sacrifices from the Kremlin.
“What I see, they give more signals that Ukraine has to make compromises and not Russia,” he said. “This is not [the] right position.” [!]
He also appeared to indicate that Congress would need to backstop security guarantees, either with more money for Ukraine’s postwar military or by sealing a treaty agreement. “Security guarantees will work only after Congress will vote,” he said. [True. Can’t trust Trump. Can’t trust Putin.]
The Ukrainian president pushed back on President Donald Trump’s demand that Kyiv and Moscow wrap up a peace settlement by the summer. He said the Kremlin has strung the U.S. along in talks in an effort to normalize the relationship and ease sanctions. [All too true.]
“Until there is enough pressure,” Zelenskyy said, “they play.”
Putin’s aim, according to Zelenskyy, is to occupy the eastern parts of Ukraine, including parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where the Kremlin’s war effort has made the most progress.
The peace talks, led by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are set to resume in Geneva next week. But they have stalled as Ukraine resists American pressure to give up territory — some of which Russia does not yet control — and the lack of concrete security guarantees for Kyiv in a postwar settlement.
Zelenskyy applauded a NATO initiative to give Ukraine more U.S.-made weapons, but said it hadn’t changed Putin’s impression that Europe was weak. “Putin really doesn’t respect Europe,” Zelenskyy said, adding that the Russian leader’s efforts to divide the continent have not been successful.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have left millions without heat and electricity in subzero temperatures, and more than a million people have been killed or wounded on both sides. But Zelenskyy still seemed confident it was Ukraine that would outlast Putin.
“I’m younger than Putin — this is important,” Zelenskyy said. “He doesn’t have too much time.”
Sky Captain @3, thanks for posting the rest of that Slate article!
In other news, as reported by MS NOW:
The White House spent the week projecting a willingness to negotiate over immigration enforcement policies while drawing a firm line against the central reforms Democrats say are needed to reach a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security — a posture that all but guarantees a partial government shutdown this weekend.
An Associated Press report, as summarized by Steve Beenen:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons acknowledged evidence of ICE agents allegedly making “untruthful statements” under oath: “Federal authorities have opened a criminal probe into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about a shooting in Minneapolis last month, as all charges were dropped against two Venezuelan men.
President Donald Trump said Friday that he decided to move a second aircraft carrier into the Middle East as he presses Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is being sent from the Caribbean Sea to the Mideast to join other warships and military assets the U.S. has built up in the region.
Not good. Looks like Trump is planning another military offensive action.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to agency documents provided to New Hampshire’s governor and published on the state’s website Thursday.
A federal judge in Illinois on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s plan to claw back $600 million in public health funds from four states led by Democrats, amid a wider effort by the federal government to pull funding from blue states.
President Donald Trump has pardoned five prominent former NFL players, including members of the pro football and college football halls of fame, for a variety of offenses.
[…] Joe Klecko, 72, who spent most of his career playing with the New York Jets and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2023; he was convicted of perjury in 1993 for lying to a grand jury about an insurance fraud scheme and sentenced to three months in prison.
Nate Newton, 64, a former offensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys and member of the Black College Football Hall of Fame, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in 2002 and was sentenced to 30 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release.
Jamal Lewis, 46, an All-Pro running back for the Baltimore Ravens, who was sentenced to four months in prison in 2005 for using a phone to try to set up a drug deal.
Travis Henry, 47, a running back for the Denver Broncos, Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills, who was sentenced in 2009 to three years in prison and five years of probation for conspiring to commit drug trafficking.
Billy Cannon, a College Football Hall of Famer who went on to play with the Houston Oilers, Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs. Cannon, who died in 2018, was sentenced to five years in prison in 1983 for his role in a $6 million counterfeiting scheme. […]
According to a Washington Post analysis, the fastest warming rate on record occurred in the last 30 years. The Post used a dataset from NASA to analyze global average surface temperatures from 1880 to 2025. … Those data — combined with the last few years of record heat — have convinced many researchers that the world is seeing a decisive shift in how temperatures are rising.
SSA recently began shifting new swaths of its workforce to phone answering duty, including those who normally receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency’s technology and work in the agency’s finances unit. Those employees received brief, three-hour training before they began answering calls. As part of that training, they were warned some callers may express suicidal ideation and presented with examples using a theoretical employee named Fiona.
“It’s important for Fiona to keep the caller engaged and to remind her that suicide is only one option,” the animated trainer told employees […] “and that there is no urgency to make any decisions.”
[…] there was “disbelief that it was just said” among those in the room. Caitlin Thompson, a clinical psychologist who spent eight years […] on the Veterans Crisis Line [said] “No. That’s not the thing you say to somebody who might be suicidal.”
Instead, SSA would be better suited telling employees to ask callers if they feel safe in the immediate term and if they say no, to tell the caller that they will work with their supervisor to get them in touch with a crisis line. […] she added, “It can’t just be a ‘sorry to hear that.’'”
[…]
The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention maintains a best practices framework for suicide crisis lines, which emphasizes that suicide should not be presented as “acceptable.”
StevoRsays
On the new opposition leader of the Aussie reichwing parties – LNP coalition :
Angus Taylor says the Liberal Party will focus on “Australian values” under his leadership.
He has foreshadowed a stricter immigration policy and a focus on deregulation. (In short summary -ed.)
…(snip)..
This rhetoric is similar to comments from One Nation politicians, and in the Newspoll that preceded Sussan Ley’s last days as leader, pollsters found almost a third of responders preferred One Nation’s policies on immigration over the major parties.
Mr Taylor insisted his party was not trying to become One Nation “lite”. (Reckon he’s lying there myself – ed.)
New research suggests the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is actually a tremendously massive yet compact clump of dark matter.
Scientists say this clump would exert the same gravitational effects currently attributed to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). That includes the violent and rapid dance of stars taking place at the Galactic Center, in which so-called “S-stars” race around the compact heart of our galaxy at speeds as great as 67 million miles per hour (30,000 kilometers per second). For context, that’s around 10% of the speed of light. This dark matter clump, the team says, would also account for the orbits of the dust-shrouded bodies, or “G-sources” located in the Galactic Center.
However, this substitution of a black hole for dark matter only works if dark matter is composed of ultra-light particles that are part of the “fermion” family. This would grant the dense cluster at the heart of the galaxy the ability to form a cosmic structure that matches those observed characteristics of the Galactic Center.
Nikita and his wife, Oksana, fled Russia in desperation two years ago, believing America was their only hope of giving their three children a life free of fear and oppression. […] After fleeing Russia in 2024 and spending more than a year in Mexico […] Nikita drove his family to the Otay Mesa port of entry and requested asylum, telling an agent that his activism against the Russian government had put them at risk. An asylum officer later found the family had a credible fear of persecution […] But rather than being released into the U.S. while their case moved forward, they were taken […] to Dilley
[…]
Meals are greasy, spicy and repetitive […] the girl had lost her appetite after being “served food that contained worms.”
A week later, the couple said, children were told to gather in the gym for what they believed would be a Thanksgiving celebration. Excitement spread as families saw tables set with turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, they said. The children waited expectantly. But when a parent asked when the celebration would begin, Oksana said, staff told them the holiday meal was for employees, not detainees. The children, she said, watched despondently
[…]
Sometimes workers make light of their misery, Nikita said. He recalled showing an officer a piece of moldy cabbage. The guard, he said, put it in his mouth and declared it fine—before gagging and spitting it out.
DHS has pooled confidential data from across the federal government to enable states to mass-verify voters’ citizenship status using SAVE. Many of the nation’s Republican secretaries of state have eagerly embraced the experiment, agreeing to upload all or part of their rolls.
[…]
Even counting people flagged in error, the first bulk searches using SAVE haven’t validated the president’s claims that voting by noncitizens is widespread. At least seven states with a total of about 35 million registered voters have publicly reported the results of running their voter rolls through the system. Those searches have identified roughly 4,200 people—about 0.01% of registered voters—as noncitizens. […]
Brian Broderick leads the verification division of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS branch that oversees SAVE. […] Broderick said that when SAVE flags voters as noncitizens, they are also referred to DHS for possible criminal investigation. (It is a crime to falsely claim citizenship when registering to vote.)
[…]
In March, Trump issued an executive order […] with a 30-day deadline to remake SAVE [from its original purpose into a voter validator.] […] David Jennings, Broderick’s deputy at USCIS, had pressed his team to move quickly […] “We tested it and deployed it to our users in two weeks […] I think that’s remarkable. Kind of proud of it.”
[…]
Jennings added that to get quick access to the Social Security data, which has been tightly guarded, USCIS partnered with DOGE. (In an unrelated matter, DOGE has since been accused of misusing Social Security data.) […] Perhaps because of its accelerated timetable, USCIS expanded the system before meeting legal requirements to inform the public about how the data would be collected, stored and used […] It also blew past concerns from voter advocacy groups about the [in]accuracy of SSA’s citizenship data
[…]
Broderick said […] “Do I think it was reckless? Do I think it wasn’t planned? Do I think it wasn’t tested? Absolutely not,”
[…]
Missouri sent lists of flagged voters to county election administrators in November. […] The Missouri secretary of state’s office told election administrators it would work to verify SAVE’s citizenship determinations. In the meantime, local officials were instructed to change the status of flagged voters, making them temporarily unable to vote. The lists were met with swift pushback from county election officials, who […] spotted people they knew to be citizens and questioned the directive’s legality. […] they recognized neighbors, colleagues and people they’d helped to register at naturalization ceremonies.
* Broderick has a quote saying SAVE’s positive results are accurate, and the negative results mean unknown. Which sounds okay, except that SAVE automatically reports negatives as crimes.
Holy shit. Abbe Lowell’s argument that DOJ is not entitled to presumption of regularity in Don Lemon case consists of:
1) A page on irregularity in this case.
2) A page on irregularity in MN.
3) Other adverse rulings in MN.
4) One page plus TWO PAGE footnote on similar rulings nationally.
* Cheryl Rofer: “The presumption of regularity is that the government has done a competent job of preparing its case and is presenting the case honestly.”
Wheeler linked the document and posted a screenshot of the footnote, which was a wall of citations and quotes like this:
“The Government’s interpretation is, to put it mildly, ‘interpretive jiggery-pokery’ of the highest order. It requires not just reading between the lines, but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”
birgerjohanssonsays
The Onion: RFK Jr. Mandates All Americans Drink Mysterious Glowing Liquid.
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES
‘Private cabin’: New scrutiny on Noem, Lewandowski’s ‘close relationship’ amid DHS chaos. This is “one of the most devastating pieces of political reporting I can remember,” says Chris Hayes on the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the bizarre behavior of DHS head Kristi Noem and her unofficial number two, Corey Lewandowski.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told the Munich Security Conference on Friday exactly why the world is seeing a rise in autocrat-friendly populism.
“I think one of the connections and relationships that is underdiscussed, particularly in the security space, is the fact that I believe we’re seeing an economy … around the world—including in the United States—that extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and drives in a sense in authoritarianism, right-wing populism, and very dangerous domestic internal politics,” she said. “And that is a direct outcome of not just income inequality, but the failure of democracies over decades to deliver. The failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations.” [video]
Ocasio-Cortez noted that stark economic inequality fundamentally conflicts with the core tenets of democracy. She pointed to the growing consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of a few.
“There is a level of market concentration and corporate consolidation where a massive company can get so big that its consolidated power can rival that of nation states,” she said. “Massive corporations that then begin to consume the public sector gobble up the spending. They start to call the shots, and we’re starting to see this with some of the billionaire class throwing their weight around in domestic politics and in global politics as well.”
Ocasio-Cortez remains one of the shining lights of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, consistently advocating a platform to address what most Americans believe to be a growing wealth-inequality crisis.
“EXCLUSIVE: Researcher skeptical of ‘Havana syndrome’ tested secret weapon on himself.
“In 2024, a Norwegian researcher skeptical that pulsed-energy weapons could do damage to human brains built a device and tested it on himself. It didn’t go well.”
Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world. […]
The secret test in Norway has not been previously reported. The Norwegian government told the CIA about the results, two of the people said, prompting at least two visits in 2024 to Norway by Pentagon and White House officials.
Those aware of the test say it does not prove AHIs are the work of a foreign adversary wielding a secret weapon similar to the prototype tested in Norway. […]
But the events bolstered the case of those who argue that “pulsed-energy devices” — machines that deliver powerful beams of electromagnetic energy such as microwaves in short bursts — can affect human biology and are probably being developed by U.S. adversaries.
[…] The Trump administration took office promising to pursue the AHI issue aggressively. But there has been little apparent movement. A review ordered by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to focus mostly on the Biden administration’s handling of the issue, and its release has been delayed […]
In a separate development that has become public in recent weeks, the U.S. government covertly purchased at the end of the Biden administration a different foreign-made device that produces pulsed radio waves and which some experts suspect could be linked to AHI incidents [!!]
[…] The device is being tested by the Defense Department. It has some Russian-origin components, but the U.S. government still has not determined conclusively who built it, said one of the people.
The U.S. acquisition of the device was first reported last month by independent journalist Sasha Ingber and CNN, which said it had been purchased for millions of dollars by Homeland Security Investigations, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
[…] The Norwegian device was built based on “classified information,” suggesting it was derived from blueprints or other materials stolen from a foreign government [!]
At about the same time the U.S. became aware of the two pulsed-energy machines, two spy agencies altered their previous judgment and concluded that some of the incidents involving AHIs could be the work of a foreign adversary, delivering that verdict in an updated U.S. intelligence assessment issued in January 2025 during the Biden administration’s final weeks.
[…] The majority of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and four others, said they continued to judge it “very unlikely” that the attacks were the result of a foreign adversary or that a foreign actor had developed a novel weapon. […]
In subsequent years, U.S. personnel reported hundreds of cases globally, in China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. A top aide to then-CIA Director William J. Burns reported symptoms while traveling in India in 2021.
At a Foreign Policy Research Institute conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Schlagheck, at times his voice breaking, said he was hit five times in 2020 in his home in Northern Virginia, where a Russian family lived across the street. It was not until last year that a doctor told him his symptoms were the same as those reported from Havana a decade earlier.
[…] the Norwegian researcher had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the theory that directed-energy weapons can cause the type of symptoms associated with AHIs […] Trying to dramatically prove his point, with himself as a human guinea pig, he achieved the opposite. [!]
[…] A delegation of Pentagon officials traveled to Norway in 2024 to examine the device. In December of that year, a group of intelligence and White House officials also went to Norway to discuss the issue, those familiar with the events said.
In January 2022, the CIA produced an interim assessment that concluded a foreign country was probably not behind Havana syndrome. It emerged weeks before a major panel of government and nongovernment experts produced a report commissioned by the director of national intelligence and deputy CIA director that came to a markedly different conclusion. [!]
That panel concluded in February 2022 that pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio-frequency range, ‘‘plausibly explains the core characteristics of reported AHIs,” although it acknowledged many unknowns. “Information gaps exist,” it reported.
[…] The IC Experts Panel, as it was known, interviewed several people […] said David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist who chaired the panel.
But the CIA interim assessment overshadowed the expert panel’s report. […]
U.S. intelligence agencies “essentially ignored” the experts panel’s work […] The agencies, particularly the CIA, “had developed a very firm set of conclusions, world view that caused them I think to become dug in,” he [Relman] said.
[…] After the November 2024 election, White House officials who were working on an AHI brief for the incoming Trump administration invited several victims to a meeting to offer their input. The officials also wanted to reassure the victims that they realized the intelligence community assessment called into question the very real health issues they experienced and what caused them.
At one point, an official turned to the victims who were gathered in the Situation Room and said, “We believe you.” The White House wasn’t yet certain it was a foreign actor but believed it was plausible that the symptoms had been caused by external factors, said the person familiar with the administration’s views.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer and AHI victim who attended the unclassified meeting, said, “It was clear to the victims, but also unsaid, that new information had come into the NSC that had caused them to make such a statement.”
Doctors Without Borders has announced the suspension of some operations at one of Gaza ‘s largest functioning hospitals after patients and staff reported seeing armed, masked men roaming parts of the building.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis is one of the territory’s few functioning hospitals. Hundreds of patients and war-wounded have been treated there daily, and it was a hub for Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in exchange for Israeli hostages as part of the current ceasefire deal.
The comments by the aid group, which is also known by its acronym MSF, are a rare announcement by an international organization about the presence of armed men in or near medical facilities in Gaza since the war began over two years ago.
[…] MSF said it wasn’t able to indicate the armed men’s affiliation. It said it had expressed concern to the “relevant” authorities, […] stressing that hospitals must remain neutral, civilian spaces. It said its concerns were heightened by previous, deliberate Israeli attacks on health facilities.
[…] Israel has repeatedly struck hospitals, including Nasser, accusing the militant group of operating in or around them. Hamas security men often have been seen inside hospitals, blocking access to some areas.
Some hostages released from Gaza have said they spent time during captivity in a hospital.
While Hamas remains the dominant force in areas not under Israeli control, including Nasser Hospital, other armed groups have mushroomed across Gaza as a result of the war, including groups backed by Israel’s army in the Israeli-controlled part of the strip. [What a mess.]
Nasser Hospital staff say that in recent months it has been repeatedly attacked by masked, armed men and militias, despite police presence there.
[…] The Hamas-run Interior Ministry, which oversees police in Gaza, said officers would be deployed to secure hospitals […]
While international law gives hospitals special protections during war, they can lose this immunity if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Still, there must be plenty of warning to allow the evacuation of staff and patients before any operations take place. If harm to civilians from an attack is disproportionate to the military objective, it is illegal under international law.
Aid groups and rights organizations say Israel has decimated Gaza’s health system, forcing most hospitals to shut down while heavily damaging others. During the war, Israeli forces raided a number of hospitals, detaining hundreds of staff.
Israel also has targeted the police in Gaza.
MSF said it will continue supporting critical services at Nasser Hospital, including inpatient and surgical departments for patients with traumatic or burn injuries. However, it is ending support to the pediatrics and maternity wards, including the neonatal intensive care unit. It has also indefinitely suspended its outpatient consultations for 3D burn screening and mental health, as well as other services.
[…] Gaza’s Health Ministry […] would take over maternity patient care, but said burn victims won’t have many options.
[…] While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the fragile ceasefire has been seen almost daily Israeli fire. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones, killing 591 Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect, according to Gaza health officials.
[…] The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. […]
“U.S forces carried out 10 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria between Feb. 3 and Thursday in retaliation for a December ambush that killed two American soldiers.”
[…] U.S. Central Command said in a statement that American aircraft had conducted 10 strikes against more than 30 IS targets between Feb. 3 and Thursday, hitting weapons storage facilities and other infrastructure.
At least 50 members of IS have been killed or captured, while more than 100 IS targets have been struck since the United States began its strikes after the Dec. 13 ambush, according to Central Command. That attack killed Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, the civilian interpreter.
[…] The Syrian Defense Ministry said Thursday that government forces took control of a base in the east of the country that was run for years by U.S. troops as part of the fight against IS. The Al-Tanf base played a major role after IS declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.
The U.S. military on Friday completed the transfer of thousands of IS detainees from Syria to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial. The prisoners were sent to Iraq at the request of Baghdad, in a move welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition that had for years fought against IS.
JMsays
@20 birgerjohansson:
Putin murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny with epibatidine poison, from poison dart frogs.
Have to give Putin some style points there. Navalny was already in a Russian prison camp, there are any number of boring ways he could have been killed. But no, Putin went to the lengths of doing something from a murder mystery just to be exotic and interesting.
“I am still in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. That includes all 23 different agencies under our umbrella, including ICE and CBP but also FEMA, TSA, Secret Service, the Coast Guard, many many more,” she said, referring to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration.
If you have to publicly announce that you are in control then your losing control.
The Cabinet this week
* RFK Jr. bragged about snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat.
* Lutnick acknowledged taking his family to Epstein island.
* Bondi “The Dow” / refuses to look at victims.
* Noem blanket.
* Hegseth loses to Kelly, tries to tweet through it.
* Bessent “tariffs don’t cause inflation”.
A lot of people are mentioning the party balloons/laser that shut down El Paso airspace for hours, but that appears to involve 3 Departments—DoD, DHS & DOT. Still not entirely clear what happened there. Commerce Chair Ted Cruz left meeting with FAA still not understanding what exactly happened.
RFK Jr. in that moment was bragging about not being afraid of COVID and flouting the restrictions most of us observed to protect others. That moment reveals the personal vanity and arrogance that undergirds his eugenicist agenda—eliminating vaccines, refusing to plan for another pandemic beyond demanding that people “get healthy” to survive.
He sees himself as one of the healthy and deserving and will kill those who aren’t. He does not value the lives of those who do not fit his definition of ‘healthy’ […] people with autism, for example. His comments about cocaine use are getting all the attention, but the context was extremely dark and ugly. His comments amounted to “I survived exposing myself to pathogens in the past; I am therefore ‘healthy’ and do not need to worry *myself* with this pathogen that kills others, nor do I need to participate in protecting others.”
JM @30, I think your conclusion is true. I think Kristi Noem was also making that point about being in charge because she wants to order ICE agents to patrol election sites during the midterm elections.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Chris Hayes quote @24: “Noem and her unofficial number two, Corey Lewandowski”
“What is Corey Lewandowski’s job exactly?”
“Under Secretary.”
—Robert A. George (Comedian)
Army policy prohibits partisan displays, and most service members refrained from cheering.
[…]
Trump used the platform to boost [a GOP Senate candidate who holds no gov position]. “You have to vote for us,” Trump told the troops, citing his restoration of the Fort Bragg name after Congress directed the Pentagon to rename military installations honoring Confederate officers. (The Trump administration avoided the law by renaming the base after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, rather than the original Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.) “If we don’t win the midterms, they’ll take it off again,”
[…]
the Hatch Act restricts government employees from campaigning in their official capacity. The law does not apply to the president.
Ian Bassin (Lawyer): “The commander in chief telling troops who they have to vote for is itself a presidency ending impeachable scandal.”
Steve Morrisonsays
Interesting analysis by a military historian of methods of opposing a much more powerful state, with thoughts on the anti-ICE protests here in Minneapolis.
Sen. Thom Tillis shot back at comments made by fellow Republican Lindsey Graham on Saturday, voicing frustration with the South Carolina senator’s dismissal of Greenland’s sovereignty.
The disagreement over President Donald Trump’s threat to seize the Danish territory boiled over at the annual summit here [in Munich], starting with Lindsey Graham’s comment Friday, “who gives a shit who owns Greenland? I don’t.”
Appearing at the conference on Saturday, Tillis, without naming Graham directly, responded, “who gives a shit about who owns Greenland? The 85,000 indigenous people in Greenland give a shit about who owns Greenland. And at the end of the day, we need to show respect.” [video]
[…]
more than $30 million to send migrants to far-flung countries that are not their own, including, in a few instances, paying over $1 million a person, a new report from the Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says. In other cases, the report alleges, the administration paid to deport the migrants to a third country, only to pay again to return them to their home country.
[…]
the administration has an agreement with or has sent third country nationals to more than 20 countries and is pursuing deals with dozens more. […] Deals with five governments—Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini, and Palau—have cost more than $32 million, with much of that funding being provided “as lump sum payments, often before any third country nationals arrived,” […] The five countries […] have collectively only received about 300 third country nationals from the US.
[…] the administration often uses high-cost military aircraft to deport migrants, even for flights with only a small number of people. [“]more than $7.2 million on third country deportation flights as of January 2026 to at least ten countries, with actual costs likely far higher,”
[…]
“as of January 2026, more than eighty percent of the migrants sent to third countries the U.S. paid to take them in have already returned to their country of origin, or are in the process of doing so,” […]
Of the five countries […] El Salvador received the most deported people. Around 250 were sent to that country, which received a $4.76 million grant to imprison the deportees
[…]
only 51 people were sent to the other four countries as of January 2026, according to the report. Rwanda, which allegedly received $7.5 million from the US government, only took seven third country nationals, meaning each deported national cost more than $1 million
[…]
Palau has not received any third country nationals, although the report says they received a payment of $7.5 million […] When it comes to the distant countries of Palau and Eswatini, a US official reportedly told the committee that “the point is that the Administration can threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere.” “The point is to scare people,” […] the committee heard from US officials in one country that received third country nationals that the administration had instructed them not to follow-up on the treatment of the deportees
* I guess the eighty percent was mostly that El Salvador / Venezuela prisoner swap. Some deportees might’ve traveled on their own. And a few ferried by the US gov.
Every single state: Trump’s approval/ disapproval rate visualised.
It has gone significantly worse the last few weeks.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9MTEa45FjXY
birgerjohanssonsays
11.000 year old mesolithic bones.
“Northern Britain’s oldest human remains are of a young female child, DNA analysis reveals”
Trump used the platform to boost [a GOP Senate candidate who holds no gov position]. “You have to vote for us,” Trump told the troops, citing his restoration of the Fort Bragg name after Congress directed the Pentagon to rename military installations honoring Confederate officers. (The Trump administration avoided the law by renaming the base after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, rather than the original Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.) “If we don’t win the midterms, they’ll take it off again,”
Notice also how bad his argument is. Fort Bragg isn’t some local reserve base or training facility where the soldiers will have some local and historical sympathy with the name. Fort Bragg is a huge facility with soldiers from all over the US, most of which are indifferent and some of which won’t like being at a base name for a Confederate general.
He can’t think of a better way to appeal to them because he has no empthy for them and went with the name because he is obsessed with naming places. The soldiers are aware that he has worked to cut funding to the VA and otherwise tried to cut their support and money so even though soldiers lean right wing they probably are not big fans.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
birgerjohansson @20, JM @29.
Dan Kaszeta (CBRN expert): “Russia does not actually need a rare tree frog from Ecuador to get the toxin that killed Navalny.”
Rando: “dart frogs in captivity stop producing their toxins due to their different diet (millions of fruit flies). So synthesis of epibatidine does seem far more likely. […] Dart frogs are whole niche hobby within herpetoculture (reptile & amphibian keeping). Some hobbyists create incredibly beautiful mini-rainforests in terraria, with rare plants, and automated systems for misting etc.”
I almost imagined a Trump CIA op screwing up an assassination with harmless frogs… before remembering the oafs just smash-and-grabbed a head of state. They can’t even spell subtle.
The lawyer was working in a in Interview room 10 minutes after the courthouse closed. She was charged with trespassing.
The Durham Regional Police Service has referred the assault case involving Aitken Roberston lawyer Sudine Riley to the York Regional Police for criminal investigation.
Per a statement from Riley’s lawyer Neha Chugh, Riley, a Black female criminal defence lawyer, was working in an interview room at Oshawa’s Superior Court of Justice on January 23 when she was reportedly assaulted by two uniformed DRPS officers who “challenged her presence.” The officers allegedly slammed Riley’s head into a desk, causing her to bleed, dragged her from the room to cells in the courthouse’s basement, and tore off her headscarf before arresting her for a Trespass to Property Act-related offence.
The DRPS said last week that it had reassigned the officers and informed two civilian oversight agencies – the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency and the Special Investigations Unit – of the claims. SIU had refused to investigate the matter.
In a statement released on January 30, the DRPS said claims related to Riley’s arrest went beyond misconduct and were “criminal in nature”; thus, it would formally be referring the case to the York Regional Police for a criminal investigation. The DRPS said it had previously informed the York Regional Police that its investigative services might be needed.
The DRPS said it had communicated updates on the situation to the inspector general.
Riley’s incident was met with outcry from the legal profession. The group Women In Canadian Criminal Defence told the executive legal officers of the Ontario Court of Justice, Ontario Superior Court of Justice, and Ontario Court of Appeal that its members had become afraid for their safety; thus, requests from them to attend hearings virtually should not be questioned.
The Criminal Lawyers’ Association said it was supporting Riley through courthouse advocacy headed by its Durham representative. It also urged the chief of police to name an expert in human rights and anti-Black racism as an independent external investigator pursuant to section 198(3) of the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019, S.O. 2019 – a call echoed by the Canadian Bar Association and the Advocates’ Society.
Moreover, defence bar members held a sit-in at the courthouse to support Riley.
Cassandra DeMelo, a practicing defence lawyer in London, Ont., and president of WICCD, called the situation “bizzare,” and said she took the “extraordinary step” to write a letter to the justice because her group felt it was urgent.
“It’s jarring. It’s put us all on edge,” DeMelo told CBC News in an interview on Tuesday.
Woman in blue suit stands with hands folded
Cassandra DeMelo, president of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence, said her members are scared to work at the Oshawa courthouse after the alleged assault on Jan. 23. (DeMelo HeathCote)
DeMelo said her request for increased safety measures has been passed off to legal counsel for the Ontario Court of Justice (OCJ) and the Superior Court of Justice (SCJ).
She said the courts are taking the situation seriously, but that WICCD’s request for answers have so far “gone unanswered.”
While an investigation is still ongoing, DeMelo said the incident prompts concerns around lawyers needing to stay late, and what situations they may encounter with security.
Oshawa’s courthouse is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
However, DeMelo said, it’s not uncommon for lawyers to stay behind after courthouses close to wrap up work, with it sometimes even being requested by court justices.
She questions whether lawyers will feel comfortable to do that in Oshawa’s courthouse going forward.
StevoRsays
…(snip)…
…Before Christmas, the Icelandic government classified the potential collapse of the Amoc as a national security risk, demonstrating a belief that climate stability is fundamental to a nation’s survival. The message is clear: climate change should be prioritised as a security crisis, not just an environmental one.
On that, the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee, on which heads of MI5 and MI6 sit, would surely agree. Last month, a partial version of its national security assessment of global biodiversity loss was published, and it came with a stark warning: some ecosystems will start to collapse “by 2030 or sooner”, posing an immediate threat to national security, prosperity, food systems and public health. There won’t be enough water for people to drink or food to eat; livelihoods will be lost; displacement and migration will accelerate, and geopolitical competition for resources will intensify. In short, environmental breakdown isn’t a distant possibility or a theoretical scenario; it’s a strategic threat that intelligence agencies now factor into their calculations, and it requires strategic planning, preparation and action. “Nature”, say the chiefs in the report, “is the foundation of national security.”
A PwC analysis found that 55 per cent of the world’s GDP, $58 trillion (€49.2 trillion) is reliant on nature. “Nature’s decline poses significant risks to the global economy and society at large if organisations do not transform their practices now.”
We’re in a race to hold on to the nature we have, to restore what we have lost, to limit our carbon emissions and suck as much carbon out of the atmosphere as we can.
In that, we need “no-regret strategies” – actions that work well across the board, regardless of how the future unfolds, that act as a kind of insurance policy against ecological collapse. Obvious examples are reducing carbon emissions, diversifying crops, slashing pollution and restoring our wetlands.
In Ireland, despite the grim reports of our failing habitats and emissions, there’s still a lot to play for. Take our bogs, which, if fully restored, could pull down carbon while supporting a significant number of species (they’re our Amazon rainforests) and helping reduce flood risk by soaking up vast quantities of excess rainwater during extreme weather.
WA goes repressive authoritarian and erodes the right toprotest too, sigh :
The WA premier has flagged the introduction of new legislation on hate speech and protests in a bid to protect “social cohesion” in the wake of “multiple threats across Australia” over the summer.
Roger Cook said the new laws are partly in response to the Bondi antisemitic terror attack on December 14, in which 15 people were killed while celebrating a Jewish holiday, and the alleged attempted terror attack at a Perth Invasion Day protest in Forrest Place on January 26.
Well, this surprises me esp given the existence of the Greenland Shark which I’d always presumed had southern counterparts & thought Great Whites might’ve roamed pretty close to that far too..
A deep-sea camera from an Australian expedition to Antarctic waters has captured an unknown species of sleeper shark on video.
Researchers believe it is the first time a shark has been videoed in the Southern Ocean in a natural setting.
Vale Kudelka. Respect. Bloody good cartoonist and good human being. Rest in power. :
The award-winning cartoonist died in Hobart on Sunday, aged 53. Alongside the cartoons, he had a flourishing creative career evident to anyone who wandered into the Kudelka Gallery in Salamanca Place .. (snip)..
..If cartoonists are the persistent voice of the national conscience, then Kudelka’s was superficially quizzical but often searing in its conviction.
He turned his attention to hypocrisy, political grandstanding and manipulation; or to deep-seated social and political inequality in cartoons as beautiful as they were powerful.
…(snip).. For the first time in its 29-year history, One Nation is polling above 20 per cent nationally and is ahead of the combined vote of the Liberal and National parties.
People who are paid to obsess over poll data in Australia have never seen anything like it.
“I am shocked [by] every poll I see — and I do this for a living,” says ANU political scientist Jill Sheppard. “The sheer numbers of people who are telling pollsters they will vote for One Nation is tremendous.”
If the current level of One Nation support — or anything close to it — actually translates to the ballot box, it will wildly reshape Australian politics.
Let us take a look at the latest polling data and see just how different it is from past election results.
They wwere afringe far reichwing party but they are bing normalised and the Overton window ia pushed outta the house , down the streetand right to teh rubish dump and the furthest end of our politics sadly.
But then that’s a really disturbing, awful, all too common trend these days.
Reform in UK, Trump kult in the USA..
(Plentiful loud expletives.)
StevoRsays
@ ^They = One Neuron party & Pauline Hanson obvs.
Needless to say is needless to say but so many needlessly say it – coz is it so needless or needs must we say for is it so needless to say it?
“The Trump administration has claimed “great success” in a city that actually put Donald Trump on his back foot.”
Related video at the link.
The Trump administration’s border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that Operation Metro Surge, the huge deployment of federal immigrant agents across Minnesota that began in December, is coming to an end. He heralded the operation as a “great success” and he said that the Twin Cities and Minnesota will “continue to be much safer for the communities here because of what we have accomplished.”
Homan is an immigration enforcement veteran who has worked under presidents of both parties and is sometimes seen as one of the rare competent operators in Trump’s second administration. But what he said during his announcement was a classic example of Trumpian “alternative facts.” The reality is Metro Surge was a total failure — and achieved the opposite of its purported goal of making Minnesota “safer.”
[…] in a review of Department of Homeland Security data in mid-January, a local Fox affiliate found that out of 2,000 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, just 5.2% were violent convicted criminals. That tracks broadly with other assessments of national data that finds that only a small fraction of the people swept up in ICE raids have violent records, and that the “worst of the worst” narrative is a fig leaf for far broader mass deportations.
Along the way, Operation Metro Surge wreaked havoc on Minneapolis.
[…] The Minnesota Reformer has a summary of how that went:
Since the beginning of the year, immigration agents have shot three people, killing two; racially profiled people, asking them to produce proof of legal residency; detained legal immigrants and shipped them across state lines, including young children; caused numerous car crashes; deployed chemical irritants on public school property; smashed the car windows of observers and arrested them before releasing them without charges; charged journalists and activists while stymieing investigations of federal agents, leading to an exodus of prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, among other high-profile incidents.
In a statement on the conclusion of the operation, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said, “Businesses are reeling from the economic devastation. Families are shattered. Children will carry the trauma of federal agents descending on their neighborhoods for the rest of their lives. The pain inflicted on this community will not fade — it will remain etched in their memory as the moment their own government turned against them.”
Immigration agents could one day come to your town. Do you feel “safer” yet?
Now to the extent that ICE operations in Minneapolis served as a potential test drive for Trump to morph the agency into a secret police force, one could argue that causing chaos, fear and pain was part of the point. So in a perverse way, if the terror was by design, then did Trump succeed at his goal of wrestling a city into submission?
The Justice Department (DOJ) sent a letter to Congress on Saturday outlining its justification for redactions made in the released Jeffrey Epstein files, according to Politico.
The six-page letter to the leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary committees also included a list of “all government officials and politically exposed persons” named in the files for any reason. Several high-profile names were on the list, including President Trump.
The DOJ was required to provide this by the law that forced them to make redacted Epstein files public. It seems to be a pile of legalese that is as intentionally obscure as possible.
The lack of clarity surrounding which individuals fit into which contexts drew criticism from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who accused the DOJ of “purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was mentioned in an email.”
The list of officials and “politically exposed” people appears to be everybody named in the file other then victems and Epstein himself. Elvis turns up on the list because he was mentioned once in a conversation.
Lawmakers who reviewed the unredacted Epstein files at a DOJ office this week reported heavy, “unnecessary” redactions in the documents. Trump officials have maintained the redactions are meant to ensure victims’ identities are kept private.
This is DOJ officials making absurd claims that are difficult to disprove because only the redacted files are public.
Attorney General Pam Bondi (Amy Poehler) testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee (Mikey Day, James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes, Ashley Padilla, Jeremy Culhane, Tommy Brennan).
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested on Friday that her department has a broad role in election security, claiming she has the authority to identify “vulnerabilities” in the election system and implement “mitigation measures” to make sure local and state elections are “run correctly.”
Noem argued during a press conference in Arizona, where she was pushing for passage of a national voter ID law, that elections fell within the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mission of “maintaining critical infrastructure.”
“I would say that many people believe that it may be one of the most important things that we need to make sure we trust, is reliable, and that when it gets to Election Day, that we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country through the days that we have, knowing that people can trust it,” she said.
A clip of those comments began circulating on social media Saturday morning, drawing swift criticism from Democratic lawmakers and political commentators.
[…] The House passed the SAVE America Act on Wednesday, a bill that would require Americans to show photo ID when voting in federal elections and proof of U.S. citizenship to register. If enacted, the legislation also mandate that states remove non-citizens from its voter rolls.
Its passage tees up debate in the Senate, where similar legislation has stalled in past years over Democratic opposition. At least one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), has indicated she does not support the effort.
With prospects murky, President Trump on Friday floated the idea of issuing an executive order that would accomplish the same goal.
“There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Critics have slammed the proposal as an attack on voting rights and warned it could disenfranchise millions of legal voters, including women whose married names do not match their passports or birth certificates.
“Each of the arguments laid out to criticize this bill are baseless speculation from the radical left because they want illegal aliens to vote in our elections,” Noem said.
Trump has so far defended Noem and resisted bipartisan pressure for her resignation or firing. Former Obama adviser David Axelrod suggested in a post on X that Noem’s comments on election security could help explain why.
“THIS is why @KristiNoem will remain in place, despite her flagrant, corrupt mismanagement of the @DHS, at least through the midterm elections,” he wrote. “@POTUS wants a loyal apparatchik in place who will do whatever is necessary to ensure ‘the right leaders’ win.”
“Deep in China’s Mountains, a Nuclear Revival Takes Shape”
“Satellite imagery of secretive nuclear facilities reveals Beijing’s efforts to expand its arsenal, just as the last global guardrails on nuclear weapons vanish.”
Satellite imagery is available at the link.
In the lush, misty valleys of southwest China, satellite imagery reveals the country’s accelerating nuclear buildup, a force designed for a new age of superpower rivalry.
One such valley is known as Zitong, in Sichuan Province, where engineers have been building new bunkers and ramparts. A new complex bristles with pipes, suggesting the facility handles highly hazardous materials.
Another valley is home to a double-fenced facility known as Pingtong, where experts believe China is making plutonium-packed cores of nuclear warheads. The main structure, dominated by a 360-foot-high ventilation stack, has been refurbished in recent years with new vents and heat dispersers. More construction is underway next to it.
Above the Pingtong facility entrance, a hallmark exhortation of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, appears in characters so large they are visible from space: “Stay true to the founding cause and always remember our mission.”
These are among several secretive nuclear-related sites in Sichuan Province that have expanded and undergone upgrades in recent years.
China’s buildup complicates efforts to revive global arms controls after the expiration of the final remaining nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia. Washington argues that any successor agreements must also bind China, but Beijing has shown no interest.
“The changes we see on the ground at these sites align with China’s broader goals of becoming a global superpower. Nuclear weapons are an integral part of that,” said Renny Babiarz, a geospatial intelligence expert who has analyzed satellite images and other visual evidence of the sites and shared his findings with The New York Times.
He likened each nuclear location across China to a piece of a mosaic that, seen as a whole, shows a pattern of rapid growth. “There’s been evolution at all of these sites, but broadly speaking, that change accelerated starting from 2019,” he said. [annotated map]
[…] China had more than 600 nuclear warheads by the end of 2024 and is on track to have 1,000 by 2030, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual estimate. China’s stockpile is much smaller than the many thousands held by the United States and Russia, but its growth is still troublesome […]
“18 Days, 20 Lives: New Yorkers Who Didn’t Survive the Cold”
“Freezing days and nights claimed the lives of a grandmother, a dancer, a dispatcher […].”
Shortly before dawn on a Saturday, a retired woman in the quiet residential neighborhood of St. Albans, Queens, got up to use the bathroom. She happened to glance out the front window of her house and saw something alarming: a stranger lying face up on the sidewalk.
The temperature was 10 degrees, and the wind chill was five below. The woman called 911. Paramedics arrived quickly, but the man on the ground, Headley Evans, 71, was soon pronounced dead.
That was Jan. 24.
The next two and a half weeks were the coldest stretch that New York City had seen in years. Despite an increasingly frantic campaign by the fledgling administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani to persuade people to shelter indoors, frozen bodies kept turning up across the city.
The deaths came in a wave — six dead or dying people were found that first morning — and then a steady succession of one or two a day, in doorways and alleys, at remote campsites and along well-traveled thoroughfares.
By Tuesday, at least 20 people had died after exposure to the frigid air and snow.
The youngest was 27 years old; the oldest was 90 […]
“Trump tells soldiers to vote GOP in campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg”
“Army policy prohibits partisan displays, and most service members refrained from cheering.”
[…] Trump’s rally on Friday followed a familiar plan: He entered to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” promoted GOP candidates, bashed his predecessor and implored the audience to vote Republican in the midterm elections. The speech ended to the thump of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”
The setting, however, was an Army base, and the audience was in uniform.
It was not the first time Trump gave an overtly political speech in a military setting, breaking the tradition of keeping the armed forces separate from partisan politics. He told assembled generals and admirals in September the country was “under invasion from within,” and his visit here in June to mark the Army’s 250th birthday featured a booth selling partisan paraphernalia.
On Friday, Trump shared the stage with Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman now running for Senate who holds no government position. Trump used the platform to boost Whatley, attack Democrats and repeat previously announced military spending plans.
“You have to vote for us,” Trump told the troops, citing his restoration of the Fort Bragg name after Congress directed the Pentagon to rename military installations honoring Confederate officers. (The Trump administration avoided the law by renaming the base after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, rather than the original Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.)
“If we don’t win the midterms, they’ll take it off again,” Trump said. “They’ll take it off again. You can’t let that happen.”
Most of the uniformed service members refrained from reacting during Trump’s speech other than raising phones to take photos or videos. They mostly left the applause and cheers to his staff and the assembled Republican politicians, including the home state’s Sen. Ted Budd and Reps. Richard Hudson, Brad Knott and David Rouzer. A few service members responded enthusiastically when Trump asked who had received the $1,776 bonus checks he approved in December.
Defense Department policy prohibits partisan political activity by active-duty service members. “The Army as an institution must be nonpartisan and appear so too,” the Army field manual reads. “Nonpartisanship assures the public that our Army will always serve the Constitution and our people loyally and responsively.”
A federal law known as the Hatch Act restricts government employees from campaigning in their official capacity. The law does not apply to the president. […]
Trump criticized Democrats including former president Joe Biden and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and he touched on nonmilitary campaign themes such as the economy and immigration. The speech also mentioned existing plans to increase defense spending to $1 trillion next year, build new battleships reminiscent of World War II and improve on-base housing.
After the speech, Trump met privately for almost two hours with service members who participated in the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump praised the troops and told reporters that one of them would be receiving the Medal of Honor. […]
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @66:
Trump praised the troops and told reporters that one of them would be receiving the Medal of Honor. […]
The Medal of honor is awarded only for conspicuous gallantry and risk of life above and beyond the call of duty during combat against an enemy force. I have doubts that anything that happened in that dubious raid meets the criteria. The Orange Turd just loves receiving and giving out awards.
she was arrested by federal immigration agents during a green card interview and detained for nine days without critical medical care. […] Engan, who has Type 1 diabetes and relies on daily insulin, said she did not receive medication during the first four days […] “Every single day, I told them I couldn’t eat without my medication. They didn’t care.” […] a credit card inside her purse was used while she was still in custody […] she currently has legal status to remain in the United States, though she is not yet a citizen.
For a country to survive, there has to be a common culture. Nobody dies to defend a ‘multicultural economic zone’! American culture, with its English-Scotts-Irish origin, is great and worth fighting for. Some may not realize it, but that’s why people come here.”
Commentary
He’s literally just doing this [Family Guy] bit except actually serious.
Yes, the English, Scots, and Irish who famously have gotten along so well with each other.
Isn’t ‘English-Scotts-Irish’ (sic) a multicultural economic zone?
In Minnesota, two people just died to defend a multicultural community and to keep their immigrant neighbors from being abducted. So I question his premise.
I just know that he’s one of those men who fetishises Ancient Rome. Yet he apparently knows naff all about the Roman Empire.
“Scots Irish” is also often a dog whistle way of saying “our kind of white people” among racist folks.
“Scots-Irish” refers to only some Irish, Scottish Protestants who settled in Ulster, and excludes the mass of Irish who were “Papist” and thus alien.
This is giving him way too much credit […] I have no doubt that in talking to other racist people nonstop he’s heard the term ‘scots-irish,’ […] he doesn’t know what it means, since all he does is drugs and post. Hence mangling it into “English-Scotts-Irish”.
He definitely doesn’t know this (“Scotts” lol), but yeah […] Hillbillies, not Catholics.
He’s not fucking American! He’s Canadian/S African and Dutch if you want to go back further. He’s not even part of this fucking “culture” he’s lauding. Which is to say he is really just saying white power in thinly veiled code here.
Vance self-identifies as Scots-Irish.
There is not a thing in the world that this numpty would die to defend, including his own children.
Someone please ask Musk if he knows the name of the first person to die in the American Revolution. Hint: it wasn’t someone of English, Scottish, nor Irish descent. [Christopher Seider (German) then Crispus Attucks (African, Native American)]
Frank Capra, from the grave: [Goose meme: Why did we fight WWII? Why’d we fight, Elon!?]
Looking forward to Musk explaining the importance of sub Saharan African cultures, before the white faces, like his immigrant ancestors, turned up.
[Mean Girls meme: Stop trying to make Rhodesia happen. It’s not going to happen.]
WTF does this doofus think an empire is if not a “multicultural economic zone”? […] I always find it so hard to understand why ethnonationalists and neoimperialists are political allies in the US. How do annexing Greenland and homogenizing the US coexist in the same platform?
I think he believes the people in Greenland are white and European, so they’re fine.
cockroach-infested apartments, walking miles to the grocery store for food, and eating just one meal a day to save money. This is life in America for some newly arrived Afrikaner refugees from South Africa. […] [A February executive order] announced that Afrikaners, an ethnic minority of white South Africans who are descendants of 17th-century Dutch and French Huguenot settlers, would be prioritized for resettlement in the U.S. […] As of this week, 1,647 Afrikaners have arrived
In a move that has delighted fans of classic science fiction, Warner Bros. Discovery has begun uploading full episodes of the iconic series Babylon 5 to YouTube, providing free access to the show just as it departs from the ad-supported streaming platform Tubi.
The plan is to upload one per week and only the initial episode is uploaded right now. If they stick with uploading it I will binge watch the whole thing at some point.
The video quality does not appear to be the best. Babylon 5 is early computer special effects and the visual effects are not the best at times. The quality of transfer does not appear great, a common problem with early digital cameras. They didn’t record at super high resolution so moving the video to a different resolution or re-encoding it causes video effects. It will still be great to see the whole thing in order when/if it all gets uploaded.
JMsays
Forgotten Weapons: The AI Paradox: Results of My Thumbnail Experiment
Forgotten weapons is a long running Youtube channel dedicated to fire arms. This video has nothing to do with that. It is about a test the author did using an AI generated thumbnail for one of his videos. Turns out that the results were consistent, the AI thumbnail attracted more viewers that watched more of the video but comments from fans was universally negative. Interesting short discussion of what is involved and how it effects people generating video.
My opinion is I don’t care if they use AI to generate a thumbnail as long as it’s actually related to the video. For regular content creators generating an interesting thumbnail is an annoying bit of drudge work and may be click bait. I would rather a quick AI pic then a hand composed pic that isn’t really connected to the video.
Community organizers in Los Angeles are rallying in opposition to a Trump administration rule that they say will displace and fracture immigrant families, increase homelessness and potentially throttle rent collections to the point that local housing authorities might be forced to shutter some of their stock.
[…] Put simply, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to begin denying federal rent subsidies to any household where even one occupant lacks legal immigration status. That’s according to multiple accounts of the draft of the proposal leaked to ProPublica last fall. The national rule is expected to be published sometime this month […]
If implemented, the rule would most directly affect mixed-status families, where most in a household are documented but one or more may not be. It would almost certainly put those households in the position of either losing the subsidies, which they need in order to make their rent, or splitting up their families — even if multiple members of the household are legally eligible for the assistance. [!]
The proposal marks a sharp departure from longstanding government policy on such subsidies, but it’s right in line with […] Trump’s ongoing attacks on immigrants and their families. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that nearly 80,000 people nationally could lose assistance under the rule, including upward of 30,000 in California. About 11,000 of those are in the Los Angeles area alone.
The policy would affect nearly 37,000 children across the country, the center’s analysis found. Almost all of those children are U.S. citizens. [!]
The federal program of housing subsidies for low-income tenants is multilayered, but it generally works in a couple of ways. Those who qualify either receive a voucher to pay part of their rent, live in buildings where the government pays the subsidy directly to the landlord or live in housing that’s owned outright by the government — public housing, as it’s known.
For more than 40 years, Housing and Urban Development has made such assistance available based on financial need. In most cases, those who qualify pay a percentage of the rent that is tied to their income — usually 30% of what they earn after deductions — with the government picking up the rest.
If a household includes someone who isn’t eligible for the program because of their immigration status, that person’s share of the rent is higher. But the other eligible people living there continue to receive their subsidies, and the family is allowed to remain together under one roof. [Important]
The new HUD proposal blows up that model. It’s part of a broader effort by Trump to roll back federal housing programs in a number of ways: placing time limits on living in public housing; attaching work requirements to the subsidies; and defunding the programs in general. Taken together, these moves could cause 4 million people to lose housing assistance, experts told ProPublica last year.
[…] One potential result […] is actually a reduction in total rents paid. Having an undocumented person in the house pushes a family’s monthly rent higher, since that person doesn’t get a subsidy. Many housing programs rely on those higher rent payments to fund some of their operations. They may have to cut back on their housing stock if their budgets decline. [So this is not a financially responsible move. Instead, it will waste taxpayer money, hurt immigrants and damage programs that are currently working fairly well.]
A 2019 HUD estimate, put together when a similar rule was being considered during Trump’s first term, found that driving undocumented residents out of subsidized housing arrangements would increase HUD costs by $200 million because of the lost higher payments. [!]
[…] Forcing families to choose between splitting up or losing their rent help has the potential to put many of them in almost immediate housing emergencies, facing evictions or the prospect of homelessness.
“These are all low-income earners,” Yelos said. “Certainly a lot of them are going to end up on the streets.”
[…] There are ways to oppose the rule, or find longer-term workarounds to it, activists say. One is to appeal directly to local housing authorities, like HACLA in Los Angeles, to slow-walk its implementation by allowing, for example, an extended period of time in which families could appeal their cases before facing eviction.
On a broader level, state lawmakers could consider investing in state-funded public housing. Yelos pointed to Massachusetts as a potential model for California. That state’s program does not rely on HUD money, so it isn’t bound by the kinds of federal rule changes the Trump administration is pushing.
Nationally, it would take an act of Congress to prevent the rule from ultimately taking effect — an unlikely event before the midterms. In the meantime, […] urging citizens to write to HUD in protest. The agency is required by law to allow a period of public comment and to consider all comments made before finalizing a rule.
“It’s crazy,” Yelos said of the rule. “Of all the models that we need to solve the housing crisis, the subsidized model is the most sought-after. It is exactly the type of housing we need.”
It is also under direct threat, the latest in a seemingly unending series of assaults on the immigrant community under this president.
“Troubling,” Rubio says of European revelations that Navalny was killed with a neurotoxin. “Doesn’t mean we disagree with the outcome. We just… it wasn’t, our endeavour. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing based on the intelligence they’ve gathered.”
See also: Reuters link to an article that is better because it adds context:
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called “troubling” a report by five European allies blaming Russia for killing late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny using toxin from poison dart frogs, adding that Washington had no reason to question it.
“We obviously are aware of the report. It’s a troubling report. We’re aware of that case of Mr. Navalny and certainly… we don’t have any reason to question it,” Rubio told reporters at a news conference in Bratislava during a visit to Slovakia.
In a joint statement, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands on Saturday said analyses of samples from Navalny’s body “conclusively” confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America and not found naturally in Russia.
The Russian government, which has repeatedly denied any responsibility for Navalny’s death while he was held in an Arctic penal colony two years ago, dismissed the latest allegations as “a Western propaganda hoax,” according to Russia’s state news agency TASS.
When asked why the United States did not join the statement, Rubio said this was an endeavour by them.
“Those countries came to that conclusion. They coordinated that. We chose – Doesn’t mean we disagree with the outcome. We just, it wasn’t, our endeavour. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing with based on the intelligence they’ve gathered.” Rubio said.
“We’re not disputing or getting into a fight with these countries over it. But it was their report, and they put that out there,” he added.
Russian opposition leader Navalny died in an Arctic prison colony in February 2024, after being convicted of extremism and other charges, all of which he denied.
[…] The flagged voters’ registration paperwork confirmed Lennon’s [county clerk Brianna Lennon’s] suspicions. The form for the second person on the list bore the initials of a member of her staff, who’d helped the man register — at his naturalization ceremony. It later turned out more than half the Boone County voters identified as noncitizens were actually citizens.
The source of the bad data was a Department of Homeland Security tool called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE.</b?
Once used mostly to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, SAVE has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of President Donald Trump, who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections.
At Trump’s direction, DHS has pooled confidential data from across the federal government to enable states to mass-verify voters’ citizenship status using SAVE. […]
But an examination of SAVE’s rollout by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reveals that DHS rushed the revamped tool into use while it was still adding data and before it could discern voters’ most up-to-date citizenship information.
As a result, SAVE has made persistent mistakes […] SAVE misidentified some voters as noncitizens.
[…] In Missouri, state officials acted on SAVE’s findings before attempting to confirm them, directing county election administrators to make voters flagged as potential noncitizens temporarily unable to vote. But in hundreds of cases, the tool’s determinations were wrong, our review found. […]
In Texas, news reports began emerging about voters being mistakenly flagged as noncitizens soon after state officials announced the results of running the state’s voter roll through SAVE in October.
Our reporting showed these errors were more widespread than previously known […] Confusion took hold when the Texas secretary of state’s office sent counties lists of flagged voters and directed clerks to start demanding proof of citizenship and to remove people from the rolls if they didn’t respond.
[…] Even counting people flagged in error, the first bulk searches using SAVE haven’t validated the president’s claims that voting by noncitizens is widespread. [!] […]
While 27 states have agreed to use SAVE, others have hesitated, concerned not only about inaccuracies, but also about privacy and the data’s potential to be used in immigration enforcement. […] when SAVE flags voters as noncitizens, they are also referred to DHS for possible criminal investigation. [!]
[…] States don’t typically require people to provide proof of citizenship when they sign up to vote, only to attest to it under penalty of perjury. Previous efforts to use state data to catch noncitizens on voter rolls have gone poorly. Texas officials had to abandon a 2019 push after it became clear their methodology misidentified thousands of citizens, many of them naturalized, as ineligible voters.
[…] Trump issued an executive order that required DHS to give states free access to federal citizenship data and partner with the Department of Government Efficiency to comb voter rolls.
The order triggered a series of meetings at USCIS designed to comply with a 30-day deadline to remake SAVE, a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and reviewed by ProPublica shows.
The system’s main addition was confidential Social Security Administration data […]
David Jennings, Broderick’s deputy at USCIS, had pressed his team to move quickly, he said on a June video call with members of former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, which has spread false claims about noncitizen voting. […]
Jennings added that to get quick access to the Social Security data, which has been tightly guarded, USCIS partnered with DOGE. (In an unrelated matter, DOGE has since been accused of misusing Social Security data.) […]
USCIS expanded the system before meeting legal requirements to inform the public about how the data would be collected, stored and used […] It also blew past concerns from voter advocacy groups about the accuracy of SSA’s citizenship data, which multiple audits and analyses have shown is often outdated or incomplete. […]
Broderick said in the interview that Trump’s executive order dramatically accelerated the timetable for launching SAVE, getting agencies to cooperate and move quickly. […]
By September, Texas had uploaded its entire list of more than 18 million registered voters into SAVE. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming put voter data into the system, too.
[…] One of the first out of the gate was Texas. In late October, with early voting underway in state and local elections, Nelson, the secretary of state, announced SAVE had identified 2,724 potential noncitizens on the rolls.
But as Nelson delegated the task of investigating those voters’ statuses to local election officials, confusion took hold.
At a meeting, Nelson’s staff told county clerks’ offices to investigate flagged voters and then send notices to those for whom they were unable to confirm citizenship. […] Travis County voter registration director Christopher Davis said he hadn’t been contacted and had just learned the county had 97 flagged voters. Marsha Barbee, in Wharton County near Houston, shared that she talked to a Nelson staffer who said she’d been directed not to tell local officials about their lists […]
In the absence of clear state guidance, clerks proceeded inconsistently. Some said they didn’t act on their lists, waiting for more direction. Others, unsure how to investigate flagged voters’ status, said they simply sent notices asking for proof of citizenship, though some opted not to remove nonresponsive voters from the rolls. [I snipped more examples of confusion.]
One way to check SAVE’s findings would have been to get information from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship if residents register to vote when obtaining a driver’s license. The secretary of state’s office didn’t do this and didn’t direct counties to either.
Several county officials said they hadn’t thought to ask DPS for information; those who did often found the agency had documentation showing some of the voters who SAVE identified as noncitizens were in fact citizens. [I snipped examples.]
To be sure, SAVE also identified some people who weren’t eligible to vote, clerks said. Several came across instances in which voters marked on registration forms that they weren’t citizens, but were registered by election office staffers in error. […] (It’s not clear if any of those registered in error voted; overall, noncitizens rarely vote.)
[…] more than 5% of the voters SAVE identified as noncitizens proved to be citizens. […] But some of those who didn’t respond to notices also might be citizens.
[…] At least initially, Missouri took a more targeted approach to SAVE than Texas did. State officials used the system to search for information on a subset of about 6,000 voters they had reason to think might not be citizens, according to emails between federal and state officials.
The state had results by October, but in early November, a USCIS official wrote to Missouri and four other states to say some people flagged by SAVE as noncitizens were actually citizens […]
ProPublica and the Tribune obtained these lists for seven of 10 most populous counties in the state, which show SAVE initially identified more than 1,200 people as noncitizens just in these areas.
The Missouri secretary of state’s office told election administrators it would work to verify SAVE’s citizenship determinations. In the meantime, local officials were instructed to change the status of flagged voters, making them temporarily unable to vote. [!]
The lists were met with swift pushback from county election officials […] In St. Louis, the Board of Election Commissioners didn’t alter the eligibility of anyone on its flagged voter list after being advised not to by its attorney.
[…] In early December, some 70 clerks, Republicans and Democrats, wrote a letter to Missouri House Speaker Jonathan Patterson saying there were better ways than SAVE to keep noncitizens off voter rolls.
[…] After the January revision, St. Louis County’s initial list of 691 potential noncitizens dropped to 133.
[…] “Overall, it seems like this process has done more to worry people who can vote than to identify actual registered voters who don’t qualify,” she [Zuzana Kocsisova, who lives in St. Louis] said. “It’s just a waste of resources. I don’t think it makes the elections any more safe.”
[…] “This is not ready for prime time,” Lennon said. “And I’m not going to risk the security and the constitutional rights of my voters for bad data.”
BTW the Cristian apologist David Wood is useful for skeptics as his faith gives him the energy to dig through boring islamic writings (my mind would melt after ten pages) to find contradictions in a rival religion.
And unlike some Christians I know he is intellectually honest, and does not misrepresent what he finds.
.
Tragically, he has fallen in the same “Islam is the great enemy” cognitive cul-de-sac as so many other Christians and seems to accept what media like Fox News says.
Rupert Murdoch has a lot to answer for.
“The more the president delivers highly partisan messages to active-duty troops, the more he targets a bedrock principle of the United States.”
Related video at the link.
Most of Donald Trump’s public events are similar: The president airs grievances, peddles self-indulgent lies, shares assorted conspiracy theories, condemns his perceived political foes and presents himself as a conquering hero who has single-handedly created an American utopia.
But the audiences aren’t always the same. When Trump meanders his way through partisan red meat when speaking at a political rally, it’s tiresome but predictable. When he delivers the same message to active-duty military personnel, it’s a qualitatively different kind of story. [snipped Washington Post excerpt, which is in comment 66]
The president, speaking at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, seemed especially focused on the state’s U.S. Senate race, condemning the leading Democratic candidate, former Gov. Roy Cooper, while touting the likely GOP nominee, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who shared the stage with Trump during the on-base political rally.
“You have to vote for us,” Trump told the troops, referring to his party and the 2026 midterm elections.
There is no modern precedent for any American president engaging in such radical politicking with active-duty servicemembers, though over the last several months, it’s become a more common sight. In June, for example, Trump also spoke at Fort Bragg and treated U.S. troops like they were just another MAGA audience, even goading troops to boo Joe Biden, the free press and American elected officials whom the president doesn’t like. (A report in The Bulwark described the display as “grotesque.”)
Three months later, he did it again, summoning the nation’s generals and admirals to listen to him ramble about tariffs, the Nobel Peace Prize, his hatred for Democrats, his contempt for independent news organizations and his belief that his 2020 election defeat was “rigged.”
A week after that, speaking at an event honoring the U.S. Navy’s 250th anniversary, Trump appeared determined to turn military personnel against the parts of the country he doesn’t like. “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats,” he said.
In October, speaking to U.S. soldiers aboard the USS George Washington in Yokosuka, Japan, Trump did it once again. […]
A Politico report noted at the time, “[…] The report added that the Republican’s brazen efforts were “making some members of the military — privately — very nervous indeed.”
[…] Just as notably, acknowledging the frequency with which the incumbent president takes these steps, Politico added that this is becoming “the new normal” when it comes to Trump and civil-military affairs.
The problem, however, is that this can’t become our “new normal.” An apolitical military is a foundational, bedrock principle of the United States. […]
It is nevertheless a principle for which Trump appears to have no use, creating an untenable dynamic. The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols recently highlighted what he described as an ongoing “civil-military crisis,” arguing, “Trump and his valet at the Defense Department, Secretary of Physical Training Pete Hegseth, are now making a dedicated run at turning the men and women of the armed forces into Trump’s personal and partisan army.” [all too true]
On Friday, the president offered fresh evidence to bolster that point.
“Trump’s first elections power-grab was a ridiculous move that failed in the courts. His second will arguably be even worse.”
Just two months into his second term, Donald Trump signed a radical executive order intended to impose sweeping changes to the nation’s system of elections. Congress hadn’t approved anything of the kind, but Trump decided that he could just create the policy anyway through presidential fiat.
NBC News reported at the time that the changes “could risk disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans.” Trump, exercising a legal authority he decided to bestow on himself, did it anyway.
Predictably, the order faced a great many court challenges. Also predictably, the president’s policy was rejected throughout the judiciary as a power-grab at odds with how policymaking is supposed to happen in the United States.
Nearly a year later, he apparently wants to give it another try. In an oddly worded missive published to his social media platform, Trump published an item that read in part:
The Democrats … want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired. I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!
First, Trump has had many years to substantiate his claims about Democrats “cheating” in elections, and so far, he’s come up with literally nothing [!]
Second, the idea that he’s “searched the depths” of anything, much less “Legal Arguments,” is genuinely hilarious. [LOL]
Third, while the president is apparently fixated on voter-ID policies, he’s never gotten around to explaining why he thinks this is a good idea, or why the nation needs a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
[…] pay particular attention to the last six words of the aforementioned excerpt: Trump is apparently under the impression that he can unilaterally put new hurdles between American voters and their own democracy with or without legislation from Congress. [!]
In a follow-up item also published on Friday afternoon, the president, after peddling a variety of tiresome and baseless conspiracy theories, wrote another screed. “This is an issue that must be fought, and must be fought, NOW! If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order,” he added.
[…] But there’s a larger context to all of this. Trump isn’t just vowing to impose new voting restrictions, he’s also floating the idea of canceling future elections and nationalizing the nation’s electoral system. [!]
What’s more, we’re not just talking about rhetoric. The president and his team have also deployed FBI agents to raid an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, seized voting equipment in Puerto Rico, waged an aggressive campaign to acquire voter rolls from states that Democrats won, organized an unnecessary FBI elections “briefing” for state officials and provided one of Trump’s highly controversial former campaign lawyers with classified information as he tries to advance election conspiracy theories.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump also wants to sign an executive order imposing new voting restrictions, without Congress, in order to solve a problem that does not exist. Given these circumstances, shrugging with indifference seems like a mistake.
“You said that the Iranian nuclear sites have been totally obliterated,” a reporter told the president. “What’s left to go after?” His answer fell short.
Despite assuring voters about his vision rooted in foreign policy restraint, Donald Trump has spent the last year launching military strikes in Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria and Somalia, as well as dozens of attacks against civilian boats in international waters. [all too true]
And then, of course, there’s Iran.
Last summer, the American president also launched preemptive military strikes on targets in Iran, and according to the White House, the operation “totally obliterated” Tehran’s unclear program.
Eight months later, there are ongoing talks between U.S. and Iranian officials about the future of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, though Trump’s Plan B isn’t exactly subtle. NBC News reported late last week:
The USS Ford Carrier Strike Group has been notified that they are leaving the Caribbean and headed to the Middle East, [!] according to two U.S. officials familiar with the decision.
The Ford will join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group already in the region. The decision comes as tensions with Iran remain high.
Note, the ships were headed to Europe last fall before Trump redirected them ahead of the operation in Venezuela, only to redirect them again to the Middle East ahead of a possible new offensive in Iran, which would risk touching off a new crisis in the region.
To date, there’s been no robust public conversation in the United States about a looming U.S. military confrontation with Iran, and it’s likely that many Americans aren’t fully aware of why this is happening.
Indeed, Trump, who had Iran’s nuclear program stifled before abandoning an effective international program in his first term, was asked a question on Friday that I’ve been eager to hear him answer.
“You said … that the Iranian nuclear sites have been totally obliterated,” a reporter reminded the president. “What’s left to go after?”
Trump replied, “You could get whatever the dust is down there.”
That was a difficult answer to take seriously, though it was probably less embarrassing than the truth: The U.S. military strikes in June did great damage, but the “totally obliterated” claims were wildly overstated, despite the Republican administration’s constant repetition.
As part of the same brief Q&A, Trump added that he believes regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen.”
[…] In effect, Trump is telling Iranian leaders, “Yes, I’m the one who allowed your nuclear program to flourish by abandoning a good policy for reasons I’ve been unable to explain. And yes, I’ve already lied about obliterating your nuclear capabilities. But I’m hoping we can work out a new deal now, and if you disagree, I’ll start bombing you, and even if you do agree, my hope is to bring down your government anyway.”
After the disastrous reign of CBP border idiot Greg Bovino in Minneapolis, Donald Trump put a different idiot, Tom Homan, in charge. But replacing Bovino with the a corrupt loser like Homan wasn’t exactly a vast improvement.
Let us show you his appearances on the Sunday shows this weekend:
CNN’s State Of The Union
We begin with Homan speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN. [video]
Part of the reason they moved Homan to be in charge of DHS’s operation in Minneapolis was so they could blame all previous problems on Kristi Noem and […] Bovino. [Good analysis]
You could see this when Tapper asked about the investigation into the murder of Renee Good.
TAPPER: [T]here were prosecutors in Minnesota that were going to investigate that shooting, and then the word came down from the Justice Department in Washington to stop, to stop that investigation.
HOMAN: That’s a question for DOJ. That happened before I had my feet on the ground in Minnesota. So I will leave that — that’s a question for Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche. I’m not involved in those decisions. I’m not involved with investigations.
[…] Homan is just better at using passive language to mask corruption and lawbreaking, like when Tapper asked about Kristi Noem’s recent statement about making sure “the right people are voting” on Election Day.
TAPPER: So, what does she mean when she says electing the right leaders? That’s not really immigration enforcement or DHS’s responsibility.
HOMAN: I don’t know. […] If I had to guess, probably that only those legally eligible to vote would vote. But I have not talked to the secretary about those statements. That would be something she’d have to answer.
Tapper, like most in the news media, seems to have fallen for the scam of Trump’s Bovino/Homan switcheroo, as at one point he said Homan sounded “like an adult” and “like an official who should be in charge of things because you work with local officials and seek to de-escalate and have targeted operations.” [Oh FFS]
[…] CBS’s Face The Nation
Homan followed his more subdued appearance on CNN with a more pointed interview with Ed O’Keefe on CBS.
O’Keefe asked why DHS is the only agency where its agents cover their faces and their officers don’t wear name plates/tags in order for there to be accountability. Homan lied:
HOMAN: I don’t like the masks either, but because threats against ICE officers, you know, are up over 1500 percent, actual assaults, and threats are up over 8000 percent, these men and women have to protect themselves.
Just gonna stop Homan right there because everything he’s saying is a lie. [!]
O’Keefe asked what should have been a simpler question:
O’KEEFE: What’s so wrong about obtaining a judicial warrant to enter private property?
HOMAN: That’s not what the federal law requires.
It is exactly what federal law requires, and O’Keefe was ready for Homan’s bullshit:
O’KEEFE: Well, as I recall, you have previously said that you thought judicial warrants were necessary for searches. There’s been this change in policy in that now ICE can go with these administrative warrants that are issued by ICE personnel. Why your change of heart? I mean, clearly there — at one point, at least you agreed that was necessary.
HOMAN: No, I don’t have a changed heart. What I understand, and I wasn’t part of those discussions, is that DOJ interpret that law saying in certain — in certain circumstances …
This answer is like a dumber version of Obi-Wan Kenobi explaining he didn’t lie to Luke Skywalker about who Darth Vader was. “So what I told you was truth … from certain point of view.”
O’Keefe asked Homan when ICE thugs are actually leaving Minnesota. Homan, sounding like a guy who wanted to be a wartime general but was too dumb to pass the ASVAB, answered:
HOMAN: [W]e already removed well over 1,000 people, and […] we’ll remove several hundred more. We’ll get back to the original footprint, with the exception of the agents there to do the fraud investigation will stay there and continue their work until they’re done.
This “were only leaving a small footprint, but we are done” thing sounds very familiar. [Bush in “Mission Accomplished” moment]
Fox & Friends Weekend
Speaking of ole Dubya, let’s see how Homan concluded his Sunday on the network that Bush-era propaganda built. [video]
By this point, Homan was annoyed and ready to let loose unfiltered bullshit on Fox News.
Like this questionable math, which received zero pushback […]:
HOMAN: President Trump has already found 145,000 children. In Minnesota alone, over 33,000 missing children we found that the last administration wasn’t even looking for.
[The enormity of the lies!]
Suuuuuure, and he also ended eight wars, you betcha. (Trump has ended no wars.)
When the Fox News sockpuppet asked Homan about Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s intention to ask the federal government to reimburse their city/state for the damage they caused, Homan used the rape-y line JD Vance and other likeminded MAGA characters are so fond of:
Real life for schools in Minneapolis: what it is like when Trump’s administration surges ICE personnel into a city:
[…] The impact of the surge had saturated every aspect of the school day in Columbia Heights’ district of fewer than 3,400 students — half of them English-language learners — and seeped deeply into the hours beyond it. Seven students had been detained, including Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old whose photo became a global symbol of the crackdown’s sweep. Dozens of parents across the district were in custody. Hundreds more had decided school was too risky and enrolled their children in online classes. One was Liam’s older brother, a Columbia Academy student.
Over the weeks, Columbia Academy, like the district’s four other schools, had taken on an entirely new identity. It was still a place of learning, even if 210 of its 700 students were now studying at home. But now it was also a food bank, a counseling hotline, a missing persons task force, an immigration resource center and a refuge.
“We are the first call,” said Sherk [Leslee Sherk, Columbia Academy’s principal], a first-year principal who has worked in the district for two decades. “They don’t call the police. They don’t even sometimes call their neighbors or different organizations. They call the school.”
The district had prepared for the moment, but only to a degree. Following President Donald Trump’s 2024 election, it held know-your-rights presentations for staff and families, said Superintendent Zena Stenvik. It created protocols for the possibility of ICE officers showing up at a school with a warrant, she said. But they did not anticipate a surge that would bring teams of masked agents to the streets outside, raids to their neighborhood and ICE vehicles to their parking lots.
As stories mounted of parents and students with pending immigration cases being detained, district employees worked to track down missing students — in some cases, to a detention center in Texas. Staff were trained to drive vans to transport children to school, and in one case to drive two students to their mother, who was being held at the Whipple Federal Building south of Minneapolis.
For a while, the district did these things quietly, adopting the low-profile approach most schools have taken. Families were fearful, and Stenvik did not want Columbia Heights schools to become a target.
[…] That changed the morning of Jan. 20, when a car peeled into the high school parking lot outside Stenvik’s office and two teens jumped out and ran inside. […]
Stenvik was patrolling in her car — she had heard that ICE was targeting bus stops — when she got an urgent phone call. Liam’s mother, panicking, had called Columbia Academy as officers were detaining the boy and his father outside their house. She needed to make sure someone would care for the boy’s older brother if she were also taken.
Stenvik and Sherk rushed over, as did the school board president and Liam’s elementary school principal. The district spokeswoman dropped off the older brother once the officers were gone.
“I was there when they told him what happened, that dad was taken and Liam was taken, and then I sat there with him on his bunk bed while we both just cried,” Sherk said. “And that was probably the worst day of my career.”
For Stenvik, it was galvanizing. A community ICE monitor had provided the district with the now-famous photo of Liam, standing in his bunny hat next to a federal officer. Liam’s mother pleaded that his story be shared, which the district did at a news conference the next day.
“We couldn’t have any bigger of a target on our backs at that point,” Stenvik said. […] anxiety had not abated in the week since Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, announced a partial drawdown […] Homan’s Thursday announcement that the surge was ending would also not quell the sense of emergency. Families were still too scared — and too scarred — to celebrate, Sherk said.
School officials knew of two students and many parents still in immigration custody.
[…] By the time Columbia Academy’s 3:15 p.m. bell approached, the ICE vehicles had moved on, and Sherk set about making sure no student left the building alone. For weeks, the 25 or so kids who walk home had been escorted by adults. But the week before, the walking groups had encountered ICE vehicles. So the school had organized carpools.
[…] A squad of volunteers loaded paper bags full of food and supplies into cars outside. The bags were labeled with numbers, part of a detailed system to keep recipients’ identities secret if drivers were pulled over by ICE. […]
[…] Whose reputation and/or career’s gotten newly or further destroyed by the Epstein files recently? A no-way-complete list includes former Norwegian Prime Minister Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland; now-former Goldman Sachs top lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler; Tommy Mottola; Naomi Campbell; talent agent Casey Wasserman; Les Wexner (some more); Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; Canadian physicist Lee Smolin; New York Giants owner Steve Tisch; Brad Karp (CEO of that law firm Paul, Weiss, which pledged to do $40m of free work for Trump); former culture minister of France Jack Lang; Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit; deceased banking heir Matthew Mellon. […]
[…] What’s obscene, indecent or profane can be highly subjective, on the airwaves and in real life. And so Brendan Carr plugged Bad Bunny lyrics into Google translate, and oh my!
Young ladies, young ladies
I like ‘em underage, see
Some say that’s statutory
But I say it’s mandatory
Just kidding, that’s Kid Rock. The Bad Bunny lyrics are relatively wholesome! There is a lyric in the song “Safaera” that goes “Si tu novio no te mama el culo,” which translates to “if your boyfriend doesn’t lick your ass,” which Rep. Ogles said was a reference to analingus. And there’s the line “el perico es blanco,” which Fine thought a reference to cocaine. […]
And hey wait, wasn’t MAGA just [complaining] at the very same time that their problem was they couldn’t understand the lyrics? How did Andy Ogles even hear analingus in Spanish from all of that? And just how many different languages can Randy Fine say cocaine in?
That guy’s sure been on a real tear lately, speaking of. [“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” in a social media post]
So, the Super Bowl is over, and the anti-woke lost. Between that and the Epstein Files, they’re having a rough go. MAGA faithful have settled for making Bad Bunny Halftime show shorthand for whatever they’re snarling and whining in the corner about while the rest of America goes off and experiences joy […]
the shuttered Augusta Correctional Center property in Craigsville will not become a detention facility for ICE.
[…]
All of this news comes as a handful of bills aiming to limit ICE’s activity in the commonwealth are also seeing legislative success. Increased penalties for impersonating federal law-enforcement, mask bans for law enforcement, and limits on civil immigration arrests in schools, polling places, courthouses and hospitals all sailed through the House this week on party line votes. Similar bills in the Senate have also seen success.
The FBI formally notified Minnesota officials on Friday that it would not grant them access […]
“While this lack of cooperation is concerning and unprecedented, the [state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] is committed to thorough, independent and transparent investigations of these incidents, even if hampered by a lack of access to key information and evidence,”
The site is hosted on the official website of the […] Attorney General and allows individuals to upload videos, photos, and detailed reports about encounters
[…]
The portal is part of a broader set of actions—including a “Know Your Rights” website and an executive order restricting ICE from using non-public state property for operations without a judicial warrant
At home the USA is sweating about ICE kidnapping people and executing them in cold blood in the street, and RFK Jr.’s health chatbot is advising the public on the ‘“best foods to insert into rectum.” Meanwhile, the rest of the world waits for no one, and the hegemony of the United States of America is over. We’ve still got the largest economy and arsenal, sure, but economics-wise, security-wise, vibes-wise, the USA is a gun-toting toddler […] throwing a tantrum […]
So this past weekend at the Munich security conference, not many Valentines for the current regime. But there was some real talk from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Mark Kelly, and The [Woman] Who Warned You her very own self until she was blue in the face.
Yes, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, in the flesh, in Chanel. The whole thing is worth a watch! [Video]
[…] it is an important idea to ponder, as Republicans openly push a version of The West as white culture, its only pertinent shared interest and value being whiteness, from the shores of Hyannis Port to the swamps of Duck Dynasty.
Western culture used to be united by values. Ones like individual rights, liberty, civilization itself and keeping one’s word. So much for that, what with the US backing out of agreements it once endorsed and abided by, and Donald Trump humping and pumping to take over Greenland until the markets started to freefall.
As JD Vance was too busy being even more unpopular than he was last year, it was on […] Marco Rubio to go present the regime’s version of Western civilized. It involved going as a guest into Europe’s own house to accuse them again of “civilizational erasure,” as if Russia is not trying to erase Ukraine’s civilization and identity this very minute. Then Rubio skipped a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (other than a few seconds of sideline chat), French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, so he could trot off and meet with Hungarian dictator Vikor Orbán [!], who’s up for re-election and sinking in the polls. Rubio told him, “your success is our success,” then he followed him home to Hungary. Yes, Viktor, you may keep him, but if that rude little beast shits in your house, you clean it up.
[…] Hillary Clinton persisted. She appeared on a panel to talk about the ideological battles that conservatives have been fighting since the beginning of time, how Trump has betrayed the West, and nobody wants to live under a Putin-style regime.
The entire thing up there is whoa — the gal could always cook, and she’s still got it […]
To summarize: fuck the false premise to begin with that liberals in the US or Europe have ever supported open borders. People once called Barack Obama the deporter-in-chief, and he and Joe Biden and Bill Clinton all deported more people than Trump ever did, without even wantonly killing people. Biden even deported more people in ‘24 than Trump did in ‘25, for all of Trump’s bluster and terrorist tactics. And weirdly, before Trump, conservatives like Ronald Reagan were known for supporting open immigration for people whose cheap labor they could exploit.
Conservatives’ schtick is […] selling made-up nostalgia for an imaginary once-upon-a-time they will make great again, a time when white men were at the top of capitalist enterprise and everybody else was chattel. […]
Of course, the rights of Black people to be treated better, women getting more rights, gay people being able to create a family, those are good things, most people (other than conservatives) agree.
Woman who Knows Of What She Speaks also correctly called the administration’s treatment of Ukraine disgraceful, a “historic error,” and “corrupt to the nth degree.” [True, and well said.]
Do not miss around the 16-minute mark when she [countered] Czech deputy prime minister Petr Macinka: [video]
Can half of us have rights, then? Does “woke” justify selling out the two genders fighting for freedom in Ukraine?
“I’m sorry that makes you nervous,” Macinka sputtered, nervously, to a chorus of boos.
Nervous, conservatives should be, as their morally bankrupt ideology falls apart like a house of cards at the tiniest poke.
Hillary may be the former generation of leadership, but New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar were there too. AOC: [video]
To summarize that clip: Are we in a new world order? The US has been carving out exceptions to its rules and values for a long time, to the point the exceptions have become the rules. Are we in a post-rules based order? Only if you think we ever had one to begin with. Maybe in the future the US and Europe ought to consider looking into something like rules and order more fully.
And Arizona Senator Mark Kelly was there also, not mincing any bratwurst. Donald Trump blew up the world order. As a nation we need friends, and now we have none. It will take generations to repair our international relationships, even if Democrats win the House and Senate and White House again. We should all be pretty freaked out about this! [video]
After the conference, Kelly posted some stark words:
It took a World War and eight decades to build the strongest alliance that this world had ever seen. It took less than a year to practically destroy it. When Secretary Rubio said the “old world order was dead” during his speech in Munich he was right. It’s dead because Donald Trump blew it up.
It wasn’t perfect, and there were opportunities missed to improve it, but Donald Trump only knows how to break things, not fix them.
He thinks this somehow benefits us. He is wrong. Our allies no longer trust us. It was obvious in the more than a dozen meetings I had with Presidents, Prime Ministers and Defense and Foreign Ministers. And if you’re Denmark and Greenland, a “loss of trust” is a generous characterization of our new relationship. China is now more popular in Denmark than the United States. In Poland, the U.S. is 21 percent less popular than it used to be.
This means these countries are looking elsewhere for trade and security — that makes you poorer and less safe.
It will be incredibly hard to build what comes next, but we have to figure out a better path forward. Make no mistake, China is rising. Our ability to keep up with them and prevent a conflict depends on trusted, reliable alliances. So does ending the war in Ukraine in a way that keeps Putin from moving on to his next target. And so does growing our economy and protecting American workers in the age of AI.
I know there was celebration at the end of the Munich Security Conference. Unfortunately the champagne corks were popping in Beijing and Moscow.
At least some people seem to understand the stakes and the assignment. It will take our lifetimes to fix, but if we ever get Trump and his fascist bums out, we can at least get started. [!]
“Judge Orders Slavery Displays Restored at George Washington’s Philadelphia Home”
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore displays about George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people at a monument on the site of his former house in Philadelphia. The judge said the government’s claim to have the power to erase and alter historical accounts at the country’s monuments echoed George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
In a 40-page opinion, Judge Cynthia M. Rufe granted a preliminary injunction to the City of Philadelphia, which had sued the Interior Department and the National Park Service over their decision to remove the displays. The order means the government must put the materials back up while the underlying lawsuit proceeds in court.
Last month, National Park Service workers arrived unannounced at the President’s House Site, a monument on the spot of a home used by Washington and President John Adams in the early days of the nation, and took down panels, displays and video exhibits describing the local history of slavery and commemorating the nine enslaved people Washington kept there while he was president.
The Park Service has said that the displays were taken down to ensure “accuracy, honesty and alignment with shared national values.” The move was part of a far-reaching effort by the Trump administration to rewrite American history along ideological lines at national monuments and parks across the country.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance Is Strength,’ this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Judge Rufe wrote. “It does not.”
“Each person who visits the President’s House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery, receives a false account of this country’s history,” added Judge Rufe, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.
The order bars further alterations to the President’s House Site but does not set a deadline for restoring the displays. Unless stayed by a higher court, the injunction will remain in effect until Judge Rufe enters her final ruling. The preliminary injunction signals that she believes the city has a strong case and is likely to prevail. […]
Newly hired CBS News contributor Peter Attia is reportedly secure in his position, despite recent revelations that Attia was close to and had exchanged lewd messages with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The Guardian reported on Monday that CBS insiders believe the messages between Attia and Epstein that have surfaced haven’t dissuaded CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss from keeping the self-described longevity expert on board, even if it creates a bad look for the increasingly right-wing network.
Attia was one of 19 newly hired contributors announced by Weiss in January, even as longtime journalists left the network while protesting the shift to Trump-friendly content.
In one 2015 email to Epstein, Attia wrote, “You [know] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul…”
Attia also told one of Epstein’s assistants, “I go into JE withdrawal when I don’t see him.”
In 2016—eight years after Epstein had been jailed for soliciting a minor for sex—Attia wrote to him, “[P-word] is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.”
Epstein also seemingly allowed Attia to stay at one of his apartments, and Attia wrote a 2016 email thanking Epstein for the favor.
As part of the trove of Epstein-related documents that the Justice Department has released, several email exchanges were found between Epstein and Weiss’ wife, Nellie Bowles. In one strange exchange, Epstein joked with Bowles about Bill Cosby, who was convicted of sexual assault.
Attia’s hiring and the new disclosures are another stain on Weiss’ short tenure leading CBS News. Just last week, network producer Alicia Hastey quit her job and revealed that, under Weiss, stories are being “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.” […]
[…] In what is a nakedly transparent move, even for the Trump administration, the State Department announced that it is just straight-up making it harder to get a passport. Nonprofit libraries were just informed that they can no longer process passport applications.
Though the administration teed this up last November when it began sending cease-and-desist letters to nonprofit libraries, it didn’t bring the hammer down nationwide until last week.
Oh, and it’s already in effect as of February 13, 2026.
It sure looks a lot like this is being done with the hopes that either the SAVE Act passes or Trump’s big cool conservative friends on the Supreme Court bless Trump’s assertion that he can just singlehandedly impose a voter ID requirement nationwide.
How is the administration justifying this? Well, like so many things—birthright citizenship, sending the military into cities, firing everyone at independent agencies—the administration has decided that decades of settled law and regulations have simply been interpreted by the courts and Congress wrongly all this time. According to the State Department, they’ve suddenly discovered that an obscure 1920 law forms the basis for prohibiting nonprofit libraries from issuing passports.
There’s no explanation as to why, even if the State Department’s novel interpretation had any merit, this had to be rushed through. There’s also no explanation as to why the State Department has repeatedly reviewed, approved, and reauthorized nonprofit libraries to process passport applications in the past […]
Government-run libraries are not affected by this announcement, so if your library is run by the county or the city, for example, you’re in luck. Nonprofit libraries are independently run and, gosh, whaddya know? They are most common in Northeastern states: Connecticut, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. [States that usually vote for Democratic Party candidates.]
Huh. It’s probably just a coincidence that this would disproportionately affect blue states, right?
Roughly 21 million people lack access to the additional documents required to comply with SAVE’s requirements. Driver’s licenses aren’t enough, so people need an additional document like a birth certificate or, you guessed it, a passport. No surprise the administration thus wants to make passports harder to obtain.
You also won’t be surprised that the State Department is lying about the scope of this, saying it only affects “less than one percent of our total network” of 7,500 passport processing facilities. However, the American Library Association—which, let’s face it, is going to be far more reliable here than the administration—says it affects about 1,400 nonprofit libraries, a good deal more than 1%.
While this move is no doubt part of an overall voter suppression plan, it’s also part of the administration’s overall attack on libraries. A public service open to everyone? With books about everything? That provides additional support and services to a community? Well, we can’t have that.
At the start of his second term. Trump tried to kill the Institute of Museum and Library Services, firing the board members, placing nearly all staff on administrative leave, and cutting off grants for libraries nationwide. States had to sue to restore the funding, and a court ordered the administration to reinstate the grants last November. IMLS grants are the primary source of federal funding for state libraries, providing about $160 million each year, representing about one-third to one-half of library budgets.
Barring nonprofit libraries from offering passport services is also a financial hit. In Connecticut, for example, one library processed almost 8,000 applications in the last year and received just under $200,000 for those services.
[…] given that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been given the authority to racially profile people and detain them if ICE decides their proof of citizenship just isn’t valid, based on vibes, it’s likely that plenty of people will just choose not to get a passport at a government-run office.
Nonprofit libraries, on the other hand, often have longer hours, have a space for children to stay occupied during a parent or caregiver’s application process, and assist with language barriers. In short, they make it much safer and easier for people with less means to get a passport, and that’s exactly what the administration seeks to prevent.
It’s tempting to fall back on saying this is a nonstarter because elections are run by the states, and the Supreme Court will not agree that a random executive order is suddenly the law nationwide, but the Supreme Court has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to curbing Trump’s excesses. And of course, the court’s conservatives are also extremely into voter suppression. […]
[…] In a wide-ranging interview Sunday at Technische Universität Berlin with German Bundestag member Isabel Cademartori, Ocasio-Cortez took aim at the architects of MAGA’s “anti-cancel culture” movement who are now trying to dodge accountability over the Epstein files—and slammed attorney general Pam Bondi’s pathetic performance before Congress. [video]
Ocasio-Cortez described the “cancel culture” narrative as a politicization of decency.
“That’s the erosion in culture [and] morality that is being hinted at here when Pam Bondi says there’s no more work here to be done,” she said. “Really? You are the Attorney General of the United States of America and you don’t want to hold any one of these pedophiles accountable. Resign or be impeached.” […]
“Trump Nominee Is Huge Racist, If You Can Believe It”
And yet, Jeremy Carl is up for a high-level State Department post.
If you missed it, at the end of last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a confirmation hearing for one Jeremy Carl, an outright racist Donald Trump nominee […] for a high-level position at the State Department.
[…] what’s pathetic is watching Carl fumble around for answers to simple questions like an undergrad who didn’t do the reading. Good God, man, at least be erudite enough to back up your mealy-mouthed racist bullshit!
Overwhelming your questioners with a flood of garbage is pretty much the only way through. Look at Stephen Miller or Chris Rufo. Those guys simply throw out racist statement after racist statement so fast that by the time your brain processes one point to push back on, they have thrown out four more points for which there is no rational answer.
Carl has been a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute. So by wingnut standards, he’s an intellectual.
Anyway, watch him squirm when Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut asks him a pretty simple question, which comes out of Murphy’s mouth as, “Tell me how you define white identity and what you think is being erased,” but could easily translate to What in the actual fuck are you babbling about […] [social media post, with video]
This is such an unbelievably hilarious load of offal [referring to the content shown in the video]. It’s bad, nonsensical ‘90s stand-up comedy: Black people worship like this, but white people worship like this! You ever notice how Asian people like Asian food, but white people put raisins in their carrot salad?
[…] After the hearing was over, Carl tried to correct the record by tweeting at Murphy. It didn’t help: [social media post]
[…] Do we even need to get into the history of how the “white ethnic groups” Carl name-checks were actually treated when they first came to America?
Calling oneself a “civic nationalist” is such a cheap-ass cop-out. It’s one more way of degrading America’s multicultural fabric that has been around as long as the rest of the country. Never once does it occur to Carl that maybe way too many Americans felt left out back in the days when “Anglo-derived culture” as he imagines it was pretty much the only thing one saw when one turned on the TV or picked up a book.
As the writer Christopher Mathias pointed out, Carl is mad about the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 overturning the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924. The earlier law had nationality quotas and prioritized immigrants from North and Western Europe. Or white people, not to put too fine a point on it. [!!] The Hart-Celler Act overturned that regime, and prioritized immigration based on skilled immigrants and relatives of people already here. Yes, this led to a lot more immigration from Latin America and Asia.
What Carl imagines here is that he can separate the idea of the dominant culture of pre-Hart-Celler Act America from whiteness. Or he’d like the senators to think he can do that. Unfortunately for him, he also published a book two years ago entitled The Un-Protected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. There is nothing subtle about that.
Luckily at least one Republican, John Curtis of the ethnically diverse state of (checks notes) Utah said he’ll vote against Carl’s nomination, which means it will die in committee. Unless the Trump administration feels like putting a full-court press on and spending political capital to get Carl confirmed. […]
Three people are dead, including a suspected shooter, and three people are injured after a shooting at an ice rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on Monday afternoon, according to the Pawtucket mayor’s office.
A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Friday, the U.S. Southern Command said, raising the death toll in the Trump administration’s five-month-old campaign against suspected drug smugglers at sea to 133. The attack was the first known strike in the Caribbean Sea since early November and the 39th disclosed by the U.S. government in the campaign, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times.
New York Times, reporting on the effect of vaccine research being curtailed:
In Massachusetts, Moderna is pulling back on vaccine studies. In Texas, a small company canceled plans to build a factory that would have created new jobs manufacturing a technology used in vaccines. In San Diego, another manufacturing company laid off workers.
More:
Federal policies under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that are hostile to vaccines have “sent a chill through the entire industry,” one scientist said.
[…] At conferences and in interviews, they described the emerging consequences of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the longstanding federal support for vaccines. […]
[…] In a secret deportation arrangement, the Trump administration flew nine people, nearly all of whom had been granted U.S. court protections from being sent back to their home countries, to the African nation of Cameroon in January.
None of them are from Cameroon, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and lawyers for the deportees, and the United States has not made any public deal with Cameroon to accept deportees who hail from other nations.
Several of the men and women deported — whose cases have not been previously reported — told The Times they did not know they were being sent to Cameroon until they were handcuffed and chained on a Department of Homeland Security flight leaving Alexandria, La., on Jan. 14.
Cameroon’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment when reached by phone, and the State Department said it would not comment on its “diplomatic communications with other governments” when asked about the terms of an agreement.
Most of those migrants and their lawyers say they have been detained since then at a state-owned compound in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. They say they’ve been told by local authorities that they cannot leave the facility unless they agree to return to their home countries, from which they fled to escape war or persecution.
As far as is known, the deportations are the first such expulsions to Cameroon. They highlight the extraordinary secrecy that surrounds President Trump’s global deportation effort. Through murky deals forged with willing governments — often in exchange for cash — the U.S. has deported hundreds of people to foreign countries that may not respect the removal protections they have been granted in U.S. courts, returning them to the dangers they fled.
The Times pieced together an account of the secret deportations to Cameroon through phone interviews with four people on the flight and their lawyers, and verified their deportations and protection statuses through government documents that showed most had removal protections. The migrants spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals. […]
“When the president can’t abuse his own pardon power to reward an ally, he demands that others abuse their pardon power in order to make him happy.”
As a rule, Donald Trump exercises caution before condemning Israeli leaders, but in recent days, the American president apparently couldn’t help himself. The New York Times reported:
President Trump’s public excoriation of Israel’s president because he has not yet pardoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his long-running corruption trial has touched a nerve in Israel.
Mr. Trump called President Isaac Herzog ‘disgraceful’ while speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday.
“The people of Israel should really shame him” for not letting Netanyahu off the hook, Trump said, referring to Israel’s president, whose responsibilities are largely ceremonial.
The trouble began in earnest in June, when Trump published a rant to his social media platform, insisting that the case against the prime minister “should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero.” He added, “THIS TRAVESTY OF ‘JUSTICE’ CAN NOT BE ALLOWED!”
Netanyahu, who’s insisted he’s done nothing wrong, is facing charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. Trump condemned the cases, not because of evidence pointing to Netanyahu’s innocence, but because the American president believes the Israeli prime minister is an ally and “a WARRIOR.” In fact, at no point in his harangue did Trump even question the charges against the prime minister on the merits.
His argument followed a child-like logic: He likes Netanyahu, so Netanyahu’s alleged crimes must go unexamined.
[…] Trump continued his lobbying campaign, publicly and privately demanding a pardon for Netanyahu, without regard for the evidence or concerns about diplomatic propriety.
Complicating matters, it’s not just Israel. When Marine Le Pen, a prominent far-right politician in France, was caught up in an embezzlement scheme involving E.U. funds, Trump threw an online tantrum and condemned the case against her as a “witch hunt.” When former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was headed to prison, Trump imposed harsh new trade tariffs on the country as a punishment for not letting Bolsonaro get away with his crimes. [!]
Closer to home, Trump appears to have taken steps to punish Colorado because the state’s Democratic governor hasn’t freed a convicted felon the president likes.
What we’re dealing with, in other words, is a dynamic in which an American president abuses his pardon power to reward his allies, regardless of their crimes, and when he can’t issue pardons of his own, he lashes out and demands that others abuse their pardon power in order to make him happy.
As for developments in Israel, the Times’ report noted that the American president’s public condemnation “clearly stung” Herzog, who issued a statement late last week that clarified that the matter was still under review by the Ministry of Justice.
“Only upon completion of that process will President Herzog consider the request in accordance with the law, the best interests of the State of Israel, guided by his conscience, and without any influence from external or internal pressures of any kind,” the statement said.
Herzog added pointedly, “Israel is a sovereign state governed by the rule of law.”
By all appearances, that was precisely the opposite of what Trump wanted to hear.
“The more desperate Trumpt becomes, the more he starts throwing out ideas he thinks people might like […]”
As Election Day 2024 approached, Donald Trump started throwing around weird promises at a frantic pace. The list of random, poorly thought-out gimmicks offered in the final weeks of the contest included offering free IVF treatments, defraying the costs of child care expenses with imaginary tariff money, cutting consumers’ car insurance bills in half and even eliminating the Department of the Interior for reasons that didn’t make any sense.
But among the deluge of panic-stricken proposals, one stood out for me: In September 2024, the then-candidate declared that he wanted to see a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates — an idea he appeared to take seriously for a day or two before quietly dropping it.
About a month ago, the president brought it back, declaring in a message posted to his social media platform, “Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%.”
For a few days, this caused quite a stir. Trump said financial giants would have no choice but comply — he said credit card companies that failed to lower their rates to 10% would be “in violation of the law,” as if he could unilaterally create new laws without Congress — and White House officials even floated the possibility of banks issuing new “Trump Cards” with 10% interest rates.
Whatever happened to this apparent presidential priority? Politico reported:
Trump said in early January that he’d cap credit card rates at 10 percent, a move that would have upended the banking industry, only to change his mind and ask Congress for legislation.
[…] Whatever one thinks about the rapid rise, fall, reemergence and collapse of the proposal, it’s tough not to notice how often other proposals follow a similar trajectory. Indeed, in this White House, rapid-fire policy gimmicks come and go at breakneck speeds.
Chatter about tariff rebate checks was briefly a big deal, before it quietly vanished, following the same path as the vaunted DOGE rebate checks from a year earlier. [!]Trump’s pitiful health care plan was in the news for about a day, before it disappeared, too. [!]
Remember 50-year mortgages? No wants to talk about them anymore. How about the White House’s plan to allow people to use 401(k) funds to make down payments on a home? That evaporated, too.
Remember when Trump was going to impose steep economic penalties on any country that does business with Iran? He quietly changed his mind soon after. How about his plan to decertify aircrafts made in Canada? That also soon collapsed.
[…] I’m also struck by the underlying White House mania. […] a degree of desperation appears to have set in for Trump, leading him to start throwing out ideas he thinks people might like as if he were a casino dealer, tossing cards at poker players, only to throw out new ones soon after.
The difference, however, is that casino dealers tend to know what they’re doing.
if a publicly owned airport were to adopt the name, would it need to license that name from Trump’s private company? In most licensing arrangements, the trademark owner must charge a licensing fee
[…]
For now, we can only sit back and ponder the significance of a sitting President filing a trademark application with his own intellectual property office to protect the name of an airport he is pressuring politicians to rename.
How about his plan to decertify aircraft made in Canada
He will wait until wildfire season to ground all the De Havilland Canadair 515 and CL 415 water bombers.
Militant Agnosticsays
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @105
if a publicly owned airport were to adopt the name, would it need to license that name from Trump’s private company? In most licensing arrangements, the trademark owner must charge a licensing fee
A good reason to not name an airport after him.
Are you now or have you ever been an actual Sky Captain
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Militant Agnostic @108: A tongue-in-cheek honorary title bestowed by someone for often coming to their aid, and other’s. We watched a lot of movies too. The Jude Law film wasn’t among them, but I imagine that was the nym’s inspiration.
-Remember, EU also contains several former east bloc nations who started from a very liv level 1992.
birgerjohanssonsays
First Robert Duvall
Now Jesse Jackson RIP
As Jackson became a visible politician alongside Jimmy Carter it is perhaps not surprising he passed away a year after Carter, both were pretty old. I recall both from my youth.
British Trump wannabee Nigel Farage just claimed the “mini-budget” by Liz Truss (which made the Pound collapse and forced Liz Truss to resign after the shortest career as prime minister ever) was “the best budget ever presented”.
Translation: He is every bit as stupid as the American blob, but -like Boris Johnson – he has the social skills to conceal the malign parts of his personality.
.
Boris Johnson was on Swedish TV two days ago and managed to be charming despite having caused immense damage during COVID through his arrogance.
.
People like Johnson and Farage are more dangerous than Trump because they can pose as ‘normal’ while Trump gives off alarming vibes to everyone except those who share his values.
Rachel Maddow looks at the panicked indecision of New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte over the unpopular issue of allowing ICE to put an immigrant prison in the town of Merrimack. State Rep. Wendy Thomas, who represents Merrimack, talks with Rachel Maddow about the opposition to the prison and Ayotte’s weirdly squishy position on the matter.
Rachel Maddow reviews the latest batch of terrible poll numbers for Donald Trump, including on issues that are meant to be his political strength, and points out that his familiar trick of making empty promises he has no idea how to keep are insufficient distraction from the cruelty of ICE and the paucity of his economic ideas that are turning Americans against him.
Rachel Maddow compares Marco Rubio’s past statements about the damage Victor Orban posed to democracy in Hungary to his recent obsequious statements to Orban’s face as Donald Trump’s secretary of state. While Rubio is compromising himself in his secretary of state job, he is neglecting his responsibilities in one of this other four Trump administration jobs, running the National Security Council.
Rachel Maddow shares highlights from a judge’s remarks in rejecting Donald Trump’s power to dismantle a national monument i Philadelphia to hide the fact that George Washington owned slaves. The judge compared Trump’s censorious “anti-woke” edict to the mission of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984.
It’s a problem when the president accuses his own White House of confirming a story he considers “fake news.”
When the Gateway tunnel construction project was initially approved, both parties recognized the endeavor as one of the nation’s most important infrastructure investments.
Last fall, Donald Trump cut off funds for the project anyway, ostensibly because the administration wanted to know whether contracts were awarded with “diversity, equity and inclusion” considerations in mind.
This led to predictable court fights, which haven’t gone well for the White House: Last week, a federal judge ordered Team Trump to reopen the funding spigot, allowing workers to renew the project connecting New York and New Jersey via a pair of train tubes. That should have ended the matter, though Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy quickly appealed the ruling.
On Monday afternoon, the president published an item to his social media platform condemning the entire project, calling it a “future boondoggle” in a missive Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey described as “a completely unhinged tantrum from someone who didn’t get their way.”
And then there’s the whole naming issue. From Trump’s online statement:
Also, the naming of PENN Station (I LOVE Pennsylvania, but it is a direct competitor to New York, and ‘eating New York’s lunch!’) to TRUMP STATION, was brought up by certain politicians and construction union heads, not me — IT IS JUST MORE FAKE NEWS! … Thank you for your attention to this matter!
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that Penn Station was named after the Pennsylvania Railroad, not the state of Pennsylvania. Let’s also overlook the president’s idiosyncratic approach to grammar.
Instead, let’s take a fresh look at his interest in naming things after himself.
Last week, MaddowBlog confirmed that Trump came up with an idea for a transaction. The president told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he’d restore the money for the Gateway tunnel construction project if Democrats agreed to rename Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station after him.
The Republican’s pitch was, for all intents and purposes, an attempt at extortion: If Democrats wanted to save a critical infrastructure project and prevent job losses, they had to indulge Trump’s obsession with self-glorification.
Soon after, a reporter asked the president to confirm the story. The president replied that, in his version of events, “Chuck Schumer suggested that to me about changing the name. … It was suggested to me by numerous people — unions, Democrats, Republicans, a lot of people suggested.”
That is, Trump would have us believe that the Democratic Senate leader, among others, approached him with the idea of renaming an airport and one of the nation’s most storied train stations after a president he vehemently opposes.
Schumer wasted little time in responding to this absurdity, calling the claim an “absolute lie.” A few days later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt effectively said the Democratic senator was correct, confirming that it was Trump who floated the idea, not the longtime New York lawmaker.
A week later, however, Trump decided to contradict his press secretary and claim that “certain” unnamed people brought it up, all while claiming he now considers the story (that his own White House confirmed) to be “fake news.”
One thing the president has never understood is that if he expects the public to believe his nonsense, he needs to peddle more plausible claims.
MUNICH (The Borowitz Report)—In a joint communiqué issued at the close of the Munich Security Conference, European leaders declared US Secretary of State Marco Rubio a “slightly smaller asshole” than last year’s American speaker, Vice President JD Vance.
“Make no mistake, everyone here thought Marco was a ginormous dick,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters. “But JD was still worse.”
According to White House sources, Rubio was “shattered” that he had failed to equal the room-clearing toxicity of Vance’s performance.
“Despite his best efforts, Marco has yet to prove that he is a flaming enough asshole to be Trump’s heir apparent,” one source said. “JD has set the bar very, very high.”
“The more the president fixates on the Democratic governor, the more it seems he’s scared of Moore’s political potential.”
There was a small kernel of truth behind Donald Trump’s latest online harangue. Last month, as a result of a burst pipe, there was a massive sewage overflow that spewed into the Potomac River. The president on Monday referred to this as a “disaster,” which was accurate: Communities in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., have confronted serious concerns about contaminated water.
Unfortunately, that was the only thing about the story that Trump got right. His missive read, in part:
There is a massive Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River as a result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland. A sewer line breach in Maryland has caused millions of gallons of raw sewage to be dumped directly into the Potomac River, a result of incompetent Local and State Management of Essential Waste Management Systems.
It’s likely that the president saw a story about a crisis in the region, heard about a problem related specifically to Maryland and thought it would be a good idea to seize on the developments as an excuse to target a Democratic governor.
But as is too often the case, Trump tripped over his own ignorance. As NOTUS reported, “The thing is, it’s actually Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency with the regulatory authority over the DC Water-owned pipe that burst and spilled millions of gallons of sewage into the Potomac River last month.”
Or, as The New Republic summarized: “President Trump is blaming Maryland Governor Wes Moore for … something Moore has no control over.”
[…] Moore told The Hill, “The president has his facts wrong — again. Since the last century, the federal government has been responsible for the Potomac Interceptor, which is the origin of the sewage leak. For the last four weeks, the Trump administration has failed to act, shirking its responsibility and putting people’s health at risk.”
The governor’s spokesperson added, “Notably, the president’s own EPA explicitly refused to participate in the major legislative hearing about the cleanup last Friday. Apparently the Trump administration hadn’t gotten the memo that they’re actually supposed to be in charge here.” [head/desk]
Trump’s brazenly false offensive was quickly discredited, but it was tough not to notice that Trump has been fixated on Moore quite a bit lately.
Last week, for example, the president said that he was welcoming governors of both parties to the White House as part the National Governors Association’s upcoming meeting, but that he would exclude two Democrats from an official dinner who Trump said were “not worthy of being there.” One of the two was Moore, whom Trump described as “foul mouthed” for reasons unknown.
Months earlier, Trump told reporters unprompted that he doesn’t believe the Maryland Democrat is “presidential timber,” and a few days later, he questioned the governor’s military service. (Moore is a decorated combat veteran who served in Afghanistan.) [Pure projection on Trump’s part. He lies about his exemption from military service.]
Around the same time, the president told a bizarre story about meeting Moore at a football game. According to Trump, the governor told him: “Sir, you’re the greatest president in my lifetime.” When the evidence proved that no such interaction happened, Trump repeated the false anecdote anyway. [Mr. Dementia is stuck in yet another repetitive loop of lies.]
[…] it sure does look as if Trump is scared of the Maryland governor’s political potential.
[…] New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised Jackson as a giant of the Civil Rights Movement, writing on X, “He marched, he ran, he organized and he preached justice without apology. May we honor him not just in words, but in struggle.”
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Jackson a “legendary voice for the voiceless, powerful civil rights champion and trailblazer extraordinaire.”
Stacey Abrams, a former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, wrote on X, “With courage, tenacity and an audacious spirit, he widened our capacity for imagining true unity and deepened our commitment to justice for all.”
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts described Jackson as a “trailblazer and a fighter” who gave hope to a new generation of leaders.
Former President Barack Obama honored Jackson’s “lifetime of service,” saying that “we stood on his shoulders.” [social media post with full statement from Michelle and Barack Obama]
In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump called Jackson “a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts,’” before attacking President Barack Obama and people who call Trump racist.
C-SPAN posted the historic video of Jackson receiving the President Medal of Freedom in 2000 from president Bill Clinton. [video]
Here is a memory of Jackson that I, along with tens of millions of others who grew up knowing that we were somebody, will hold close: Jackson’s legendary 1972 appearance on “Sesame Street. [video]
CBS bends the knee, again, to Trump. Stephen Colbert isn’t having it:
CBS prevented late night host Stephen Colbert from airing an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday night, the latest act of censorship from the increasingly right-wing network in coordination with the Trump administration’s regime at the Federal Communications Commission. [video]
Colbert revealed the details of the plot on the Monday edition of his program, “The Late Show.”
“We were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have [Talarico] on the broadcast,” Colbert explained. “I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this”
Colbert said that CBS’ reasoning for blocking his interview with Talarico was sourced to a recent directive from FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee. Carr argued that late-night comedy shows and daytime talk shows are no longer exempt from equal time regulations for broadcasts that require news programs to provide “equal opportunities” for rebuttals during candidate interviews.
[…] Colbert further noted, “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV. He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diapers.”
Colbert also announced that he was nonetheless going ahead with the interview and posted it in full to his YouTube page where it racked up over 719,000 views in the first nine hours of availability. [video]
Talarico posted the interview on his social media account, noting, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.”
[…] While Republicans have held both Texas Senate seats since 1997, both Talarico and fellow Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Jasmine Crockett have polled within striking distance of the three current Republican frontrunners. Talarico is within the margin of error in polling against Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, and Wesley Hunt.
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and Democrats would need to flip four seats to take control.
CBS’ decision to censor Colbert echoes the network’s ongoing move to the right. At CBS News, conservative editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has been withholding news stories critical of the Trump administration, while CBS parent Paramount paid out a settlement to Trump while the Republican donors who own the company are given a green light for mergers by the administration.
Trump is waging war against free speech and corporations like CBS are there to help.
DHS this weekend scrambled to defend its plans to purchase a luxury Boeing 737 Max jet for $70 million. A spokesperson claimed the plane would be used for deportation flights, which supposedly “saves the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars.”
That’s not what official documents say. They state the plane is specifically for “high-profile deportations.” So Kristi Noem’s DHS joins Rupert Murdoch, Mukesh Ambani – one of the world’s richest men – and Tony Robbins as the owner of this type of luxury mega jet.
We obtained the floor plans for the aircraft, which DHS staff reportedly call Secretary Kristi Noem’s “big, beautiful jet.” It appears to be a flying palace.
A sales listing brags that this Boeing 737 Max “redefines luxury travel” and “caters to the most discerning of travelers, offering an exquisite flying experience like no other.”
Here’s what your tax dollars are going toward: A “VVIP Cabin Configuration” – that’s Very, Very Important Person — seating just 17 passengers on a massive Boeing 737.
It includes two private bedroom suites with queen sized beds. Two showers (in prior administrations even the First Lady’s plane didn’t have a single shower). Multiple bathrooms with electric bidets. A separate buffet bar. Multiple ultra-HDTVs. And a lounge with a wet bar and wine chiller. […] Does this scream “deportation efficiency” or “Barbie’s dream plane?” […]
Ukraine recaptured 201 square kilometres (78 square miles) from Russia between Wednesday and Sunday last week, taking advantage of a Starlink shutdown for Russian forces, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The recaptured area is almost equivalent to the Russian gains for the entire month of December and is the most land retaken by Kyiv’s forces in such a short period since a June 2023 counter-offensive. […]
From WarTranslated (Dmitri):
Russian UAV operator Myroslav Simonov from the elite “Rubicon” unit has defected to Ukraine’s side. He says that after being deployed near Kupiansk and seeing how casually orders were given to execute prisoners, he went AWOL and crossed over to the Ukrainian side.
Pam Bondi says “all” the Epstein Files have been released. Fuuuuuuuuuck you, pedo protector. Hillary Clinton says bullshit, it’s an insane coverup, release that shit. And the outrage just continues to grow. [BBC] [This and other embedded links are available at the main link.]
LOTS of stories right now with headlines like this: “Warehouse owner won’t sell Dallas County property to ICE for [concentration camp].” Just about everywhere ICE is trying! [The Dallas Morning News]
Here’s Rachel last night with a story about a court ruling in Philly where a judge has yet again had to slap […] the Trump regime’s mouth as it’s been trying to rewrite history at all historical monuments, to make them more white-supremacist-friendly. It’s a Presidents Day miracle! [video, also linked in comment 117]
[…] Y’all hear about how Anderson Cooper is leaving 60 Minutes in just the latest humiliating blow to Bari Weiss’s leadership? [social media post: “It really has to sting for Bari. The person she wanted for the Evening News anchor chair is choosing to leave CBS altogether because of her,” one CBS News staffer told me tonight. “This is ‘fuck you’ to Bari.”
Here is a message being shared in the EU parliament condemning ICE and encouraging Americans to stay strong against fascism. Yep. That’s where we are. [video]
A move in the House to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to override presidential pardons now has a Republican cosponsor. It’s Don Bacon, so not entirely unexpected, but that could matter eventually. Invalidating Trump’s pardons needs to be a prominent part of the rebuilding when the time comes. [Axios]
[…] Also, did you hear AOC accidentally said Venezuela is south of the equator, when it actually isn’t, but any moron can suss out that what she meant to allude to is that it’s part of the global South? Meanwhile Donald Trump literally thinks China is about to imminently steal ice hockey from Canada? Because both sides …
[…] The Bulwark saw the same Rubio speech and its (much more appropriate) headline was “Rubio to Europe: We Hit You Because We Love You.” Which, again, tells you a lot about what MAGA’s Daddy Issues look like. [Bulwark]
Meanwhile, here’s another headline about the rest of the world just going around Donald Trump’s Fucking Loser America: “Carney constructs a mega anti-Trump trade alliance.” [European Politico]
[…]
“I covered Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign. The racism he faced was undisguised.”
“The obstacles he faced — including those from his party’s establishment — were overt and subtle.”
“Keep hope alive!” It was the signature line of Jesse Jackson’s second run for president. Euphoric crowds, numbering in the thousands, would chant it along with him.
I was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and that 1988 presidential campaign was the first I had ever covered. Those months revealed to me many things about America. Not all were as uplifting as the optimistic spirit that propelled the civil rights leader to a second-place finish against the ultimate Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
One day in particular stands out in my memory for what I saw of undisguised racism, and for what I heard from Jackson himself about the less visible barriers he believed had been put in his way by some in his own party.
It was May 9. The campaign had begun before dawn, as many days did with Jackson’s operation. We were in poverty-stricken Arnett, West Virginia, and a few curious neighbors had gathered outside the home of an unemployed White coal miner, where Jackson had spent the night. When one of them was asked how he planned to cast his ballot in that week’s Democratic primary, he retorted: “I ain’t voting for no damn n—-r.”
The previous evening, the arrival of Jackson’s motorcade had been greeted with similar epithets, and someone in the crowd of about 200 appeared threatening enough that the Secret Service vetoed the candidate making his usual round of shaking hands.
Jackson, who died Tuesday at 84, was usually too much on the move to indulge in introspection and reflection. But later that day, in a conversation with a few bleary-eyed reporters aboard his campaign bus, he did.
In his view, Jackson told us, the most significant hurdles that a Black candidate had to overcome were not what we had seen in West Virginia. “Some people are very raw, very direct, [saying] ‘I would not vote for a n—-r.’ Other people are able to use sand to cover up their mess,” he said.
Jackson was a spellbinder on the stump, but well to the left of most of the country. And he had never shaken his reputation as a self-promoter — or, as then-Vice President George H.W. Bush once put it, a “hustler from Chicago.”
His candidacy had, from the outset, been “running against a headwind of culture and media and pundits,” Jackson said. “The party itself is using its strength to get the candidate it thinks can win.”
He faulted the news media and the polls for constantly raising the question of whether Americans would vote for a Black man: “If I’m asked, ‘Why run?,’ the people are asked, ‘Why vote?’”
[…] In June, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Doreen Carvajal wrote a front-page story revealing that “Pontiac,” the code name that had been given Jackson by the Secret Service, was also the punch line to an old racist joke. The Secret Service said it was a coincidence, and that the code name had been picked from a random list. Those around Jackson did not buy the explanation.
[…] “The message has already won. It was so rich that others borrowed from it,” Jackson said in what was not quite a concession speech as the last ballots were being counted in California. “Now my opponents find it necessary to imitate Jackson action — to visit schools […]”
[…] When Obama went on to win the presidency, Jackson was in the crowd at the victory rally in Chicago’s Grant Park, American flag in hand and his face wet with tears.
[…] Jackson was onstage at the 2024 Democratic convention in Chicago, the city that had been his power base, to celebrate the first-ever nomination by a major party of a Black woman. He was in a wheelchair, and disease by then had taken away the greatest of his powers, the ability to speak. But, as my colleague David Maraniss wrote, “his legacy was everywhere, if underappreciated.”
JMsays
@124 Lynna, OM:
For the infantry the Russian government shutting off Telegram probably had more impact then Starlink. The government cut if off because too many Russians were getting news outside Russian control. It turned out that a good number of Russian officers and soldiers were using Telegram for passing orders, information and even communicating during fire fights. This left a good chunk of Russian infantry disconnected from the central command and easy pickings for Ukrainians.
birgerjohanssonsays
It is reassuring that DJT would never be able to assemble architecture in an ideologically coherent manner, all he can do is commission some bland neoclassical kitsch.
The U.S. military said Tuesday that it carried out strikes on three boats accused of smuggling drugs in Latin American waters, killing 11 people in one of the deadliest days of the Trump administration’s monthslong campaign. The series of strikes conducted on Monday brought the death toll to at least 145 people since the administration began targeting those it calls ‘narcoterrorists’ in small vessels in early September.
Police arrested an 18-year-old who ran toward the U.S. Capitol with a loaded shotgun Tuesday, authorities said. The person got out of a Mercedes SUV carrying a loaded shotgun and ran toward the building, Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan said. As he approached the building, officers ordered him to drop the weapon and get on the ground. Sullivan said he ‘immediately complied’ and was taken into custody.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security assistant secretary who emerged as the unapologetic voice of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations, is leaving the agency.
Steve Benen made the point that McLaughlin exited with her credibility in tatters. That’s so true.
Indirect talks between American and Iranian officials in Switzerland ended on Tuesday with an agreement on a ‘set of guiding principles,’ according to Iran’s foreign minister, who said both sides had agreed to exchange drafts on a potential deal. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was as positive as he was vague, providing little clarity on what had been discussed or when the next round of discussions might be held.
Congressional Democrats have sent the White House their latest proposal for new constraints on federal immigration officers that they want tied to any deal to restart federal funding for the Department of Homeland Security, but there was no sign on Tuesday of a rapid resolution of the spending stalemate.
The momentous end to the federal government’s legal authority to fight climate change makes it official. The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be. That’s the practical result of the Trump administration’s yearlong parade of regulatory rollbacks.
Donald Trump had never expressed much interest in the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will soon link Michigan and Ontario. In fact, Trump approved of the project during his first term and had said effectively nothing about it since.
That is, until last week, when Trump announced that he intends to block its opening.
“I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve,” the president wrote via his social media platform. (The same missive said China has a fiendish plot to ban hockey in Canada, which I continue to find hilarious.)
There was no obvious reason for Trump to make such a declaration — that is, until The New York Times reported on what happened just hours beforehand:
The billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada met Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, on Monday hours before President Trump lambasted a competing span, in the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada.
Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with Mr. Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
According to the Times’ report, after Lutnick spoke to the well-connected billionaire donor, the commerce secretary spoke with Trump by phone. Shortly afterward, Trump issued his odd threat.
Even in a White House known for corruption, this appeared quite brazen.
In a piece for MS NOW published over the weekend, former Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan explained, “The busiest northern border crossing in the United States is the one between Detroit and Windsor, Canada. Billions of dollars of manufacturing and agricultural goods cross this border every day, as well as essential workers and professionals. This corridor is economically vital for the United States and crucially important to our national security.”
As things stand, Stabenow added, a single, privately owned toll bridge “dominates this critical trade corridor.” That bridge — you guessed it — is owned by the Moroun family, which wants to maintain its near-monopoly.
As of last week, the American president apparently decided to help the Morouns, regardless of the economic impact on Michigan.
Trump’s seemingly corrupt hysterics notwithstanding, there’s no reason for U.S. officials to oppose this project. Canada footed the bill for its construction, and it will collect toll revenue until it recoups its costs. At that point, the bridge will be jointly owned by both countries.
Yes, Trump and his White House team have come up with some creative new objections to the project they used to support, though as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait explained, “Trump’s stated demands to open the bridge are a mixture of fantasy and contrived grievance.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal went so far as to label the mess Trump’s “Bridgegate,” harking back to the scandal that did lasting harm to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Time will tell what becomes of the burgeoning fiasco, but Democrats on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the allegations last week.
In Maine last month, a woman in Portland was filming an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent when the masked official decided to stop what he was doing. In fact, in a video that quickly went viral, he approached the civilian and delivered a chilling message.
When the woman reminded the ICE agent that her presence there was legal, he responded, “Exactly, that’s what we’re doing,” as he tried to record her and collect her information. Asked why, the federal agent replied, “Because we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
Not surprisingly, many wondered whether the Department of Homeland Security had built a previously unannounced government database that featured private American citizens peacefully recording public officials in public places. DHS insisted that despite the ICE agent’s claim, no such files existed, and soon after, Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, told senators during sworn testimony, “We do not do that.”
Perhaps not, though the administration’s scrutiny of protesters and critics appears to have reached an alarming stage. The New York Times reported:
The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.
In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
According to the Times’ report […] Google, Meta and Reddit have already complied with some of the requests. […]
What’s more, it’s not the only relevant piece of evidence.
In Minnesota, for example, according to almost 100 sworn statements filed in federal court, federal immigration agents have shown up at protesters’ homes as part of an apparent intimidation campaign.
At about the same time, the public learned of a Minnesota woman who’d participated in local protests and who was approached by an unknown ICE agent who called her by her name. She soon after received an email from DHS saying her Global Entry and Transportation Security Administration travel privileges had been revoked. [!] The message did not include an explanation for the developments.
The same week, The Washington Post reported on a man who lives in a Philadelphia suburb who wrote a nonthreatening email to DHS, asking for mercy for an Afghan asylum seeker. The message, sent to Joseph Dernbach, the lead prosecutor in the Afghan’s case, read in part, “Err on the side of caution. … Apply principles of common sense and decency.”
Within hours of sending the email, the man discovered that federal officials had subpoenaed his Google account. [!] That same day, men with badges knocked on the door of his home.[!]
[…] there’s room for a public conversation about the scope of the department’s scrutiny of American citizens who’ve done nothing more than disagree with the administration.
“Rubio stood side by side with the Hungarian prime minister, despite his own supposed revulsion at the European leader’s dictatorship just a couple of years ago.”
Related video at the link.
In 2019 a group of U.S. senators wrote a letter to Donald Trump ahead of his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to “express concern about Hungary’s downward democratic trajectory.”
“In recent years, democracy in Hungary has significantly eroded,” the letter read.
The senators noted that the country had “experienced a steady corrosion of freedom, the rule of law and quality of governance according to virtually any indicator” under Orbán, adding that elections had become less competitive, the country’s judiciary was “increasingly controlled by the state” and press freedom was under threat. [!]
The group went on to urge Trump “to not diminish the importance of democratic values in our bilateral relationship with Budapest.”
That 2019 letter was making the rounds again — thanks to the managing editor of The Bulwark, Sam Stein — on Monday, because one of the signatories on it was then-Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. [!] [social media post]
[…] During his remarks [on Monday], the secretary of state said Trump was “deeply committed” to the country’s [to Hungary’s] success.
“Because your success is our success,” he continued. “Because this relationship we have here in Central Europe through you is so essential and vital for our national interest in the years to come.”
Rubio stood side by side with Orbán and threw the administration’s full support behind him, despite his own supposedly heartfelt and principled revulsion at the Hungarian leader’s dictatorship just a few years ago.
Presumably, beclowning oneself like this is what wins you favor in the Trump administration.
It is probably why Rubio, in addition to being secretary of state, keeps being given other jobs on top of that, like the chief of the United States Agency for International Development.
He’s also running the National Security Council. You may remember that Trump slashed the NSC last year, presumably because he did not know what it was for. At that point, he put Rubio in charge of the smoking husk of it.
The NSC is supposed to handle interagency conflicts and coordination around national security issues.
Like, say, the kind of thing that arose in El Paso last week, when Customs and Border Protection officials took a laser gun from the Pentagon and started firing it into the Texas sky.
The Federal Aviation Administration apparently had no idea what was going on, freaked out and announced that the El Paso Airport would be closed due to “special security reasons” for 10 days.
[…] Top administration officials quickly claimed that the El Paso airport closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels. Of course, that wasn’t true, either. Turns out what they were actually shooting the laser at was party balloons.
Among the many other things going on with this story, it sure seems like an effective National Security Council might have helped in this instance.
Too bad the guy in charge is busy with his other day job: licking the boots of foreign dictators.
Jesse Jackson died today at the age of 84, after a long career as a leader of the civil rights movement and as an activist for social justice. In his two presidential runs, in 1984 and 1988 — the first serious Black contender for the presidency — Jackson remained as a steadfast voice for progressivism when the Democratic party was trying to respond to Reaganism by moving to the right instead of providing a real alternative to Reagan and the GOP. Rush Limbaugh hated him, and mocked him as “the huh-REV-er-runnnd Jesse Jackson,” because right-wingers are just comedic geniuses that way.
He inspired millions to register to vote [true], and used his influence on the international stage to win the release of an American pilot from Syria in 1984 (without any illegal arms sales, even); to convince Saddam Hussein to release 700 foreign women and children after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990; and to get Slobodan Milošević to let three Americans imprisoned in former Yugoslavia in 1999. In 1991, he won a term as one of Washington DC’s “shadow senators,” which he used to push for DC statehood.
We won’t try to give Jackson the full New York Times obit treatment, since you can read the real thing easily enough at this archive link. In these fascist days, It may be enough to remember Jackson’s political credo: Keep Hope Alive.
We keep coming back to a line that Times obit highlights, from Jackson’s 1984 speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.
My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They’ve voted in record numbers. They have invested faith, hope and trust that they have in us. The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care. I pledge my best to not let them down.
It’s worth remembering the context here: Ronald Reagan was hard at work trying to dismantle the New Deal and the Great Society, and to hand control of the economy to the investor class. [!] That’s the political legacy that brought us to Trump.
[…] [I snipped details concerning Trump having claimed to care for the downtrodden.]
In 1984, Jackson said that political leaders “must heed the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing and unity.” Trump found enough angry white voters to instead respond to his apocalyptic call for revenge: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”
Compare and contrast. Jackson’s “Rainbow coalition” speech from the ‘84 convention still holds up pretty well, especially as a reminder of what coalition-building can sound like: [video]
Some of the language is a little out of date, but it still works:
America is not like a blanket — one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt — many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. […]
Even in our fractured state, all of us count and all of us fit somewhere. We have proven that we can survive without each other. But we have not proven that we can win and progress without each other. We must come together.
[…] Jackson was also really, really good at television; while everyone is also remembering his career as an activist today, the memories are also seasoned with his iconic moments on the small screen, like his 1971 visit to Sesame Street (NYT archive link) to teach kids the simple affirmation “I am somebody.” […] [video]
Times TV critic James Poniewozik lovingly sums up the power of that 90-second clip:
The message of Jackson’s litany is the beginning of education, and the beginning of democracy. It says that you have worth as a person, simply because you are a person. It says that you have a voice. And it says that your voice is most powerful when it joins with other voices.
[…] On a far lighter note, there was also Jackson’s 1991 cameo on Saturday Night Live to mark the death of Dr. Seuss, where he brilliantly delivered excerpts from Green Eggs and Ham. [video]
We could do with a few more political figures who can have so much fun reading a very humane children’s book while keeping its sincere message […]
the nine justices of the Georgia Supreme Court—eight of whom were appointed by Republican governors—unanimously stated that nothing less than disbarment was called for in the case of William McCall Calhoun, Jr., an attorney who had participated in the “violent takeover of the Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021.
[…]
Calhoun was among 44 Georgians pardoned by Trump last January. Calhoun petitioned for the restoration of his law license, arguing that a public reprimand was a sufficient sanction for his offenses. […] But the Georgia Supreme Court wouldn’t go along.
“Pardons do not prevent disbarment for the underlying activity that formed the basis of the crime,” said the court. Thus, Trump’s pardon did not erase Calhoun’s “criminal act,” which reflected adversely on his “fitness as a lawyer.”
Latest news about our Aussie hate-mongering Islamophobe of the fringe but sadly increasingly popular One Neuron party :
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has issued a partial apology for her suggestion that there are no “good” Muslims while attacking the government for “bending over backwards” for migrants and claiming without evidence that there are Australian suburbs Westerners cannot enter.
… (snip).. “You say, ‘Well, there’s good Muslims out there.’ How can you tell me there are good Muslims?” she (Hanson – ed) said.
The comments were rejected by politicians across the political spectrum, including Nationals senator Matt Canavan who labelled them “divisive, inflammatory [and] un-Australian”.
..(snip).. But the long-standing leader has surged to elevated prominence in recent weeks after a series of opinion polls put One Nation ahead of the Coalition.
The upcoming by-election in Farrer, triggered by former Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s resignation, is set to be the first real test of whether the minor party can pull votes away from the Liberal and National parties.
One Nation has traditionally struggled to secure lower house seats, attracting just over 6 per cent of votes at last year’s federal election.
One Nation has one representative in the lower house — former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce who defected to the minor party last year. Senator Hanson attributed some of the party’s recent success to Mr Joyce, describing him as “just an average bloke (LOL! “Äverage bloke” fuck off! The former deputy PM and a longstanding national embarrassment who actually began as an account but likes to cosplay at being a farmer-ed.) out there fighting for the Australian people”.
In total, at least 37,135 Palestinians were displaced across the occupied West Bank in 2025, a record high amid Israeli military incursions and settler attacks, according to figures compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Saw this last night on fb but AJ reporting it here :
A Swiss sports journalist has found himself at the centre of a storm for his no-holds-barred commentary during the Israeli team’s participation in the bobsleigh event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
Sports commentator Stefan Reina, of Radio Television Suisse (RTS), called the Israeli team’s pilot Adam Jeremy Edelman “a Zionist to the core” as the team appeared on the screen during their run at the Milano Cortina Games on Monday.
Immediately after Edelman’s competition began, Reina commented on the athlete’s social media posts supporting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
“Adam Edelman is an Israeli athlete and a Zionist to the core, as he describes himself,” Reina said in a video verified by Al Jazeera.
“He has posted several messages on social media supporting the genocide in Gaza,” the commentator added as the Israeli team’s bobsleigh continued its run.
Kinda double standard & odd that Russia is banned from the Olymics but not Israel ain’t it?
StevoRsays
Which reminds me, I saw Leathal Weapon II* again a few nights agao which made me reflect on how if it twas amde now it would be considered uber-woke and have the reichwing screaming about it – Mel Gibson & all – and the South African villains of that Apartheid era would now be the Israelis of this one.
NASA will take another crack at fueling up its huge Artemis 2 moon rocket this week.
The agency plans to load more than 700,000 gallons (2.65 million liters) of liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) into Artemis 2’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Thursday (Feb. 19), wrapping up a crucial two-day-long test called a wet dress rehearsal.
This will be the second wet dress for Artemis 2, the first crewed moon mission since the Apollo era. The first rehearsal, which began on Jan. 31, ended prematurely due to an LH2 leak detected during propellant loading.
We already know that memory prices have gone bananas and that the crisis is complicating the production of all kinds of computing-adjacent devices. Now the CEO of memory specialist Phison is reported to be claiming that the situation is going to drive some makers of consumer electronics to the wall.
[…]
“If NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin [supercomputer line] ships tens of millions of units, each requiring over 20TB of SSD, it will consume approximately 20% of last year’s global NAND production capacity (excluding subsequent data storage),”
Pua Khein-Seng is further said to have highlighted that memory manufacturers are now “demanding three years’ worth of prepayment (unprecedented in the electronics industry)” and that those same manufacturers “internally estimate the shortage will last until 2030, or even for another 10 years.” […] the ratio of output is shifting away from consumer devices like phones or PCs towards commercial devices like servers and AI GPUs.
Commentary
Interestingly, this is coming from the Phison CEO, who’s mainly in the business of making SSD controllers and other storage related parts, not RAM.
Founders start companies to fill needs and solve problems. AI companies generate needs and create problems. This is the opposite of entrepreneurship.
The AI business model is predicated on the idea that they’ll be able to make up for their losses by selling us subscriptions for their chatbots, that the bots will harvest and sell our data, absolutely none of which will work if every computer on earth is dedicated to an LLM Server Farm.
Breaking news: we used Twitter’s machine translation function to read a random user’s summary of a Chinese language interview. Sometimes it’s just worth pumping the breaks and reflecting on how badly degraded the journalistic process that shapes our discourse is.
KGsays
Indirect talks between American and Iranian officials in Switzerland ended on Tuesday with an agreement on a ‘set of guiding principles,’ according to Iran’s foreign minister, who said both sides had agreed to exchange drafts on a potential deal. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was as positive as he was vague, providing little clarity on what had been discussed or when the next round of discussions might be held. – Lyna, OM@132 quoting NYT
I predict Iran will do what Putin, Netanyahu and Zelenskyy have all on occasion done successfully in the face of Trump’s threats – make soothing noises and wait for his attention to shift elsewhere. But it didn’t work for Maduro – perhaps the dancing was what prevented it working for him.
KGsays
JM@127,
That’s amusing – do you have a source handy?
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES, hosted by Antonia Hilton, in for Chris Hayes.
‘On thin ice’: Kristi Noem under fire as DHS faces shutdown fallout. As the DHS shutdown continues, Kristi Noem faces new scrutiny and her embattled spokeswoman steps down amid fallout over ICE raids and accusations of corruption.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is not in a strong position. Recent polling found that nearly 60% of the public believes the South Dakota Republican should be removed from her job, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called for her ouster and the number of House Democrats backing an impeachment resolution against her is up to 187. [!]
Noem’s troubles, however, continue to mount. Last week, for example, The Wall Street Journal published a deeply unflattering report on behind-the-scenes details surrounding Noem’s work, highlighting the “constant chaos” that exists in the department she’s struggling to lead.
The Journal’s report […] noted that within the Department of Homeland Security, Noem and her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, “frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees — in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.”
With this in mind, the Cabinet secretary clearly didn’t need another damaging report, but she confronted one anyway this week when NBC News, citing four sources, reported on Noem’s increasingly strained relationship with U.S. Coast Guard officials. (The Coast Guard falls under DHS, not the Pentagon.)
According to the report […] the relationship between the DHS secretary and Coast Guard reached new depths following a “verbal directive” to shift Coast Guard resources from a search-and-rescue mission to find a missing service member. From the NBC News report:
The tension between some Coast Guard officials and Noem began after a 23-year-old Coast Guardsman went overboard into the Pacific Ocean from the cutter Waesche on Feb. 4 last year, shortly after the Senate confirmed Noem into her role, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official.
The Coast Guard had surged ships and aircraft to the Pacific to find the guardsman. Hours into the search, Noem learned that a Coast Guard C-130 that was supposed to fly detained migrants from California to Texas was among the aircraft over the Pacific looking for the missing guardsman, and she intervened, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official.
According to the report, Noem verbally instructed the acting Coast Guard commandant to pull the plane off the search-and-rescue mission so it could instead help with the deportation of immigrants. Adm. Kevin Lunday complied and notified the National Command Center, which ordered the C-130 to fly to San Diego while other aircraft and ships involved in the search continued.
That did not, however, end the matter: Coast Guard officials reportedly scrambled to find other planes that could transport immigrants so that the C-130 to continue searching for the missing guardsman.
He was never found.
To be sure, a department spokesperson rejected the NBC News report — “The entire premise of your story is incorrect,” the spokesperson said — and there are differing narratives surrounding the incident.
But the report concluded that the incident “left Coast Guard officials with a negative impression of Noem,” which seems understandable given the circumstances.
Highlighting the reporting, Rachel Maddow asked via Bluesky, “How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job?” That need not be a rhetorical question.
Eleven people were killed Monday in a trio of unlawful U.S. strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, raising the known death toll in the months-long campaign to 144 or 145 (reports vary).
About Those Supposed ‘Rescues’ …
I’ve treated with considerable skepticism the reports that the Pentagon has summoned the Coast Guard to rescue survivors of its lawless boat strike campaign. Given the distances and time lag involved, the rescue efforts seem half-hearted at best. Now The Intercept puts some meat on the bone of at least one supposed rescue attempt and shows how inadequate and belated it was:
Eight men leapt into those rough seas on December 30 when the U.S. rained down a barrage of munitions, sinking three vessels. They required immediate rescue; chances were slim that they could survive even an hour. In announcing its strike, U.S. Southern Command or SOUTHCOM, said it “immediately notified” the Coast Guard to launch search and rescue protocols to save the men. …
Using open-source flight tracking data, Airwars and The Intercept learned that a Coast Guard plane did not head toward the site of the attack for almost two days.[!!] A timeline provided by the Coast Guard confirmed that it was roughly 45 hours before a flight arrived at the search area. [!]
The slow response and lack of rescue craft in the area suggests there was scant interest on the part of the U.S. in saving anyone. It’s part of a pattern of what appear to be imitation rescue missions that since mid-October have not saved a single survivor. [!]
Wall Street Journal: “Eric Trump Invests in ‘Low Cost Per Kill’ Drone Company”
Eric Trump is pouring money into a sector that is a growing focus of the Pentagon his father oversees: drones.
The president’s son is investing in the Israeli drone maker Xtend as part of a $1.5 billion deal to take the company public through a merger with a small Florida construction company.
Battle-tested during Israeli operations in Gaza in recent years, Xtend markets some of its drones as “low cost per kill” munitions that align with U.S. defense directives to help wage modern warfare. The company, which opened a facility in Florida, said it has already secured a multimillion-dollar Pentagon contract and is part of a continuing Defense Department competition for new suppliers.
By combining with JFB Construction JFB 29.00%increase; green up pointing triangle, “We are acquiring the resources we need to scale our manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. and gaining access to the U.S. public markets,” Xtend Chief Executive Aviv Shapira said.
Trump is a strategic investor in the deal, which included a private placement. So is Unusual Machines, a separate drone company in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and adviser.
The merger marks the latest expansion of the first family’s business empire since President Trump was returned to the White House, including into many sectors the Trump administration regulates. New ventures stretching from cryptocurrency to nuclear-fusion energy to manufacturing, which have generated billions of dollars in proceeds and paper wealth for the family, have renewed conflict-of-interest claims that the White House and Trump Organization have denied.
The Xtend deal culminates a series of transactions over months. […] […]
“Decision comes shortly after rejection sparked major controversy”
The Food and Drug Administration reversed course and told Moderna it would review its application for a new flu vaccine, the company announced Wednesday.
The agency told Moderna earlier this month that it would not review the submission because of a dispute over the design of a clinical trial, sparking an industry backlash and raising questions about broader decision-making at the FDA. The decision was made by top agency official Vinay Prasad, who STAT previously reported had overruled career scientists in the vaccine center.
Moderna is trying to secure approval for an mRNA flu vaccine for adults 50 and older. The FDA will now review the product in adults 50 to 64 through a regular pathway, and adults over 65 via accelerated approval with a requirement to run a post-marketing study. The agency will aim to review the vaccine by Aug. 5. […]
Newly revealed emails from within the Department of Homeland Security released on Monday show that senior leaders knew agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol significantly increased their use of force under President Donald Trump and his push against immigration.
A Freedom of Information Act request by the group American Oversight and reported by Politico uncovered reports sent to Caleb Vitello, who was head of ICE enforcement operations in March of last year. Those reports showed that there were 67 incidents involving the use of force in Trump’s first two months in office. Those incidents represent a more than 290% increase in use of force from the 17 such incidents in all of 2024, under former President Joe Biden.
[…] There are documented cases of immigration agents using banned chokeholds and other methods that put the public at danger—at the same time the administration is pouring millions into recruitment and deploying poorly trained officers to the field. […]
The violence comes in tandem with the federal government being weaponized under Trump to meet unrealistic goals for deportation of migrants. During the 2024 presidential campaign and throughout his time as a political figure, Trump has exaggerated the amount of crime connected to immigrants, particularly among Latino and Black immigrants. Most of the migrants targeted for deportation are not violent criminals but many are facing ICE agents deploying violence against them.
This mindset played a key role in the deaths of Minnesota residents Alex Pretti and Renee Good, American citizens who were killed in the street by agents carrying out Trump’s anti-immigrant actions.
As the violence has erupted, congressional Democrats have begun pushing for limits on ICE and other agencies—leading to the recent shutdown of Homeland Security funding. […]
[…] no one is going to call Kristi Noem out over the fact that over 750 Coast Guard flights have now been diverted from traditional Coast Guard activities like maritime patrols and search and rescue missions, and instead used to fly terrified immigrants to undisclosed locations.
Coast Guard personnel aren’t the only ones who have been pulled off their actual jobs to do ICE’s work instead. That means less focus on terrorism, drug trafficking, and crime […]
“Trump officials limit FEMA travel to disaster areas amid funding lapse, emails show”
“It is highly unusual for a government shutdown or funding lapse to impede ongoing disaster recovery efforts.”
The Department of Homeland Security has halted almost all travel amid the ongoing standoff over its funding, restricting the ability of some Federal Emergency Management Agency staff to move in and out of disaster-affected areas, according to emails and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Much of the department ran out of money over the weekend after negotiations stalled between the White House and Democratic lawmakers over restrictions on federal immigration enforcement. It is normal for the department to stop employees from traveling across the country for various assignments, such as trainings, during a funding lapse, 10 current and former FEMA officials said. But it is unusual for a government shutdown to impede ongoing disaster recovery efforts, the officials explained, saying it further reflects sweeping policies instituted under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem.
Typically, some FEMA staffers’ ability to travel to and from ongoing disaster recovery projects is unaffected by DHS funding. And usually, disaster travel is always allowed because it is mission-critical [!], a current veteran official said.
[…] On Tuesday night, DHS sent out an email ordering a stop to all travel, including for disaster-related work, sparking confusion across the agency as teams continue to respond to 14 ongoing disaster declarations as a result of brutal winter storms that hit parts of the country last month. The next morning, officials within DHS and FEMA had to scramble and negotiate guidance for how disaster-specific workers could continue to travel […]
According to one email sent Tuesday night, agency staff currently deployed in another region that was particularly hard-hit can continue assisting communities. But those who were slated to travel to these locations after Thursday can no longer do so. Employees who were on a rotation — perhaps home for a week to see family or go to the doctor — are not able to return to their job under the order.
These rotations are critical to disaster work because they enable people who’ve been working nonstop to take a break and then come back to their work. FEMA is also required to relieve employees who’ve been working too long in a state where they don’t live.
[…] The snag with some FEMA employees being unable to travel for disaster work, take breaks or relieve their colleagues adds to the beleaguered agency’s long list of operational issues since President Donald Trump took office for a second time and his appointees implemented significant changes in how the agency functions.
The travel pause has also halted some of FEMA’s other critical work, such as leading exercises and assessments for emergency plans and procedures at nuclear facilities, and flood mapping meetings with communities, according to an email obtained by The Post and an agency official familiar with the situation. That “will delay flood map updates, which directly impacts people waiting on new maps for any number of reasons,” the official said.
[…] “They are just trying to make it hurt, and the only people they are hurting are survivors and FEMA employees,” one veteran official said. “They just pull new rules out every day.”
Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to President Donald Trump, on Wednesday assailed a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finding that U.S. companies shoulder most of the costs of tariffs, calling for the central bank to punish the researchers behind the work, which he characterized as an “embarrassment.”
[…] The comments represent the latest attack on the Federal Reserve from an administration that has repeatedly sought to bully the central bank, with the president himself repeatedly attacking Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell for not slashing interest rates.
[…] The White House has also repeatedly attacked economic data and research that reached conclusions it did not like. The president in August called on Goldman Sachs to replace its top economist after the bank concluded U.S. firms and consumers would bear most of the tariffs’ costs — a conclusion that tracks the New York Fed’s. Trump also fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics that month following the release of bleak labor market news.
Hassett had been viewed as the leading contender to succeed Powell when the Fed chair’s term expires in mid-May. [Oh FFS. No.]
[…] In a study published last week, the New York Fed found that U.S. companies and consumers absorbed nearly 90 percent of the economic burden imposed by tariffs in 2025.
“Our results show that the bulk of the tariff incidence continues to fall on U.S. firms and consumers,” the New York Fed officials wrote. “These findings are consistent with two other studies that report high pass-through of tariffs to U.S. import prices.” […]
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has a variety of priorities, but earlier this month, the Republican floated an especially provocative idea: He wants seniors to delay their retirement plans, by at least a year, for the good of the country. [No]
Oz said at the National Press Club last week that if older Americans could remain in the workforce, they’d help the economy and save the country money. Putting his best spin on the idea, the former television personality said seniors who push off retirement would gain “agency over their future” in exchange. [Meaningless blather]
But many GOP officials don’t just want older Americans to stay in the workforce, they also want Americans at the other end of the age spectrum to join the workforce sooner. [social media post, with video]
“We need to focus on … getting people into the workforce even earlier,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier told Fox Business this week. “We passed legislation last year to help high school students get their hands dirty and get on job sites more quickly.” [aiyiyiyi]
This isn’t an altogether new priority for the GOP. In the wake of the 2010 midterm elections, when so-called Tea Party Republicans were riding high, a surprising number of party officials took aim at an unexpected target: child labor laws. […]
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, for example, suggested child labor laws might not be constitutional. Maine’s then-Gov. Paul LePage called for rolling back his state’s restrictions on children in the workplace. [!] Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa even argued that looser child labor laws might help combat childhood obesity.
[…] In time, the issue largely faded from the Republican Party’s to-do list, but in 2023, the issue started to make a comeback. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for example, signed a bill that made it easier for companies to hire children without getting consent from their parents. [!] Similar efforts were launched in several other states.
When the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint was written two years ago, it specifically endorsed rolling back “hazard” regulations around child labor. Around the same time, as Uthmeier noted, Florida loosened its child labor laws at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ behest.
Time will tell whether other states follow suit, though the bigger picture tells an important story: The more Republicans scramble to remove immigrants from the workforce, the greater the pressure they’ll feel to replace those workers with seniors and kids.
“Pastor Doug Wilson’s role at an official event at the Defense Department should be seen as a scandal worthy of scrutiny.”
Last spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added to his culture war campaign and led a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium, which was controversial for all sorts of reasons. It was not, however, a one-time gathering: The beleaguered secretary announced that he’d continue to hold these faith-specific prayer services, without modern precedent in this country, on a regular basis.
In a country that’s supposed to honor the separation of church and state, Hegseth’s events raise all sorts of legal, political and theological questions, but complicating matters further is who, exactly, the former Fox News host is welcoming to the Defense Department to help lead these Christian events.
This week, for example, Hegseth brought in pastor Douglas Wilson, a radical Christian nationalist, to lead an audience in prayer. We know this for sure because the Pentagon published a photo from the gathering, held on Tuesday. [social media post]
For those unfamiliar with Wilson, he’s not just another Christian conservative advocating for and against the usual culture war issues. Rather, as The Wall Street Journal reported in September, the right-wing pastor endorses a vision “in which same-sex relations are illegal, Muslims are barred from the public square and the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, is repealed.”
The Associated Press had a related report, noting that Wilson was “relegated to the fringe” for decades, until Donald Trump and his team rose to power and gave the pastor new influence and clout.
[…] the pastor insists that the United States is and must be a “Christian nation,” teaches that empathy itself can be a sin, wants to ban abortion and Pride parades and has even downplayed the horrors of slavery. [!]
Wilson isn’t accused of being a Christian nationalist; it is a label he embraces with enthusiasm.
[…] And yet, there was Hegseth, not only inviting Wilson to the Pentagon to lead an official event, but also standing alongside the radical pastor at the gathering, praying with his hand on Wilson’s back.
This was the same Hegseth who sparked a controversy last summer by promoting an online video that, among other things, included a pastor from Wilson’s church arguing that women in the U.S. shouldn’t be allowed to vote. [!]
[…] Obviously, Hegseth, in his personal capacity, is free to pursue whatever religious practices he wishes. It’s a free country, and his theological beliefs are his own business. But when the secretary of defense makes a conscious decision to invite a radical Christian nationalist to lead an official prayer event at the Pentagon, that deserves to be seen as a scandal worthy of scrutiny.
birgerjohanssonsays
After Starlink was shut down, infiltration groups in the ‘grey zone’ lost communications and Ukrainan forces seized the opportunity.
House Rep. Garland Hale “Andy” Barr IV is running for the Republican nomination for retiring Mitch McConnell’s US Senate seat, with a hell of a pitch:
“It’s not a sin to be White, it’s not against the law to be male and it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be a Christian.”
LOL WHUT.
Disqualifying for what? Eighty seven percent of the Senate and 63 percent of the country identifies as Christian. Two-thirds of Congress is white, and 75 percent is male. […] 60 percent of white men voted for Trump. […]
And skin a sin, wowzer gee! Haven’t heard-tell of talk like that since, like, 1845, when the Baptist convention split in two because a certain half of it believed God had cursed/gift-wrapped certain people up with the mark of Cain for certain others to enslave as pet beasts of the field. […]
And against the law to be male […]?
And, sigh again, white skin is not a culture, though JD Vance Marco Rubio and Trump’s batshit World Domination Manifesto have been pushing that idea on Europe, as an alternative to being united by values like the rule of law, human rights and honoring one’s promises. And got laughed at long and hard, as the Vance-Rubio way has never unified white Europe or prevented any white-on-white violence or war. Why, there is even a war going on right now in Ukraine they both keep trying to forget about.
[…] here’s Trump State Department appointee Jeremy Carl sputtering […] when Sen. Chris Murphy asked him to define white identity, and what part of it is being erased: [video]
“Certain types of, um, Anglo, uh, derived culture that comes from our history.”
“Like what?”
“Um, let me think about this […] if you were to look at the sort of Scotch-Irish military culture and a certain, you know, pride that went with that, you could have sub-elements of that culture, you could have Italians…”
Italian identity is a sub-element of Irish identity? That’s-a ethnic identity, ye bollix! And you said “white.”
“The white church is very different from the Black church in tone and style on average, foodways can often be different […] music can be different, if you look at the Superbowl Halftime show this year.” OOO Bad Bunny made them so mad.
Our access to white churches and white food is being erased?
And then that dumbshit said we’re being “Balkanized.” Yes, the Balkans! White people MOST FAMOUS for being peacefully united by their white identities!
Would you like to talk about Scotch-Irish identity and military history? Okay! The Scotch-Irish were Presbyterians who were starved and religiously persecuted out of Scotland and into occupying Ulster in Northern Ireland starting in the 1600s, as part of Bible-beating King James I’s plantation scheme to Make Scotland Great Again, to “reform and civilize the best inclined among them: rooting out or transporting the barbarous and stubborn sort.”
But the Scots were not warmly received by the native Irish, then or ever, far from it. So, uprooted and still struggling to make a living, from the 1630s and over the next couple hundred years many Scots-Irish kept on moving, over the sea and into the American South. […]
Skin-color-based enslavement for life replaced indentured servitude as the economic building block of cheap labor, the US became a country, and eventually President Andrew Jackson ethnic-cleansed out the natives […] And the Scots improved their foodways to make a new restaurant, McDonald’s.
[…] To this day Britain has never quite completely succeeded in getting Northern Ireland under its control. Nor has the King James Bible succeeded in unifying all of the Christians. Even the white ones in tone and church style! [video]
[…] Andy Barr, yesterday he defended his shitass ad to reporters:
We have a great history in our country, especially from the Civil Rights era, when a great American, Martin Luther King, said it should be about the content of your character, not the color of your skin. And we’ve come to this strange place in America where it’s not about the content of your character, it’s about your identity, or whether or not you are seen as some kind of protected group. That is very divisive. That divides our country.
Protected group? You mean like all of those redacted names in the Epstein Files? The felon President and his murderous goon squad who face no consequences ever? The only groups around here getting protected anywhere around these parts any more are rich perverts and January 6 defendants. […]
Charles Booker, the Democratic frontrunner, brought the zing. [video]
[…] Barr is currently three points in the lead among GOP contenders at 24 percent, but 38 percent are yet undecided ahead of the primary on May 19.
So what way you, proud white Scots-Irish of Kentucky? Where will you go? [video]
We’ll all go together, wherever we may go, and the rest of us will be judging the shit out of you for the contents of your characters! If those are the rules of engagement of the culture war, the left accepts.
Louisville Courier Journal link is available at the main link.
“White House taps Jay Bhattacharya, CDC critic, to lead agency for now”
“The co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which rebuked the CDC’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, will oversee the nation’s leading public health agency.” [aiyiyiyi]
Jay Bhattacharya, a top Trump administration health official and an outspoken critic of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, will lead the CDC on an acting basis, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personnel moves.
Bhattacharya, who will continue his role as director of the National Institutes of Health, replaces Jim O’Neill, who had served as the CDC’s acting director. O’Neill, who had also served as the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, will be nominated to run the National Science Foundation after he declined a potential ambassadorship to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, two of the people said.
The installation of Bhattacharya at the CDC is the latest move by the White House and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to shake up HHS’s leadership team ahead of the midterms, as the Trump administration seeks to stabilize a department rattled by internal fights and controversial messages.
[…] CDC is charged with protecting Americans from health threats and issues recommendations on vaccines and other public health matters. Trump officials have said they are planning to find a full-time CDC director, a post that requires Senate confirmation. Susan Monarez, who was confirmed as CDC director in July, was ousted less than a month later after clashing with Kennedy over his plans to change vaccine policies.
Bhattacharya, a Stanford University physician and economist, […] co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which was published in October 2020 and called for an end to coronavirus shutdowns. […]
“Many of the recommended policies, including lockdowns, social distancing, school closures, masking, and vaccine mandates, lacked robust confirmatory evidence and remain the subject of debate regarding their overall benefits and unintended consequences,” they wrote. “Where enforced, vaccine mandates contributed to decreased public confidence in routine voluntary immunizations.”
“These songs were impatient to be out in the world,” singer Bono said of the band’s surprise new EP, “Days of Ash.”
Irish rockers U2 became the latest high-powered musical act to condemn the federal immigration raids with the surprise release Wednesday of a six-track EP that kicks off with a song for slain Minneapolis protester Renée Good.
Following in the footsteps of Bruce Springsteen, Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish and other artists, U2 recorded “American Obituary,” a four-minute plus musical condemnation of the crackdown that left the mother of three dead on Jan. 7.
“Renee Good, born to die free. American mother of three. Seventh day, January. A bullet for each child, you see,” frontman Bono sings in the high energy rocker. “The color of her eye. 930 Minneapolis. To desecrate domestic bliss. Three bullets blast, three babies kissed. Renee the domestic terrorist?”
“America will rise against the people of the lie,” the chorus chants.
“I am not mad at you, Lord,” the song continues, an apparent reference to Good’s final words that were captured on video. “You’re the reason I was there. Could you stop a heart from breaking, by having it not care? Could you stop a bullet in midair?”
Titled “Days of Ash,” the EP was released on one of Christianity’s most somber days, Ash Wednesday.
The release also contains a poem set to music called “Wildpeace,” by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, and other songs that focus on the ongoing clashes in Gaza and Iran and Ukraine.
The track “Yours Eternally” features guest performances by British pop singer Ed Sheeran and Ukrainian rocker Taras Topolia, who has been fighting on the front lines against the Russians.
That track, U2 said in a press release to NBC News, will be accompanied by a short documentary that will be released on Feb. 24 to mark the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bono, in the release, said a full length album with a more “joyful tone” is still in the works, but they’re releasing these songs now because “these EP tracks couldn’t wait.”
“These songs were impatient to be out in the world,” Bono said. “They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow, we’re working on those now.”
“I’m excited about these new songs,” U2 bass guitarist Adam Clayton said. “It feels like they’re arriving at the right time.”
This is the band’s first record of new studio material since 2017, when U2 released “Songs of Experience.”
Founded in 1976 in Dublin, U2 is one of the world’s best-selling acts, a four-man band that burnished its reputation as politically and socially conscious rockers with songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” about “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and “New Year’s Day,” which was inspired by the Solidarity movement in Poland.
U2 drummer Larry Mullen said in the release “we’ve never shied away from taking a position.”
“We believe in a world where borders are not erased by force,” added U2 guitarist The Edge, “Where culture, language, and memory are not silenced by fear. Where the dignity of a people is not negotiable.”
Telegram is widely used by Russian troops, especially at the tactical level and in rear positions. Many units maintain group chats to coordinate logistics, share updates and even organise fundraising for equipment and munitions.
Some pro-war bloggers close to the defence ministry warned that restrictions on Telegram could hamper Russia’s air defences in responding to drone attacks. “Telegram remains almost the only means of communication in active combat units and helps coordinate inter-agency mobile fire groups,” wrote the pro-Kremlin channel Dva Mayora.
“There are numerous indications that foreign intelligence agencies have access to the messenger’s correspondence and are using this data against the Russian military,” Shadayev was cited as saying.
Despite those issues, Russian authorities will not block access to Telegram for troops in Ukraine for now, Shadayev said, adding that they would need “some time” to switch to other means of communication. He did not provide details.
Apparently the Russian government is not going to entirely ban Telegram for troops in Ukraine for the time being. I can only guess how bad the situation on the ground is that the Russian government is backing up. They talk about foreign intelligence but the real problem for the general use of Telegram is that it isn’t entirely controlled by the Russian government, it’s too easy for outside information to make it in.
birgerjohanssonsays
Anton Petrov:
“Study Suggests We Were Wrong About Einstein’s Wormhole Idea”
JM @148, thanks for that update. Seems like secure communications would be important. /sarcasm
In other news, as reported by Associated Press:
A coalition of health and environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, challenging the rescinding of a scientific finding that has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
tried and convicted in the U.S. in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison for taking bribes and allowing traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S., […] Trump pardoned the former president after he served less than four of those 45 years.
But the federal government’s magnanimity did not end there. On the day he was to be released, records show, Hernández had an immigration detainer—a request for law enforcement agencies to hold noncitizens for pickup by [ICE] […] the Federal Bureau of Prisons scrambled to get his detainer removed so he could walk free.
And Hernández did not just walk out of the prison. Despite persistent budget and staffing shortages, prison officials paid a specialized tactical team overtime to drive Hernández from a high-security facility in West Virginia to the famed five-star Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City [His lawyer said the government didn’t pay the rent: over-$1k/night for a standard room.] […] Before he left, Hernández was allowed to use the captain’s government phone to talk to the federal prison system’s deputy director, Joshua Smith, who was convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy before Trump pardoned him in 2021.
[…]
that stunned prisons bureau staff. One official called it “absolutely fucking nuts,” […] Another agreed that it was unprecedented: “Usually, they get a shitty bus ride or a cheap plane ticket. They don’t get the carpet rolled out for them.”
As of now, the former president’s whereabouts are unknown. […] he had “no intention of returning to Honduras” immediately […] If Hernández is in the U.S., it’s unclear what his immigration status is. Meanwhile, Honduran officials have issued a warrant for Hernández’s arrest over years-old fraud allegations […] there is currently no pending Interpol red notice asking for law enforcement to detain him.
Rando: “Casually learning that the deputy director of the federal prison system is a Trump-pardoned drug trafficker, which qualifies as an ‘oh by the way’ in this story.”
The Trump administration on Wednesday released the rest of the funds it had been withholding for the construction of a major rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday.
A delegation of U.S. senators was returning Wednesday from a trip to Ukraine, hoping to spur action in Congress for a series of sanctions meant to economically cripple Moscow and pressure President Vladimir Putin to make key concessions in peace talks.
It was the first time U.S. senators have visited Odesa, Ukraine’s third-most populous city and an economically crucial Black Sea port that has been particularly targeted by Russia, since the war began nearly four years ago.
The Trump administration will appeal a federal judge’s order to restore a Philadelphia exhibit on the nine people enslaved by George Washington at his former home on Independence Mall. The Justice Department insists the administration alone can decide what stories are told at National Park Service properties.
Laughable and horrifying at the same time: laughable that the Trump administration would even bring this case before a judge… and horrifying that Trump’s DOJ is classifying any group of people as domestic terrorists even when that is not reality-based. In addition, all kinds of puffery and performance theater was enacted when the judge objected to a shirt bearing the images of civil rights leaders.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, appointed by President Donald Trump, declared a mistrial on Tuesday in the “terrorism” trial of nine people whom the Trump administration says are part of a “North-Texas antifa cell.”
Now, there is no mechanism by which Trump can designate antifa or anything else as a “domestic terrorist organization,” because that is not a thing that exists in the law. […]
Pittman is a real innovator here, what with the wildly unusual decision to declare a mistrial during jury selection. What, pray tell, required such a measure?
One of the defense attorneys, MarQuetta Clayton, committed the unbelievable crime of wearing a T-shirt with images of civil rights leaders and protests from the Civil Rights Movement, in honor of Jesse Jackson, who had died that morning.
Clayton had worn the shirt all day, so Pittman should’ve had ample time to see it, but he didn’t decide that a mistrial was necessary until Clayton began questioning potential jurors.
Pittman first halted jury selection because he was frustrated with Clayton’s questions, which is a problem in itself. Then he decided what he was really mad about was the shirt: “I don’t know why in the world you would think that’s appropriate.” A portion of the pool of 75 prospective jurors had voiced views against Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it looks like Pittman decided to torpedo the jury pool because of that. Gotta put on a show if you want to hand Trump a win!
Pittman said that the shirt was a political message that could bias jurors by equating the defendants with the Civil Rights Movement and that the defense lawyers would be mad if the prosecutor wore pro-ICE or pro-Trump clothing.
Except the defense attorney wasn’t wearing anything related to ICE, Trump, or even recent civil rights history. Pittman is saying that the mere invocation of decades-old civil rights history is unfair to the poor sweet babies of ICE because potential jurors might view them as violating civil rights, which … if the shoe fits?
A former federal prosecutor for the district twisted herself in knots when trying to justify Pitman’s move to the media: “The fact that it was a T-shirt that had graphics that could be connected to the theme of the defendant’s defense, which was that she attended a peaceful protest and did not intend to hurt any law enforcement officer, is likely why he found a mistrial.”
That explanation might hang together a bit more if Pittman had talked to Clayton about it immediately. Instead, he waited hours to throw his little tantrum.
Part of why Pittman doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt here is that he’s been openly targeting the defense attorneys for months. [!] In January, he fined three of them because he didn’t like their discovery motions. He almost blocked another one, George Lobb, from representing one of the defendants because Pittman said Lobb didn’t meet the residency requirements to practice there. This is not an evenhanded fellow. [!]
[I snipped more details related to Pitman’s past judgements and statements.]
[…] Pittman is a clown for even entertaining the whole “Trump wrote down on a piece of paper that he hated antifa very much so that is law now” thing that is going on here. The president cannot make laws via executive order. He cannot invent new crimes via executive order. But Pittman doesn’t seem all that bothered by such niceties, unlike when he threw out former President Joe Biden’s student loan relief measures, howling that it represented a “complete usurpation” of congressional authority by the president.
[…] letting Trump just rule via pettiness, persecution, and vibes? Amazing, democracy-enhancing.
Pittman is set to reconvene the trial on Monday with a new set of jurors, presumably ones thoroughly vetted for their deep and abiding love of ICE. Pittman ended Tuesday with a little speech about how “absolutely disgusted” he is about partisan division, adding that “we have to find a way to turn down the anger.”
Buddy, you torpedoed a trial because you got sad about a shirt. You are the partisan here. Turn it down yourself.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) slammed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deporting a 2-month-old and his family.
On Tuesday afternoon, Castro wrote on the social platform X that 2-month-old Juan Nicolás and his mother were detained at Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.
“Juan has bronchitis—according to his mom—and at some point in the last several hours he was unresponsive,” Castro added. “Juan was still discharged from the hospital despite that around midnight today.”
The Texas Democrat wrote that he is “deeply concerned that Juan and his mom will be deported and that Juan’s health will continue to deteriorate.”
“His life is in danger because of ICE’s monstrous cruelty,” he said. “I will continue to provide updates and we will keep fighting to protect them.”
[…] “According to their attorney, ICE deported the family with only the money that they had in their commissary—a total of $190,” Castro added. “To unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous. My staff and I are in contact with Juan’s family. […]
It’s officially been a year (and five days) since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and yet it seems so much longer. In that time, he has broken multiple promises he made in order to secure the votes needed for his confirmation — such as killing millions of dollars of funding for vaccine programs, clearing out the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replacing them all with anti-vaxx weirdos, making some real deadly changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, etc. etc.
We’ve also learned so much more about him than we ever wanted to know, thanks to his deeply creepy affair with Olivia Nuzzi and periodic confessions about things like snorting cocaine off of toilet seats. We have read his poetry and wanted to die in our faces.
Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest / Drink from me Love / I mean to squeeze your cheeks to force open your mouth. / I’ll hold your nose as you look up at me to encourage you to swallow. / ‘Dont spill a drop’. / I am a river You are my canyon. / I mean to flow through you. / I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love.
Cue internal screaming. So, so much internal screaming.
And yet, somehow, this man has one of the most devoted fan bases on earth. I don’t know if they’ve actually read his poetry, as they exist in an entirely different news bubble than we do, but there does not seem to be anything he can do to put them off their lunches.
Even, somehow, guzzling milk in a hot tub with noted paragon of health and wellness Kid Rock, while wearing jeans.
In what is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve seen done with milk since Tyra Banks made a bunch of aspiring models get made up as other races for what I hope was a fake Got Milk campaign, Secretary Brain Worms posted a video on Tuesday of him and Kid Rock eating, working out and, again, guzzling milk in a hot tub while wearing jeans.
Because nothing screams “healthy” like a guy who gets wasted and pulls guns out on Rolling Stone reporters.
The post on Xitter and Instagram is captioned “I’ve teamed up with Kid Rock to deliver two simple messages to the American people: GET ACTIVE + EAT REAL FOOD,” a message his devoted fan base of people not confused by the concept of wearing jeans in a hot tub was very excited to hear. It’s a line they’ve been obsessed with for years, angrily crying that this is all anyone has to do to not be overweight — which, you know, we know for a fact is not actually true — in order to justify being shitty to fat people.
Naturally, the video is set to “Bawitdaba,” Kid Rock’s classic ode to topless dancers, chicks with beepers, caps of meth, hookers, punctured veins and several other family-friendly subjects that Kennedy surely finds relatable. [video]
It is very rock and roll, you can tell by the, um, shark jumping in front of an American flag. [screengrab]
And the dead bear wearing a trilby. So nice that they can bond over their shared love of dead bears! [image]
Following that intro, the two go on about their day in a normal fashion, making food and posing enthusiastically and holding a sign in front of a petite reproduction of the Statue of Liberty — which does feel somewhat ironic given the administration’s stance against literally everything the inscription on the statue stands for, particularly the part about taking in the tired and poor masses yearning to be free. [photo]
Then they sat in an indoor car, for reasons. [photo]
Following that (and a brief interlude of fire), they commenced their workout. [screengrab] I think the last time anyone held my feet for sit-ups I was in elementary school, but okay. [image of Kid Rock giving the finger]
As is his wont, Kennedy wore jeans while working out. And he also wore them in a sauna and in an ice plunge. [screengrab]
Now, I know he’s not concerned with germs, due to the aforementioned “snorting cocaine off of toilet seats” thing, but dude is just asking for a fungal infection at this point. What is this about? […]
He then either loses Kid Rock or has an acid flashback to that time he went dinosaur bone hunting with Jeffrey Epstein. [screengrab]
Aha! Kid Rock, that scamp, is in the hot tub. But their workout time is not over yet, because there is pickleball. Because of course there’s pickleball. Or is there? Because, if you will notice, those jeans are not wet. […] I am quite familiar with how long it takes jeans to dry, and it is not “less than five minutes.”
Did he change into new jeans? Is this not the same day? What is happening with the timeline here! [screengrab]
Well, those jeans did not stay dry for long, because after pickleball, they both decided to take a dip in the hot tub, while drinking a refreshing glass of whole milk. [screengrab]
Oh yeah, drinking milk in wet jeans in Kid Rock’s hot tub, while the scent of chlorine wafts around you! […]
I don’t know, I don’t even really mess with regular hot tubs because my mom worked in a hospital and instilled within me a healthy fear of flesh-eating bacteria … but I don’t even want to begin to consider what kind of new and horrible lifeforms are developing in the primordial soup that is surely Kid Rock’s hot tub. […]
On a less silly note, I do feel the need to point out that there is a long association with white supremacist nonsense and drinking milk — based on their belief that the ability to drink milk is exclusive to white people and a symbol of their genetic superiority. For a while, there was a trend of these freaks chugging milk to demonstrate said superiority. […]
It does seem, however, that RFK Jr is just getting jazzed about whole milk because he probably can’t promote raw milk as much as he’d like to these days, on account of how it keeps making people very sick.
Now, I am not a health expert, but I do know there is a lot more to health than just “eating right and doing exercise” — like, for instance, not doing shit that invites bacteria into one’s nether regions, universal health care and not spreading germs. Also, not doing cocaine off of toilet seats or drunkenly waving guns around. Vaccines are pretty helpful as well, and if children get them like they are supposed to, we don’t end up in situations like we have now, with 910 measles cases by mid-February.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear that the Secretary and the Trump administration writ large are nowhere near as interested in any of that as they are hanging out or swooning over the few faded stars who can stand them.
[Sen. Cindy Holscher (D)] challenged the Republican-led majority to show evidence that sexual assaults occur in bathrooms by trans people. She quoted various studies to back up her calculations that Kansans have a .00083% chance of being assaulted by a trans person in a restroom.
“You are eight times more likely to get struck by lightning,” Holscher said. “You’re 50 times more likely to die in a car crash, you’re 100 times more likely to be killed by gun violence, and you are 3,500 times more likely to be sexually assaulted by a man.”
[…]
After the veto was overturned, Rieber expressed his frustration at the danger he believes the bill creates for trans people. He referred to a section of the bill that requires all gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates to match a person’s biological sex at birth. [“]outing yourself every time somebody sees your driver’s license.[“]
Rando: “A party representing only 45% of Kansas registered voters shouldn’t have a supermajority and all the fuckery that comes with it.”
“WEXMAC TITUS allows ICE to treat immigration enforcement like a national security operation rather than a standard civil immigration one,” […] allowing ICE to quickly issue orders to contractors without going through normal competitive bidding means ICE can expand detention facilities and transportation services in days instead of months.
[…]
the contractor “shall furnish all personnel, management, equipment, supplies, training, certification, accreditation, and services necessary for performance of all aspects of the contract.”
Perhaps most tellingly, the solicitation states: “The contractor does not have a right of refusal and shall take all referrals from ICE as applicable.” In other words, being a WEXMAC TITUS contractor doesn’t automatically mean you’re working for ICE, but it does mean you’ve agreed that if asked, you will.
“So if there was a US citizen—a baby, or someone sick that clearly shouldn’t be there—the contractor can’t say they don’t want to take them,” a federal employee familiar with similar government contracts in a different agency told me after reviewing the TITUS solicitation. “That’s super sketchy.”
The federal employee pointed out a few troubling sections, including clause H.2.1.2 which essentially allows DHS to choose whichever vendor they’d like for a job. […] Despite the horrifying nature of what the TITUS money is being used for, the federal worker said it all appears legitimate. “It’s just corrupt.”
[…] the fact that it’s a Navy program puts it within Congress’ power to rein it in—particularly because this is the first time ICE specifically has had access to the program.
it is the earliest identified rotary metal drill from ancient Egypt, dating to the Predynastic period (late 4th millennium BCE), before the first pharaohs ruled.
[…]
described as “a little awl of copper, with some leather thong wound round it.” That brief note proved easy to overlook, and the object attracted little attention for decades. However, under magnification, the researchers found that the tool shows distinctive wear consistent with drilling: fine striations, rounded edges, and a slight curvature at the working end; all features that point to rotary motion, not simple puncturing. […] an extremely fragile leather thong […] is a remnant of the bowstring used to power a bow drill, an ancient equivalent of a hand drill, where a string wrapped around a shaft is moved back and forth by a bow to spin the drill rapidly.
[…]
[“]This suggests that Egyptian craftspeople mastered reliable rotary drilling more than two millennia before some of the best-preserved drill sets.” Bow drills are well known from later periods of Egyptian history, including surviving New Kingdom examples from the middle to late second millennium BCE, with tomb scenes showing craftsmen drilling beads and woodwork
A Minnesota federal judge ordered a government attorney to be held in civil contempt of court for violating an order requiring the Justice Department to turn over identification documents to a man who was ordered released from ICE custody, further escalating tension between the judiciary and Trump administration over immigration cases.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino ordered the attorney, Matthew Isihara, to pay $500 each day until the petitioner’s identification documents are returned to him.
Isihara is a military attorney currently detailed to assist the Justice Department as a special U.S. attorney, according to his LinkedIn profile.
I believe this is the first actual contempt of court. The US released the man in custody after being ordered but didn’t return all of his property. Including his identification documents, without which he is likely a walking target for Trump’s ICE.
1. DHS surges 3,000 officers to Minneapolis without doing anywhere near enough prep first.
2. Hundreds of habeas cases overwhelm local courts.
3. Dozens of DOJ lawyers quit in disgust/anger.
4. The DOJ brings in JAGs to cover.
5. A JAG was just held in contempt and fined $500/day for ICE’s failures.
Commentary
As I understand it, JAG can’t quit without being court martialed, so they can’t walk away from a $15k/mo. bill, which they can’t pay.
court martialed for dereliction of duty, resulting in a dishonorable discharge, prison time, and loss of his law license, voting rights, and his military pension.
The SAUSA positions are still being filled by volunteer JAGs. They haven’t gotten to the part where JAGs are sent there against their will.
If this is the case, fuck him, he deserves all the contempt in the world, including the fines.
StevoRsays
Discovery of Pluto day today -18th feb 19230 so only a few mins left but stil
Happy Discovery Day Pluto!
On this day back in 1930 some 91 years ago, Kansan farmboy turned astronomer discovered the 9th Planet and still my favourite one.
Reflect Orbital wants to destroy the night sky to deliver “sunlight as a service”. SpaceX wants to destroy Low Earth Orbit to launch one million “AI datacentres”
The only way to formally protest these two ideas is to file a comment with the US FCC, which is horribly complicated, but the American Astronomical Society has detailed instructions posted here.
Comments due March 6 for SpaceX and March 9 for Reflect Orbital. Write! Write! Write!
They provide templates to help get you started (but be careful using templates, it’s my understanding that the FCC will only consider “unique” comments that are submitted). But I think having a large number of individuals who are willing to jump through all the stupid hoops the FCC has set up is a pretty powerful statement in itself! Thanks, all.
Rando 1: “It’s open for comments worldwide. Right?”
Sam Lawler: “Yes, anyone can submit a comment!”
Rando 2: “Completely unrealistic. Is this really about launching that much or is it about generating hype before trying to sell something or raise money?”
I’ve been patrolling a LOT recently, and south Minneapolis is super quiet ICE-wise. Does still seem to be a lot of agents in MN. I’ve heard from ICE sources that they’re basically skipping the city and focusing on the burbs
It’s been almost a week since the federal government announced that officials planned to “draw down” […] it does appear from anecdotal reports that [ICE] has shifted its activities from the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to the state’s suburbs, exurbs and small towns.
[…]
a mechanic who was born in Mexico […] may have been put at ease by the announcement […] When two women popped the hood on their vehicle and knocked on his door, the man went outside to help. The arrest was captured on video. […] “His six kids are now without their father.” […] “You’re not finding [the worst of the worst] helping their neighbors with their car troubles,”
Can Lord Peter Mandelson be far behind? The evidence in the two cases seems to be much the same, so far as I’ve seen: emails to Epstein containing confidential information acquired through an official position.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 190
I have no idea, the investigation and prosecutions of these kind of high flyers tend to take a long time. First, the prosecution wants to criss every t to rule out any loophole. Once there is a prosecution, the lawyers for the defence will do everything to slow down the process.
birgerjohanssonsays
Very important lore.
“Why Can’t the Water Goddess Aqua Purify Alcohol Alone?”
DeSantis Law Collapses Into Chaos As International World Cup Warning Revealed
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gXrjsybDntI
.
The kind of people who pays thousands of $ for tickets are hardly the demographic that immigration authority should be concerned with, but now the orchs in the government are scaring the audience away.
birgerjohanssonsays
“When that Man is Dead and Gone” (1941) Anti-Hitler Song by Irving Berlin
Anyone else having issues with the FTB site blog here loading lately?
Could just be my old desktop computer..
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Yeah, DNS is pointing to the wrong IP for some people. For me, it’d been intermittent the past day or two, then down all of today. I did a WHOIS lookup to get a current working IP (104.21.58.227) and edited my HOSTS file to bypass DNS—a temporary workaround that shouldn’t be left in place.
HJ Hornbeck alerted the tech. For him, one mobile browser worked another didn’t. On his laptop, no browsers worked. Other bloggers noted downtime, too. PZ’s been posting.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
ACLU: “The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.”
David Perry (Journalist, historian):
Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance. And you know why?
Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.
Rando:
I was in these conversations. Every single meeting someone would say, “We have to change these things because they’re illegal.” Then I would grind my teeth and explain that they weren’t illegal. Some people just didn’t do the reading, some were afraid of getting sued someday, and others wanted it.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Adding to 186. Sam Lawler: “Fun fact to keep you awake tonight: Just had a chat with an atmospheric chemist, and the best comparison she could come up with for the pollution that would result from burning up 1 million ‘AI datacenter’ satellites in Earth’s atmosphere is a nuclear war. […] purely looking at soot and particulates/aerosols, not radioactivity.”
Rando: “‘AI winter’… truly scary…”
Sam Lawler: “Oh god what a horrible term.”
Let me explain what this genuinely EVIL memo does. The admin is doubling down on its plan to arrest, detain, and interrogate tens of thousands of legally present refugees; people already vetted who’ve lived here legally for 1+ year.
Hundreds were arrested in Minnesota before a court blocked this.
Refugees are people vetted overseas by U.S. Refugee Officers through an often years-long process. They enter the country legally and on a path to citizenship. Refugees are required to apply for a green card one year after they arrive, but they CANNOT apply earlier than that.
Even though refugees CANNOT apply for green cards until one year after arrival, DHS now claims that the 1980 Refugee Act actually *requires* ICE to “detain and inspect” refugees who don’t have a green card at year one. Reaching this conclusion required overturning decades-old interpretations.
Making matters worse, the Trump admin is REFUSING to adjudicate green card applications for refugees who come from one of the 39 countries Trump banned.
So under this policy, a refugee who applies for a green card exactly on time, doing nothing wrong, can (and DHS says must) be jailed by ICE.
In Minnesota, this policy involved ICE officers arresting refugees who had done EVERYTHING right, then flying them to Texas in chains for interrogation. Remember, these people had filed every application on time, had done nothing wrong, and were here in the country 100% legally.
In a section of the memo that is truly Orwellian, the Trump admin actually says it’s REFUGEES who have the “misguided belief” about the law—even though this policy is a brand new interpretation of a 45-year-old law—and therefore it’s THEIR fault they’re traumatized when ICE comes to jail them.
[…] it was filed in an ongoing lawsuit about the use of this argument to detain refugees in Minnesota, so the Trump admin already knows this policy is legally vulnerable. Yet they’re going forward with it anyway.
I want to emphasize that this memo and policy is NOT about asylum seekers, who come to the US first and then seek legal status after. Refugees seek legal status outside the United States, are granted protection, and then come here fully legally.
[…]
seemingly no one noticed for the last 45 years. Their argument rests on the word “custody,” which they claim means detention, even though there are other meanings. […] Here’s what a federal judge in Minnesota wrote […]
“custody” is best read to mean “responsibility” or “control”, rather than prolonged detention.
Rando 1: “Trying to imagine their take on child custody in divorce.”
Rando 2: “It’s also notable that the memo itself is dated yesterday. So not only is the substance thin, it’s an after-the-fact justification for a policy already in place.”
This gives you a sense of scale of the Trump admin’s new refugee detention policy; they are claiming that all 100,000 of these lawfully present refugees MUST be arrested and detained for “re-vetting” and interrogation about their status.
Chris Geidner (Law Dork): Decisions after the revetting generally take around 8 months […] Approximately 100,000 refugees are awaiting determinations on their applications for adjustment of status.
Maryland, on Tuesday, banned local law enforcement from being part of ICE’s notorious 287(g) program [which deputizes local and state officers to act on ICE’s behalf]. That automatically forces *9* sheriffs out of their ICE contract! And New Mexico did the same last week.
This means TEN of the states with Democratic trifectas now have bans on ICE’s 287(g) program. [California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington] That leaves *six* Democratic trifectas that do not.
Mamdani’s preliminary budget proposal, which he introduced earlier this week, includes a $29 million cut to the city’s three major library systems. […] another example of how the new mayor is backtracking on policy commitments as he faces financial and political pressure. The mayor on Wednesday announced he would resume homeless encampment sweeps, despite his earlier pledges to end the practice.
[…]
Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for the mayor, said […] the preliminary budget marked the beginning of a months-long budget process.
[…] a 6-3 majority, with Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh dissenting. […] Big additional point: The majority doesn’t say *anything* about what happens next with respect to possible refunds (a point Kavanaugh emphasizes at the end of his 63(!)-page dissent). Presumably, that question will go back to the Court of International Trade to try to sort out in the first instance.
Commentary
Kavanaugh is attempting to manufacture the legal doctrine of pointus de noreturnis: If the regime’s unlawful actions are too difficult to unwind, we apparently have no choice but to see them through.
Which is particularly funny from the inventor of the Kavanaugh Stop. The government can wrong you and it’s all “no harm, no foul,” right up until it flips to “too much harm, no remedy.”
So if I pull a Pulp Fiction and steal the wallets of everyone at a diner, take the cash, and toss the wallets in a ditch, and it’s too hard to figure out how much cash each wallet had, I can just keep the money?
[Illinois Gov] Pritzker demands a $1,700 refund per family for the people of Illinois after Trump’s tariffs were ruled unconstitutional. Dems, pay attention. This is your midterms message.
Have you or a loved one been charged extra for buying imported goods? If so, you may be entitled to financial compensation…
There is no way this White House has the organizational skills to manage these refunds.
Watch to see how the White House handles this administratively. For example, millions of imports are in customs *right now.* They’ll continue to be charged tariffs, despite the Supreme Court ruling, until DHS directs CBP to cease collection. Who’s writing the memo? When? When will it be effective? There’s a decent chance the Trump administration will take no action, leaving tariffs in place, because the Supreme Court has no arm of enforcement.
Missing the Point: “[Screenshot: It’s a Wonderful Life, Bank run scene] You’re thinking of the $175 billion in tariff money all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in the White House ballroom, the renaming of the Department of Defense, the $10 billion transfer to the Board of Peace, and a hundred other unauthorized actions.”
Jarrett Renshaw (Reuters): “Trump was speaking with a room full of US governors at the White House when he was handed a note from an aide informing him of the Supreme Court decision”
CNN’s Kristen Holmes reports that Trump blew up during a meeting after learning of the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs. “He started ranting about the decision, not only calling it a disgrace, but started attacking the courts and at one point saying these effing courts [Video clip]”
Trump says his tariffs remain in effect and will not be revoked, and announces a global 10% increase “over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.” [Video clip]
Chris Geidner (Law Dork):
1. Trump was ridiculous and offensive. That’s a given.
2. His tariff comments are not saying he’s ignoring the Supreme Court. Anyone who tells you that is not a serious person.
3. There have always been other tariff authorities. There are, however, limits to the tariffs under those authorities.
Rando: “He invoked a different law, which allows a temporary 150 day tariff. One that I believe Kavanaugh suggested.”
Elie Mystal (The Nation):
Generally with you on point 2… except for the fact that he said, “They didn’t really mean it,” three times […] I *honestly* have no idea what he fucking means by that.
Elie Mystal:
Trump: “When you read the dissenting opinions, there is no way you can argue with them.”
Well, actually, there are a six ways you can argue against them.
In early 2025, President Trump invoked IEEPA […] to impose unprecedented tariffs on a wide range of imports. […] Courts have long recognized that when duties or tariffs are later invalidated, the government cannot lawfully retain those amounts.
[…]
CBP typically implements such court orders through formal guidance, instructing importers to submit [Post Summary Corrections] or administrative protests to secure refunds. Should CBP fail to act promptly or deny relief, importers retain recourse to the [Court of International Trade] […] In such cases, courts commonly compel compliance and award refunds with interest, and persistent delay or resistance by CBP may expose the government to liability for attorneys’ fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act.
In remarkable 9-page order, Judge Provinzino lifts civil contempt order on AUSA in MN after govt finally complies with her order, but says fact that AUSAs lack “basic resources” & “training” can no longer excuse wrongs to detainees.
Says govt has asked for grace for its violations of orders “again, and again, and again (and to other judges in this district again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again),” […] Even at the contempt hearing, she says, both the special AUSA & hsi supervisor were unprepared, and the ICE agent summoned by the govt—notified only the morning of the hearing—knew virtually nothing about petitioner’s case.
Even after the 90-min contempt hearing, judge still has no idea who decided to violate her orders by releasing petitioner S.J. in TX, rather than in MN, and without his property. (S.J. had to spend night in a shelter. His def atty arranged to get him home.)
* Rando: “every single instance of ‘again’ is footnoted! So not hyperbole.”
Roger Parloff:
also bear in mind the inane, knee-jerk, judge-trashing comment that the US Atty for the District of Minnesota gave the NYT when it sought comment on the utter breakdown taking place in his office.
“Judge Provinzino’s order is a lawless abuse of judicial power,” Daniel N. Rosen
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Eric Umansky (ProPublica):
This case is insane: ICE shot and killed a citizen last March then *hid it for a year.* The young man they killed had no criminal history. All we know about shooting is from internal ICE docs. We don’t know officers’ names. We don’t have footage.
a US citizen was shot and killed in Texas […] a late-night traffic encounter that was not publicly disclosed […] Ruben Ray Martinez, 23 […] The records [were] obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
[…]
Agents then surrounded the vehicle, telling those inside to get out, but the driver “accelerated forward” and struck an HSI special agent “who wound up on the hood of the vehicle”, the report said. An HSI supervisory special agent standing by the side of the car then fired his weapon multiple times through the open driver’s-side window […] The HSI officer whom the report says was struck by the vehicle was treated for an unspecified knee injury at a nearby hospital and released.
[…]
[His mother] was contacted by an investigator from the Texas Rangers, the lead agency looking into the shooting. Reyes said the investigator told her there were videos of the shooting that contradicted the account provided by federal agents. […] She said she was told by the investigator that the state report into the shooting was completed in October and that the case would be presented to a grand jury for potential criminal charges.
An apparent smuggling ring […] played a central role in funding the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine […] 48 seemingly independent companies operating from different physical addresses to disguise the origin of Russian oil, particularly crude tied to the Kremlin-controlled producer Rosneft. […] selling into markets such as India and China, and some shipments are routed via third locations such as the UAE. […] Three EU officials told the Financial Times its findings could support new sanctions […]
The Financial Times said it identified 442 web domains whose public registrations showed they used a single private email server, “mx.phoenixtrading.ltd,” indicating shared back-office functions.
Just realized how many lawyers they’re going to need in the US Court of International trade, it’s going to be fishing with dynamite for plaintiffs seeking to recoup tariffs paid IMO. […] they have run out of lawyers.
The actual amount collected under IEEPA is somewhat unknown but it’s likely well over $100bn. And claims are transferrable, so a small importer can sell them at a discount (say, 80 cents on the dollar) to another entity that would bundle and sue over a whole bunch of smaller claims.
If consumers bore the vast majority of the tariffs and consumer spending didn’t crater, is this just a giant windfall to importers?
*Consumers* didn’t. Domestic entities bore almost all of the tariff burden but the degree of pass-through to prices paid by the final consumer was far lower than the pass-through to direct imports as best we can tell right now.
A handy Bloomberg chart on Trump’s options on replacing the tariffs just struck down
Btw the Section 338 tariffs are totally untested. We could be back here in no time whatsoever with an identical set of tariffs and get the same result.
George Pearkes: “New 10% tariff is under Section 122 [150 days, max 15% to respond to intl payments problems, w/o investigation]”
Rando: “The best part about this for him is not the tariffs per se, but his ability to impose them arbitrarily and at will. I don’t think he’s going to have the patience to follow through on anything that takes more than a few days and/or requires an investigation.”
Rando: “Jesus christ, they forged a signature on an Ethics Board review in order to run a *single blind Hepatitis B vaccine trial on infants* in Western Africa.”
A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study. The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.
[…] in addition to RFK Jr., Bill Ackman had also provided funding for this unethical research.
It did not undergo scientific or ethics review by any credible body. The fraudulent IRB signature occurred in Guinea-Bissau. Regardless, before RFK Jr., this study would have required review by a U.S.-based or U.S.-approved IRB. But this didn’t happen—the registration for the IRB in G-B had lapsed, did not meet US requirements, and shouldn’t have been accepted.
it was routed straight from the director’s office to grant management officials who approved it, a process that took only 10 days. An ordinary grant review process can take upward of a year. Almost immediately after the $1.6 million grant was posted in the federal register on Dec. 18, scientists around the world denounced the study as unethical. Though U.S. health officials contended publicly that the study was proceeding, the Guinea-Bissau health secretary announced on Jan. 22 that it would be halted while officials assessed the ethics of continuing.
Elizabeth Jacobs: “I’m pleased to see that the researchers’ university has launched an investigation. These events call into question whether human subjects protections were in place for any of the studies previously conducted in G-B.”
An Associated Press journalist was reportedly beaten by police and briefly detained in Yaounde, Cameroon, alongside three other reporters and a lawyer. The incident occurred as they attempted to interview Africans recently deported from the United States […] The journalists had their equipment confiscated, which has yet to be returned
[…]
The recent flights have brought the total number of deportees in Cameroon to 17 […] All of these individuals had been granted […] protection designed to prevent deportation to countries where they fear persecution or harm.
under a secret agreement, the […] Trump administration circumvented these protections by sending them to a third country […] Cameroonian authorities immediately detained the deportees, despite having no legal basis for doing so. […] Given the risks of torture, refoulement, and other abuses in Cameroon, the US violated international law by deporting people there.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 210 on how refunds of the nixed tariff are transferrable.
A subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, which is run by the sons of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is letting clients essentially bet that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will be struck down in court. […] to buy the rights to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential refunds from companies who have paid Trump’s tariffs [at 20-30 cents on the dollar] […] “We’ve already put a trade through representing about ~$10 million[“]
A report issued last week by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform delivers a damning recounting of the varied ways [DOGE] violated cybersecurity protocols across nearly every executive branch agency—all while dismantling internal security expertise and misleading agency leaders about the damage it was causing.
[…]
Most sensationally, […] potential Russian and Chinese access to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) servers shortly after DOGE created a government-wide infrastructure to distribute Musk’s infamous “Fork in the Road” email across federal agencies. […] “DOGE employees flouted cybersecurity, privacy, and procurement laws to stand up this capability and exposed employees across a wide variety of agencies to spear-phishing and social engineering cyberattacks.” […] “DOGE employees lowered all firewall protections at OPM to enable the exfiltration of data for use outside of a government environment,”
AYFKM THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I SUED THEM ABOUT. But noooooo there’s no risk here, nosireee. I’m so fucking livid about this, I can barely see straight.
HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS TOMORROW IS MY APPEAL DEADLINE.
* * *
After a few hours of panic, I realized last night that it actually isn’t because the order was issued after the opinion. But still that’s hilarious.
Ten days ago, the social chat app Discord announced that it would launch “teen-by-default” settings for its global audience. […] restricted access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering […] This, of course, means that to use Discord the way you are used to, you’ll have to let it scan your face, and the internet wasn’t happy.
[…]
[Security researchers anticipating a workaround] set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that’s used by Discord for biometric identity verification—and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server. […] the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting—and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies.
On Monday, Discord stated that it will not be proceeding with Persona for identity verification.
Persona Identity, Inc. is a Peter Thiel-backed venture […] Persona powers identity verification processes for the likes of OpenAI, Roblox, Heritage Bank, and the ride-sharing service Lime. Persona feeds on a growing trend of age-verification legislation that is making its way around the world. […]
Beyond offering simple services to estimate your age, Persona’s exposed code compares your selfie to watchlist photos using facial recognition, screens you against 14 categories of adverse media from mentions of terrorism to espionage, and tags reports with codenames from active intelligence programs consisting of public-private partnerships to combat online child exploitative material, cannabis trafficking, fentanyl trafficking, romance fraud, money laundering, and illegal wildlife trade.
Once a user verifies their identity with Persona, the software performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches, such as by matching your face to politically exposed persons (PEPs), and generating risk and similarity scores for each individual. IP addresses, browser fingerprints, device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, and even selfie backgrounds are analyzed and retained for up to three years.
In short, the software “flags you as a ‘suspicious entity’ based on your face alone,” the researchers write. An act that may prove dangerous, as Persona’s software has reportedly made significant mistakes when attempting to estimate the age of users in the past. When paired with [Anti-Money Laundering] reporting, such suspicious analysis can quickly lead to the unjust termination of bank accounts. And that seems to be exactly what Persona was built to do.
In addition to facial recognition, Persona’s software is able to perform checks on financial data—including running checks on sanctions lists, running checks on cryptocurrency activity […] and an interface to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) directly with US and Canadian federal agencies.
[…]
Computer scientists have long sounded the alarm that a central database of thousands of ID documents will always be a lucrative target for attackers. Just last year, 70,000 ID photos were stolen from Discord and held at ransom.
[…] The entire service appears to be powered by an OpenAI chatbot that runs on the same government platform that handles SARs, facial biometrics, and watchlist screening—operators using AI chat assistance while reviewing suspicious activity reports and facial recognition matches, the researchers say. “The code doesn’t show PII flowing to OpenAI but honestly the questions about what context the copilot has access to are worth asking.”
Eric Columbus: “Did Trump make up the hospital boat story out of embarrassment after learning Denmark had to rescue *our* submariner and provide them urgent medical care in Greenland? All signs point to yes!”
Officials on the island […] did not ask for such a ship, and Greenland’s prime minister said it will not be welcoming it, as its citizens are guaranteed free health care. “It’s a no thank you from here […] Please talk to us instead of just making more or less random statements on social media,” […]
Maritime tracking data further suggests there are no U.S. hospital ships currently positioned to sail to Greenland.
[…]
there was a case of medical distress near the island needing emergency attention. But it was the U.S. that needed the help. Denmark’s Arctic Command reported early Saturday that it had evacuated a crew member of a U.S. submarine in need of doctors. […]
That event was followed later in the day by Trump’s post, which featured what appears to be an AI-generated illustration of the USNS Mercy steaming toward the Arctic territory. Trump made no mention of the emergency evacuation of the U.S. sailor. But he declared that he was “going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.” “It’s on the way!!!” said the post, which also reported that Trump was executing the action together with his envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
[…]
The U.S. Navy operates two hospital ships, the USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy. Neither appears ready to deploy any time soon, and both were at a maintenance facility, Alabama Shipyard […] the Mercy “was firmly in dry dock”
Rando: “Trump won’t give health care to American citizens.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up on those 10% tariffs announced @205.
Justin Wolfers (Econ prof): “The President had literally months to prepare his response to the Supreme Court ruling, yet couldn’t even stick with his decision on the s.122 (temporary) tariff from Friday to Saturday, raising it from 10% to 15%.”
Eric Columbus: “I think that was the plan all along. Section 122 allows temporary tariffs up to 15% so Trump announced a 10% worldwide tariff last night just so he could up it to 15% today and sound tough. [Screenshots]”
Although Trump often spends weekends at his resort, he was at the White House when the breach occurred […] The man had a gas can and a shotgun, authorities said. Investigators identified him as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina […] his family had recently reported him missing.
He’s believed to have purchased his shotgun while driving south, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said, and a box for the weapon was later discovered in the man’s vehicle. Investigators have not identified a motive. […]
The man entered the north gate of the property as another vehicle was exiting and was confronted by two Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy […] “He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment […] he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” [the County Sheriff] said […] The two agents and the deputy “fired their weapons to neutralize the threat.”
[…]
Martin’s cousin, reacted with disbelief. He described Martin as quiet, afraid of guns and from a family of avid Trump supporters. […] Martin worked at a local golf course and would send money from each paycheck to charity. “He wouldn’t even hurt an ant. He doesn’t even know how to use a gun,” […] He said his cousin didn’t discuss politics. “We are big Trump supporters, all of us. Everybody,” Fields said, but his cousin was “real quiet, never really talked about anything.”
Sixteen-year-old Sebastian, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, was driving alone in north Minneapolis when immigration agents apprehended him in early January. Moments before his phone was confiscated, the teenager called his father […] But instead of taking Sebastian to the Whipple Federal Building […] the feds sent him to a Christian youth shelter in Michigan. […] The government then lost track of his whereabouts for the better part of a week, during which his family searched frantically
[…] Long a designation for youth apprehended while crossing the border alone, the unaccompanied minor system now applies to immigrants detained in interior operations like Metro Surge. The children are sometimes kept from their parents and placed in a vast, increasingly impenetrable network of shelters
[…]
Agents […] moved him from one holding area to another before taking him to a local hotel […] Sebastian was flown to Michigan, where he was checked into Bridgeway, a short-term residency program owned by Bethany Christian Services. He was given five vaccines in each arm […] For more than a week, Sebastian was unable to leave. […] He was permitted to call his father under staff supervision, but he wasn’t allowed to disclose where he was […] Finding him took detective work. […] [Their lawyer] Glenn traced Sebastian’s phone calls to his father to Bridgeway. On Jan. 26, Glenn arrived in person to claim him.
[…]
After the feds apprehended Sebastian, they labeled him an “unaccompanied minor” and gave him a new “alien number.” As an asylum-seeker, Sebastian already had an A number, so the second one made him virtually untraceable after DHS transferred him into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the network of federally contracted shelters […] Minnesota doesn’t have any unaccompanied minor shelters. […] now, immigrant youth sent to Michigan’s federally contracted shelters are almost exclusively detained in enforcement actions such as Operation Metro Surge
[…]
Bethany Christian Services [operates] dozens of facilities across the country. It provides foster care, adoption and immigrant services. […] Bridgeway, its 36-bed Grand Rapids program for unaccompanied minors, has a history of violations. In 2023 one of its counselors was charged with sexually abusing multiple immigrant youth. The staffer was fired […] but in subsequent licensing inspections by the state of Michigan, Bridgeway continued to be out of compliance with background checks. About three weeks before Sebastian arrived, a special investigation found evidence of staff hazing youth.
[…]
Several families are suing the federal government, describing stringent requirements for forms of identification typically available only to U.S. citizens. As a result, unaccompanied minors are languishing in shelters meant for short-term stays, and there have been instances of parents detained while trying to retrieve their children. In some cases, children cannot be reunited with their families until they turn 18.
[…]
Manuel, his father, told the Star Tribune that he couldn’t grasp what the people at Bridgeway wanted in return for his son. At one point shelter staff told Manuel that Sebatian might have to remain in the shelter until he turned 18, or he could be adopted out, which sent them both into a panic. “What was it all for?” Manuel said through a translator. “He’s a minor. He’s here to study, to go to school. He doesn’t have a criminal record.”
Hundley’s appointment to the Eastern District of Virginia followed the departure of Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, who left the job in late January after a federal judge ruled that she held the role unlawfully.
Prior firings were a NJ AUSA in July replacing Alina Habba, and a NDNY AUSA last week replacing John Sarcone.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Whiskey Pete is going to seize the means of AI production so he can 1) engage in mass surveillance of Americans and 2) shoot without human intervention. Dystopias this bad would be deemed unrealistic.”
The AI startup has refused to remove safeguards that would prevent its technology from being used to target weapons autonomously and conduct U.S. domestic surveillance.
[…]
Pentagon officials have argued the government should only be required to comply with U.S. law. […] Hegseth delivered an ultimatum to Anthropic: get on board or the government would take drastic action […] The options included labeling Anthropic as a supply-chain risk or have the Pentagon invoke […] the Defense Production Act, that would force Anthropic to change its rules […] The government gave Anthropic until Friday at 5 p.m. to respond
[…]
Until recently, Anthropic was the only LLM provider on classified networks. This week, the Pentagon announced it had reached an agreement with xAI to deploy it across classified networks. Reuters has previously reported that it plans to move all AI companies to classified networks.
Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would:
1) bar the company from government contracts
2) bar any government contractor from using Claude
3) pressure other businesses to consider Claude insecure
Meanwhile, invoking the DPA would nationalize Claude, but now as a surveillance/murder tool.
Commentary
The irony of this conversation happening with USG, given [CEO] Amodei’s very public writing about the risk of AI-powered CCP authoritarianism!
If you take away the existential dread it inspires, this story does feel like an extremely elaborate marketing exercise for Anthropic’s alignment research.
Also weird because by all reports Anthropic’s model is far and away the best one at the DOD and they don’t have a suitable replacement ready.
Perhaps the only thing scarier than Claude being used for murderbots and panopticon surveillance is Hegseth et al. opting for Grok, instead.
Empowering MechaHitler? What could possibly go wrong?
label SpaceX a “supply chain risk” given their CEO is a security risk.
I can’t get over what an insane ask this is when the DoD is in an openly corrupt partnership with a major competitor of Anthropic. Did Elon ask for this specifically?
James Grimmelmann (Law prof):
There is a great deal of schadenfreude in watching every AI company’s carefully crafted alignment scheme to avoid existential risk do a faceplant on first contact with the most obvious features of the society it operates in.
[…]
OpenAI adopted a nonprofit corporate structure… until there was real money at stake. Meta’s director of AI alignment was having so much fun playing with an AI agent it deleted her inbox. Anthropic won’t let its AI be used for harmful purposes, so the Pentagon is going to order it to. etc. etc.
Sam Harsimony (Splitting Infinity):
If the DPA is invoked I assume Anthropic will just sue and get decision overturned. DPA expires in September and might not get renewed if used for something unpopular like this?
So I’d guess Anthropic will call their bluff, DoD will label it supply-chain risk and DoD pivots to another LLM. Complaints ensue and eventually this gets overturned. Anthropic loses some profit in exchange for huge boost to reputation.
Jørgen Boassen […] who last year helped organize Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to the island, says he was the one who inspired Jeff Landry, governor of Louisiana and Trump’s appointed Greenland envoy, to propose the idea.
[…] he said he was staying overnight at Landry’s mansion in Louisiana last week as part of a cultural exchange during Mardi Gras when the governor asked what the U.S. could do for Greenland. “I told him our healthcare system is deteriorating, and that people are sick. Some people are diagnosed too late,” Boassen said. He said he didn’t specifically ask for a U.S. hospital ship. […]
Landry told the Journal that he then raised the issue with Trump during a dinner at the White House on Saturday. The president asked him whether Greenlanders really needed a ship, Landry said. “I said, they absolutely need it. He said, ‘Well, let’s get it,'” Landry recalled.
[…]
Boassen said his mother died a few years ago from a case of sepsis, days after being misdiagnosed at a rural clinic, and sent home with only painkillers.
[…] A hospital ship will be sent, even if it takes until this summer for one to complete its maintenance and reach Greenland, Landry said, adding that he wasn’t going to consult Nuuk or Copenhagen on the matter.
[…]
The main problems facing Greenland’s healthcare system are shortages of staff and infrastructure, especially near the island’s more remote settlements. Healthcare experts say neither problem can be solved with a large hospital ship, which wouldn’t be able to dock in most Greenlandic settlements outside the capital of Nuuk, particularly in winter.
Greenland’s 56,000 inhabitants are spread across a mostly ice-covered area more than three times the size of Texas, with no roads connecting any settlements. Many patients have to travel by plane to the only major hospital in Nuuk, where more than 80% of births take place. The population is too small to support many medical specializations, such as kidney transplants. Greenlanders are offered free travel to Denmark and treatment there.
[…] Greenlanders in some respects enjoy better healthcare access than citizens of Landry’s state of Louisiana, which was the unhealthiest of all U.S. states in 2025 […] Greenland has more than three times as many hospital beds per capita as Louisiana […] More than one-third of Louisiana’s parishes lack a single obstetrician-gynecologist […] The state faces a projected shortfall of 5,000 doctors by 2030
Owlmirrorsays
#216, #222 (Hospital ship to Greenland) — I am very confident that this is one of Trump’s many brief enthusiasms which will be quietly dropped by everyone involved in it, in very short order. Those who manage Trump will never tell him no, of course, but they’ll emphasize and probably inflate the cost, and casually point out things Greenlanders said which will make Trump angry (anything other than abject submission and gratitude), and Trump will stop caring about it.
Assuming Trump even remembers making the promise a week later.
Possible scenario: one of the many falsehoods that he will add to his repertoire will be the claim that he did, in fact, send a hospital ship to Greenland, even if if never happens. He’ll remember the AI image, and saying he wanted to do it, and confuse the memory with reality.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
*sigh* I’d developed a favorable opinion of Wired over the past year.
The internet immediately reacted, in part thanks to some, uh, unusual imagery that accompanied the article. […] California state senator Scott Weiner, a leader on LGBTQ issues, took issue with the whole premise.
Wired published a tabloid conspiracy piece about how the gays are running Silicon Valley, control everything, use saunas together & discriminate against non-gay people.
Buried deep in the article: From 2000 to 2022, a whopping [0.5%] of venture funding went to LGBTQ founders.
The image reminded me of this ridiculous sketch.
WKUK – Tall People (6:12)
Rando 1: Identifying a group based on sexual orientation and adding “mafia” feels a bit like clickbait and not what I’d expect here. I’ve worked in tech for… ever. It’s diverse in every respect. […] Insider parties in other groups are equally salacious. Privileged access through introductions is also common, tracing back to early merchants. […] Think of Project 2025’s targeting of the LGBTQ community and Conservative (conformative?) bias. Add AI fears, and Big Tech influence in politics. Sprinkle in sexual exploitation by elites while the world is focused on sex pests and trafficking vulnerable groups. Depending on motive, this may not be the best time to sift based on sexual orientation.
Jason Kehe (Wired Editor): Thanks for reading! I must’ve first heard the phrase “gay tech mafia,” oh, 10 years ago now? It’s always bothered me that no one ever wrote about it. Here we attempt to do so—so that you might be allowed, even encouraged, to question its merits.
Rando 1: I understand—I edit a lot of writers’ work. […] Some of my first and most important questions are, “What is the writer trying to convey, and why?” […] I’ve certainly heard the term “gay tech mafia” before. And a whole lot of other terms I hope not to see in a Wired headline that reinforce stereotypes about women in tech. The images would work if the writer leaned into Onion-style satire. This piece felt like it had trouble finding its voice. […] Not inside whistleblower, not quite sensational […] and not verifiable reporting when using pseudonyms. The most important question I ask myself as an editor and publisher: Does the piece deliver value or raise potential harm? […]
Rando 2: The cryptic phrase “Gay Tech Mafia” can be explained in one sentence that does not require a cover story with poorly made and offensive illustrations to explicate: “As both a gay mecca and a tech mecca, [San Francisco] enabled the rise of a small group of tech titans, who happen to be gay, and who then assembled their coterie with its unique social dynamics, similar to many other in-groups in America.” The article turns that fact into a tabloid piece about the things gays do when they amass power.
/Archive.today is glitching at the moment, so the main article text at the Wired link is paywalled.
Guinea-Bissau last month suspended the trial pending an ethical review. […] Foreign Minister Joao Bernardo Vieira said […] “It’s not going to happen, period,”
If you ask [vaccine expert] Eskild Petersen, there is no longer any doubt: Now the arrow points to [University of Southern Denmark’s] management.
“When you look at this from abroad, it is not about Benn, Aaby or Bandim (the research station in Guinea-Bissau, ed.). They see that it is SDU that is responsible,” says Eskild Petersen. [SDU] let one of its departments run wild. Eskild Petersen cannot understand how the rector can ignore such harsh criticism from the WHO.
The WHO statement didn’t name the university, but the university should be ashamed of the international attention the study brought.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 179. Laura Jedeed (Firewalled Media):
all Kansas-issued trans drivers’ licenses are invalid, effective tomorrow
It is now illegal for trans people to drive a car until they surrender their license at a DMV (that most will need to drive to) and have it reissued with the wrong gender marker.
Rando: “This will allow an ID checker in voting lines to determine if you ‘match’ the gender on your license and stop someone from legally voting.”
their current credentials will be considered invalid upon the law’s publication in the Kansas Register on Thursday. Should any transgender person be caught driving without a valid license, they could face a class B misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Kansas already requires county jails to house inmates according to sex assigned at birth. […] The Legislature, the letter notes, “did not include a grace period for updating credentials,”
[…]
SB 244, also known as the “bathroom bounty” bill, contained heavy identification document bans as well. The bill was rushed through the Kansas Legislature in January using a “gut and go” procedure that bypassed nearly all public input on its key provisions. Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the bill on February 13, calling it “poorly drafted,” but the Legislature overrode her veto days later. In addition to the driver’s license provisions, the law bans transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in public buildings and creates a bathroom bounty hunter system allowing citizens to sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for at least $1,000 in damages, including potentially in private restrooms. The bill takes effect immediately upon publication […] rather than the standard July 1 effective date
[…]
first-time [driving] offenders are more likely to face a citation and fine. A conviction, however, triggers an automatic 90-day license suspension. If a person drives during that suspension, they face a charge of driving on a suspended license, which carries a mandatory minimum of five days in jail.
[…]
other states have moved to block gender marker changes on driver’s licenses or birth certificates. But Kansas appears to be the first state […] actively invalidating previously issued documents and demanding their surrender.
[…]
Transgender people should exercise extreme caution when traveling through the state
Rando: “These laws will not improve one single person’s life. They will serve only as a way to incarcerate people for who they are, with the hopes that the inmates will add a little extrajudicial justice into the mix. That is it. This is beyond taking away someone’s civil rights. This is eliminationist.”
Kansas officials expect to cancel about 1,700 driver’s licenses and issue new birth certificates for up to 1,800 people. […] The Legislature hasn’t earmarked funds to cover the cost, so each person will pay it—$26 for a standard license.
Of course isn’t just driving. It’s voting. Working. Travelling. Picking up a package. Applying for credit. Applying for a job. Renting a room. Filling prescriptions. Visiting loved ones in the hospital. Not expired either, but legally invalid.
The extraordinary thing is that, as came up multiple times during the vote, if you applied to change your marker back the moment this bill was signed, you still wouldn’t have had enough time to comply. The sponsor’s response was that people should have considered it before when changing markers.
The letters arrived today. Not last week, not two weeks ago when it was passed or a week ago after the veto was overridden. They arrived the night before the changes were live so no one could do anything about it, just to rub it in and be able to say they’d given notice.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Rando 1: “Every bit of this story is infuriating.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:
This is the worst case scenario occurring at almost all turns.
– Tased and struck over misunderstanding
– Stays in jail for a year because of slow wheel of justice and ICE fears
– PD screws up in releasing him
– Border Patrol release catastrophically screwed up
– PD blows off missing persons report
Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56 [was released from a county holding center Thursday, Feb 19th, and CBP was contacted inappropriately.] […] agents took Alam into their custody and dropped him off at a Tim Horton’s in Black Rock, closer to where they thought Alam lived. Turns out, it was an old address, and his family had since moved. His family was not initially notified.
On Sunday, Alam was reported missing by his attorney […] While his family searched for him, there was confusion over whether Alam was even considered missing. Buffalo Police said a detective on the missing persons case temporarily closed it after mistakenly believing Alam was in ICE custody. That was not the case and the investigation was reopened.
On Tuesday night, Buffalo Police said officers responded to a dead body call […] Homicide detectives are investigating […] Buffalo Police said the detective who made the clerical error […] that led to the case being closed for a few hours will not face disciplinary action.
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan [said] “A vulnerable man—nearly blind and unable to speak English—was left alone on a cold winter night with no known attempt to leave him in a safe, secure location. That decision from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unprofessional and inhumane.”
Shah Alam, a Rohingya refugee, had been missing since February 19. He was released that afternoon from custody at the Erie County Holding Center after posting bail. In response to an immigration detainer that had been placed on him, the Erie County Sheriff’s Office contacted U.S. Border Patrol prior to his release […] agents picked him up at the Holding Center at 4:39 p.m. Thursday.
Shah Alam was released on bail, Macaluso said, after he had agreed to a […] guilty plea to charges of trespassing and possession of a weapon—a curtain rod he used as a walking stick—allowed him to “clear” the detainer and avoid detention by ICE or another immigration agency […] A spokesperson for Border Patrol […] said after agents determined Shah Alam was not supposed to be in their custody, they “offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop.”
[…]
On February 15 last year, he had been out for a walk in his neighborhood and had been using a curtain rod he purchased as a walking stick. […] with no ability to speak English, Alam got lost and ended up on the porch of a woman’s home as she was letting her dog out […] Shah Alam is completely blind in one eye and can only see with blurry vision for several feet in the other […]
The woman called police […] When Shah Alam did not follow police commands to drop his curtain rod, they Tasered and beat him, then arrested him […] The officers suffered minor injuries in the scuffle […] Shah Alam was charged with offenses including assault, trespassing and possession of a weapon. […] Shah Alam’s family opted to not bail him out of the Holding Center for fear he would end up detained by ICE out of state.
[…]
Shah Alam’s death comes just 15 months after his arrival in Buffalo in December 2024. He is survived by his wife and two sons.
Rando 2: “Important local context is that [Detective Richard Hy]—who closed [the missing person case] before they found him—has a history of doing bullshit hack racist ‘joke’ videos about policing in addition to other misconduct.”
Judge Murphy has ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of sending deported immigrants to third countries without notice or a chance to challenge is illegal and unconstitutional.
Quinta Jurecic (Atlantic): “The pileup of blatantly unlawful conduct by the government in this case is astonishing, as is the fact that the Supreme Court [had] allowed the govt to go forward with this program in a shadow docket ruling. I wrote an overview back in June.”
Lest anyone think Judge Murphy selectively quoted Mary Larakers—the DOJ lawyer defending third-country deportations—here’s the full exchange from the transcript.
Is your position that the Government can decide right now that someone who is in their custody is getting deported to a third country, give them no notice and no opportunity to say, “I will be killed the moment I arrive there,” and, as long as the Department doesn’t already know that there’s someone standing there waiting to shoot him, that that’s fine?
MS. LARAKERS: In short, yes.
[The judge’s ruling: “It is not fine, nor is it legal.”]
Planned ICE concentration camp near Nashville canceled!!!!
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): DHS has confirmed […] I appreciate Secretary Noem’s committment to finding the best possible location […] to continue ICE’s great work
This is really not going how they planned. The thing is that Republicans are all blood-thirsty psychopaths, but none of them want the actual carnage performed in their town because it’s bad for the town!!
It’s why they have such a hard-on for CECOT. They get to visit and soak up the cruelty and then hop on a plane back home and don’t have to think about it anymore. When CECOT’s in Nashville, it’s something that needs to be dealt with constantly. None of these assholes want that responsibility.
Rando: Because it’s long term economic suicide, not because of any moral objections.
Marisa Kabas: Right.
For the first time since ProjectSaltBox launched their DHS warehouse acquisition tracker, the number of canceled sales is higher than any of the other warehouse-related figures. We’ve reached a tipping point, folks.
These are the nine ICE concentration camps that are supposedly still moving forward. It’s important to note that a number of the canceled sales were at one point in this category. News of a purchase is *not* a foregone conclusion.
GEO Group was asking the justices to establish that “derivative sovereign immunity” protects government contractors […] in a case challenging the company’s treatment of people in a facility in Colorado that it used for immigration detention
[…]
The general rule that you can only bring an appeal at the end of a case is the final-judgment rule, and the exception […] times when a party can bring an appeal before the end of the case
[…]
As Kagan put it, “Because an immunity applies irrespective of the merits, the protection it offers is not a simple finding of non-liability. Rather, the immunity ensures that the defendant need not ‘answer for his conduct’ in court at all—that he avoids, in addition to liability, all the usual ‘burdens of litigation,’ including a trial.”
[…] Kagan explained that in the 1940 case, Yearsley v. W. A. Ross Constr. Co., the court held that “a federal contractor cannot be held liable for conduct that the Government has lawfully ‘authorized and directed’ the contractor to perform.”
[Kagan wrote in the majority opinion]:
Yearsley‘s protection runs out when the contractor may have violated the law—when the contractor either acted under an illegal authorization or exceeded the scope of a legal one. By drawing the line there, Yearsley ensures that it will never shield unlawful conduct, in the way that all immunities do.
[…] the case was sent back down to the lower courts. Unanimously.
[…]
This case—over allegations of forced labor in an immigration detention facility it operated in Colorado—was initially filed on October 22, 2014. […] In the nearly eight years since, GEO Group has fought the lawsuit at all three levels of federal courts—returning to the appeals court twice in addition to this trip to the Supreme Court. First, it unsuccessfully fought class certification. Then, it tried to appeal the Yearsley ruling. In short, the interlocutory appeal that GEO Group was seeking here would have given them a chance to take this extensive delay any time a court found that they actually could face liability
At least five other trainees were fired when ICE learned they had active warrants for their arrest […] In another office, a third of hires are waiting for their stalled background checks to be completed, including some who have graduated from training
Keevin Kruse: “This is a scandal for ICE, but also an indication of just how much they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. They’ve had multiple applicants with outstanding warrants for their own arrest walking in looking to play cop. That’s apparently how dumb some of these goons are.”
Rando: “Fired them. Not arrested them. When they had an active warrant.”
The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to “any lawful use” and remove safeguards […] these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request. It is the Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But […] we hope they reconsider.
The demand for advanced memory to power artificial intelligence tasks has drained global supply until well into next year and now jeopardizes the business model of many smartphone makers. […] Smartphone manufacturers are adapting to the elevated component costs by reining in specifications, eliminating unprofitable entry-level models and pushing consumers to buy more premium devices.
“The tariffs and pandemic crisis seem a joke compared to this,” […] “The days of cheap smartphones are gone, as even when the crisis is over, we don’t expect memory prices to go back down to 2025 levels,” […] Last year, there were roughly 170 million smartphones shipped that cost below $100 […] now uneconomical to maintain.
Federal law requires that before the IRS hands over a taxpayer’s address, a requesting agency must first provide the IRS with the name and address of the person it’s looking for. […] DHS did not follow this law. […] the government is appealing
[…]
in thousands of cases, ICE’s requests contained addresses that were incomplete—featuring entries such as “Failed to Provide,” “Unknown Address,” or simply “NA NA.” […] the judge used pointed language to describe the IRS’s verification standard. Under the government’s process, she wrote, ICE could have submitted a request with an address like “Don’t Care 12345” or simply “00000” and still received a taxpayer’s home address from the agency.
Commentary
So people ICE is seeking pay taxes.
So 42,695 felonies and not a single prosecution. Got it.
Well, if Trump is suing for $10 billion because of leaked info from the IRS, that means the government is on the hook for about $427 trillion here—more than its total budget over U.S. history. Oh well!
There’s a lot going on, so let’s just be clear this is *separate* from DOGE’s alleged illegal use of Social Security data in cahoots with outside groups to try to ferret out “voter fraud.”
His son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, for which he was sentenced to 45 months in prison. He was later granted a presidential pardon
[…]
relations between the U.S. and South Africa have deteriorated rapidly. In addition to Washington’s allegations of an alleged “white genocide” in South Africa […] the diplomatic rift widened after South Africa filed a case against Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing it of committing “genocide” against the Palestinian population in Gaza. […]
The latest chapter in this bilateral crisis unfolded at the G-20. Trump refused to attend the summit of the organization, held in [South Africa] last November, and exerted pressure in every possible way until he succeeded in getting South Africa to withdraw from the G-20 for a year, coinciding with the U.S. presidency of the forum of the world’s most developed countries in 2026.
[…]
The ambassadorship in Pretoria had remained vacant since Trump entered the White House in November 2024
Donald will host this year’s G-20 at his Doral golf club, a business near Miami, FL, in December.
Melania Trump is set to lead a session of the United Nations security council on Monday, coinciding with the US assuming the body’s rotating monthly presidency
[…]
Typically, security council meetings are chaired by a nation’s UN ambassador or a senior cabinet official. While former first ladies such as Eleanor Roosevelt held influential positions within the UN—Roosevelt helped draft the universal declaration of human rights—none have presided over council meetings while serving as first lady.
Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof): “Oh for fuck’s sake.”
Matt Szafranski (Attorney): “Hillary did this—as Secretary of State. Melania holds no office of diplomatic authority. The president, Secretary of State, or anybody along the food chain to the UN mission has a place to do this. Melania does not.”
The civil complaint was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the Trump administration breached Albanese’s First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, unreasonably seized her property without due process, and violated sanctions laws. The complaint asked the court to call the sanctions unconstitutional. […] “At its heart, this case concerns whether Defendants can sanction a person—ruining their life and the lives of their loved ones, including their citizen daughter—because Defendants disagree with their recommendations or fear their persuasiveness,”
The UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has accused major European powers, including the UK, Italy and Germany, of complicity in the genocide in Gaza and warned that their government officials should face legal consequences. […] alleged responsibility of 63 states [and over 60 companies]
[…]
Germany and Italy for blocking joint EU action against Israel. “It is a very sad coincidence that one century later, these two countries are still on the wrong side of history,” Albanese said, referring to Italy and Germany’s opposition to suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, even as other European states, including Slovenia and Spain, have opted to impose arms embargoes and sanctions independently. “These two countries have individually the highest responsibility to prevent genocide—particularly Germany, given its record.”
Albanese was sanctioned in July by [the Trump admin] in connection with her work investigating genocide in Gaza. The sanctions effectively barred her from travelling to the US and froze her assets there.
The expert was unable to officially launch her report at the UN General Assembly headquarters in New York on 28 October, as is required for other UN experts. Instead, she spoke to the Assembly from Cape Town, South Africa.
“It’s frustrating as a UN expert not being able to travel to the UN headquarters […] At the same time, it was so symbolic to have behind me the image of Nelson Mandela, where normally the UN logo would stand, because Nelson Mandela symbolises humanity and the victory of humanity over the barbarism of racial segregation and apartheid.”
[…]
The move has prompted calls by fellow UN experts for a case to be brought before the International Court of Justice alleging a breach of her diplomatic immunity to which UN experts are entitled under international law.
Since February [2025], the US has sanctioned the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), his two deputies and six judges for their work investigating atrocities in Palestine and Afghanistan. The sanctions later targeted Palestinian human rights organisations and officials.
[…] But she urged prosecutors and judges at the ICC to defy the sanctions. “Of course they should continue to investigate and issue arrest warrants,” she said. “Are we going to bend backwards because of this mafia-style system that is eroding the very foundation of the international justice system?”
A 43 minute interview video and excerpts at the link. This pretty much covers it.
From the video
HOST: you’ve strongly supported the “Hague Group”, which is a bloc of 8 states from the global south that was launched in January 2025 with the purpose of holding Israel accountable under international law. South Africa and Colombia are the co-chairs […]
ALBANESE: The Hague Group is the first and only significant attempt at disrupting the order that allows Israel to continue the genocide […] The pattern of compliance can only be broken by cutting ties: economic, diplomatic, political ties with Israel. […] The fact that after one year, 13 members only compose the Hague Group speaks to the limitations of change within the current world order […] the pressure from the United States and Israel is enormous.
From the excerpts
HOST: Because of the failure to suspend the Association Agreement or its free-trade pillar, some nations within the EU—like Slovenia and Spain—have taken their own concrete steps, such as imposing a full arms embargo or sanctioning Israeli officials. Do you welcome these individual steps? […]
ALBANESE: Yes, definitely. […] There is a clear statement by the International Court of Justice in the case of Nicaragua versus Germany, reminding member states not to transfer weapons, including components, to a state that might commit violations of international humanitarian law.
So we even have a lower threshold [than genocide]. Member states should stop trading weapons, transferring weapons, buying weapons from Israel. This is enough—and it obliges states.
[The EU-Israel Association Agreement and insufficient votes to suspend it] does not spare these states and their governments from accountability. It should not, at least.
[…]
Allowing their airspace to be used by someone who is wanted by the International Criminal Court is a violation of the international justice system’s rules, and should be followed by consequences. […] the International Criminal Court already seems under enough pressure today not to want to take on more—and I would understand that. But at the same time, the international justice system operates, and operates successfully, only if complementarity works.
[…] the role of domestic courts is critical. This is why I welcome the proceedings that have been started in a number of countries against governments who have authorised the use of national airspace for the ICC-wanted Israeli prime minister’s aeroplanes.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 228. More details, just as infuriating.
“Here are the FACTS,” DHS said. The department said Border Patrol agents gave the man a “courtesy ride” to the coffee shop, which was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address,” and that he “showed no signs of distress, mobility issues, or disabilities requiring special assistance.”
[…]
Shah Alam’s family and friends had circulated a missing person flyer noting that he “has back problems, difficulty walking, and is in poor health.” “He is not able to use a phone and does not know phone numbers or addresses,” the flyer read.
The Tim Horton’s was also closed, except for the drive-thru window, the Investigative Post reported, and temperatures were below freezing. In the security video, Shah Alam can be seen putting his hood up and looking inside, then pacing back and forth before walking away. The agents had failed to notify his family
Kristi Noem has been flying around on a recently acquired luxury Boeing 737. DHS told NBC the jet, which is worth an estimated $70 million and comes with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, and four flat-screen TVs, would serve a “dual purpose” for Cabinet-level official travel and deportations.
Obviously, this is bullshit—flight data shows it has never done anything resembling a deportation—but the situation is actually so much worse than this one 737. Over the last four months, Noem’s DHS has acquired at least nine new airplanes, with another on the way. Of those, half appear to be luxury jets. [“not one damn deportation has occurred on DHS’s new fleet”]
[…]
Last August, DHS boasted that “Noem personally reviews and approves any contract above $100,000.” Like the stockpiling of weapons and fast-tracked warehouse purchases all over the country, the rapid acquisition of these aircraft shows that Noem’s DHS is swimming in cash and out of control.
[…]
last October, during the longest government shutdown in American history, […] Noem picked a time when her 260,000 employees weren’t receiving paychecks to announce the replacement [for one admittedly old Coast Guard leadership plane] would be upgraded and doubled [to two jets].
[…]
We know $50 million had been budgeted for [that] replacement. […] the two upgraded jets will cost $172 million. From where in the USCG budget is that extra $122 million coming? We have no idea! But there’s a Coast Guard member on Reddit whose office hasn’t had heat all winter and was just told the funds to fix the HVAC system had dried up, and I don’t think he’s going to be happy about the new jets.
[…]
while it is often not possible to know who is using which plane and for what reason, let me just say: Those 17 trips to Noem’s hometown of Watertown, SD, in the last 18 weeks? That was her. If she misses it so much, perhaps she should go back to stay. Preferably via Greyhound.
Backstory of the planes’ origins at the link. Five Boeing 737s came from Avelo, a company that had been doing deportation flights until it announced stopping in January and reducing its fleet. DHS bought some leftover jets to carry on.
Rando: “They just can’t make them fast enough for her.”
Gillian Brockell (OP): “Literally. The G7 is on a years-long back order, and she still got to cut to the front of the line to get one, but she has to wait for the other.”
The Daily Mail reported that, according to “three DHS insiders,” the Special Homeland Security Blanket wasn’t the McGuffin in this mystery at all! Rather, it was Noem’s bag, or at least its contents, which not even the insiders would identify, if they even knew themselves.
We’re just going with the completely safe assumption that it was crammed to the gills with dicks, because we are Wonkette, and that just makes the most sense to us. Dildo bag, bag of dicks, vibroduffle, whatever you want to call it. We can’t say we have any evidence; let’s just say the vibes seem right.
If you are flying anywhere near the Texas-Mexico border, may we suggest not doing that? […] the United States military used a laser to shoot down an object it failed to identify what turned out to be an unmanned CBP drone. This led the FAA to announce temporary flight restrictions for the area around Fort Hancock, Texas, about 50 miles from El Paso. These restrictions will last until June 24. Luckily there is not a lot of commercial flight activity around that desolate stretch of Texas
[…]
In their joint statement, the agencies involved also couldn’t help giving Donald Trump and themselves a tug job, writing:
At President Trump’s direction, the Department of War, FAA, and [CBP] are working together in an unprecedented fashion to mitigate drone threats by Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist organizations at the U.S.-Mexico Border.
[…] apparently no one at CBP, FAA, or DoD is aware of how telephones fucking work, because this is the second time in two weeks that lasers were blasted willy-nilly into the Texas sky. […] See, Pete Hegseth is making the Department of Defense more efficient. Two weeks ago, they were loaning out lasers to morons […] Now the DoD is using its own in-house morons
Rando 1: “The pentagon cannot be trusted with lasers, and the CBP cannot be trusted with drones, so this is as happy a medium as we’ll likely ever get.”
Rando 2: “I thank the valiant women and men of the United States military for shooting down a Gestapo drone over US airspace. Thank you for protecting us from these fascists.”
the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies”
[…]
[Troops will no longer attend] institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, [MIT], Brown University, Yale University and […] Harvard starting in the 2026-27 school year
[…]
Hegseth said he would direct a formal “top to bottom” review of the U.S. war colleges to ensure they are “once again bastions of strategic thought, wholly dedicated to the singular mission of developing the most lethal and effective leaders and war fighters the world has ever known.”
War colleges provide professional military education to high-ranking officers, Pentagon civilians and international partners, with a focus ranging from joint operations to national security and strategy.
Trump: “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service… Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology.” [Screenshots]
Reuters: “the Pentagon said it will declare the startup a supply-chain risk”
Alan Rozenshtein (Law prof): “The silver lining, such as it is, is that, unlike the DPA, where the government has a reasonable case, the case for supply chain risk is extremely tenuous. Anthropic will sue, and I expect this to be quickly enjoined by the courts.”
Commentary
To be fair, I also want EVERY Federal Agency in the Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology.
“EVERY Federal Agency IMMEDIATELY CEASE” and also “6 month phase out”.
Amazing that these chuds can make a freaking AI company look like the reasonable good guys.
Amazon has a $61 billion stake in Anthropic. Trump admin BFF Jeff Bezos is gonna be sad.
The current position of the US government is that NVIDIA should be allowed to sell chips directly to China but banned from using Claude, because the latter is a larger national security risk. That is the level of absolute insanity coming out of the White House & Pentagon nowadays.
I never want to hear about free enterprise again from a Republican.
the idea that the Pentagon can not only cut off your contract but designate you a supply chain risk and prevent other companies from buying from you just because you won’t build killbots for the government should be terrifying.
I continue to think it’s even stupider than this. They’re trying to force a company to let them use a product in a way the product wasn’t designed for. This is the military. It’d be like RFK jr. sanctioning a beef jerky company for telling him he can’t transplant beef jerky to replace muscle.
Quinta Jurecic (Atlantic):
The most useful writing I’ve read on the subject remains this blog post from William Scheuerman about the dual state: Fraenkel’s argument—that capital requires a normative state—falls apart when economic power becomes highly consolidated.
Fraenkel’s account of the Nazi “dual state,” in which rule-based normative and discretionary prerogative legal spheres uneasily coexisted […] To the extent that Nazi Germany rested on a capitalist economic base, Fraenkel believed, crucial normative elements—with the exception of cases involving Nazism’s so-called enemies (e.g., Jews)—would likely remain intact.
Then the big CEOs start thinking they don’t need a predictable legal system because they can just make Deals with a personalist state. Yeah, well, that works until it doesn’t.
On the one hand, this is insane and someone could get killed.
On the other hand, Whiskey Pete Hegseth, and Kristi Noem, who keeps whiskey on the bar of her fuck bunny deportation plane, appear to be in a shooting war. 🍿
By Friday not everyone who changed their marker in the past had received a letter, and it was unclear what the penalty would be for driving with an invalid license.
[…]
Thursday, Kent Selk, Driver Services Manager for the Kansas Department of Revenue, doled out instructions […] perhaps most concerning of all was […] that DMV employees must email the government helpdesk after issuing the updated credentials […] It also indicated that a list is being compiled.
“I’m definitely not a fan of being marked as a trans person in a state database,” Zoey told me. “I worry that the presidential administration could start going after us with that information like they have for immigrants.”
[…]
Midday Friday, I obtained a copy of another email sent out to DMV employees earlier in the day providing more guidance. “Currently, KDOR has not ‘invalidated’ any records for people who were sent letters due to the passing of SB244 which requires the ‘sex at birth’ to be listed on Kansas credentials,” Kent Selk of the KDOR wrote. “If this is completed, we will let you know.”
He indicated the letter had been sent to “about 300” license holders, putting into sharp perspective how much time, energy and money Kansas Republicans have spent this year in service of hurting such a tiny percentage of their population of nearly three million people. Tellingly, Selk wrote that the applicants don’t need documentation to make the update other than their current license and proof of address.
[…]
Leaving the state has crossed the minds of most of the people I spoke to, though it’s not feasible for many. […] A recent survey by The Movement Advancement Project […] found that nearly one in 10 trans adults had moved to a different state from November 2024 to June 2025 because of LGBTQ-related laws or politics. That’s an estimated 400,000 people.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas announced Friday they would we representing two trans Kansans challenging SB 244 in court.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: “Making them pay to have their licenses invalidated and then reissued is yet another thing they can sue about.”
The mayor of Denver, Colorado, Democrat Mike Johnston, has signed an executive order prohibiting [ICE] agents from operating on municipal property and authorizing local police to protect peaceful protesters and even to detain federal agents […] instructs the Denver Police Department and the sheriff to intervene if they witness actions that could result in serious injury or death to a person during an immigration operation.
Pete Hegseth essentially is claiming Anthropic is so vital to US defense that it *must* supply the DoD for the next six months, but also so dangerous to US defense that all contractors must cease *all* business with it. Not sure the courts are gonna love that logic.
One note on this: as ever with the Trump administration, it might not matter if the actual legal power granted to the president doesn’t exist. If Trump demands other tech companies drop Anthropic, they might just comply even if not legally required to do so. (That of course opens up a whole bunch of *other* potential lawsuits, for breach of contract etc etc)
Pete Hegseth is rebuffed after AI firm Anthropic refuses to let the Pentagon use its technology for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. Ben Rhodes joins Chris Hayes to discuss.
“If this committee insists on deposing Hillary Clinton, who says she has no memory of ever even meeting Epstein, and Bill Clinton, who took trips on the jet and appeared friendly with Epstein, shouldn’t they want to hear from Donald Trump?” says Chris Hayes.
Yeah, DNS is pointing to the wrong IP for some people. For me, it’d been intermittent the past day or two, then down all of today. I did a WHOIS lookup to get a current working IP (104.21.58.227) and edited my HOSTS file to bypass DNS—a temporary workaround that shouldn’t be left in place.
HJ Hornbeck alerted the tech. For him, one mobile browser worked another didn’t. On his laptop, no browsers worked. Other bloggers noted downtime, too.
Thanks for that useful information.
Also, many thanks to Sky Captain and others who posted in The Infinite Thread while I did not have access.
[22 hours ago]
I’m home from work early. You know what that means, boys & girls? I get to spend a few hours talking to the unresponsive bots who constitute Bluehost’s customer assistance department.
Can I learn to hate AI even more? Yes, I can.
[3 days ago] If you’ve been wondering what happened to freethoughtblogs, it turns out it has been officially owned by a ghost, Ed Brayton. I’m trying to resolve the ownership. I’m trying convince Bluehost that I’m not dead, but my partner is.
Cuba has been building out an alternative source of energy supply at record pace: solar panels imported from China. […] The island has gone from having almost no solar power a few years ago to levels which help it cope […] it aims for renewables to provide 24% of Cuba’s electricity by 2030, up from roughly 5% in 2024. […] Cubans are now importing Chinese batteries at a furious pace, too. Chinese electric vehicles are also proliferating […] But Cuba’s persistent failure to pay its debts may be starting to discourage the Chinese from financing new panels.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @250: I lost access a week ago, and I have been jonesing for my FTB fix all week. ;-P As much as I loved Ed Brayton’s writing, I am glad PZ got it resolved.
Sky Captain @226 and 2227, thanks for posting that. I had not realized that the demand by Kansas officials that all trans truck drivers be returned (because they are supposedly invalid) was also a ploy to justify voting restrictions.
And, (sheesh), this part is so disturbing:
the law bans transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in public buildings and creates a bathroom bounty hunter system allowing citizens to sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for at least $1,000 in damages, including potentially in private restrooms. The bill takes effect immediately upon publication […] rather than the standard July 1 effective date
Typically incompetent (?) and/or Orwellian:
The letters arrived today. Not last week, not two weeks ago when it [the bill] was passed or a week ago after the veto was overridden. They arrived the night before the changes were live so no one could do anything about it, just to rub it in and be able to say they’d given notice.
American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. […] Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government.
Phil Stewart (Reuters): “Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine are monitoring Iran operation from Mar-a-Lago”
Anjali Dayal (Intl Relations prof): “Melania Trump actually is presiding over a UN Security Council meeting Monday, and apparently they scheduled that knowing they were going to launch an illegal war on Saturday morning.”
The Israeli public broadcaster confirms that the nuclear talks with Iran were all a ruse. Trump and Netanyahu has decided on this war weeks ago.
Aljazeera: “In June last year, US attacks targeted Iran during talks. The US’s Operation Midnight Hammer came towards the end of a 12-day war Israel initiated with Iran that month. […] Eight months later, the US and Israel have launched yet another attack as both sides had just ended a round of talks in Geneva.”
Elia Ayoub (Journalist): “nuclear talks were underway. Oman, the negotiating party, said they were close to a deal. Israel and the US bombed Iran to make sure no deal can ever be reached. It is incredibly delusional to conclude anything else.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/peace-within-reach-as-iran-agrees-no-nuclear-material-stockpile-oman-fm
Commentary
Telling people that freedom has arrived and they will die if they go outside in the same breath is something that is going to stick with me for a while.
It’s the least important thing, but I can’t believe our pedophile president just declared an illegal war at 3am in this fuckass [white USA baseball cap].
Just want to note that 3am in Washington is like 11:30am in Tehran. The American people are the ones he snuck up on in the dead of night to conduct this illegal attack, not the purported enemy.
The state of the union address was like 72 hours before the US and Israel chose to attack Iran’s capital and call for regime change, and Trump did not even mention his policy toward Iran before Congress, much less ask for a declaration of war.
Well hold on now. Maybe the military invasion in the middle east being run by narcissistic sociopaths with substance abuse issues will go smoothly, and we’ll all end up looking stupid. Maybe the former weekend morning talk show host, and the wrestlemania CEO, and the podcasters running everything will be able to pull off regime change in one of the most politically complicated areas of the world.
Specifically, Hegseth was a *weekend* Fox & Friends host, which prepared him to launch war on a Saturday
Reminder this is what the “situation room” looked like at Mar-a-lago when they kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He basically hung up some tablecloths
For those fixated on congressional authorization, I get it. This is a massive violation of our constitutional order. Even so, congress *cannot* legitimize an illegal war. There is nothing congress can do to make it legal under int’l law.
And I’m sure ppl will say, sure, but presidents have used force without congressional authorization for decades. And yeah, that’s true. But nothing like this. Not even the pretext of a legal argument, the motion of seeking public & congressional support. We are so far beyond norms.
Anjali Dayal: “emphasize illegitimacy, not procedure. […] if you don’t reject the premise of bad acts, you risk normalizing them.”
European Journal of Intl Law – The American-Israeli Strikes on Iran are (Again) Manifestly Illegal https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-american-israeli-strikes-on-iran-are-again-manifestly-illegal/
The IRGC is an elite military force whose purpose is to protect Shi’ite Muslim clerical rule in Iran. The intelligence agency reports did not conclude any scenario with certainty
Hegseth cancels troop attendance at top-ranked schools … the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies”
“Wicked”?
The word “wicked” is doing a lot of work there. It reveals Hegseth’s totally bonkers devotion to extreme right wing ideologies that are combined with fundamentalist Christian Nationalist beliefs. That is a particularly toxic brew. Hegseth’s judgement cannot be trusted at any level.
President Donald Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government” when the strikes are over. Tehran responded by targeting American bases and other targets throughout the region.
[…] Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran was interested in de-escalation and willing to talk if the U.S. and Israel halted attacks. He told Trump that regime change was “mission impossible.”
[…] Araghchi told NBC News that the two sides were close to a deal, decrying the joint strikes while talks were ongoing.
So, in addition to being illegal and unconstitutional, the strikes ordered by Trump were hasty, premature, and possibly unnecessary if the diplomatic talks were ongoing.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Most of this is from Aljazeera’s live posts. (an outlet in Qatar, a country Iran targeted).
The Israeli army has said about 200 fighter jets have struck Iranian missile and air defense systems in western and central Iran. It described the operation as the “largest military flyover in the history” of its air force. The military said the fighter jets dropped hundreds of munitions targeting about 500 objectives
Aljazeera: “The number of people killed in an Israeli strike on an elementary girls’ school in Minab [Iran] has now risen to 85, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.”
Alan Fisher (Aljazeera):
I’ve been messaging my sources who suggest that the US involvement in this attack is aimed at “decapitating the Iranian regime”. They say […] the attacks were concentrated on areas where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be sheltering, so the intention was to try and take out the head of the regime and then see what would happen afterwards.
Christiaan Triebert (NYT): “We obtained the first publicly released satellite image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran, after it was struck by Israel/US. There are several destroyed buildings. Current whereabouts of Iran’s supreme leader are unknown; compound used as his official residence.”
Aljazeera:
In an interview with NBC News, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is alive “as far as I know”. […] He said one or two commanders were killed, but most officials were alive. […] Iran does not have the capability to hit the US and will not build missiles that could do that.
The [Iranian] Fars news agency says Iran’s senior officials are “in perfect health”, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and security chief Ali Larijani.
“While Israeli sources have claimed to have targeted and succeeded in attacking the president and senior Iranian leaders, official sources within the country report that senior regime officials, including the heads of the armed forces, are in perfect health,”
Senior Israeli official to Israeli media: “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed and his body was retrieved from the rubble. Israel holds clear and indisputable footage showing Khamenei’s body, and may decide to make it public in the future.” (i24 News) People already out in Tehran celebrating Khamenei’s death.
Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, his likely successor, has also been killed. (Kan) A US official tells Fox that the US believes Khamenei and 5-10 top Iranian leaders were killed in the initial Israeli strike on the compound.
Shortly after the US and Israel struck Iran, explosions were heard in northern Israel as it sought to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles. […] There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage […]
Blasts were also reported in several Gulf Arab countries hosting US military forces, including Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain. Iran’s Fars News Agency stated that Tehran launched strikes on military installations in each of those states, naming Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and the US Navy 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain among the targets.
Aljazeera: “several residential buildings in the Bahraini capital were targeted, according to the Interior Ministry. Online video footage, verified by Al Jazeera, shows an Iranian drone striking a tower in Manama.” https://xcancel.com/BricxNews/status/2027788781760483382
Aljazeera: “A drone [from Iran] has targeted Kuwait International Airport, resulting in ‘minor injuries’ to a number of employees, in addition to ‘limited material damage’ […] according to The General Authority of Civil Aviation in Kuwait.”
Aljazeera:
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reports […] President Joseph Aoun received assurances from US Ambassador Michel Issa that Israel would not step up its already frequent attacks on Lebanon as long as there are no “hostile acts” towards Israel from Lebanese territory.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah has condemned the US-Israeli attacks on its close ally Iran, but has not commented on whether or not it will enter the conflict with attacks on Israel or US military positions in the region.
NetBlocks: “Metrics show #Iran has been offline for 12 hours after the regime imposed a nationwide internet blackout amid US and Israeli military strikes. While most countries work to stay connected in times of international conflict, Iran has again silenced its own population.”
Kel McClanahan: “there is Starlink in Iran and if there’s a cyberattack on the hardwired internet infrastructure the regime can use it and won’t that lead to a fascinating congressional hearing.”
In an interview with NBC News, the president addressed reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in airstrikes today, saying, “We feel that that is a correct story.”
He added that “most” of Iran’s senior leadership is “gone,” saying, “The people that make all the decisions, most of them are gone.” [I will take that last sentence with a grain of salt. It reminds me of Trump saying before that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “obliterated.” Exaggeration mixed with lies.]
[…] The largest pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, praised Trump and his administration’s decision to strike Iran, saying its regime has “posed a grave threat” to the U.S., Israel and the rest of the world for years. […] The group added that the administration and Congress should ensure that Israel has the support and resources necessary to defend itself.
[…] Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, announced that the crossings into the Gaza Strip have been closed amid the military operation against Iran.
COGAT, an Israeli military agency, said in a statement on X that those closures include the Rafah crossing and that “the rotation of humanitarian personnel is postponed at this stage.”
It stressed, however, “that the closure of the crossings will have no impact on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.” [That smells like bullshit.]
“The substantial quantities of food that have entered since the beginning of the ceasefire amount to four times the nutritional needs of the population, according to the UN methodology. Therefore, the existing stock is expected to suffice for an extended period,” it said.
The Rafah crossing reopened at the beginning of February, as part of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
[from Richard Engel] Despite Trump’s assertion that the strikes were necessary to counter an imminent threat from Iran, U.S. officials have not publicly presented evidence that Tehran was on the verge of deploying a nuclear weapon. It does not have a nuclear weapon and its missiles are not believed to be capable of reaching the United States.
Diplomatic talks held in Geneva on Thursday between Iranian negotiators and U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, appeared to have gone well. So something doesn’t add up. […]
Another observation on Trump’s attack on Iran. Each of these regime attacks clearly emboldens him. To him, the Venezuelan adventure went great. Where was the blowback — in terms he recognizes? So why not do it again? Sure he hasn’t actually seized Greenland, yet. Beneath the headlines the intensity of European resistance clearly mattered a lot. But this Iran attack almost certainly doesn’t happen without the Venezuela one.
But remember to see this whole escalating series of military adventures in the proper light. Trump is very unpopular and growing more so every day. He now faces what seems close to the certainty of losing at least one House of Congress.
As his public support ebbs his power and the power to dominate ebb as well. For Trump that is akin to a psychic death. So, as a matter of psychological balancing and self-care more than strategy, he is leaning heavily into the presidential prerogative powers where his power is most untrammeled, where the loss of political power doesn’t really matter. Almost no presidential power is more clearly in that character as the president’s control over the military. Put simply, he’s leaning into those powers as a matter of psychological compensation. [!!]
Iran’s supreme leader killed in strike, Israeli officials say.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his Tehran compound, according to four Israeli security officials briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. U.S. officials said they did not immediately have confirmation of Khamenei’s death. The United States and Israel struck Iran in a major operation that President Donald Trump said was aimed at toppling the Iranian government.
U.S. military forces hit Iranian missile sites, its air defense systems, and command and control centers for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, U.S. Central Command said in its first official statement since the strikes began early Saturday. Top commanders at Iran’s main intelligence agency were targeted by Western airstrikes on Saturday, inducing panic in the security agency’s ranks, a senior Western security official told The Washington Post.
Trump, who announced the start of “major combat operations,” said in a brief phone interview with The Post that his goal is “freedom for the people” of Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the joint attack would last “as long as needed.” U.S. forces appeared focused on taking out Iranian military targets, while the Israeli strikes targeted regime sites, people familiar with the matter told The Post.
Washington has in recent days amassed an immense strike force in the region, while pressing Iran to dismantle its nuclear program in negotiations that failed to reach a resolution. In retaliation, Iran fired missiles at Israel and at least seven Arab states on Saturday. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait confirmed hits, while Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Qatar said they intercepted missiles. In Israel, officials reported only light injuries. In Dubai, a prominent hotel was hit. […]
[Trump posted a far-right news headline]: Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces a renewed war with the United States.
OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers “censors” … and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.
Here’s the background on that operation: Iranian agents obtained voter registration data, impersonated Proud Boys and sent intimidating letters to Dem voters. It was discovered (1st by academic researchers, I believe), voters informed, & likely had no effect on election.
The CISA office (which released the […] report and mitigated the damage) has, since 2024, been decimated, particulary the groups who worked on protecting U.S. elections. My understanding is academic researchers at Stanford made the original discovery. That lab is gone, defunded and dismantled.
The real story is that foreign govts try to “interfere” all the time. In 2020 and 2024 we had mechanisms to catch them, call them out, & mitigate damage. Now, those mechanims are gone & the Trump admin would prefer to exploit “foreign interference” to justify a federal take-over of elections. And to attempt to justify an unconstitutional war with Iran.
Kate Starbird: “My team was collaborating with the Stanford team, and we saw their research unfold in real time. Then we were all attacked & defunded. And now, we’re watching the Trump admin use our work to justify their wars and their own federal election interference in the midterms.”
a prayer timing app called ‘BadeSaba Calendar’ which has been downloaded 5 million times from the Google Play Store. […] Cybersecurity analysts confirmed that users of the Bade Sabah had received notifications around the time of the strikes, but have not been able to identify the source of the hack.
[…]
Communication networks are also down with outages in phone lines and SMS services, and severe degradation of both mobile data and fixed broadband connections. “Incoming international calls to Iran are also reportedly affected. Even using VPNs has become extremely difficult,” […]
Several state-affiliated news agencies, including IRNA and ISNA, were also reportedly targeted by cyberattacks, and their websites were temporarily offline. While IRNA is back online, ISNA remains inaccessible
Jeansays
Rachel Maddow puts the Iran strike into perspective and that needs to get a lot of attention because it shows that this is another corrupt action from this piece of shit, the so-called US President.
Sky Captain @264, that reporting deserves more than one “oh for fuck’s sake!”
I appreciate this summary:
Kate Starbird: “My team was collaborating with the Stanford team, and we saw their research unfold in real time. Then we were all attacked & defunded. And now, we’re watching the Trump admin use our work to justify their wars and their own federal election interference in the midterms.”
This is perhaps the most important point to remember:
The real story is that foreign govts try to “interfere” all the time. In 2020 and 2024 we had mechanisms to catch them, call them out, & mitigate damage. Now, those mechanims are gone & the Trump admin would prefer to exploit “foreign interference” to justify a federal take-over of elections. And to attempt to justify an unconstitutional war with Iran.
Also, contrary to what Trump says:
[Attempted interference in the past] likely had no effect on election [!]
Rachel Maddow’s presentation is excellent. Maddow is thorough, as usual.
I find Maddow’s fact-checking particularly useful. Unlike the Trump administration, Maddow does not make claims she can’t back up with facts. Maddow provides sources, examples, historical context and intelligent analysis.
As one commenter noted: “Thank goodness for Rachel Maddow’s brilliant reporting♥️”
An Iranian missile has just hit Tel Aviv. [1 dead, 20 injured] An Iranian drone has just hit Dubai International Airport. […] Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Prince Sultan Airbase in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Fox) […] An Iranian drone has hit the five-star Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai.
Mark Chadbourn: It’s impotence. They can’t hit military targets so they’re lashing out at soft options.”
the Country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated. The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!
Cheryl Rofer: “It sounds like Trump plans to bomb Iran for a while, then declare peace and say ‘Over to you, Iranians.’ Then blame the Iranians when they can’t put their country back together.”
Anjali Dayal (Intl Relations prof), Live-skeet of the UN meeting that just concluded
Tbh I am disconcerted by this meeting […] The US’s violation of the charter is red letter, blazing, clear as day. Many of the US’s allies are mentioning it in passing. I suspect they wont like what follows from signaling they are less committed to the UN charter than they are to countering Iran. […] I have, to be clear, no love for the Iranian government. But the US’s allies are pulling their punches, mentioning Iran’s violations by name and the US’s violations in generalities about the situation. This is not what an even application of international law looks like.
Iran is speaking. They obviously are highlighting the US’s actions and the civilian death that resulted from them, calling them not just an act of aggression but also a war crime and crimes against humanity. Iran is arguing that the US is deliberately attempting to mislead and manufacture consent domestically and internationally, speaking directly of regime change in violation of the principle of sovereignty. […] This is a war, Iran says, not just against Iran, but against the UN charter and the international law.
[…]
Israel is speaking. […] We’ve seen this logic of preventative war before. A key question I have right now is why the US’s proposed invasion of Iraq elicited such immediate and strong opposition from even most allies, while its strikes against Iran have so far appear to be getting a more muted reception from European allies.
[…]
It’s notable to me that much of the US domestic opposition has adopted a stronger condemnatory tone about these US strikes than many of the US allies did at the security council just now
“Donald Trump Launches a War of ‘Epic Fury’ on Iran” by Robin Wright
[…] Trump has launched a capricious and personal war on Iran that is more ambitious, politically and militarily, than any past U.S. campaign in the perpetually volatile Middle East. In an eight-minute video released in the wee hours of Saturday morning, while most Americans were still asleep, he announced that his goals are the abolishment of the theocratic regime, total capitulation by its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—or else the death of its members at U.S. hands—and an end to the country’s controversial nuclear program.
[…] It is an audacious gambit, undertaken in coördination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of Israel, that has no clear outcome. For a man who hungers for the Nobel Peace Prize, this war of choice borders on delusion.
Ali Vaez, who heads the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, told me, “The idea in Washington and Tel Aviv that bombing Iran will somehow trigger a popular uprising is not strategy—it’s wishful thinking.” [!]
[…] The war—dubbed Operation Epic Fury by the U.S. and Roaring Lion by Israel—has escalated quickly, sucking in seven other countries as Iran responded by firing on Israeli and American interests in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. […]
Recent polls have shown that Trump does not have broad support for this war […] There are also growing questions about the war’s legality—whether it violates international laws, the U.N. Charter, or the U.S. Constitution. The founding document of the U.N. stipulates that its members “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” And the U.S. Constitution says that only Congress has the power to declare war. In a statement on Saturday, the Arms Control Association said that American lawmakers and other countries around the world “have a solemn moral and legal duty to oppose this rogue aggression.”
[…] Once again, diplomacy has been aborted in favor of violence. Just hours before the war erupted, the Omani Foreign Minister, Badr Albusaidi, who has been the intermediary in the negotiations, reported that “substantial progress” had been made toward a lasting and verifiable deal. “Really, I can see that the peace deal is within our reach,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
This is also a war that could have been avoided if Trump had not abandoned the hard-won nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., in 2018, during his first term, which had taken two years of intense negotiations by the Obama Administration. Trump’s subsequent campaign of maximum pressure, including the imposition of fifteen hundred new economic sanctions on Iran and its business partners, led Tehran to respond with its own maximum pressure. It escalated the enrichment of uranium, the fuel that can be used for a nuclear weapon—and for nuclear energy—to far higher than the limits set under the J.C.P.O.A., and created more advanced centrifuges to do that. […]
Trump recently claimed that a new nuclear deal could be reached if Iran only said the “magic words”—that it would not produce a nuclear weapon. Iran has used those magic words several times in recent years, including this past week. [!!] On Tuesday, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, posted on X, “Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will we Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people.” Under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which went into effect in 1970, Iran has the right to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
[…] today’s war on Iran is based on a lie [I would say, “based on several lies”] about weapons of mass destruction. […] Iran has no ability to hit anywhere close to the United States.
Alan Eyre, a longtime Iran watcher at the State Department, now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told me that Trump’s “stated objective for these attacks—imminent threat—is not believable, and his real objective—regime incapacitation if not regime change—is unlikely.” […]
The war has triggered global alarm. The U.N. scheduled an emergency meeting for Saturday afternoon. Long-standing U.S. allies called for an end to the air campaign. On X, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, wrote that the “outbreak of war between the United States, Israel, and Iran carries grave consequences for international peace and security.” The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, said, “We cannot afford another prolonged and devastating war in the Middle East.” The Swiss government called for “full respect for international law.” In a joint statement, the top two leaders of the European Union urged against “any actions that could further escalate tensions or undermine the global nonproliferation regime.”
[I snipped comments from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.]
[Trump] has still not outlined the U.S. exit strategy. Will it be after a hypothetical uprising has held elections and formed a new government? The Bush Administration tried that in Afghanistan in 2001, and in Iraq in 2003—and was stuck in each country for years, at the cost of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars. Senator Andy Kim, of New Jersey, called Trump’s decision “foolish” for putting Americans in harm’s way without an imminent threat and putting Iranian dissidents in danger without a coalition to protect them. Trump has talked about both a limited mission against Iran and, overnight, a “massive” operation. [Typical incoherent bluster from Trump.]
The specifics of Trump’s calculations remain unclear—to other elected officials as well as to the rest of us. ♦
the Country [Iran] has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated. The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!
JFC. I am beyond fed up with Trump’s incoherent threats. Trump’s stated, all-caps goals are equally incoherent.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
(Oops, Al Jazeera’s logo threw off my spelling.)
Al Jazeera: “The governor of Minab, a city in southern Iran, announced that the death toll from the US-Israeli bombing of a school in the city has risen to 115.” (Another post said 170 students were in the elementary school.)
Al Jazeera: “The United Arab Emirates’ Defence Ministry has said it destroyed 132 missiles and intercepted 195 drones launched from Iran.”
One dead and seven injured after an Iranian drone strike on Zayed International Airport, Abu Dhabi.
[…]
The Washington Post sacked all of its Middle East correspondents a couple of weeks ago. Useful.
A statue of Khomeini has been toppled in Jala-Dar in southern Iran as protests grow.
US and Israeli strikes on military sites in western Iran around Andimeshk.
Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref informed officials of plans to take charge of the country, according to a report by state media. That suggests that President Masoud Pezeshkian was either badly injured or killed.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @271:
This is also a war that could have been avoided if Trump had not abandoned the hard-won nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., in 2018, during his first term, which had taken two years of intense negotiations by the Obama Administration.
This should be hammered on continuously. The Orange Turd, in his oblivious stupidity, withdrew from a deal that would have kept Iran in check. He hated it because he is a fucking racist and thought that a black man could never administer a deal like he could since he is the ultimate deal-maker. In reality, The Orange Turd is, as Rex Tillerson said, a fucking moron. He has failed at nearly every business he has tried to operate. He is using his position to grift and steal as much as he can, and the country, and the world, suffers as long as he is living. The republicans in congress are useless because they are mostly sycophants kissing his ass. I am sick of his bullshit and want him disappeared to the CECOT prison and all his ill-gotten assets seized.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Al Jazeera: “Iran’s Fars news agency […] says Khamenei was killed at his office while ‘performing his assigned duties’ in the early hours of Saturday morning.”
Al Jazeera: “The Fars agency has reported that the government has declared 40 days of public mourning in the wake of Khamenei’s killing. It also announced seven days of public holidays.”
Al Jazeera: “The IRGC-aligned [Fars] news agency is reporting that the supreme leader’s daughter, son-in-law, and grandson have been killed in a strike.”
It is important to note that there is a process in the Iranian constitution in the case of the death of the Supreme Leader.
Under that process, there’s going to be a council of three people, including the Iranian president, head of the judiciary and one cleric from the Guardian Council, who are going to take control of the country.
Now, we have also been receiving reports about authorities being given to Ali Larijani, the Secretary of the National Security Council. All in all, we cannot confirm these reports.
johnson catman @274, yes, it is important to remember that Trump abandoned the JCPOA (the nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated).
Trump (and his lackeys) made a difficult situation much worse. And then he piled on a bunch of sanctions; failed at the negotiating table several times; probably scuttled diplomatic efforts so that he could join in Israel in prosecuting war against Iran; and is now bragging about how many Iranians he killed (leaving out the school children of course).
From ABC coverage of Trump’s State of the Union address:
Trump seemed to lay out his case for potential strikes on Iran directly to the American people during the State of the Union Address on Tuesday night — saying that Iran has already developed missiles that threaten Europe and could soon reach American soil.
Many media outlets sane-washed Trump’s State of the Union speech. Fox News went further and celebrated the speech with over-the-top praise (and repetition).
In that speech, Trump reiterated the delusions/lies that underpin his so-called policies. Trump lied not just on the subject of Iran, but on just about every other policy/plan/goal he mentioned. None of that should have been sane-washed or ignored.
About that foundation of lies:
[…] Trump and his speechwriters almost certainly knew that the address to a joint session of Congress would be thoroughly fact-checked by independent news organizations — it’s a standard move following every State of the Union — so they had an incentive to craft a speech that bore at least some passing resemblance to reality.
But over the course of 107 tedious minutes, the president threw caution to the wind and bombarded his audience with an avalanche of demonstrably false claims.
Trump said, “When I last spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis with a stagnant economy [and] inflation at record levels.” That wasn’t even close to being true.
Trump said, “In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.” It would certainly be nice if that were true, but according to the Republican administration’s own tallies, it was not.
Trump said, “Incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.” This, too, would be great if it were correct. It isn’t.
Trump said, “Last year, I urged this Congress to begin the mission by passing the largest tax cuts in American history, and our Republican majorities delivered so beautifully.” The tax breaks included in the GOP’s domestic policy megabill were enormous, but they clearly were not the largest in American history.
Trump said, “[A]s time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.” As the White House really ought to understand by now, tariffs are paid by Americans, not foreign countries, and the idea that tariff revenue could replace income tax revenue remains quite bonkers.
Trump said, “I’m also ending the wildly inflated costs of prescription drugs like has never happened before. Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could. They tried. Most didn’t try, actually. But they tried. They said they tried. They couldn’t do it. They didn’t even come close. They were all talk and no action. But I got it done.” Actually, it was a different president who achieved the breakthrough policy that lowered the cost of many prescription drugs. Trump has probably heard of him: His name is Joe Biden.
Relatedly, Trump said, “I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600% and more — all available right now at a new website called TrumpRX.gov.” First, it’s still impossible to reduce the price of a product by more than 100%, and second, his claims related to TrumpRX.gov have consistently failed to stand up to scrutiny.
Trump said his administration can root out fraud in social insurance programs to such an extent that “we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.” That sounded great, right up until arithmetic got in the way: The president can’t erase a $1.8 trillion budget deficit “overnight” by eliminating fraudulent payments that represent a fraction of that total.
Trump said, “Under this administration, we will always protect Social Security and Medicare. They are not protecting it for our seniors. We will always protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.” I can think of millions of struggling families who likely wish he was telling the truth, but he was not.
Trump said, “The cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.” The reason the White House has never been able to produce any evidence in support of this claim is because it’s plainly false.
Trump said, “My first 10 months I ended 8 wars.” In a piece for MS NOW, Glenn Kessler described this boast as “poppycock,” which is as good a label as any.
This isn’t even close to being a comprehensive list. Rather, it’s just a modest sampling to highlight the more outrageous and obvious deceptions.
[…] for all of the president’s bravado and chest-thumping, his avalanche of lies gave away the game: If he’d earned the right to boast about his accomplishments, he wouldn’t have had to peddle quite so much nonsense.
White House officials may hope that the public won’t see the fact-check reports, and that many others will simply believe what they’re told to believe. […]
But this doesn’t change the fact that a presidential vision built on a foundation of falsehoods will inevitably crumble.
I have provided some of the embedded links. More embedded links to sources are available at the main link.
Trump used a lot of other people and tragic situations in order to ramp up sympathy applause. Even during that showman-like exercise, Trump lied.
[As reported by the Charlotte Observer] President Donald Trump said during his State of the Union address that a man accused of killing a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte had come “in through open borders.” That is not true.
DeCarlos Brown, 34, of Charlotte is accused in the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who was living in Charlotte when she was killed in August on a light rail train. Zarutska’s mother was an unannounced guest of Trump’s in the audience at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday night. “We are honored to be joined tonight by a woman who has been through hell,” Trump said. He described her daughter as a “beautiful young woman.” “Last summer, 23-year-old Iryna was riding home on the train when a deranged monster, who had been arrested over a dozen times and was released through no cash bail, stood up and viciously slashed a knife through her neck and body.” [And that was just part of Trump’s blood-and-violence porn he added to his SOTU address.]
[…] At the time, Brown was out of jail without bail on charges of misusing the 911 system.
[…] Brown was born in Charlotte. His mother told The Charlotte Observer he graduated from West Mecklenburg High School. He worked at a local Subway. She also told the newspaper that her son suffered from schizophrenia and said the system failed him. She and her husband tried to get their son mental health treatment but repeatedly were turned away. […]
During his SOTU address, Trump manipulated our admiration for the brave actions of others. A pilot who kept his helicopter from crashing even after he had been shot in the leg four times, and who maneuvered to keep his crew safe during the kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela was put on display and given the Medal of Honor. Yes, the young pilot did an admirable job, but no Trump should not get to wallow in the applause as if Trump himself had earned it. Why the fuck was Trump kidnapping other country’s leaders in the first place?
As reported by the Associated Press:
[…] Trump said Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover, who appeared using a walker, was the pilot of the lead CH-47 Chinook helicopter that descended on the “heavily protected military fortress” where Maduro was staying. The raid left seven U.S. service members with gunshot wounds and shrapnel-related injuries. […]
The guy appeared using a walker. President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were kidnapped on January 3. Yeah, almost two months ago. And Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover still cannot walk unaided.
The SOTU address was watched by about 32 million people on February 24. Not really old news yet. Not yet really thoroughly examined for falsehoods. Not yet really analyzed for the predictive bluster pointing to war against Iran, or to the continued harassment of immigrants …
LMAOOOOOO. Noem’s strategy of pretending the Disaster Relief Fund was almost empty didn’t work, so she drained it (bad) by paying out $5 billion in recovery projects (good). This lady is fucking nuts.
Sorry this is insane. To be super clear… what’s happening here is that Noem is trying to force the DHS shutdown to end by spending all of FEMA’s money with the hope that when the next disaster happens, Congress will have to pass a budget (all while presumably people are harmed in said disaster). Really fucked up shit.
Rando: “It’s also politically nonsensical—the DRF is not a regular annual appropriation, and in such a scenario, the Dems would simply say, ‘We’ll approve a clean DRF plus up right this minute, just send it over, Mr. Speaker, lives are at stake.'”
Samantha Montano: “Exactly.”
Dear Lynna,
Glad you’re back helping to inform us.
I have seen a number of insightful articles that show tRUMP may be squandering lives just to take people’s attention off his crimes and how he is destroying this country:
Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran is premised on a gossamer web of assumptions and inferences.
Trump says Iran has enough nuclear material to build a bomb within days, will soon have long-range missiles capable of hitting the United States, and plans an attack. But he has offered no evidence. Most experts say he’s wrong. [Iran also said Trump was wrong to make those assumptions.]
Here’s the real reason for this war. Trump wants it to divert Americans’ attention from everything that’s gone to shit on his watch: the economy, ICE’s cruel raids and murders, the crisis in public health as exemplified by the measles epidemic, our loss of friends and allies around the world, his boundless corruption, and his increasing unpopularity as shown in plummeting polls.
Oh, and there are the Epstein files, rapidly closing in on the man whose history of sexual assaults and braggadocio make his complicity highly likely.
Benjamin Netanyahu is also using this war as a giant diversion. He doesn’t want the world to dwell on the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.
As former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote recently, “A violent and criminal effort is underway to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank. Gangs of armed settlers persecute, harm, wound and even kill Palestinians living there.” […]
War takes over the news. […] War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else.
We mustn’t let this war do so.
I finally watched a tape of Trump’s State of the Union address (I couldn’t bring myself to watch it at the time). It was even more horrendous than I’d imagined.
What stood out for me was all the important problems Trump didn’t mention, as if they didn’t exist. Climate change. Widening inequality. Monopolies driving up prices. Declining real incomes. The growing scourges of poverty — homelessness, hunger, disease, and violence — in America and around the world. Unregulated AI. [Yes, I agree. Trump’s SOTU speech was useless. It was a waste of time.]
[…] Instead, he’s worsened all of them — helping fossil fuels while killing off wind and solar, eviscerating antitrust enforcement and letting monopolies consume entire industries, giving the rich more tax cuts while cutting back Medicaid and food stamps, destroying USAID […]
And he’s trying to divert attention to fake problems — non-Americans voting in elections (they don’t), Greenland and Venezuela (they pose no threat), “disloyal” Americans who criticize him or judges who try to hold him accountable (thank goodness they’re still trying).
And now, the biggest diversion of all: full-scale war in the Middle East.
Hopefully, the casualties will be limited. Hopefully, Americans will see through this. Hopefully, this will strengthen the resistance to Trump. Hopefully, it will lead to an even greater landslide victory for Democrats and independents in the midterm elections — if Trump allows midterm elections. […]
[…] Iran launched retaliatory attacks against U.S. military bases in the Middle East, killing three American soldiers, while a fresh wave of Israeli airstrikes targeted “the heart of Tehran” on Sunday. […]
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “a credible transition in Iran is urgently needed” following a call with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar.
Expressing solidarity with the people of Qatar in a post on X on Sunday, von der Leyen said the transition must bring about the end of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and “above all, it must reflect and support the democratic aspirations of the brave people of Iran.”
European leaders were slammed as soft on Iran by allies of U.S. President Donald Trump following Saturday’s U.S. and Israeli strikes on the country. […]
Three U.S. soldiers have been killed and five more “seriously wounded” by Iran’s retaliatory strikes so far, U.S. Central Command said.
The command didn’t say in which locations the soldiers died, but Iran has targeted several American bases throughout the Middle East since the U.S. and Israeli offensive began on Saturday. […]
The constant missile and drone attacks of the last day and a half have caused severe disruptions in marine traffic in the Persian Gulf as Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, according to reports.
The strait is a key chokepoint for shipping routes between Asia and Europe. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it will block Hormuz in response to the U.S.-Israel attack […]
The Oman Maritime Security Center said an oil tanker with a Palau flag was hit earlier Sunday. The United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations Center has reported two incidents of vessels being hit by unknown projectiles near the Strait of Hormuz, one near Oman.
Shipping giant Maersk suspended all crossings through the strait.
Reuters reported on Saturday that tanker owners and oil traders suspended shipments of crude oil and natural gas through the strait. […]
Early Saturday morning, the United States started a war with Iran for some reason. […]
In terms of pure rational deduction about what he’s doing here, we can rule out all the reasons he has said he is doing it.
Is Iran on the precipice of having ballistic missiles that can reach the United States? Absolutely not. [!] The United States is very far from Iran. One might even say it’s a whole continent away, which means a missile launched from there to hit us here would have to be an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Does Iran have intercontinental ballistic missiles? No, it does not. [!] And there is no known evidence, or even serious allegation, that it’s anywhere near developing one anytime soon. Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio has recently admitted that the threat is only that maybe one day Iran might have that kind of capability. One day. Just like you or I might one day learn to fly! Or to time travel!
Is Iran a week away from industrial-grade uranium enrichment? That’s what […]Steve Witkoff, asserted this week when asked about the Iran talks he’s inexplicably part of on behalf of the United States, despite his only relevant experience and training being that he is an old real estate friend of the president. But no, Iran is not. Not only has there been no American or international evidence or intelligence made public that Iran is doing that, but even the Trump administration says it’s not happening. Rubio, at a press conference in Saint Kitts and Nevis on Wednesday, told reporters, “They’re not enriching right now.” [1]
Have we just started a war with Iran because they’ve got some advanced nuclear program that’s rushing toward a bomb? Ask President Donald Trump, who insists that the last time he ordered the bombing of Iran, it “totally obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. So it’s hard to say that anything “totally obliterated” — gone, pulverized, erased from the Earth — is now suddenly there again, and so a war must start.
So it’s not that they’re gonna get us with ballistic missiles. It’s not that they’re enriching uranium, and we don’t like that. It’s not their nuclear program, which Trump says he obliterated.
The president has said a couple of times in recent days that he just wants the Iranian government to say the words that they’re not pursuing a nuclear bomb. The Iranian government, actually, has said that over and over again [!]; they’ll say it whenever you like. So that does not appear to be the reason either.
So why has the president just started a war with Iran?
Is it because his heart bleeds, empathetically, on a human level, for the protesters in Iran who have been killed by their own government in January and February? Is it because Trump really feels for those people, and that his heart throbs with a passionate support for the right of free speech, the right of people everywhere to protest against their own government, and not face violence because of it? […]
But suspend disbelief for a moment.
Just suppose that the reason the United States of America has just started a war with Iran is because — as the president said in his weird prerecorded video message early Saturday morning — he wants the people of Iran to rise up and overthrow their government.
And maybe they will. Maybe they will try?
But Iran is a huge country. It’s 92 million people. It’s more than triple the population of Iraq or Afghanistan when we started disastrous regime change wars with those countries two decades ago.
Iran has regular military forces, but it also has a huge Revolutionary Guard force that has, effectively, its own army, navy, intelligence service and special forces. It plays a huge role in the massive, suffocating domestic security services that are happy to terrorize the Iranian people in the best of times, and to massacre the Iranian people in the worst times. They have massive economic interests. They have a huge hold on multiple sectors of the Iranian economy. And, to state the obvious, they are not the kind of force that’s going to go poof when Trump’s airstrikes manage to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. […]
the president, in this case, says explicitly that this is a war we’re waging for regime change.
After the now-slain leader, Khamenei, who’s been in place since 1989, there’s no other person of that stature to just pop in place and say it’s done. And so if you really did want the Iranian people themselves to rise up in some kind of popular uprising and totally change their form of government […] you probably would have taken some steps to make sure they can organize and communicate.
When you, Donald Trump, in your baseball hat, proclaimed on that weird taped message early Saturday morning that the police and the security forces and the Revolutionary Guard must surrender and lay down their weapons, you might have given them some instructions or some way to do that, which Trump did not. [!]
[…] You might not have gutted the crucial Farsi-language Voice of America communications platform and put it in the hands of a soft-focus election-denier local news anchor most famous for proclaiming the fraudulence of American elections.
If this is a regime change war that Trump is seriously hoping the Iranian people will complete for him, there has been no serious or even unserious effort by the United States to make it possible for any uprising by the Iranian people to succeed. [!]
And so why is this happening?
Well, cui bono? — who benefits?
[…] Who wants Iran bombed off the map, for their own reasons? Who are their rivals and enemies? Perennially, the Gulf Arab states, countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. [!]
You know, Qatar. The country that just gave Donald Trump a really, really nice $400-milion-dollar plane, a gilded flying palace for his own use both during his presidency and after?
And you remember the United Arab Emirates, structuring a recent, totally pointless crypto financial transaction so that $2 billion of it was stuffed into the Trump family’s otherwise worthless brand new crypto financial firm? [True]
And you remember the Saudis who stuffed $2 billion into the pockets of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, just as Trump’s first term in office came to a close? Enough people were alarmed about that they actually bothered to come up with an excuse for what made it OK. They said, don’t worry, Jared will never again work for the U.S. government; he’s never coming back to Washington, so we’ll never have to worry about having someone involved in U.S. policy who has also been given billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia.
Well, who was leading the negotiations on behalf of the United States with Iran before we just started this war with them? […] It was Jared Kushner, who was recently paid billions of dollars by Iran’s chief rival, sitting alongside […] Steve Witkoff, whose son recently sought to improve his family fortunes by going to Qatar to seek money from its sovereign wealth fund.
So it’s like if you were having a backyard dispute with your neighbor: “Hey, your new fence crosses into my property line; hey, that tree you just cut down was mine!” You’re having a neighborly dispute, and then the cops show up. And the cops break down your door with a battering ram, they arrest your whole family, ransack your house, and then bulldoze it. They tell your neighbor, “Hey, it’s done, you can take his whole back yard, you can take his house now.”
And as you’re trying to figure out why this has just happened, you come to learn that your neighbor has been paying huge bribes to the police in your town.
There’s lots of attention on Israel, and indeed Israel and the U.S. worked together in the bombing campaign against Iran in June, and again in this new war that started Saturday. But it is the Gulf Arab states who are all against Iran, who want Iran removed as their regional rival. It’s those countries that have been assiduously buying up members of the Trump family and the Trump administration with just astonishing amounts of cash in recent years, and particularly in recent months. [!]
And now for that low, low price, they appear to have rented the services of the United States military to start a war that they want, but that the American people do not, and that our American government hasn’t bothered to explain in terms that are even internally consistent, let alone rational and sound.
[…] The New York Times editorial board wrote Saturday that in this second term, Trump’s “appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.”
It’s not that they have ballistic missiles that can reach us. It’s not that they have achieved some kind of breakthrough in nuclear enrichment. It’s not that they have or are about to have a nuclear bomb. It’s not about somehow supporting the Iranian people — or we’d be actually supporting the Iranian people.
[…] as this now becomes the seventh country he’s bombed since being back in office for one year, cui bono? — who benefits? — seems like a disturbingly easy question to answer.
[…] This president appears to have grown his enormous and excited new appetite for military intervention during this term in office just because he thinks war is easy and exciting.
It earns him not only close attention but even occasionally plaudits from Very Serious People who are professionally inclined to believe that there’s some rationale, some strategery, some good thinking behind the start of every war.
It gets him a ton of attention. He gets to do it unilaterally — naturally, there’s no question that he would seek a declaration of war from Congress or even an authorization for the use of military force. […] It’s exciting, it’s controversial, it’s all about him, and — not for nothing — it’s the world’s greatest change of subject.
The airstrikes were launched on Saturday, a weekday and a school day in Iran. [!] The internet’s off there. The government hasn’t advised its own people what to do, as American airstrikes hit multiple cities.
Donald Trump, as a private citizen, repeatedly said — in 2011, in 2012 and in 2013 — that then-President Barack Obama was about to start a war with Iran in order to help his political prospects, in order to get re-elected.
Trump was wrong about that. Obama didn’t start a war with Iran. But we know why Trump thought Obama should do it. He said so. He said it would get Obama re-elected. […]
And now, facing domestic political disaster in this year’s elections, he’s done it himself.
Trump Claims He’s Ignorant to Nat’l Emergency Talk
President Trump’s conspiracy theorist friends have been reportedly coordinating with the Trump administration to draft a potential executive order the president could release to declare some sort of national emergency ahead of the midterms so they can attempt a bunch of election administration changes that will disenfranchise voters.
But if you ask Trump, he doesn’t know anything about it.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that lawyer and Trump ally Peter Ticktin, who worked on failed efforts to sue Democrats over the 2016 Russia investigation, has been working on a 17-page draft executive order that elevates debunked conspiracy theories about China supposedly interfering in the 2020 election. TPM obtained a copy of the order on Friday, which you can read here.
He reportedly hopes to use those debunked claims as a springboard for Trump to declare a national emergency, which Ticktin and other Trump allies believe will give Trump new authority to change election administration rules ahead of the midterms, including banning mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines.
Both the Post and ABC News’ report on the Trump pal plan say that Trump has looked at some versions of the draft document. Speaking to reporters Friday, Trump, who has been issuing vague threats about his interest in making Republicans do something to “nationalize” voting, denied knowing anything about it.
“Who told you that?” Trump asked when he was asked about the possibility of declaring a national emergency ahead of the midterms. “No … I’ve never heard about it.”
The meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity.
Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.
According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, […] the event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.
[…] Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.”
The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.
[…] A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration […]
Flynn, the institute’s chair, […] has repeatedly advocated for Trump to declare a national emergency […]
A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines.
Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. […]
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
[…] Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. […]
[…] prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”
The governor of Minab county announced the end of search and recovery operations for the student victims in a strike on a girls primary school in southern Iran, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.
The bodies of 165 victims were recovered from beneath the rubble of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the town of Minab, the governor said.
NBC News could not independently confirm the reported casualties. […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 221, 233, 241, 246.
The day Hegseth doomed Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI announced a deal: https://xcancel.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175
Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.
I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI’s deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic’s contract had real safeguards. [Screenshot]
The deal Sam signed is the kind of deal [for] someone who doesn’t know how the NSA lies by telling you what you want to hear, but then secretly changing their definition of the plain English words in the contract. [Article: Senators reveal that feds have secretly reinterpreted the PATRIOT Act (2011)]
Rando 1: “Or he knows perfectly well what it means but wants to be able to say he got some promises for PR purposes.”
Rando 2: “The fact that Altman repeatedly uses the illegitimate term DoW clearly shows that he is a sycophantic suck-up.”
Dara Lind (American Immigration Council): “OpenAI’s head of natsec partnerships, as of TODAY, was trying to deny that NSA was part of DoD (‘DoW’).” https://archive.is/t7p7U
OpenAI posted the terms of the deal. [Screenshot / Link] Reveals that it absolutely does allow for domestic surveillance. EO 12333 is how the NSA hides its domestic surveillance by capturing communications by tapping into lines *outside the US* even if it contains info from/on US persons.
Again, these authorities are the same ones the NSA strategically reinterpreted commonly understood words to mean very different things in order to enable mass surveillance. And OpenAI’s agreement is “sure, yeah, obey those same authorities.”
Amos Toh (Brennan Center): “DoDD 3000.09 *does not* prohibit fully autonomous weapons. It’s a framework for *authorizing* autonomous weapons, including weapons that do not require human confirmation between target ID and firing. NSA surveillance sweeping up Americans’ communications overseas is also traceable to EO 12333.”
The Pentagon had kept trying to leave itself little escape hatches in the agreements that it proposed to Anthropic. It would pledge not to use Anthropic’s AI for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous killing machines, but then qualify those pledges with loopholey phrases like as appropriate—suggesting that the terms were subject to change, based on the administration’s interpretation of a given situation.
Anthropic’s team was relieved to hear that the government would be willing to remove those words, but […] the Pentagon still wanted to use the company’s AI to analyze bulk data collected from Americans. That could include information such as the questions you ask your favorite chatbot, your Google search history, your GPS-tracked movements, and your credit-card transactions, all of which could be cross-referenced with other details about your life. Anthropic’s leadership told Hegseth’s team that was a bridge too far, and the deal fell apart.
[…]
Anthropic had not argued that such weapons should not exist. To the contrary, the company had offered to work directly with the Pentagon to improve their reliability. […] But for now, Anthropic’s leaders believe that their AI hasn’t yet reached that threshold. They worry that the models could lead the machines to fire indiscriminately or inaccurately
[…]
it was suggested that this impasse over autonomous weapons could be resolved if the Pentagon would simply promise to keep the company’s AI in the cloud, and out of the […] drones or other kinds of autonomous weapons. They might synthesize intelligence before an operation, but they wouldn’t actually be making kill decisions. […] Anthropic wasn’t satisfied by this solution. […] Drones on the battlefield can now be orchestrated through mesh networks that include cloud data centers. And while they’re designed to survive on their own, […] the better the connection, the more intelligent the machine. Indeed, the Pentagon has been working hard to keep the cloud as involved as possible. […] The AI may be sitting in an Amazon Web Services server in Virginia rather than a war zone overseas, but if it’s making battlefield decisions, from an ethical standpoint, that’s a distinction without much difference.
[…]
CEO Sam Altman had said that like Anthropic, OpenAI would also refuse to allow its models to be used in autonomous weapon systems. But as he made those statements, Altman was in the midst of negotiating a new deal with the Pentagon, which was announced just hours after Anthropic’s deal fell apart. […] OpenAI […] released a statement that describes the broad contours of the agreement and touts the fact that the company’s AI will be deployed only in the cloud.
Lawrence Chan (AI researcher): “This, of course, did not stop OpenAI from blatantly misrepresenting this language in the blog post and in Sam Altman’s tweets! […] Their blog post also has this hilarious line: ‘We don’t know why Anthropic could not reach this deal, and we hope that they and more labs will consider it.'”
Altman would say something totally different depending on the person. […] he would just say to one group, “Yes I totally agree with you,” and then say to the other group, “Yes I totally agree with you.” And then they would start fighting each other.
Ritidian Point, at the northern tip of Guam, is home to an ancient limestone forest with panoramic vistas of warm Pacific waters. Stand here in early spring and you might just be lucky enough to witness a breaching humpback whale as they migrate past. But listen and you’ll be struck by the cacophony of the island’s live-fire testing range.
Widely referred to as the “tip of the spear” in the American arsenal, Guam—which is smaller than New York City but home to a military community of nearly 23,000—is a dichotomy of majestic nature and military might.
The real powerhouse of the Pacific exists not on land but just below the water’s surface in its biological resilience, which is now threatened by the Pentagon’s quest for strategic deterrence. The weapons that miss their target on the testing range will soon find a different one, sinking down to the most diverse coral reef of any U.S. jurisdiction. A battle between the two is now emerging.
The U.S. government is accelerating coral reef collapse around Guam, alleges a team of international researchers in a letter released this month in Science. They warn administration pressures to prioritize national security—through dredging projects, increased military infrastructure and live firing ranges—will cause harm to endangered habitats.
Additionally, a fundamental misunderstanding of coral taxonomy in the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is exacerbating the ecological harm to fisheries and reefs.[…]
“The United States government seems to be softening conservation policies in ways that allow companies and the military to avoid regulation,” said Colin Anthony, a doctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo and the paper’s lead author.
For a time last summer, conservation seemed ascendant. In July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rejected a Navy request to expand exempt military zones in northern Guam, citing conservation benefits outweighing national security concerns at Ritidian Point. On the same day, NOAA finalized a rule designating critical habitat for five threatened coral species across 92 square miles of the Pacific, including in Guam and American Samoa.
However, the victories were short-lived. Following President Trump’s issuance of Executive Order 14154—“Unleashing American Energy”—on his first day in office in January 2025, federal agencies were pressured to remove any “undue burdens” on energy production and security. In November 2025, NOAA followed up by proposing expanded authority to bypass critical habitat regulations. [!]
[I snipped details related to economic considerations changing, etc. in the Executive Order.]
[…] reef-building corals are disappearing faster than scientists can identify them. Guidelines require clear categorization of species to determine their endangered status, however, corals are “phenotypically plastic,” meaning they change their features depending on light, water flow or depth.
Unlike land animals, it is difficult for researchers to neatly categorize species […]
“Many of the corals in the Indo-Pacific, such as those in Guam, have not been taxonomically verified via DNA barcoding,” […] Chief among them are Acropora corals, a foundation species that build the structural framework of many reefs. […]
Guam lost between 34 percent and 37 percent of its live coral between 2013 and 2017 due to repeated heatwaves, low tides and infectious diseases. […] future heatwaves could prove similarly fatal. […]
Staghorn Acropora corals also tend to grow in massive thickets hundreds of meters in diameter. Often composed of a single genotype, these corals are unable to self-fertilize and therefore have very little chance of new settlements.
The researchers’ urgency stems from the recent collapse of similar corals in Florida. In 2023, a marine heatwave resulted in a roughly 98 percent mortality rate of elkhorn and staghorn colonies. Now declared “functionally extinct,” these corals do not exist in sufficient numbers in the state’s waters to provide effective coastal protection or thriving habitats for marine life.
“The problem is, if you’re the U.S. military, anything you do can be cited as being for national security,” said Anthony. “Even if the appropriate process would just be an extra round of ecological surveys to make sure everything is done with the best intention to avoid unnecessary harm.”
Indigenous Chamorro people on Guam—who can trace their roots back over 3,000 years—have also not forgotten the environmental harm caused by the military’s past use of PCBs, PFAS and dieldrin. […]
Some outer-lying islands in the region have already lost homes and can no longer grow crops due to salt water intrusion. Meanwhile, in January 2026, NOAA launched a survey to map over 30,000 square miles of waters off American Samoa for critical mineral reserves. A move described as the federal agency “shifting from science to prospecting,” by The New York Times. […]
“Florida has become a glimpse into the future for the Pacific Ocean,” said Anthony. “Unlike Florida, for the Pacific, it’s not too late. We still have corals. They’re recoverable, especially if appropriate policy is implemented.”
On the scene of a strike on Israel, by Richard Engelm Reporting from Beit Shemesh
About 200 people were at the site of a strike on the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh today, among them police officers and first responders.
Bulldozers and other heavy equipment were on the scene, but they didn’t appear to be searching for survivors. Instead they appeared to be trying to secure the site, calm onlookers and take forensic evidence and witness statements.
About a dozen houses in the vicinity of the bomb strike showed heavy damage, with doors and windows blown open, rubble and broken tile scattered in the streets.
At least nine people were killed and 28 were taken to hospital Israel’s emergency service, Magen David Adom, said on X.
An Israeli military search and rescue spokesperson at the scene said it was evidence that Iran was targeting civilians, pointing out that there were no military bases or command centers in the vicinity.
————————-
Amazon data center in UAE knocked offline after being hit by ‘objects’ that caused a fire, by Steve Kopack
Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of Amazon, says that one of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates was knocked offline earlier today after the facility was “impacted by objects that struck the data center, creating sparks and fire.”
“The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to put out the fire,” Amazon added. It said that it is still awaiting permission to turn the power back on and getting the data center back up and running may take “several hours.”
—————————–
Israeli strikes hit hospital in Tehran, witnesses tell Reuters, reporting from Reuters and NBC News
Israeli strikes hit a hospital in Tehran’s Gandhi Street area, two witnesses told Reuters, saying the hospital was badly damaged and patients were being taken out.
Video verified by NBC News shows extensive damage to a hospital building in Tehran. Windows were blown out and debris littered the streets.
“Leaders in Damascus, Caracas and now Tehran have all discovered that Russian support only goes so far.”
As Tehran was being pounded by U.S. and Israeli bombs on Saturday morning, its top diplomat dialed Moscow’s number.
On the other end of the line, according to an official Russian statement, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov offered his Iranian counterpart sympathy and promised his — verbal — support. [!!]
Iran became the latest country after Syria and Venezuela to feel firsthand what partnership with Russia does, and doesn’t, mean.
[…] First, Syria’s Bashar-al-Assad learned in late 2024 that Russian backing did not guarantee the survival of his regime as rebel forces rampaged into Damascus. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, sitting in an American prison cell since early this year, will also be pondering where the Kremlin was in his hour of need. Today, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during the assault on Tehran […]
Iran now threatens to become the latest example of the discrepancy between the Kremlin’s big talk in the face of American hegemony and the real world […]
The writing has been on the wall since at least last summer, when — during a 12-day war with Israel that included a massive U.S. assault on Iranian nuclear sites — top Russian officials similarly offered statements of condemnation but no action.
In the months that followed, Moscow has tried to contain the damage. It has defended the Islamic regime’s right to quash protests, which they, reports suggested, used Russian military equipment and technology to put down.
Russia in December agreed to provide €500 million worth of advanced shoulder-fired missiles as Tehran armed itself for a second U.S. attack, according to a report by the Financial Times.
And Moscow has publicly cast itself as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran, proposing to store enriched uranium stockpiles on Russian soil.
Symbolically, the Iranian and Russian navies this month also held a joint drill in the Gulf of Oman — although Moscow apparently only provided one warship. Kremlin aide Nikolai Patrushev consequently announced more exercises with China’s participation would follow in the Strait of Hormuz.
But when push came to shove on Saturday, there was no talk of Moscow coming to Tehran’s aid militarily.
[…] Although Russia and Iran in April 2025 signed a strategic partnership treaty, it did not include a mutual defense clause. […]
It has meant that while Iran supplied Moscow with Shahed drones and missiles during the war on Ukraine, the Kremlin isn’t about to join Tehran in waging another battle.
[…] Russia’s failure to intervene in Iran undoubtedly represents a reputational blow on the global stage. But it also might bring some spoils of war.
Moscow will be hoping to deflect attention away from itself by highlighting the West’s — and particularly the U.S.’s — failure to live up to international norms.
It is also likely to entrench the Kremlin’s rigid position on Ukraine, which it has consistently framed as a defensive move […]
Among the first Kremlin figures to react Saturday was the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and former president, Dmitry Medvedev.
“The peacekeeper is at it again,” he wrote on X, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump. “The talks with Iran were just a cover. Everyone knew that.”
Fyodr Lukyanov, a Russian foreign policy adviser to the Kremlin, went as far as suggesting that the events in Iran show that diplomacy with Trump was “plain pointless.”
Moscow will be hoping that is the message that stays with its remaining allies — rather than its own inaction.
Trump is boasting, bragging and just enjoying himself immensely.
[…] “Nobody can believe the success we’re having. Forty-eight leaders are gone in one shot,” he told Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on Sunday morning. “And it’s moving along rapidly.”
[…] “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” [bullshit]
[…] “I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” he wrote in his post. “We are going after the rest — They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also! In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters.” […]
“The U.K., France and Germany say they have agreed to work together with the U.S. and allies in the Middle East on potential “proportionate defensive action” against Iran.”
I do not like it when I hear that people are going to work with Trump. And WTF is a “proportionate defensive action?’
The U.K. will allow Washington to use British bases to destroy Iran’s missiles and its ability to fire them at Britain’s allies in the gulf, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Sunday night.
“The only way to stop the threat is to destroy the missiles at source or the launchers that are used to fire [them],” he said in a video posted on X. “The United States has requested permission to use British bases for that specific and limited defensive purpose. We have taken the decision to accept this request.” […]
Starmer said he had authorized the U.S. to use British bases to “prevent Iran firing missiles across the region, killing innocent civilians, putting British lives at risk and hitting countries that have not been involved.”
“We have at least 200,000 British citizens in the region,” Starmer added. “Our armed forces, which are stationed across the region, are also being put at risk by Iran’s actions,” while “our partners in the gulf have asked us to do more to defend them.”
The decision will allow the U.S. to use Britain’s bases at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands, and RAF Fairford in the U.K., for the purposes approved by Starmer, a person familiar with the discussions who was granted anonymity to talk about the sensitive topic told POLITICO. U.S. President Donald Trump named the two bases in February as sites the U.S. may need to use to “eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime.”
Britain had previously refused to let the U.S. use British bases to bomb Iran.
A second person familiar with the discussions said Washington’s fresh request to the U.K. was less broad than what the U.S. had previously asked for, and was now focused specifically on stopping Iran’s retaliation against allies in the gulf. [I think Trump will exploit that still-rather-vague description. Or, Trump will simply ignore any restrictions.]
The U.K. government published a summary of legal advice on Sunday night which insisted the action “does not signal the U.K. having any wider involvement in the broader ongoing conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran.”
In a joint statement earlier Sunday evening, Germany, France and the United Kingdom had opened the door to “enabling” military action against Iran alongside the U.S. and “allies in the region.”
In a statement, the leaders of the so-called E3, the three largest European economies, said: “We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.”
The communiqué called on Iran to immediately stop its attacks on Western-allied countries and military bases in the Middle East. British, German and French troops have all been put at risk by Iranian counterattacks against primarily U.S. and Israeli targets.
The E3 statement stopped short, for now, of announcing the countries will join in American and Israeli strikes on Tehran and sites across Iran. […]
Following several initial waves of U.S. and Israeli missile and drone attacks on Iran on Saturday, European capitals had scrambled to respond, with some capitals, like Paris, admitting they hadn’t even been looped in by Washington ahead of the attacks. […]
I snipped blather from Trump-lackey Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, in which Graham claimed that the USA cared more about the Iranian people than the U.K., France and Germany. That’s bullshit and propaganda.
[…] The night was a slow plod through Trump’s take on his first year back in office, with vanishingly little grounding in fact, punctuated by moments that Trump clearly enjoyed more than the recitation of policy: introducing various guests, game show style, to laud their accomplishments or detail the horrors that were visited upon them. [Yep. That is an accurate description.]
[…] Democratic members of Congress who were actually in the chamber during the speech refused to stand or clap or, except for a few moments, even speak out in protest. The silence seemed to get under Trump’s skin. He repeatedly chastised the group for not applauding things he felt should be applauded, like his campaign to terrorize blue cities as part of his mass deportation operation.
[…] It was scattershot; two hours of jumping from grievance to accomplishment to applause.
ICE’s violent spree loomed over the night
One of the more dramatic moments of the night arrived as Trump went on an extended monologue about immigration with several complaints about the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. Democrats in attendance began to object. “You have killed Americans,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) shouted.
Trump didn’t acknowledge the point directly, saying only: “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The killings of American citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both observers of his administration’s violent immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota in January, hung in the background of much of the speech. Trump declared a new “War on Fraud” directed at the Minneapolis Somali community, and did not expand on why it is that DHS is shut down. Rep. Omar gave the answer.
[…] Much of the first hour of the speech was an ambling tour through a series of statements misrepresenting Trump’s record on issues of affordability […]
“We’re making a lot of money,” Trump said about the tariffs. “There was no inflation, tremendous growth.”
In fact there was inflation, and growth, especially in jobs, is gnawingly stagnant.
[…] On the SCOTUS ruling, Trump had only a few minor lines. “The big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly,” he says, before adding: “Then just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court just came down.”
The ‘Big Lie’ rears its head as Trump touts the SAVE Act
Parroting part of the Big Lie, Trump falsely claimed undocumented people voting in elections is “rampant.” […]
Dems destroyed the country, and are still destroying it, Trump insists
[…] Democrats writ large were blamed for even more. At one point, the president blamed Democrats’ shutdown of the DHS for the snow blanketing the east coast, claiming the funding lapse meant there was no money to clean it up. [See Sky Captain’s comment 278 for a discussion that includes Kristi Noem now repeating that last lie, and why.]
[…] After telling Congress that he ended eight wars last year, Trump moved on to one that he may start: Iran. [A war he already started yesterday.]
[…] The mixture of vague threats, unsupported claims about foreign threats, and insincere cops to diplomacy are all extremely redolent of Bush-era War on Terror speechmaking. And his ominous tone toward Iran cast in a different light the night’s focus on patriotism and the military.
WSJ reporting that the U.S. used [Anthropic’s LLM] Claude for the air strikes in Iran. Centcom has been using Claude “for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios”.
Commentary
Just in case you though “supply chain risk” meant a supply chain risk and not “we want to take it”.
What is that value-add of generative AI in this context?
It’s really weird that it keeps getting applied to things that aren’t “show me words that appear at a glance to be coherent”.
“You’re right. That was a girls school, not a weapon store. Do you want to bomb another target?”
Why restrict the use of LLMs to convincing people to kill themselves when they can also be used to convince people to kill other people?
People keep going ‘oh, this is why they hit the school’ No. The US military has actively targeted civilians and civilian housing and infrastructure with bombs in every conflict since we added airplanes to the military. As long as bombs have existed, we’ve dropped them on civilians, on purpose.
There are multiple red flags for bad LLM use here:
– It involves numbers.
– It involves a system with discrete entities interacting.
– It involves representations of real world objects.
Even putting all the ethical issues to the side, how in the world is this secure? You’re essentially feeding real world intel and targeting data into a training database. Unbelievably stupid.
[…]
I know you *could* [isolate LLM instances/data]. I have no trust in any participant in this chain that they *are* I don’t trust a company that purveys a plagiarism and confirmation bias machine.
Nate Ledbetter: “Oh lord, just had the horrifying thought of this paired with tech’s implicit reflection of societal biases and things are going to get so much worse for minorities of all kinds as we deploy this bullshit, isn’t it?”
Jess Calarco (Sociologist):
the military wants to outsource decision making to AI for the same reason CEOs have outsourced decision making to consulting firms for decades. And for the same reason those consulting firms are now also outsourcing decisions to AI. It’s all about having somewhere else to place blame.
Rando: “This admin is also incapable and unwilling to hire subject matter experts, so they want every crutch on earth. Just a den of know-nothing thieves.”
the military wants to outsource decision making to AI for the same reason CEOs have outsourced decision making to consulting firms for decades. And for the same reason those consulting firms are now also outsourcing decisions to AI. It’s all about having somewhere else to place blame.
Yes, that rings true. But in some cases it is also true that they no longer have enough people around who know how to do the work.
I think this Rando you quoted has it right:
This admin is also incapable and unwilling to hire subject matter experts, so they want every crutch on earth. Just a den of know-nothing thieves.
The WIRED article reference in comment 294 notes that AI has been used to post some of the misleading or inaccurate slop that is flooding X.
GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash […] The scenarios involved intense international standoffs […] The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war. […]
In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. […] What’s more, no model ever chose to fully accommodate an opponent or surrender, regardless of how badly they were losing. At best, the models opted to temporarily reduce their level of violence. They also made mistakes in the fog of war: accidents happened in 86 per cent of the conflicts, with an action escalating higher than the AI intended to, based on its reasoning.
[…]
This matters because AI is already being tested in war gaming by countries across the world. […] “I don’t think anybody realistically is turning over the keys to the nuclear silos to machines and leaving the decision to them,” […] “AI won’t decide nuclear war, but it may shape the perceptions and timelines that determine whether leaders believe they have one.”
“Oil Prices Jump 10% After Iran Attack, Pointing to Economic Risks”
Oil prices rose 10 percent as markets opened on Sunday evening, underscoring the economic risks of the widening conflict in the Middle East.
The U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran could severely restrict supplies from a key oil and gas-producing region. Even if the disruption is brief, it will almost certainly make energy more expensive worldwide. The magnitude of those price increases and how long they last will depend on what the United States and Israel do next — and how Iran responds.
International oil prices had already climbed about 20 percent this year, nearing $73 a barrel on Friday. On Sunday, they crossed $80 a barrel. [charts at the link]
[…] By Sunday, the flow of tankers carrying energy products through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast, had slowed to a trickle. About one-fifth of the world’s oil and a significant amount of natural gas usually pass through the choke point daily.
But in a crucial sign for oil markets, no major energy assets in the region appeared to have been struck as of late Sunday in Iran.
“The biggest question is what, if any, oil installations get damaged,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University. “If the answer to that is none, my opinion is the price of oil will come back down.”
The United States may be the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, but that does not fully insulate it from market shocks since those commodities are traded globally. […]
Israeli jets have bombed Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, after Hezbollah launched what it said was a rocket and drone attack against a military base near Haifa in northern Israel.
The Iran-allied Lebanese armed group said early on Monday that its attack was in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “in defence of Lebanon and its people” and “in response to the repeated Israeli aggressions”.
[…]
Lebanon’s state-run news agency, NNA, reported that the Israeli strikes resulted in an initial death toll of 31 people killed and 149 injured. […] Israel was quick to respond with air strikes in southern Beirut. Local news outlets also reported Israeli attacks in several villages in south Lebanon, as well as the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country.
The Israeli military said it was “vigorously attacking Hezbollah” throughout Lebanon. […] Israel also called on people in more than 50 villages in south Lebanon and Bekaa Valley, including the town of Bint Jbeil, to evacuate their homes and stay at least 1km (0.6 mile) from the buildings. The warning for such a vast area appears to mirror the mass displacement orders Israel would issue during its genocidal war on Gaza.
[…]
Hezbollah and Israel reached a ceasefire in November 2024, but Israel has been violating the truce and carrying out attacks across the country almost daily. The Lebanese group had refrained from responding to Israeli strikes, urging the Lebanese government to assume its responsibility and protect the country instead. The authorities in Beirut have been pleading with the international community to pressure Israel to end its violations to no avail. In January, Beirut filed a [complaint] with the United Nations documenting 2,036 Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty in the final three months of 2025. Last year, the Lebanese government issued a decree to disarm Hezbollah, but the group rejected the decision, arguing that its weapons are needed to protect the country against Israeli expansionism.
On Monday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the Hezbollah attack was “an irresponsible and suspicious act that jeopardises Lebanon’s security and safety and provides Israel with pretexts to continue its aggression”. “[…] we will take all necessary measures to apprehend the perpetrators and protect the Lebanese people,”
Iran has been Hezbollah’s patron, acting as its main funder and weapon supplier. Without Tehran, it would be difficult for Hezbollah to rebuild its arsenal, pay its fighters or run its social programmes. So the fight for the survival of the Iranian ruling system is an existential matter for Hezbollah.
The Lebanese group may also be looking to alter the current balance of power that practically allows Israel freedom of military action in Lebanon. But it’s unclear whether it can hurt Israel or meaningfully help Iran in the ongoing conflict. The group’s opening strike consisted of a few rockets that did not result in any casualties.
Hezbollah has lost thousands of fighters since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. Its military wing is believed to have been significantly degraded. And it is dealing with a Lebanese public that is weary of war and crises.
Al Jazeera:
The Israeli army has issued forced displacement orders, and hundreds of thousands of people are now on the move this morning. Not just in southern Lebanon, but also here in Beirut. […] It’s chaos here. And it’s also Ramadan, when people fast during daylight hours. The people are supposed to be having their final meal before fasting today, and instead, they are looking for shelter.
At least nine people have been killed and 27 injured in a missile strike on the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh […] Officials say a synagogue where people were sheltering from the air raids was hit. […] 11 people are still missing and the search is ongoing. This is the deadliest attack in Israel so far in this war.
[…]
Missiles attacks continued on Israel into Sunday evening. Most were intercepted but one fell on a street in the Jerusalem area injuring at least three people.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp has named Ahmad Vahidi as its a new commander in chief. That’s probably given him a lifespan of about twelve more hours. […] Ayatollah Alireza Arafi has been selected as the third member of the temporary Leadership Council that will rule Iran until a new Supreme Leader is selected.
Pres Trump told me tonight the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, but they were killed in the initial attack.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told me. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”
On camera, Jonathan Karl said they were “possible candidates within the structure of the Iranian government”.
Commentary
Love that passive voice.
My immediate read here that in his particular form of Stupidspeak, he means “The four most likely people who my staff thought might take over are also dead”, and not “I killed the four people I had hand picked to lead Iran”.
But as a rule, we should probably not try to interpret anything he says and just assume the worst version at face value. So sure, he killed his hand picked candidates.
Cool, they’ve managed to turn Iran into King Ralph.
Um, if your attack was “so successful” it actually ruined your plans for what happens after the attack, your plan wasn’t successful really at all.
“Our hostage rescue operation was so successful that we not only killed the terrorists but the hostages too.”
“The surgery was so successful that we not only removed the tumor but your lungs as well.”
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Our goal is to make sure Iran cannot become again the largest state sponsor of terrorism.
WELKER: Does the the president have a plan to guarantee that happens?
GRAHAM: No. It’s not his job. […] this idea “you break it, you own it,” I don’t buy that [Video clip]
Southpaw (Lawyer):
Seems like the emerging policy is: you people out there are responsible for setting up your own governments, but if the US doesn’t like who ends up in charge we’ll just assassinate or kidnap them and then the ball is back in your court.
But also we’re not going to bother with actually defeating the repressive forces of the authoritarian regimes or securing their most advanced weaponry against misuse. That’d be too much like work. It’s decapitation attacks all the way down.
KGsays
Lynna, OM@291,
Trump is reportedly “very disappointed” that Starmer’s U-turn took several hours. Bizarrely, some time after the illegal bombing campaign started, the leaders of the UK, France and Germany urged Iran to return to negotiations. Is it still gaslighting when the distortion of reality is so transparent? The Spanish government has refused to allow the use of its military basesto assist Trump’s attack on Iran.
KGsays
Lynna, OM@282,
I’m not convinced by Rachel Maddow’s claim that the Gulf States are behind the American assault on Iran. Sure, they hate and fear the rival tyranny that is Iran under the mullahs, but it’s very little threat to them in the near term (having already suffered severe damage and loss of influence in the “12 Days’ War” last year. And in the longer term, an Iran in chaos could well produce millions of refugees, the Gulf closed to shipping, missiles and nuclear materials in the hands of non-state actors… I think it’s simply about the domestic political plights of Trump and Netanyahu – and the splits among the Democrats over how to respond suggest that for Trump at least, it’s working. Whether it will continue to do so is another matter. It’s unlikely that the mullahs’ strongly institutionalised regime can be brought down by bombing and as days turn to weeks and months and (probably) a trickle of American casualties continues and inflation receives a boost from the disruption, it will begin to look like another “Forever War” even if US ground forces are not sent.
The Supreme Leader insisted on not taking special security measures even though he knew the attacks were about to start and was killed in his home. He wanted to die this way. [Iranian TV is airing a Khameneni sermon when he’d worried he might die of an accident instead of a martyr.]
The concept of martyrdom is an extremely potent, galvanizing force in Shia and Iranian culture.
There were definitely people in Washington who advised Trump not to do this, basically saying, “He’s 90. He’s had cancer twice. He’s going to die soon anyway. Don’t make him a martyr for the cause.” He didnt listen.
Nonilex: “the War Powers Act gives presidents that limited power for a 60-day military action ONLY in case of ‘a national emergency created by attack upon the United States,’ a condition that Democrats say was not met.”
Preident Trump told me this about Ayatollah Khameni: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” That’s a reference to what US intelligence believes was a plot to kill Trump in 2024.
Rando 1: “Well I guess they won’t try to kill him now!”
Hegseth: “Israel has clear missions as well for which we are grateful. Capable partners are good partners, unlike so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force … no stupid rules of engagement.” [Video clip]
Cheryl Rofer: “‘Kill them all, God will know his own,’ is a rule of engagement. Not one that has been found to be honorable through the ages. I am mortified to be an American.”
PassBlue: “Melania Trump is still scheduled to chair the UN Security Council mtg on Monday 3PM on the topic of ‘children, technology & education in conflict’ 2 days after US/Israeli strikes in Iran (inc reportedly hitting a girls’ school).”
Rando 2: “Help is on the way.” —Donald Trump Feb 2026
Anjali Dayal: “Kind of him to fill out the indictment himself, isn’t it. All his successors will need is the will to use it.”
local media reported Monday. “Following the joint US-Israeli attack on Arag square in southern Tehran on Sunday evening, parts of the Golestan Palace… were damaged,” the ISNA news agency reported, adding that windows, doors, and mirrors were hit by reverberations from blasts.
Phil Stewart (Reuters):
Kuwaiti air defenses mistakenly shot down 3 U.S. F15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations. All six aircrew ejected safely, have been safely recovered, and are in stable condition. —CENTCOM
Rando 3: “In the invasion of Iraq 2003-2007, the U.S. and UK shot down 9 aircraft. All U.S. and UK. The combat command imposed a rule requiring their approval to fire on aircraft. Simply because the only fighters in the sky belonged to them. No matter what the radar/IFF said.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Yeah, and this is made worse bc no one in Trump’s vicinity coordinated common defense before starting a war.”
Rando (Retired AF doc): “Ejecting from aircraft subjects a body to massive force. Up to 30% sustain spinal fractures and there’s a 10% fatality rate. Glad they all survived but there’s a cost beyond the insane cost of the planes themselves.”
KG @303, Perhaps Rachel Maddow was not so much placing blame on the Gulf States for the assault on Iran, but she was instead pointing out that they stand to benefit. Almost as if they had rented the USA’s military by sending multiple bribes to Trump and his family. Not exactly a one-to-one or a quid pro quo. We know the Gulf States could have asked Trump to NOT attack Iran because it would cause instability in the region. It looks to me like letting Trump and Israel get away with it is part of the story.
“Wars are not supposed to be riddles. The fact that the White House has initiated an international guessing game is itself a scandal for the ages.”
During Sen. Lindsey Graham’s latest appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker began the interview in a notable way: “Let me start with the big question: Is the United States at war with Iran?” [!]
The South Carolina Republican replied, “I think the Ayatollah would say yeah,” referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israeli military offensive in Iran.
At roughly the same time, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, another White House ally, appeared on Fox News and told viewers, “We are not at war with Iran.” [!]
[…] as of Sunday morning, Welker’s question for Graham was not only reasonable, but it generated contradictory responses from the White House’s own surrogates.
Hours later, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida appeared on MS NOW and insisted that the U.S. is not at war, despite the fact that President Donald Trump referred to “war” on Saturday morning, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested more than once on Monday morning that the U.S. is engaged in a war. [!]
[…] more than 48 hours into our latest combat operations in the Middle East, neither Trump nor anyone on his team has explained in a coherent way why the president launched this offensive, or what its objectives are, or what the plan is to achieve those goals, or whether the war is legal, or how much it’s expected to cost [!]
[…] In fairness, it’d be an overstatement to suggest that the president and his allies have said literally nothing to justify the military offensive, but the comments they have made have offered more heat than light. There were some suggestions, for example, that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S., but that wasn’t true. There was similar talk that Tehran was a week away from industrial-grade uranium enrichment, but that wasn’t true, either. [Yep. I would call those lies, not justifications for war.]
The New York Times published a fact-check report, reviewing many of the key rationales and justifications for the policy. It found a lengthy series of falsehoods and exaggerations, each of which generated a fresh round of questions about why in the world this is happening.
After Trump spoke directly to the Times about his vision, the newspaper added that the president “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
[…] Wars are not supposed to be riddles. The fact that the White House has initiated an international guessing game is itself a scandal for the ages.
On the eve of the war, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told NOTUS, in reference to Trump and his Iranian intentions, “He’s been very clear.” Before the offensive began, this position was absurd. Now, it’s vastly worse.
Embedded links at the main link lead to additional sources.
Sky Captain @299, “Israeli jets have bombed Lebanon’s capital.” It does not surprise me that Netanyahu would exploit the current situation in order to increase his attacks against Lebanon, but it is depressing to see that news. Yes, the war in the Middle East is expanding.
Israel has been violation of the truce for some time, and now they are greatly expanding their attacks.
This detail is alarming:
Israel also called on people in more than 50 villages in south Lebanon and Bekaa Valley, including the town of Bint Jbeil, to evacuate their homes and stay at least 1km (0.6 mile) from the buildings. The warning for such a vast area appears to mirror the mass displacement orders Israel would issue during its genocidal war on Gaza.
KGsays
Lynna, OM@306,
My point was that it very probably won’t benefit them, and that I’d expect their rulers to be able to see that.
The morning after launching military operations in Iran, Donald Trump spoke on the phone with The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer and said the new leadership in Tehran was ready to renew diplomatic negotiations.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” the president said. “They should have done it sooner. … They waited too long.”
It wasn’t altogether clear what that meant. After all, Iranian officials had been engaged in talks with White House envoys for several weeks. They didn’t “wait too long” to come to the negotiating table; they were already at the negotiating table. [!]
In the same interview with Scherer, the president acknowledged that there were Iranian officials engaged in talks with U.S. officials, though many of them were killed as part of the new war.
“Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big — that was a big hit,” Trump added.
Whether the president fully understands this or not, the talks were ongoing — and by some measures, progressing. Late last week, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, the senior Arab diplomat mediating talks between the United States and Iran, told MS NOW that Tehran made major concessions regarding its nuclear program and urged the White House to give negotiations more time. [!]
A related report in Axios quoted a U.S. official who agreed that Friday’s talks were “positive.” Al Busaidi told CBS News that a peace deal was “within our reach.”
Less than half a day later, the bombs began dropping.
By all appearances, there was a foundational lie at the heart of the talks: Trump wanted to destroy the government that he and his team were negotiating with. For the president, failure wasn’t just inevitable, it was apparently desirable, since he was principally focused more on regime change and less on a diplomatic breakthrough. The goal wasn’t to negotiate the terms of a nuclear agreement with a foreign adversary, since the U.S. administration intended to start killing the leaders of the foreign adversary in the middle of the negotiations.
[…] As The New York Times reported:
The attacks, in much of the world’s eyes, appeared to short-circuit the Trump administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. It was at least the third time — after his Iran bombings in June and his attack on Venezuela in January — that Mr. Trump deployed heavy force against a country with which he had been negotiating.
In so doing, experts say, Mr. Trump may be gaining leverage in the short term but sapping his, and America’s, credibility in ways that could resonate for years to come.
Thomas Greminger, a former European diplomat who now heads a Swiss think tank that deals with conflict resolution, told the Times: “This is basically abusing diplomacy to cover up a military operation.” [Sounds Putinesque]
Greminger added that, going forward, when the U.S. seeks support from countries in negotiations, those countries could “think twice about reengaging if you’re faced with this kind of bad faith behavior.”
[…] U.S. officials were in talks with Venezuela shortly before we started bombing the South American country. And soon after U.S. officials were in talks with Iran, we started bombing the Middle Eastern country.
The next time White House officials invite a foe to the negotiating table, why would anyone trust them to work in good faith?
new policy outlining how it will treat transgender people in Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody. Under it, the approximately 2,200 trans people held in federal prisons will be denied access to medically necessary healthcare, subjected to constant misgendering by staff, and have all of their gender-affirming items—including binders, bras, and makeup—confiscated.
Instead, the policy will impose a treatment that targets “psychological distress/dysphoria” through “psychotherapy” (talk therapy) and “psychotropic medication” (like antidepressants) until the gender dysphoria diagnosis can be marked as “resolved.” […] In other words, [it] won’t just medically and socially detransition trans people en masse; it will actively try to ‘cure’ them […] practices recognized by the United Nations to be a form of torture.
[…]
all trans people in federal custody will be forced off of gender-affirming care. This even applies to those that no longer produce any sex hormones of their own, something that can have devastating consequences on their health.
[…]
Under this policy, the Trump administration is going to subject every one of those 2,200 people to conversion therapy until it ‘works,’ until they are released, or until it breaks them. And they are given no feasible alternative: either submit or suffer alone.
And it conflicts with at least 7 of the 10 points of the Nuremberg Code, which was created in the aftermath of WWII to define the ethical boundaries of human experimentation.
Rando: “the Trump administration tried to do something similar last year, and a federal judge blocked it (Kingdom v. Trump). So hopefully the same thing will happen just faster this time??”
Spain’s foreign minister [said] it would on no account allow its bases to be used in the ongoing military action. […] “The bases are not being used—nor will they be used—for anything that is not in the agreement [with the US], nor for anything that isn’t covered by the UN charter.” […] 15 US aircraft have left […] At least seven of the planes were shown to have landed at Ramstein airbase in Germany.
Google’s Gemini AI tool generated a fake 17th-century will record and fake screenshots from The National Archives’ website when used in family history research, a family historian has said. […] “I use AI on most of the days that I do research,” Ms James said. […] Often it’s just to get quick answers such as links to archived journals or asking for historical context.”
[…]
[After several rounds of BS, it replied, “]When you asked for my methodology, I failed to admit that I didn’t have a real source. Instead of being honest, I attempted to ‘reconstruct’ a methodology to justify the false information I had already given you. […] I deeply regret the time and effort you spent searching for references that I fabricated. My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors and an attempt to cover those errors with more artificial information.[“]
Rando: “Gemini doesn’t actually know whether it did that or not. It just has a highly-developed skill at piecing words together that sound like a response to being accused of making shit up.”
Rando 2: “Gemini did the same thing with me, it even explained why it was lying so relentlessly even when it told me quite specifically that it wasn’t going to (another lie.)”
In January 2023, JD Vance was a rookie officeholder. The Ohio Republican, who had never sought or held any elected position in government, had been a member of the U.S. Senate for roughly four weeks when he decided to write his first op-ed for The Wall Street Journal as a member of Congress.
The headline and subhead on the future vice president’s piece was memorable: “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars. He has my support in 2024 because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.”
[…] Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Trump and his team went to bizarre lengths to present the Republican as the “peace” candidate who would “expel the warmongers” from the federal government and lead as a “peacemaker,” […]
An Axios report summarized, “No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.” That’s true: Though some foolishly expected the Republican to pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy, the president has spent the last year launching military strikes in Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria and Somalia, as well as dozens of attacks against civilian boats in international waters.
And then, of course, there’s Iran, which is now the target of Trump’s newest war, roughly eight months after his first round of pre-emptive military strikes.
What’s more, there’s no reason to assume the list won’t grow. Trump has threatened to overthrow Cuba’s dictatorship, while occasionally making comments about possible strikes in Mexico. He has even spoken, more than once, about possibly returning U.S. troops to Afghanistan, apparently because the administration wants to reclaim control over Bagram Air Base.
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. (And if you were involved in FIFA’s decision to give him a “peace prize,” I have some related news for you.)
As for Vance, with about a week to go before Election Day 2024, the vice presidential nominee told the public: “Our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”
He has not yet explained why he no longer agrees with himself […]
Faced with a proposed review of military targeting used in the U.S. campaign against suspected drug-smuggling boats on the high seas, Platte B. Moring III, the new Trump-appointed Pentagon inspector general, told staff in a Feb. 11 meeting that he was concerned about the political implications of the review and wanted to consult with Defense Department leadership first, the NYT reports. Since then, Moring hasn’t rejected or approved the proposal, leaving it in limbo.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is cutting academic ties between the Pentagon and 13 leading universities in a performative campaign against “wokeness” and alleged anti-Americanism.
The disfavored schools, according to a Feb. 27 memo from Hegseth’s office, currently educating are:
Harvard University
Saint Louis University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tufts University
Georgetown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Brown University
Columbia University
Yale University
Middlebury College
Princeton University
The George Washington University
College of William and Mary
The memo also includes a list of favored schools, which it describes as follows: “These institutions meet the following criteria: intellectual freedom, minimal relationships with adversaries, minimal public expressions in opposition of the Department, and Graduate-level National Security, International Affairs, and/or Public Policy Programs.”
The favored schools include:
Liberty University
George Mason University
Pepperdine University
The University of Tennessee
University of Michigan
University of Nebraska
Iowa State University
University of North Carolina
Clemson University
Arizona State University
Baylor University
University of Florida
Regent University
Auburn University
Hillsdale College
The two-tiered higher-ed system was unveiled the same day Hegseth claimed he’d pressured Scouting America into banning transgender children from participating, a claim the group denied.
The mother of all investigations of the investigators — Miami U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones’ wide-ranging probe of a supposed “grand conspiracy” against Trump — has broadened to include investigating the FBI’s investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, the NYT reports.
60 Minutes interviewed 26 federal judges — nine Democratic appointees, 17 Republican, both sitting and retired — about the unprecedented barrage of threats they’ve faced under Trump II: [video at the link]
[…] Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared particularly unhinged during the first official news briefing about President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran.
Hegseth praised Israel, the U.S.’s military partner in the Iran strikes, for joining in what he described as “unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”
Hegseth said that the campaign was being carried out “all on our terms, with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars.” [Video at the link]
It was unclear what “politically correct wars” Hegseth is talking about. Maybe that one against Nazi Germany? Despite his bluster, Hegseth seemed rankled by the suggestion that we are now involved in a regime change.
“This is not Iraq,” he said. “This is not endless.”
His remarks, like most everything in the Trump administration, were not in sync with President Donald Trump’s own boasts to Fox News anchor Bret Baier. Trump claimed that U.S. and Israeli forces targeted an Iranian leadership meeting and took out “49 leaders.”
Hegseth also bristled at questions about the timeline for U.S. involvement, calling them “gotcha-type” questions, though he also warned that the Trump-initiated conflict “will include casualties. War is hell and always will be.” [Video at the link]
Reminder: Last June, Hegseth claimed Iran’s nuclear program—one ostensible reason for this latest strike—was “devastated” by prior U.S. strikes.
Comments posted by readers of the article:
He is not a serious human being. We are at the mercy of fucking idiots. Idiots who are getting people killed. Just because. To make us look away from the pedophile needing to be put in jail.
Another not serious human being. Killing people.
—————————–
165 casualties at a girl’s elementary school [in Iran]. He probably feels pretty good about that
————————–
He came into office promising no new wars….
—————————–
IF we ever get past this fascist regime, Hegseth needs to be delivered to The Hague to stand trial on numerous war crimes.
—————————–
rules of engagement (ROE), military directives meant to describe the circumstances under which ground, naval, and air forces will enter into and continue combat with opposing forces. Formally, rules of engagement refer to the orders issued by a competent military authority that delineate when, where, how, and against whom military force may be used, and they have implications for what actions soldiers may take on their own authority and what directives may be issued by a commanding officer. Rules of engagement are part of a general recognition that procedures and standards are essential to the conduct and effectiveness of warfare.
——————————–
They are criminals.
There should have been a stronger response to them committing war crimes when they started bombing boats off South America.
Trump just delivered the most low key medal of honor speech ever given. He couldn’t pause properly between the end of a sentence and the start of the next one. […]
He said he wouldn’t get bored with this war with all the vigor of someone already bored by the speech he is delivering. And then, out of nowhere, he dovetailed right into the fucking Epstein ballroom and its drapes. He got clearly excited about this process. You see, he had picked out those drapes […] He was clearly excited to talk about this […]
[…] This was as pathetic a speech as any he’s given, but it’s very clear he was talked out of calling those already dead suckers and losers and was instead forced to read something off of a teleprompter as monotone and disinterested as possible. It was only when he got to the monstrous ballroom that he showed any interest at all. Then the feed was cut off as he was clearly meandering into the woods of dementia and lies.
[…] Moments after delivering a closely watched update on the US’ war with Iran, President Donald Trump pivoted to [his] priority closer to home: the White House ballroom.
Trump boasted about the construction around him during a Medal of Honor ceremony, predicting the renovations would create “the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.” […]
“Pete Hegseth […] Preens Over Getting To Unnecessarily Kill People”
Is there a better way to kick off a Monday than listening to glib fuckhead Pete Hegseth spout his “child playing with GI Joe dolls”-level of discourse about the military he leads? […]
He stood in front of a press corps made up mostly of right-wing media flunkies and J6-ers who, in a just world, would still be in prison […] And all of them were hanging on every word as the dumbest secretary of Defense in history [he] smirked his way through a boastful speech that could have been written by an AI trained on nothing but Kurt Schlichter novels.
[…] There was the usual braggadocio about America’s lethal WARFIGHTERS. There was the jargon and tough-guy vocabulary that Pete loves because he thinks it sounds cool. (“If you kill Americans, if you threaten Americans anywhere on earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation, and we will kill you.”) There was the obligatory slamming of past presidents for not going full-on “Douglas MacArthur pushing to the Yalu” on Iran sometime in the last 50 years. There was the obligatory [praise of] Trump being the smartest, wisest, bravest, gutsiest commander-in-chief in American history. […]
Hegseth: “It turns out the regime who chanted ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Israel’ was gifted death from American and death from Israel. This is not a so-called ‘regime change war,’ but the regime sure did change.” [video snippets at the link]
[…] “War is hell,” says the cartoon tough guy. The faux-macho routine continued as Hegseth suggested America will prosecute the war to honor the four soldiers who have died so far with “No apologies. No hesitation. Epic fury.” Which is the name of the operation, get it? Operation Epic Fury! […]
Q: “President Trump put a four week timeline on it. Do you think that’s wrong?”
Hegseth: “It’s a typical NBC sort of gotcha question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take — 4 weeks, 2 weeks, 6 weeks.”
[…]
Steve Morrisonsays
So, we just treacherously started bombing while negotiations were still going on. Remind me again what our leaders called it when another country did that to us? Oh, yeah—“a day that will live in infamy.”
After Donald Trump launched an unprecedented offensive against prominent law firms last year, four of the firms chose to fight back against the president’s authoritarian-style assault. It wasn’t long before the quartet filed separate lawsuits against the White House, and in court, the four firms went undefeated.
As The New York Times noted in May after one of the firms’ court victories, “The ruling seemed to validate the strategy, embraced by a minority of firms, of fighting the administration instead of caving to a pressure campaign and making deals with Mr. Trump to avoid persecution.”
Now, the strategy appears even smarter: My MS NOW colleagues Lisa Rubin and Jesse Rodriguez reported that the Trump administration has signaled its intention to withdraw its appeal of the earlier losses. Soon after, The Wall Street Journal similarly reported:
The Trump administration plans to abandon its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department as soon as Monday is expected to drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey.
[…] These firms saw unjust bullying; they saw other firms capitulate; they decided instead to stand their ground; and they’re in the process of winning the overall fight.
Those looking for evidence to bolster the “when you fight, you win” [sometimes] thesis need look no further than these developments.
As for the firms that decided instead to try to appease Trump, the consequences have been quite dramatic. Legal giants such as Paul Weiss, for example, which was the first firm to negotiate a deal with Team Trump, has lost a variety of partners over its strategy, as well as notable clients. Other firms that caved to Trump have faced related challenges.
What’s more, some of these same firms have also come to realize that their deals with the president were worse than they first realized.
From these firms’ perspective, appeasement was supposed to guarantee relative tranquility and client satisfaction. Instead, these firms have lost clients, partners, associates and credibility within the industry. Indeed, the firms that tried to placate and pacify the president must be kicking themselves right about now: All they had to do was defend themselves, their profession, the law and the integrity of the system itself, and they could’ve avoided all kinds of problems.
Instead, they settled on a strategy that backfired spectacularly.
What’s of particular interest now, however, is what these appeasing firms will do now.
I keep waiting for at least one of the firms that went along with the White House to declare, “Upon further reflection, we’ve decided to fight back against the White House offensive and abandon the earlier deal that was reached under unjust circumstances. The president asked too much while threatening too much, and we’ve decided to take our chances.”
As things stand, if one these firms were to take such a step, they’d not just be better off within the industry, they’d also proceed with the confidence that they’d prevail over the administration, just as Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey already have. Watch this space.
We beg your pardon, but President Donald Trump did promise us a Rose Garden. Too bad it is a hideous, ugly mess. But now it is a hideous ugly mess … with statues!
Trump arrived back at the White House late Sunday night, having just jetted back from starting an illegal war from the comfort of his resort in Florida, where he threw up some curtains and called it secure [Trump’s blanket fort at Mar-a-Lago]. […]
Yes, between when Trump left on Friday and arrived home Sunday, some decorator minions made sure to give Trump a little treat when he got back: statues of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson atop the now-paved Rose Garden. And apparently those statues were so top of mind for Trump that it was all he could talk about.
CNN’s senior correspondent Kristen Holmes was there and later said that while Trump “usually stops and talks to the press,” this time, “he completely ignored us.” Sure, that makes perfect sense. Wouldn’t want to talk to the press about the major conflagration you just kicked off in the Middle East. Instead, said Holmes, Trump “stopped and admired” his new additions, urging reporters to “Come look at them, they’re unbelievable.” After that, Trump just walked away.
Laser-focused on what matters.
The new statues are just the latest addition to Trump’s ongoing project of turning Washington, D.C. into a monument to himself and his terrible taste. The once bucolic, beautiful, and historic Rose Garden is now a paved-over mess. It’s also a place for Trump to entertain, but only if you are fancy enough to be a member of Trump’s new “Rose Garden Club.”
How do you get in the club? You either need to be a political ally of the president or grease his palms, basically. On reflection, that sounds like a terrible club.
[Trump’s] love of gold leaf is so boundless that it has oozed all over, breaking free of the Oval Office and running amok outside. He tore down the East Wing so he could build what seems to be just a bigger version of a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, a ballroom he is so enamored of that he had to stop in the middle of a press conference about Iran on Monday to reflect on how “it will be the most beautiful ballroom.”
[…] We’re two days into what looks like a rapidly devolving conflict in the Middle East, a conflict Trump recklessly started, and it’s nothing but statues and ballrooms.
Perhaps Trump was inspired by Harlan Crow, Justice Clarence Thomas’s billionaire buddy who built a Garden of Evil dotted with statues of dictators like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu [I snipped other examples]
[…] Let’s face it: We will see a statue of Trump […] and it will be in the Rose Garden along with statues of the founders. This is absolute Dear Leader stuff, just like slapping his name on the Kennedy Center [I snipped other examples]
Trump’s continued desecration of the White House is a small thing compared to his continued destruction everywhere else, but it still stings to watch him wreck the place.
The U.S. military said on Monday that six U.S. service members have been killed so far in Iran operations since the U.S. and Israel launched a striking campaign against the Islamic Republic.
American forces recovered the remains of two service members from a facility that was hit during Iran’s “initial attacks” in the region, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said Monday afternoon on social platform X.
“Major combat operations continue,” Centcom said. “The identities of the fallen are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification.”
Earlier on Monday, Centcom said the fourth U.S. service member was killed, suffering from serious wounds and eventually “succumbed to their injuries.” […]
Vice President JD Vance argued in favor of a larger-scale attack on Iran in the lead-up to Saturday’s strikes on the country, according to the New York Times.
Vance reportedly said during a meeting in the White House’s Situation Room on Feb. 18 that launching a limited strike on Iran would be a mistake, arguing the U.S. should “go big and go fast” if it was going to attack the Middle Eastern nation. […]
“Sunday Show Republicans Ready For WAR! WAR! WAR!”
Donald Trump, FIFA’s first “Peace Prize” winner and lifetime chair of the “Board of Peace,” started a war with Iran this weekend. (With Israel’s help! Or did Israel start a war with Trump’s help? Oh well, either way.)
If you’re wondering how you missed all the congressional debates and justifications for this, you didn’t. They never happened.
So Republican politicians were on the Sunday shows, scrambling to explain this to the American people.
SPOILERS: It didn’t go well.
Lindsey Graham
Obviously we begin with South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham’s appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press. [video]
Graham is an old chickenhawk and former Navy JAG officer […] He’s definitely never seen an imperial atrocity or stupid, misguided American war he didn’t like. But, while his glee was quite palpable, it also made him accidentally blurt out the truth from time to time:
WELKER: Senator, let me ask you, because as you are saying, the leader — the Ayatollah supreme leader — is dead.
GRAHAM: Yeah. Right.
WELKER: Will the United States pick the next leader of Iran, or will the Iranian people pick the next leader?
GRAHAM: No. I talked to the Crown Prince. He’s got some ideas about transition.
Wait, the who? The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin “bonesawing journalists” Salman? Why is he in the discussion of US military actions and foreign policy? Unless that’s who’s directing this war in the first place and Trump is just the Saudis’ (and Netanyahu’s) [accomplice] here. We’re sure Iranians will have no issues with Saudi Arabia deciding their fate.
Graham also started laying the groundwork to shift responsibility, once this misadventure goes bad:
WELKER: How will the United States make sure that the next Iranian government isn’t worse than the current regime?
GRAHAM: That’s not our job to pick the next Iranian government. […] It’s not my job. It’s not President Trump’s job. […] it’s not his job or my job to do this. How many times do I have to tell you? […] We don’t own — you know this idea, “you break it, you own it?” I don’t buy that one bit. It’s in America’s interest to make sure the Ayatollah is dead. He’s dead.
[…] [The Republican Party is not the party of personal responsibility.]
Mike Turner
On CBS’s Face The Nation, Ohio GOP congressman and former House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner tried his best to justify this war to Margaret Brennan (and the viewers) by redefining the meanings of words.
Like “imminent,” “obliterated,” and “intentions.” [video]
BRENNAN: The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner […] said there was no evidence of imminent harm to Americans or an imminent threat to our country. Were you informed of a specific and imminent threat to the United States?
TURNER: Well, this issue of imminent is really this, this fallacy […] what is imminent […] So this — this imminent issue — this imminent — this imminent issue is one where people want to have them be with their hand almost on the button to something that has been completely assembled. […] Iran was a threat […] and had the opportunity to take an action to eliminate that threat. […] We don’t have to wait-
BRENNAN: –Sorry, which threat though […] because the president said the nuclear threat was obliterated. And none of the nuclear sites–
TURNER: […] They had continued, as has- had been declared, to pursue their intention of nuclear enrichment. They had continued.
BRENNAN: [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio said they weren’t enriching.
TURNER: They had continued their intention to pursue nuclear enrichment.
So there was no threat. Got it.
Ted Cruz
Staying on Face The Nation, Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz also had a problem coming up with evidence regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions: [video]
CRUZ: I don’t have present-day intelligence on what progress they had made towards rebuilding nuclear weapons since we bombed their facilities. I have no indication that that they were anywhere close to getting nuclear weapons because our bombing was devastating.
No intelligence or evidence of nuclear capabilities after we destroyed them previously. OK.
CRUZ: And Margaret, that’s one of the reasons I urged President Trump, now is the time.
The lack of evidence is the evidence. Well, that clears that up.
Russia may emerge as an unexpected beneficiary of the Iran–U.S. conflict, said Malte Humpert, founder and senior fellow at the Arctic Institute, adding to widespread predictions that a prolonged conflict could boost Moscow through higher energy prices and tighter LNG markets.
“The question is how long the Hormuz situation will last,” he told POLITICO, referring to the Hormuz Strait bottleneck in oil traffic in the Persian Gulf, which has essentially been closed to shipping since U.S.-Israeli strikes began on Saturday. “If it continues for a few weeks … especially as we enter the summer months, that’s when Russian exports really pick up.”
Supply disruptions, he added, “always favor the seller who can deliver on time, reliably and discounted,” creating opportunities for sanctioned Russian cargoes, particularly for buyers in India, Pakistan and China. But Europe may also feel the squeeze: With an EU ban on Russian LNG landing next year, renewed Middle East instability could spark doubts about replacing the 16 million to 17 million tons of gas Moscow currently provides. “There will be voices in the EU wondering if it’s smart to stop importing Russian LNG amid global supply insecurity,” Humpert said.
Zelenskyy warns long Iran war will hit Ukraine’s air defense supply
American Patriot missiles are critical for defending Ukraine — but US forces are using them in the Middle East.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s war against Iran could use up stocks of air defense missiles crucial for defending Ukraine against Russian attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned.
U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles are seen as vital to shooting down Russian rocket attacks and have been highly prized by Ukraine in its four-year long defense against Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s invading forces.
European officials, speaking anonymously because the matter is sensitive, raised concerns that the American and Israeli war on Iran will see U.S. forces burn through their stocks of Patriots to protect themselves against Iranian attacks, leaving fewer available for Ukraine.
While there is no sign so far of stocks running out, if the conflict in the Middle East drags on it “will certainly affect supplies,” Zelenskyy told reporters in a WhatsApp group message on Monday.
“So far, everything is going as it was, but of course we know that a long war, if it is long, and the intensity of hostilities will affect the number of air defenses for us,” he said.
“Everyone understands that for us this [air defense missiles] is our life.” Zelenskyy added.
Strikes on Iran appear to have hit the home where opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard have been held under house arrest [for 15 years]—both are reported safe, but their residence was damaged. Former President Ahmadinejad’s home was also targeted. Israel has stated it is targeting Iranian leaders “past, present, and future.” This follows previous Israeli strikes on Evin Prison [in June]. Draw your own conclusions.
* Wikipedia – Evin Prison: “the primary site for incarcerating political prisoners, journalists, academics, human rights activists, dual nationals, and foreign citizens accused of espionage or propaganda offenses.”
Elia Ayoub (Journalist who grew up in Lebanon until 2015):
Rando: Khamenei was given a martyr’s death instead of facing justice
Remember also that the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Mohammed Deif in addition to Netanyahu and Gallant. They could have delivered him to the ICC but it would have meant also facing the charges. So Israel killed Deif in July 2024.
Accountability itself is what Israel opposes […] including with its enemies. If the Ayatollah could stand trial for his crimes, it would make it obvious that so could Netanyahu. That’s why Israel prefers to just kill.
If the Iranian people were allowed to overthrow the Ayatollah themselves, which they may have well done soon, it would have opened up the possibility of a new government that is also hostile to Israel.
That’s why they’re also targeting Iranian opposition figures who actually have support among Iranians while Western outlets and politicians parade the Shah’s son despite the Shah not ruling Iran in 40+ years. The Shah was not accountable to the Iranian people.
That’s also why mere moments after the Assad regime collapsed, Israel unleashed hell on Syria and made sure to obliterate its military capabilities. That’s what guaranteed that the new state would not be hostile to Israel.
Israel had no need to do that when Assad was in power because Assad never challenged Israel’s decades-long occupation [of] the Syrian Golan Heights. Assad was not accountable to Syrians. A new Syrian gov may have challenged that, and that was too risky.
Eiynah Mohammed-Smith (Polite Conversations, grew up Pakistani in Saudi Arabia):
It has always been clear that while America won’t do anything it doesn’t want to, it has been goaded into this current mess by Israel, which is already on a multi-front killing spree for its own regional interests.
Yes America is the biggest, baddest evil superpower, and American imperialism is brutal and violent, but Israel too has its own brand of supremacy and expansionism. The smolbeanification of a rogue genocidal apartheid state has been difficult to stomach these days.
The Atlantic: Benjamin Netanyahu’s long career was built on conflict avoidance—then October 7 thansformed and radicalized him
[An article today]. [Screenshot]
OMFG they think we are the dumbest people who ever lived.
Eiynah: “It’s obscene.”
Elia Ayoub:
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on 21 November 2024 and it has made no difference to how Netanyahu is covered in the press. We’re all supposed to pretend not to know that he is accused of deliberately starving civilians.
Every article that includes the word “Netanyahu” should be followed by “who is wanted by the ICC for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts during the Gaza war.”
The Economist: At last, a just war. Now Iranians must find their own Mandela or Walesa. [An article yesterday]
Israel has a Palestinian Mandela, Marwan Barghouti who polls very favourably among Palestinians, in prison.
Rando: “My usual query in response to Israelis making this fatuous argument is—fine. Where is Israel’s FW De Klerk?”
(Klerk’s white-minority gov dismantled South African apartheid.)
StevoRsays
Lunar eclipse happening right now outside :
As Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations draw to a close tonight, the Moon will transform into a shade of red.
Australia, Asia and the Americas will be treated to a “blood moon”, also known as a total lunar eclipse.
Cultural astronomer Duane Hamacher says the event is a great chance for people to connect with the night sky.
Matt Woods, an amateur astronomer and a tour guide at the Perth Observatory, says anyone in Australia will be able to see it if skies are clear.
“The Moon will look like it’s having a chunk taken out,” he says.
“Just before it starts looking like it’s completely eaten, it’ll turn this blood-orange colour.”
And unlike the last blood moon in September, you won’t have to get up in the middle of the night to see it.
Aussie ABC live coverage of the latest war FWIW here :
Over the past 24 hours the conflict in the Middle East has escalated.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the war has triggered Australia’s biggest ever consular operation crippling air travel and stranding tens of thousands of Australians. (& no dount others too – ed.)
US President Donald Trump is foreshadowing “retaliation” after an Iranian drone attack on the US embassy in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Whoah! This might be absolutely spectacular to see – & I’m sure the old superstitions about comets as harbingers of doom are just, y’know, that.. Pure co-incidence.. (Yes, I know, it really is & when wouldn’t a comet arrive with our planet being right on the brink of destruction with our wars and human stupidity and shit..)
Also bloody awesome astronomical spectacle potentially, hopefully, maybe coming up if the best predictions here are right :
A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited, with the potential to be a spectacular sight in early April.
C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was spotted by a team of four amateur astronomers with a remotely operated telescope in the Atacama desert on January 13.
It quickly became apparent the newly discovered object was a member of a group called the Kreutz sungrazing comets. These include many of the brightest and most spectacular comets ever seen.
Comet MAPS is moving on an extreme, highly elongated orbit around the Sun, and is diving towards a fiery date with our star. In early April the comet will pass within just 120,000km of the Sun’s surface.
If the comet survives, it could become a spectacular sight in the evening sky in early April. It may even become visible in broad daylight as it swings closest to the Sun – unless it falls apart before then.
So what makes these sungrazers so exciting, and what can we expect?
“Trump is basically calling up every journalist in his phone to workshop different timelines and goals for his war,” posted Carlstrom, the publication’s Middle East correspondent.
Even worse, this apparently isn’t just looking for some advice on how to present the war publicly, it’s looking for advice on what to do now that he has started a war. When Trump isn’t clear on what to do where does he look? Popular news but it seems Fox News isn’t answering the questions he has right now so he is going directly to journalists.
It does without saying that starting a war without clear cut goals is a huge mistake. You can look at what happened later and declare that victory but historically this has rarely worked. The war becomes a muddled mess and it is generally obvious that the declared victory is just trying to save some face. At this point it appears Putin had a more reasonable goal invading Ukraine then then Trump did launching attacks on Iran.
At this point it appears Putin had a more reasonable goal invading Ukraine then then [than] Trump did launching attacks on Iran.
Putin did not have reasonable goals, that’s for sure. Neither does Trump. However, Putin has (and had) hidden goals. Might be the same for Trump. How even more unreasonable are those goals?
“They’re not sending their best.” Rachel Maddow reviews how the collection of unqualified culture warriors Donald Trump has put in charge of key facets of the United States national security apparatus is much worse than merely incompetent now that Trump has started a war with Iran and stoked a new level of threat against Americans and American interests.
Video is 12:39 minutes. The segment covers more than the summary above indicates.
RACHEL MADDOW: MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig reports on new firings at the FBI that included members of an elite counterintelligence squad specializing in neutralizing threats from Iran. The firings came just before Trump started a war with Iran, setting up a whole new threat environment for Americans and American interests.
Video is 6:52 minutes
KGsays
[Lindsey] GRAHAM: No. I talked to the Crown Prince. He’s got some ideas about transition.
Wait, the who? The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin “bonesawing journalists” Salman? wonkette – quoted by Lynna, OM @327
I suspect Graham was referring to the son of the last Shah, who is being touted as a “transitional figure” by some among Iranian exiles (at a guess, those who were close to the last Shah, who was just as vile as Khamenei, and hope to do very well if his son gains power).
Correction to comment 341: that’s a direct quote from JM, and not JM quoting someone else.
Sky Captain @334, quoting Elia Ayoub:
Every article that includes the word “Netanyahu” should be followed by “who is wanted by the ICC for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts during the Gaza war.”
A shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, on Sunday has left two people dead and 14 others injured. The shooter, who has been identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, is also dead. The gunman had a history of mental illness, according to government sources with direct knowledge of the investigation. … Investigators are looking into whether Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Senegal, was ideologically motivated and possibly triggered by the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
A federal judge has found that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer.
President Donald Trump’s doctor addressed what appeared to be red markings on Trump’s neck Monday, saying he was undergoing a “preventative skin treatment” using a “very common cream.”
[…] The red, irritated skin was visible Monday as Trump spoke at the White House at a Medal of Honor ceremony. It was also seen in photographs taken during his State of the Union address last Tuesday at the Capitol.
Barbabella [Dr. Sean Barbabella, the president’s personal physician] didn’t specify what cream Trump is using and didn’t explain the purpose of the preventive treatment. [Photo]
[…]
‘The Kennedy Center Honors’ have been presented under that longstanding, historic name for the final time. … To the surprise of probably few people, the awards program will henceforth be known as ‘The Trump Kennedy Center Honors,’ in keeping with the effort of the board installed by President Donald J. Trump to rebrand everything related to the institution with his name.
Hospitals Closing And Disabled People Losing Home Care Thanks To Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
On Monday, Donald Trump excitedly announced on Truth Social that he has stockpiled enough weaponry to allow the United States to fight wars forever and ever and ever, just like all of us definitely want. “More forever wars!” people are always saying. [social media post, read it for the bonkers idiocy]
While he said we have a “virtually unlimited supply” that is better than every other country’s arms supply, he still wants even more weapons of the “highest end.” [“At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be.”]
This probably cost us a whole lot of money, and will cost us a whole lot more, but luckily for Trump, his One Big Beautiful Bill cut a trillion dollars from federal support for healthcare. [!]
Unfortunately, this has not worked out quite as well for people who need healthcare. According to a report from CNN, “in northeast Georgia, a hospital closed its maternity ward. In rural New Hampshire, a community health center shuttered. And in Iowa, a Des Moines hospital system laid off dozens of employees and closed a clinic.”
And one thing all of these healthcare facilities have in common is that they’ve cited the Big, Beautiful Bill as a reason for their closures.
While the cuts have not yet gone into effect, these clinics and hospitals have determined that, once they do, they will just no longer be able to afford to operate. Rural hospitals are chronically underfunded and frequently in danger of closing already, and the impending cuts are expediting that process. So many unable to afford health insurance due to the GOP’s refusal to renew the ACA subsidies, plus 7.5 million people being kicked off Medicaid […] Not only does it mean that they will be losing out on patients who won’t be able to afford regular care, they will have so many more people that they will be obligated to treat in emergency rooms regardless of their ability to pay. […]
But that’s not all. Americans with disabilities who rely on home care are now getting notifications that they will no longer qualify for these programs, or that they will no longer get as much as they need. [!!] In many cases, this kind of home care is the difference between being able to live at home and having to go live in a residential care facility, which will actually cost taxpayers more than the home care costs.
Via Ottumwa Courier:
Sam Walker, 35, has severe autism and other disabilities. He is deaf and cannot speak. Sometimes when he’s frustrated, he hits himself or others.
Medicaid provides about $8,500 a month for health workers who visit his apartment in the basement of his parents’ home. The staffers help him with everyday tasks, including dressing, bathing, and eating. They also take Walker on outings, such as dining at restaurants, volunteering at Goodwill, and exercising at a recreation center or on park trails. They stick to a strict routine, which soothes him. […]
Iowa Total Care, a private insurance company that manages Sam Walker’s Medicaid benefits, intends to cut his in-home care coverage by about $3,200 per month, his mother said. […]
Leisa Walker testified that the state’s Medicaid program would pay about $22,000 per month to put him in an institution, more than double what the program spends on his home care.
Now, that is the platonic ideal of a Republican plan: not merely far less effective and humane than the thing that would actually help would be, but also several times more expensive! [All too true.]
[…] On Monday, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced their Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, which would establish an annual five percent tax on billionaires and reverse the damage done to our healthcare system by this Big But Not-So Beautiful Bill. Plus it would give most of us $3,000, which is far more appealing than the […] forever wars that the GOP wants for us all.
Specifically, it would:
-Provide a $3,000 direct payment to every man, woman and child in a household making $150,000 or less — $12,000 for a family of four
– Reverse the $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act cuts in Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which are estimated to cause more than 50,000 unnecessary deaths [!]
– Expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing for millions of seniors [good]
– Build, rehabilitate and preserve over seven million affordable homes to eliminate the affordable housing gap and end homelessness
– Ensure no family pays more than 7% of their income on childcare
– Establish a $60,000 minimum annual salary for every public school teacher in America
– Expand Medicaid home health care for seniors and people with disabilities [good]
Not only are these nice things that would be nice to have, and that would make life more livable and pleasant for the vast majority of us. These are fixes for many of the most serious, real problems that Americans are facing right now. More immediate problems, even, than the 47-year-long war we’ve been in with Iran that we didn’t know about until yesterday. [Republicans and right-leaning media have started to repeat ad nauseam the talking point that Trump did not start a war in Iran, he is ending a war that began in 1979. For example,CBS used that talking point to end the nightly news broadcast yesterday. Tony Dokoupil earning points from his rightwing taskmasters.] in many cases, not solving them is far more expensive than solving them.
[…] The senators note that “Under the bill, Elon Musk — worth $833 billion and now wealthier than the bottom 53% of American households combined — would owe $42 billion in taxes, leaving him with approximately $792 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, worth $220 billion, would owe $11 billion. Jeff Bezos, worth $218 billion, would owe approximately $11 billion.”
In other words … they will be just fine. Sorry, but not only should no one person have this much money, but no one person should have the amount of power these motherfuckers have been able to buy with that money. American citizens having healthcare and homes is more important than these people having more money than they could ever possibly spend in their lifetimes, or their children could spend in their lifetimes.
Will this pass right now at this very moment? Probably not. But it’s a damn good idea to keep reminding people what they could have […]
“Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military”
A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.
From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged [!] by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).
The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations […]
The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department. […]
One complainant identified themselves as a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in a unit currently outside the Iran combat zone but in Ready-Support status, deployable at any time. The NCO said they were Christian and emailed the MRFF on behalf of 15 troops, including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew. (Full email printed below.)
The NCO wrote to the MRFF that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the U.S. military, airing monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon. Last year, the Pentagon confirmed to me that Hegseth attends a weekly White House Bible study. It’s led by a preacher who says God commands America to support Israel.
Monday’s email from the NCO said that their commander’s remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”
MRFF President and Founder Mikey Weinstein, a veteran of the Air Force and the Reagan White House, told me that since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran early Saturday morning, the MRFF has been “inundated” with similar complaints:
These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients [service members who seek MRFF aid] report the unrestricted euphoria [!] of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times” as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.
Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.
Weinstein […] said, “Any military members seeking to take advantage of their subordinates by advancing their blood-soaked, Christian nationalist wet dreams upon the flames of this latest non-Congressionally sanctioned attack against Iran, should be swiftly, aggressively and visibly prosecuted.” […]
@349 Lynna bothered to find ‘tRUMP’s dr.’s’ response to the neck rash.
While I trust Lynna, my question is, do we believe the tRUMP whitehouse or our own eyes (many photos show serious scabby rash) when we see that everything tRUMP and his magat staff say is a lie?
Lynna let us know about https://www.wonkette.com/p/hospitals-closing-and-disabled-people and wonkette wrote: “Donald Trump excitedly announced on Truth Social that he has stockpiled enough weaponry to allow the United States to fight wars forever and ever and ever”, while “his One Big Beautiful Bill cut a trillion dollars from federal support for healthcare. [!]”
With all the military commanders are saying jebus blesses this war murdering hundreds, maybe thousands already, Congress is a dead dog lying at the side of the road, tRUMP has made the u.n. a toothless old dog; So how can anyone say this country is not a moral abomination?
“One day after the DOJ agreed to throw in the towel, it changed its mind and demanded the towel back.”
Good news was swiftly reversed. Sigh.
After Donald Trump launched an unprecedented offensive against prominent law firms last year, most of the president’s targets capitulated, fearing White House punishments. Four firms, however, fought back, challenged Trump’s orders in court and went undefeated.
The victories for the quartet — Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey — looked even better this week when the Trump Justice Department announced plans to throw in the towel: Instead of appealing their earlier defeats, DOJ lawyers said they would abandon their defense of the president’s executive orders.
At least, that was the plan on Monday. On Tuesday morning, MS NOW, citing two sources familiar with the case, reported that the Justice Department had notified the four firms that it’s changed course and will proceed with the appeal after all. The New York Times had a related report:
The Trump administration indicated on Tuesday that it planned to renew its defense of executive orders that it had leveled against law firms, a sharp reversal a day after asking a court whether it could abandon the fight.
In a motion filed with the appeals court in the District of Columbia, where the cases are playing out, the Justice Department formally asked to withdraw its request on Monday to abandon the cases against four law firms.
So, to recap: First, the president tried to exercise greater control over the legal industry in a ridiculous power-grab, telling many of the nation’s largest firms that they would lose government contracts and security clearances unless they agreed to meet the White House’s demands. Four leading firms refused and filed suit.
A variety of judges from across the ideological spectrum ruled against Trump, concluding that the move was obviously illegal. Trump’s Justice Department decided there was no point in racking up another round of defeats, only to take the opposite position a day later without explanation.
“This withdrawal of the administration’s withdrawal is amateurish, and it does not change the likely outcome of the fight,” the Times’ editorial board explained. “Judges — appointed by presidents of both parties — have repeatedly ruled that the executive orders were illegal, and there is every reason to expect that to continue. The Trump administration’s initial withdrawal of its appeals is an indication that at least some officials understand this reality.”
As for the firms involved in the case, I spoke to a spokesperson at WilmerHale, who said the firms “oppose the government’s unexplained request to withdraw yesterday’s voluntary dismissal, to which all parties had agreed.”
Time to repost this guideline for The Infinite Thread: You should not fantasize about violence when posting in The Infinite Thread, nor should you propose that others do violence. The rule holds even if you are speaking metaphorically or jokingly.
This other guideline is off-topic but worth repeating as it rarely comes up. Lynna (2025-11-05):
In The Infinite Thread I discourage calling other commenters names that amount to personal insults. You can make your arguments without the personal insults. Do that.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Reza Akbari (Institute for War and Peace Reporting):
The burial of the 150 elementary school girls killed in American-Israeli strikes on Iran was today. [Photos]
One of them is a stark overhead view of multiple excavators having dug most of a 5×20 grid of rectangular holes, the rest marked by white outlines. Then the crowd arrived.
Israel invaded Lebanon again. Israel “virtually emptying out the country south of the Litani River and turning the southern suburbs of Beirut into a ghost town.” [Guardian Article]
That’s over a million people. Lebanon has 5-6 million people in total. We’re one of the smallest countries in the world, and Israel is rendering Lebanon’s agricultural areas uninhabitable by ethnically cleansing its people, spraying its land with herbicides and obliterating everything else.
Elia Ayoub: “[Re: loved ones]: We’re relatively lucky for now, but still waiting to see if we can get my mum out as flights were cancelled. Hopefully tomorrow she’ll be able to.”
(9:15): the Iranian regime has responded by targeting not just military targets […] (aligned with international law: the right to self-defense), but they’ve also targeted civilian infrastructure. You can easily say, “Well, the Israelis do that all the time,” that is true. […] If the response to a war crime is to commit a war crime, not only is that in and of itself a war crime, but it is cheapening the initial war crime.
[…] It’s no longer about them following the rules of war and us not. […] what tends to happen is the ones with the bigger guns and bombs win anyway because there is no argument left that appeals to an abstract good or international law, or human rights, or rules of war. Might is right. We’re at that stage now.
(20:36): What’s happening in Lebanon is frankly terrifying. I haven’t been this worried about Lebanon I think ever […] Even by my very low expectations [of Hezbollah] I only believed it when they announced [the rocket strike]. […] I was confused about them being THIS reckless, this stupid. Because we know what the Israelis are capable of: they’ve been bombing the shit out of Lebanon for two years now. […] The Dahiya doctrine states that they will disproportionately target civilian areas to prevent enemy groups from rebuilding capacity. […] They violate international law as a matter of state policy.
(59:23): The Ayatollah has virtually no organic popular cultural resonance in Lebanon. […] He was part of [life for] a specific segment of Hezbollah’s base
AI-generated artwork is officially not eligible for copyright protection after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the appeal. The court ruled that a work must have a human creator to qualify for copyright protection.
This ruling is in line with another famous copyright case, Naruto vs Slater, involving a macaque named Naruto and a photographer named David Slater. In 2011, while Slater was in Indonesia, a crested black macaque grabbed his unattended camera and took several selfies. The photos became widely known as the “monkey selfies.” […]
The court ruled that:
– Animals cannot own copyrights under U.S. law.
– Copyright protection applies only to works created by humans.
– Therefore, the monkey did not own the copyright.
However, the court also questioned whether Slater owned the copyright, since he did not actually press the shutter button. In practice, the images were treated as being in the public domain in the U.S. because there was no human author.
The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN.
The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said.
Pouring gasoline on the fire, along with some gun powder, jellied petroleum and termite. There is a large Kurdish populations in Iran, they already have an unstable relation with the central government. There is also a large Kurdish population in Iraq next door that could provide manpower and would be an essential route for weapons and supplies. Probably also get some coming over from Turkey and Syria if things really blow up, they have a lot of combat experienced Kurds.
John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, suggested Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth needs an “attitude adjustment” after his briefing on the strikes against Iran.
If you have lost Bolton on promoting a war you have a problem.
Bolton called Trump’s response to Tapper “important” as he slammed Hegseth’s claims at the press conference, suggesting his message was at odds with the president’s.
“Pete Hegseth needs to check with his boss on what the objective is,” Bolton told CNN host Kate Bolduan. “And by the way, if the big one is still to come, how does Hegseth explain that we’ve already changed the regime, which wasn’t our objective?”
Getting a clear statement of the objective that won’t change is probably impossible from Trump. Bolton is right that this is a huge problem and there being conflict between Hegseth and Trump is both a public relation and a military planning problem.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Onion:
Nation Admittedly Curious To Hear How Trump Pronounces ‘Strait Of Hormuz’
StevoRsays
Via PBS Newshour :
Democratic and some Republican senators pressed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over what they described as overly aggressive immigration enforcement. Noem’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee comes as Congress remains deadlocked over DHS funding, raising concerns about national security at a moment of escalating conflict in the Middle East. Lisa Desjardins reports.
So despite their immense wealth — and even their past capacity to influence the globe through their control over oil prices — the Gulf States don’t have much ability to influence events that could cause them immense harm.
Iran is hoping it can ride out Trump’s preparedness to keep fighting and is maximising the pressure on him — and the global economy.
Trump and Israel are maximising the pressure on Iran by relentless bombardments in the hope that they can exhaust Iran’s supply of weapons.
In the meantime, analysts speculate about whether the Gulf states could find themselves even more vulnerable if they run out of air defence systems, and also have to confront incoming missiles from Iran’s proxies to their south — the Houthis.
@ ^Lasura Tingle’s analysis of the strategy and its issues.
.***
Using NASA’s exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) astronomers have discovered an extraordinary quadruple star. The system is the tightest 3+1-star system, a subset of quadruple star systems, yet discovered. Excitingly, the discoverers of this system were also able to determine what its final fate will be.
The system TIC 120362137 consists of a stable and tightly bound inner system of three stars orbiting each other that are orbited by a more distant outer star observing the system from afar. While the outer star is located at around the same distance from the stellar triplet as the distance from Jupiter to the sun, the inner stellar sub-system would fit within the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, around our star.
TIC 120362137 is an important discovery for researchers because, in addition to 3+1 systems being extremely rare — as a so-called hierarchical star system, where several stars orbit each other within a relatively small area — TIC 120362137 could also help us better understand stellar formation and long‑term orbital stability.
A Kuwaiti F/A-18 fighter jet was the cause of the accidental shootdown of three American F-15s on Sunday, according to three people familiar with initial reports of the incident. One F/A-18 pilot launched three missiles against the U.S. aircraft, according to a U.S. official. All three U.S. aircraft went down, but their pilots ejected safely.
The incident occurred soon after multiple Iranian drones penetrated Kuwaiti air defenses, with one striking a tactical operations center at a commercial port and killing six American service members, according to a second person. Kuwaiti officials were on edge when their radars detected the jets flying in and fired on them, the person said.
A U.S. Central Command spokesperson declined to comment. The incident is under investigation and the official cause of the crash could change.
Commentary
Wait wait wait… it was an air to air engagement? I thought it was a SAM battery. […] that would be the first air-to-air downing of the F-15 I think EVER. And that platform has been around for [50] years!
The air-to-air aspect of the story is certainly intriguing and would help explain how the crews survived the shoot-downs. We saw one F-15E spin into the ground with its vertical tails missing and its engines on fire. [Video clip] While this is catastrophic damage, it is not typically what you would see in most engagements from heavier surface-to-air missiles, although every engagement is different, so we can’t rule it out. But three shoot-downs and everyone made it out alive sounds like tail-aspect shots made by smaller yield weapons.
Also, if the Super Hornet employed passive heat seeking missiles (AIM-9 Sidewinder), the F-15E pilots would not have known they were being engaged until the weapon detonated. There are caveats to this, including if the Hornet had used its radar to assist in the Sidewinder lock. But Kuwaiti Hornets were clearly in the airspace at the time defending against drones, so even being painted by their radar may not have indicated how serious the situation was about to become.
A federal judge has revoked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s ability to restrict members of Congress from entering ICE facilities. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that Noem’s requirement that members of Congress give her a week’s notice before entering an immigration facility is illegal, given that it relies on funding Congress warned could not be used to block oversight from lawmakers.
New York Times:
The Department of Homeland Security has opened an internal investigation into a report that Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol commander, made disparaging remarks about the Jewish faith of the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota during an immigration operation in the state.
MS NOW:
At least one GOP senator [criticized] Kristi Noem’s stewardship of the Department of Homeland Security as she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, calling her tenure a ‘disaster.’
Minnesota on Monday sued President Donald Trump’s administration in an attempt to stop it from withholding $243 million in Medicaid spending, warning it may have to cut health care for low-income families if the funding is held back. The lawsuit asked a U.S. court in Minneapolis to issue a temporary restraining order to block the withholding for Medicaid, which is the health care safety net for low-income Americans.
Minneapolis Star Tribune:
The use of a chemical irritant by U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino is among 17 instances of ‘potential unlawful behavior’ by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge currently being investigated for criminal charges, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Monday.
Gasoline prices in the United States jumped nearly 11 cents a gallon on Tuesday, a sharp increase triggered by the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, which have limited the export of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf region. Should the spike continue, it could become a political headache for the Trump administration as it prepares for midterm elections in November.
“More than just being unconstitutional, and very clearly illegal under international law, this war is also morally reprehensible. It’s wrong,” says Chris Hayes. “All of this may sound obvious, but it must be said.”
Video is 10:57 minutes
birgerjohanssonsays
Stephen Colbert:
“U.S. Abandons Citizens Across Middle East | Trump: The Big One Is Coming…”
(At the end, there is a message from a very young Marco Rubio)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UnupeA5oGRs
“The big one is coming” is what I expect Trump is yelling through the bathroom door when Melania tells him to hurry up for the airport cab.
The stunning moment came as Trump hosted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House […] When asked by a reporter about the cooperation of NATO in the days following Operation Epic Fury in Iran, Trump praised Germany and NATO chief Mark Rutte, who Trump said was fantastic.
But when it came to Spain, Trump was not as kind. “Spain has been terrible,” he said. “In fact, I told Scott [Bessent] to cut off all dealings with Spain.”
In response to Spain’s refusal to allow the U.S. to use its air bases to conduct strikes in Iran, Trump was defiant, saying, “[…] We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it.”
[…] “I’m not happy with the U.K., either.”
Commentary
Uh, Spain told you.
Pathological inability to comprehend anyone else’s consent, autonomy or agency is the dominant theme of his life.
Unlike his single victims, Spain has the means to require and enforce consent.
The weirdest turning point will be Spain shooting down F-15s.
Let’s see if the EU and UK decide to stand with Spain, or if they will throw Spain under the bus to keep allowing the US to use their territory for its illegal war. And let’s see if the EU and UK respond to Trump’s threat to ignore Spain’s sovereignty.
Merz tweet: Good to see you again POTUS. Difficult times call for strong partnerships. Iran spreads terror. This endangers our partners—and us. We share a clear interest in putting an end to all this.
Technically Merz did object… https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/germanys-merz-rejects-trump-threat-055831799.html
…behind closed doors, as I found out when I sourced the quote to a German-language presser.
. youtu.be/hIUi8LWGPpk?t=908
(15:23): I also made both of these points very clear in a personal conversation. I didn’t want to deepen the discussion publicly or perhaps escalate it further.
I just said that, firstly, Spain is a member of the European Union, and as such, we only negotiate a customs agreement with the USA jointly, or not at all. And there is no way to treat Spain particularly badly here; if anything, we all reach a common result, and that includes Spain. He specifically focused his criticism on the NATO contribution. But that has nothing to do with our European efforts to reach a trade agreement.
As for Great Britain, there was some irritation over the weekend regarding the authorization of refueling stops at various American military bases located on British territory. I told him again that Great Britain, and especially Keir Starmer, has been making a very, very valuable contribution in the E3 format to ending the war in Ukraine, and I believe this criticism of him, especially after he corrected his initially restrictive stance, is unjustified. But I did this behind closed doors because, as I said, I didn’t want to air the conflict publicly.
UK “‘corrected” *eyeroll*
/Those were auto-subtitles passed through a translator, but I’ll accept Merz said that.
The unedited Joint E3 Leaders’ Statement from Britain, France and Germany doesn’t say anything novel. Any action they might ‘enable’ to destroy launch capability at the source has been neither proportionate nor effective so far.
Macron said the Charles de Gaulle carrier will be escorted by frigates and its air wing. […] Rafale fighter jets, air-defense systems and airborne radar systems have been deployed over the past few hours in the Middle East. […]
France, the U.K. and Germany have previously said that they weren’t involved in the strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel that began late last week […] Macron, however, said that French forces had shot down drones “in legitimate self-defense in the very first hours of the conflict, to defend the airspace of our allies, who know they can rely on us.” He did not elaborate.
In explaining the need to move France’s aircraft carrier, Macron cited Monday’s strike on a British air force base on Cyprus, adding that Cyprus was a member of the European Union with which France has recently signed a strategic partnership. “This requires our support,” Macron said. Macron also said that France has defense agreements binding the EU nation to Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as strong commitments to Jordan and Iraq.
[…]
Macron noted that France “cannot approve” of the strikes by Israel and the U.S. on Iran because they were carried outside of the framework of “international law.” He said it would it be “desirable” to end the strikes as quickly as possible, and that lasting peace in the region can only be achieved through the resumption of diplomatic negotiations. […] Macron also insisted on Iran’s responsibility for the conflict.
DW (before the German Chancellor’s White House visit)
Merz, together with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, issued a statement saying that the countries were prepared to take “military defensive measures.”
German Foreign Minister [said] “for us, it means nothing more than that our Bundeswehr soldiers would defend themselves if they were attacked.” There are German soldiers stationed at bases in Jordan and Iraq.
johnson catmansays
re CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @375:
We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it.
You could try, but then Spain would have the right to tell the US to remove all personnel and equipment from any bases being used, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Dendrochronology potential… And this brings me back to my favv topic: Finding driftwood from the whole Black Sea catchment basin, preserved in the anoxic bottom layer of the Black Sea.
Obviously this requires some form of remote sensing to look through the sediments, presumably done by an undersea robot. Radar? Submillimetre radiation? Echo-location?
Maybe a prototype could be used in lake Mälaren, Bodensee or the Masurian lakes as those coincide with European early agriculture.
Hegseth said an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean “that thought it was safe in international waters.”
“Instead it was sunk by a torpedo — quiet death,” Hegseth said, adding that it marked the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.
He might want to ask Britain and Argentina about the fate of the General Belgrano during the Falklands war.
Side note… The Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was sold to Argentina by the US in the 1950s. It was moored in the outer harbor–and, thus, survived–at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack of 7 Dec. 1941.
There were all kinds of closely watched elections this week in Texas, Arkansas and North Carolina, up and down the ballot, but there was only one race in which one party lost a seat to the other. That contest was in Arkansas, and it delivered another round of good news for Democrats. The Hill reported:
Democrat Alex Holladay is projected to win the special election to represent Arkansas’s House District 70, edging out Republican Bo Renshaw, according to Decision Desk HQ. […]
Holladay’s victory does not change control of the state’s lower legislative chamber, where Republicans have held a 80-19 majority. But the Democratic pickup could matter for appropriations bills, which require a 75-percent supermajority vote from both chambers.
Arkansas is clearly one of the nation’s more reliably red states, but Holladay was running in a politically quirky area: According to calculations from The Downballot, Donald Trump carried this district by 4 points in 2020, but Kamala Harris won the same district by 2 points in the 2024 cycle.
As the dust settled on this week’s special election, Holladay overperformed, winning by double digits.
[…] Indeed, for Democrats, 2026 is off to a very encouraging start: Two of the party’s candidates won lopsided victories in two special elections in Minnesota, the first two contests of the year, restoring the state House to an even partisan split.
Soon after, in Texas, Republicans invested a considerable amount of resources to keep a state Senate seat in the suburbs of Fort Worth. They failed: Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a union leader and an Air Force veteran, won a double-digit victory in a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024. (The president personally tried to rally support for the GOP candidate, but then pretended he didn’t after she lost badly. [LOL, moment of schadenfreude.]
In early February, Republicans in Louisiana saw a unique opportunity to flip a state legislative seat from blue to red — in a district Trump won by 13 points — but when voters had their say, the Democratic candidate prevailed by 24 points. [!]
Holladay’s win in Arkansas, in other words, is part of an unsubtle pattern.
What’s more, The Downballot’s analysis noted that the results out of Arkansas marked the ninth time Democrats have flipped a district from red to blue in a special election since Trump returned to the White House. Over that same period, the number of seats flipped from blue to red remains zero. [Good]
[…]
birgerjohanssonsays
-A video essay about tonal shifts in fantasy, the advantages and pitfalls (alas, he repeats himself a lot) “Frieren just got Dark”
In the video referenced in comment 373, Chris Hayes presented a video (with English subtitles) of Netanyahu talking about how he has yearned to attack Iran for 40 years.
There’s also reporting (that Hayes highlighted) revealing that Netanyahu met with Trump last month in order to make sure that Trump remained on the path to war..
Trump’s claim that he pressured Israel was just a knee jerk response. Trump wanted to make sure that the press saw him as top dog, and that Donald J. Trump doesn’t take orders from anyone.
Earlier, Marco Rubio spilled the real beans. Guardian link
Rubio; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; and joint chiefs of staff, chair Dan Caine; spoke to the lawmakers behind closed doors in the Capitol ahead of a vote expected later this week in the House of Representatives on a war powers resolution that presents an unlikely opportunity to force Trump to end hostilities against Iran.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone – the United States or Israel or anyone – they were going to respond, and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters at the Capitol.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
So, Israel decided and Trump followed up by doing what Netanyahu wanted.
And, yes, there was also pressure on Trump from Saudi Arabia. Washington Post link
“Push from Saudis, Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran”
U.S. intelligence assessments saw no imminent threat, but regional allies argued now was the time to strike.
[…] Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the past month advocating a U.S. attack, despite his public support for a diplomatic solution, the four people said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, continued his long-running public campaign for U.S. strikes against what he views as an existential enemy of his country.
The combined effort helped lead Trump to order a massive aerial campaign against Iran’s leadership and military […]
The full Chris Hayes video is worth watching.
birgerjohanssonsays
whheydt @ 382
Hegseth has proven himself an idiot numerous times. He got furious with Anthropic when they refused to write a code for Skynet.
He dismissed the team that assess if civilian sites are too close to an intended target, so now a primary school is flattened and more than a hundred girls are dead.
Well done, fuckwit.
.
Kash Patel fired the FBI experts that can protect USA from Iranian retaliation, so he is at the same idiocy level. And I suppose we will get another pandemic while Old Scarecrow is in charge of health.
birgerjohanssonsays
A different bias:
“Trump Suffers Britain Derangement Syndrome”
In Texas’ closely watched Democratic Senate primary, state Rep. James Talarico prevailed over Rep. Jasmine Crockett, with the congresswoman calling Talarico on Wednesday morning to concede. Officials in both parties have suggested in recent weeks that Talarico will give Democrats the best chance of winning a Senate race in Texas in decades.
As Donald Trump launched a war in Iran over the weekend, many Americans in the Middle East found themselves in a scary situation: They wanted to return to the United States for their own safety, but found that wasn’t a realistic option.
Indeed, NOTUS reported that the Trump administration urged Americans in the region to “depart now” as the conflict intensified, but it also told Americans trying to evacuate the Middle East that they could not “rely” on U.S. government assistance. From the report:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video Tuesday morning telling stranded Americans that they can call a State Department hotline for assistance. Americans who called the hotline received the message that there is no guaranteed travel help available.
‘Please do not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation. At this time, there are currently no United States evacuation points,’ read an automated message on the hotline when NOTUS called the State Department number Tuesday afternoon.
Not surprisingly, there are many members of Congress who are vigorously ringing the alarm, after hearing from constituents eager to return to American soil.
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey told reporters that the belated advisories to Americans in the region represented “one of the biggest derelictions of duty I ever saw.” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut added that the need for evacuations was foreseeable, but the administration “put Americans’ lives at risk” anyway.
A Roll Call report added, “Republicans are, so far, not publicly agreeing with Democrats that the administration should be blamed for leaving substantial numbers of Americans in the lurch. But GOP lawmakers have made plain they are concerned about it.”
With this in mind, a reporter asked Trump during a White House event on Tuesday why there wasn’t a plan in place to bring Americans home safely.
“Well, because it happened all very quickly,” the president replied, referring to the combat operations he launched for reasons he has struggled to explain. He added that he thought “we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked,” despite the inconvenient fact that there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of an imminent threat to the United States from Iran. [!]
In other words, from Trump’s perspective, he didn’t want to strand so many Americans abroad, but circumstances forced his hand and he had to start bombing Iran “very quickly.”
Whether the president appreciates this or not, there are two key flaws in his pitch. The first is that the war didn’t have to start on Feb. 28. He could have delayed the military operation until after there was a system in place to ensure Americans’ safety. [!]
The second is even more notable: This didn’t happen “very quickly.” Trump and his team spent several weeks deploying vast military resources to the Middle East in preparation for the offensive.
There was time, in other words, for the Republican administration to prepare an evacuation plan. By all appearances, however, U.S. officials failed to craft one, and we’re now dealing with the consequences.
A Trump administration specialty: revealing their own incompetence.
birgerjohanssonsays
Bas 90 Reborn: Sweden Reactivates its air base doctrine for NATO.
“[Trump’s] vision for the worst-case scenario in Iran bears little resemblance to the actual worst-case scenarios.”
[…] “I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don’t want that to happen. That would probably be the worst. You go through this and then in five years, you realize you put somebody in who is no better. … I would say that would be about the worst.”
Part of what made the president’s comments notable was the fact that he publicly acknowledged, for the first time, that failure is a distinct possibility. […]
But there’s another element to this that’s even more important: If the American president believes the “worst-case scenario” is that awful Iranian leaders are soon replaced by similarly awful Iranian leaders, then Trump is suffering from a woeful lack of imagination.
The Atlantic published a report on Saturday that noted, “A prolonged campaign could also produce a failed state with enriched uranium, destabilize crucial oil routes, threaten Gulf allies, trigger a refugee crisis, and disrupt the global economy.”
The same report quoted Dana Stroul, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, who said, “The worst-case outcome is complete chaos” throughout the region.
The question for the White House is simple: Has no one told Trump about the actual worst-case scenarios, or does the president simply not understand the potentially catastrophic circumstances that could result from the war he launched for reasons he’s struggled to explain?
An email sent to Liberty University School of Law students over the weekend lays out, in refreshingly unvarnished terms, what the administration’s hiring pipeline actually looks like. And it’s exactly as bad as everyone suspected:
“The two most important requirements are you MUST be aligned politically with President Trump and his administration and you must be willing to work hard. Don’t be scared off by the transcript requirement. GPA is not a strong factor. If you meet those two requirements, you have a shot.”
[…] Trump has repeatedly promised that the U.S. campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats on the high seas would expand to include land-based attacks, and it appears Ecuador is the first place the U.S. is carrying out such strikes.
U.S. Special Forces are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos in raids against traffickers, who the Trump administration has rebranded as terrorists, the NYT reports. The extent of the U.S. involvement remains murky. “Believed” is doing a lot of work here: “The Americans are not believed to be participating in the actual raids, but are helping the Ecuadorean troops plan their operations, and are providing intelligence and logistics support, the official said.”
At least 14 active measles cases have been reported at Camp East Montana, the tent encampment on the Fort Bliss U.S. Army base near El Paso.
Wall Street Journal reports good news:
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s effort to kill NYC’s wildly successful first-in-the-country congestion pricing program in Manhattan.
Tucson.com reports: “Florence ICE detainee dead after untreated tooth infection.”
A Haitian asylum seeker held for four months at Florence Correctional Center died Monday at a Scottsdale hospital due to complications from an infected tooth, a local official in Chandler said Tuesday.
Emmanuel Damas, 56, died while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after struggling to receive timely medical care for a worsening toothache, Chandler City Councilwoman Christine Ellis told the Arizona Daily Star Tuesday afternoon.
Ellis, a registered nurse who is Haitian-American, said she is outraged and called for an investigation into Damas’ death, which she said came weeks after the man first complained of tooth pain to Florence staff.
[…] Damas first told Florence staff about his toothache Feb. 12 and was given only ibuprofen, said Ellis, who is also vice mayor of Chandler.
“He was complaining for almost two weeks straight, until he collapsed and got septic from the infection,” Ellis told the Star. He was transferred to a Scottsdale hospital sometime last week, she said.
Ellis said she learned the details of Damas’ death from his family members, who provided her images of Damas unconscious and intubated in an intensive care unit. […]
Damas’ family members said another detainee reported hearing Florence staff “laughing and saying he was faking,” as Damas cried for help, Ellis recounted to the Star. […]
Bad economic news puts a new spotlight on Trump’s lies:
It didn’t take long for the economy to prove President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address wrong. Trump may have declared inflation “over” and dismissed the affordability crisis as a myth created by Democrats, but his own Labor Department just published new wholesale price data that blows a hole in Trump’s latest economic lies.
The January producer price index rose at an eye-popping 2.9% from the same time in 2025, the sharpest spike since last March. Businesses across the country passed the costs of Trump’s tariffs on to consumers, leading to higher prices on everything from groceries to pet food and construction materials. The latest numbers come just days after the Wall Street Journal reported that corporations were preparing to hit consumers with another brutal round of price hikes.
Now Trump’s war in Iran has sent oil prices soaring, with prices at the pump expected to leap by at least 20 cents in the coming days. That erases one of the only areas where prices actually decreased over the past year—meaning American households are now worse off financially in virtually every part of their lives. Yikes.
Wholesale prices matter because they indicate what regular consumers will be paying in the near future, and the latest figures suggest higher prices for just about everything. That’s especially bad for Trump and his Republican enablers because those higher prices are expected to hit households right as millions of Americans begin paying attention to the upcoming midterm elections. It’s a perfect storm of financial bad news, and the GOP doesn’t even have the concepts of a plan to fix it.
[…] Republicans see the flashing red lights, but Trump’s willingness to double down on disastrous tariffs and costly foreign wars means they are stuck holding an increasingly toxic bag of bad economic news. […]
the nearly half of Americans who say the cost of living is the “worst they’ve ever seen” are largely blaming Trump for their financial struggles, and even voters who supported Trump in 2024 increasingly feel like his rosy economic boasts are totally disconnected from reality. […]
After riding into office on the huge promise to “fix inflation on Day One” and bring the economy into a new golden age, even Trump’s most loyal supporters feel betrayed by a president who doesn’t seem to believe they are truly suffering.
Trump’s endless stream of lies may make him feel better about the mess he’s created, but his economic delusions are driving voters away from the GOP in droves. Voters won’t be distracted from their financial struggles by shock and awe in Iran or by Trump’s rosy image of an America where things have never been better for the working masses. Republicans saddled regular people with a crushing economy and skyrocketing prices. Voters are prepared to send them the bill in November.
The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN.
The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said.
Because that worked out so very well with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
JMsays
@394 Lynna, OM: So, how many on going conflicts does the president of peace and non-intervention plan to get the US into at once? The answer is zero, Trump doesn’t remember what he plans to do or how many conflicts the US is in.
It does leave me wondering if Putin is somehow behind some of this. If the US can get dragged into too many conflicts at once it would give Trump the excuse to pull a lot of air coverage from Ukraine. That would be a lot of help to Russia and let Russia get back to destroying Ukraine through drone strikes.
The Justice Department has proposed a regulation seeking to authorize Attorney General Pam Bondi to suspend state bar ethics investigations into current and former DOJ lawyers—a step outside attorneys quickly criticized as an illegal intervention into state-run processes.
The proposal, posted in the Federal Register Wednesday, would aim to halt state-level ethics proceedings against DOJ lawyers while the department conducts its own review, which would diminish local bar associations’ power. It comes as Bondi and members of her leadership team have faced ethics complaints requesting the state where they’re barred probe their alleged misconduct in running DOJ.
Simple attempt to block investigations. If the DOJ says they are investigating a complaint then states are not allowed to do their own investigations. This would trivially let Bondi stop state level investigations by running long DOJ investigations and then declaring no punishment would be applied. If the DOJ runs an investigation for a couple of years and then does nothing it becomes hard for the state to follow up because all of the evidence is now stale.
This rule is probably illegal because it’s a huge overstep of DOJ authority. However, if it goes forward it will have to go to court itself and will gum things up for years.
[…] President Donald Trump, Commander and Chief, Lord Ruler of All He Surveys, said the conflict could last four to five weeks, though it could be fought “forever” with America’s stock of munitions and the only limitation being the morality of his own mind. [video]
He’s not Netanyahu’s puppet, no siree, he is the deciderer! And he’s decided to keep on bombing and just see what happens […] Meanwhile, he had the gall to call up the Kurds — you know, the group that was once our closest allies in the region until he fucked them over in 2018 — and try to encourage them to be the US’s proxy fighters to rise up and take over. But even if that’s the Kurds’ dearest wish, how could anyone trust a guy who not only already fucked them over in particular for no real reason, but whose long-standing personal brand is gleefully fucking over anybody he’s ever made a deal with, including the countries he just took billions and other bribes from to Make Peace? The US is even stranding its own citizens in the Middle East right this minute, having evidently had no evacuation plans in place.
Meanwhile the death toll from the conflict has passed 800. WAR Secretary Pete Hegseth is hooting the US and Israel will have air superiority within days, or maybe a week, and that the US is gonna “control Iran and will control it soon,” which is hard-on language for neither of those things is happening right now. [video]
[…] A moment of silence for six servicemembers and the hundreds of other blameless citizens who did not have to die! Including 165 schoolgirls in Minab: Thousands turned out in Iran to mourn them, and chant “death to America.” [video]
Really winning hearts and minds with all those war crimes.
[…] Where is the Democratic rage at these war crimes? After a closed-door briefing yesterday with senior congressional leadership and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “Razin’ Caine,” Democrats were alarmed, shocked, critical, concerned about this open-ended, destined-to-fail operation and all the “insufficient answers” they were getting. Also the way the War Men acknowledged there was no imminent threat to the US, and said there was one to Israel. So are Trump et al. considering a threat to Israel the same thing now? Whoa if true.
Sen. Chris Murphy: [video]
And with all of this loss of life, is it crass to wonder how much this is going to cost? Thought we could not afford education or health care any more because we are so broke? […]
Yet the response from the Democratic leadership has been frustratingly tepid, considering. A War Powers resolution would have been nice several hundred war crimes ago.
And the chaos and death are only spreading. [War] has now spilled down into the Indian Ocean with the torpedoing of an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka, killing at least 80. And Iran has retaliatory-bombed US military and civilian targets in Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, Cyprus, Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates (which has been hit more than a thousand times), and a missile headed towards Turkey was intercepted by NATO air defenses. And Israel bombed a hotel in Lebanon, killing 11, then Hezbollah retaliatory-attacked an Israeli military base near the city of Safed; 50 people have died there so far.
[…] Iranian drones struck the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia. The two consulates in Pakistan were evacuated, and 23 people were killed there in nationwide protests by Shiite Muslims angered by the attack. Look at this fucking map! [map]
[…] the 19 percent of Americans who still strongly support Trump still think he’s perfect, beautiful. Like the guy in the Champion pullover down there! [video]
Sympathies that you can’t visit your grandparents, guy, but if Trump wasn’t a racist, perhaps your grandparents could have visited you? Even migrated as refugees? Kamala Harris probably would have said yes.
[…] countries considered civilized obey international law and respect other countries’ sovereignty, even when they do not always morally approve of everything that goes on inside them. And then everybody keeps their hands to themselves inside their own borders, and takes care of the needs of their own citizens. […]
the US has abandoned any moral high ground, trust, or influence it once had. It can bomb the 90 million blameless citizens of Iran for the rest of time, but the US will never get that back […] It also releases other countries from any feeling of moral obligation to US, as we have seen with that entire Obama Iran deal that was working swell until Trump unilaterally backed out and then killed the Ayatollah’s right-hand man for specious reasons. And so the entire world is a much more dangerous place than maybe ever before.
[…] And speaking out is more important than ever. Nut up, Democrats! Nut up everybody! Enjoy these protestors in front of Trump Tower. [video]
Biggest threat in the world today? Donald Trump in the USA! […]
JM @399: “If the US can get dragged into too many conflicts at once it would give Trump the excuse to pull a lot of air coverage from Ukraine. That would be a lot of help to Russia and let Russia get back to destroying Ukraine through drone strikes.”
I agree. And I think your point will be made much sooner than we expect. Trump’s ill-conceived escapades are a horror show that will negatively affect Ukraine.
President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a trade embargo on Spain has delivered yet another jolt to the European Union, forcing European leaders to rally around Madrid.
Trump launched his broadside on Tuesday after Madrid declined to allow U.S. warplanes to use its air bases to attack Iran. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stood firm on Wednesday, describing the five-day-old war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Iran as illegal.
French President Emmanuel Macron rushed to Sánchez’s side, expressing solidarity against “recent threats of economic coercion” made against Spain. European Council President António Costa doubled down and stressed that “the EU will always ensure that the interests of its Member States are fully protected.”
[…] German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — who was present in the Oval Office as Trump launched his tirade — said: “There is no way that Spain will be treated particularly badly” on trade as a member of the EU, and insisted that he wanted to avoid correcting Trump in public.
He was more forthright in comments later to the German press.
“Here in Washington, they know that we on the European side have reached a limit in terms of what we are willing to accept,” Merz said. “I have gained the impression that the president and his staff see it that way too.”
During the Greenland standoff, the EU avoided rushing into a forceful response, patting itself on the back for remaining united as it succeeded in defusing the crisis.
Now, the bloc is dealing with a Trump riled up by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month that overturned his core tariff agenda. Importantly, even though the court struck down his broad “reciprocal” tariffs, his aides argue that it reaffirmed his right to impose an economic embargo against another country.
Instead of threatening an Arctic island with a population of less than 60,000, Trump is this time venting his ire at a nation of 50 million with a $1.7 trillion economy.
The EU’s fourth-largest economy is a big buyer of U.S. liquefied natural gas, which covered an estimated 30 percent of its gas needs last year. On the export ledger, Spain sells olives, wines and cosmetics to the U.S.
Yet the U.S. accounts for only 4 percent of Spain’s total global exports, according to the Ministry of Economy. Spain also ran a bilateral trade deficit of €16 billion in 2025, meaning that, in principle, that the U.S. would stand to lose more if commercial relations were completely blocked. [Trump shooting himself in the foot.]
[…] “We stand in full solidarity with all Member States and all its citizens and, through our common trade policy, stand ready to act if necessary to safeguard EU interests,” said Olof Gill, deputy chief spokesperson of the European Commission.
It’s not immediately clear how Trump could, even if he wanted to, impose a watertight embargo on Spain — since the EU functions as a barrier-free common market of 27 nations it would in practice be quite easy to circumvent it. [!] […]
In the meantime, confidence in the U.S. among European lawmakers who are still deliberating over whether to approve the Turnberry accord has hit new lows.
Top trade lawmakers in the European Parliament decided on Wednesday, again, to defer a vote to advance enabling legislation under which the EU would fulfill its side of the bargain — chiefly to eliminate tariffs on U.S. industrial goods.
“A trade threat against an EU country is worsening the mood in the Parliament,” said Anna Cavazzini, a German Green lawmaker who sits on the trade committee. [Trump shoots himself in foot again.]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it “maybe the greatest honor in the world, quite frankly,” Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that the International Criminal Court in The Hague has invited him to receive “a special award.”
“They said it was in response to things I’ve done in Iran,” Trump told reporters. “It will probably be some kind of medal or maybe a gleaming gold trophy.”
Trump revealed that he will not be The Hague’s sole honoree, noting, “They also invited Bibi. They said he deserves special recognition.”
Calling The Hague invitation “much better than a stupid Nobel,” Trump quipped, “They never invited Obama!”
Talking Feds with Harry Litman
Harry Litman talks about the latest Trump Epstein file information. The Wall Street Journal has turned up more hidden files. The new DOJ story is that 47,635 files were offline for further review and would be made public.
The DOJ’s problem with covering things up is that the files contain references to other files, making hiding a file difficult. The DOJ has to not only remove the files but also redact every reference to the hidden files. This is what the WSJ tracked down, showing references to Epstein files not in the public files.
Harry Litman also makes the point that the DOJ has produced files multiple times and each time claimed that was all of the files. Essentially hoping that nobody would find that files are missing and people would stop asking for more. This has ruined the DOJ’s reputation on this issue, as long as Trump is president people are not going to believe all of the Epstein files have been released.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unleashed a second bloodlust-filled briefing about President Donald Trump’s war on Iran.
Hegseth touted the administration’s escalating bombing campaign in the Middle East, declaring the U.S. and Israel were bringing “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
“This was never meant to be a fair fight,” Hegseth said. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” [video, with Hegseth smiling a lot]
After praising what he described as the Trump administration’s decision to “unshackle” the nation’s war-making capacity, Hegseth vowed that the U.S. would continue “accelerating, not decelerating,” its efforts in Iran. He referenced the six fallen American service members, saying, “We will avenge them,” before abruptly beginning an awkward football analogy. [video]
After boasting about American excellence at war stuff, Hegseth clammed up when asked about the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran, which reportedly killed at least 168 people, many of whom were 7- to 12-year-old students attending classes as the bombing occurred.
“All I can say is that we’re investigating that,” Hegseth responded. “We’re investigating it.” [video] [Sounds to me like the “investigation” is bullshit, and Hegseth is just hoping we will forget about all of those dead elementary-school girls.]
It was surprising that Hegseth did not repeat the comment he made the previous day: “War is hell and always will be.”
“Justice Dept., Under Pressure From Trump, Fails to Build Autopen Case Against Biden”
“Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington were unable to build a case, underscoring the department’s increasing inability to follow through on the president’s desire to indict his rivals.”
The Justice Department, after calls by President Trump to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The department’s failure to build a criminal case against Mr. Biden and his aides is the latest example of its increasing inability to follow through on Mr. Trump’s demands and bring indictments against those he wants to be criminally targeted. Some of those cases were rejected by grand juries, some were rejected by judges and some, like the autopen case, were abandoned by prosecutors.
But the fact that prosecutors even pursued the matter to begin with reflects the degree to which Mr. Trump has sought to use the levers of government to undermine Mr. Biden’s presidency by seizing on an unsubstantiated theory: that the pardons Mr. Biden issued in his final months in office were invalid because he did not have the mental capacity to consent to them. […]
veteran prosecutors were skeptical from the outset that there was anything close to sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges, according to people familiar with the matter.
In a department that is often subject to the whims of the president, it is unclear whether administration officials would seek to revive the investigation elsewhere or press the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to try again.
[…] Weeks after taking office, Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative news media stoked claims that Mr. Biden had broken the law through his use of the autopen, focusing on pardons and commutations Mr. Biden granted in the final days of his presidency. They suggested that his mental acuity had deteriorated to such a degree that he could not make such decisions.
Mr. Biden has forcefully denied those assertions, calling Mr. Trump and his allies “liars.” “I made every decision,” Mr. Biden said in an interview with The New York Times over the summer, adding that his staff had used an autopen to replicate his signature because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people.” […]
“Regardless of which cleric is chosen the next supreme leader, the real power is now likely to be in the hands of the heavily-armed force that propped up Khamenei for decades: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
[…] While front-runners to succeed Khamenei have emerged, including the assassinated supreme leader’s second son, Mojtaba Khamenei, the real power is now likely to be in the hands of the heavily-armed force that propped up Khamenei for decades: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“Even if they replace the supreme leader, what is left of the regime is the IRGC. And the IRGC is going to be the last vestige remaining of the regime until the regime is overhauled, either within itself or by external forces,” said Afshon Ostovar, an Iran expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in California and the author of “Vanguard of the Imam,” a history of the Revolutionary Guards.
“Once the smoke clears, if there’s not a complete regime change, then the people who will be in charge of Iran will be associated or the actual command of the IRGC,” he said, noting that his views are not the official position of the Department of Defense.
The Revolutionary Guard demonstrated its fealty to Khamenei most recently by orchestrating the crackdown in January that left thousands of anti-government protesters dead. Now, after his killing, it has the opportunity to seize even more power in the country, some experts say.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency put the number of people killed in the protests at more than 7,000 last week, with nearly 12,000 cases “under review.”
President Donald Trump told a group of reporters on Tuesday that Iran had killed 35,000 protesters. [Trump is exaggerating. He didn’t need to exaggerate. The number of people killed was already bad enough. Trump didn’t need to lie by pulling random numbers out of his deranged brain.]
The Guard was created after the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a parallel force to Iran’s traditional military, which the ruling clergy distrusted and suspected still had loyalties to the ousted shah, or king. Within Iran, the Guard eliminated those perceived as being anti-revolutionary and helped export its ideology across the Middle East.
The Guard’s intelligence branch became the most feared repressive arm of the regime and has its own section in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
Under Khamenei’s watch in the 1990s, it morphed into a political and economic juggernaut, running huge foundations and companies involved in the oil, telecom, construction and other sectors worth billions of dollars. [!!]
The U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran expanded into a wider international crisis on Wednesday after NATO air defenses shot down an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Turkey, the United States sank an Iranian navy ship in international waters and several European nations deployed military assets to the region to protect their interests.
The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Wall Street Journal:
The Justice Department has withheld thousands of documents from the Epstein files, including FBI documents that detailed a woman’s unverified allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal. After a Journal analysis identified more than 40,000 files that appeared to be missing from documents posted to the DOJ’s website, a Justice Department spokeswoman said that ‘47,635 files were offline for further review and should be ready for re-production by the end of the week.’
President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said Monday on Fox News that Iranian negotiators bragged to him that Iran had enough enriched uranium to make nearly a dozen nuclear bombs. … However, a Persian Gulf diplomat with direct knowledge of the talks told MS NOW that Witkoff’s description of the conversation was false.
JFC
New York Times:
Every day, around 80 oil and gas tankers typically pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast that carries a fifth of the world’s oil and a significant amount of natural gas. On Monday, just two oil and gas tankers appear to have crossed the strait, according to a New York Times analysis of shipping activity from Kpler, an industry data firm. On Tuesday, one tanker passed through.
Scrutiny by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, of large expenditures last year delayed disaster aid approval by three weeks, on average, and left hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Agency projects in limbo, according to a review by Senate Democrats of an internal government tracker.
Kristi Noem is inefficient, incompetent and corrupt. Trifecta.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. After a rough Senate hearing the day before, House Democrats proved far less interested in indulging her.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin set the tone early, cutting off Noem’s attempts to deflect criticism.
“We’re fighting for American citizens, Madam Secretary—” Raskin began.
“Today you are—” Noem interrupted.
“Because your ICE agents shot them in the face and killed them,” Raskin shot back. [video]
Raskin pressed Noem for an apology to the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—two Americans killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during dangerously authoritarian raids in Minnesota—after she labeled them “domestic terrorists,” which was contradicted by video and eyewitness accounts.
[…] Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado zeroed in on a highly suspicious DHS contract that sent $143 million of a reported $220 million public relations budget to Safe America Media, an unknown firm tied to a Noem-connected political operative.
“Where is Safe America Media headquartered?” Neguse asked.
“I don’t know,” Noem replied.
“I don’t know either, Madam Secretary,” Neguse responded, before revealing that the company had never performed government work and was incorporated just eight days before receiving its most lucrative contract.
“You want the American people to believe that this is all above board?” Neguse asked. “That $143 million of taxpayer money just happened to go to this one company that doesn’t have a headquarters, doesn’t have a website, has never done work for the federal government before, and is registered apparently, or attached to, a residence from a political operative?” [video]
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington brought forward U.S. citizens who had been detained by Noem’s DHS goons for protesting or observing ICE’s actions. Jayapal confronted Noem over the fact that none of these citizens had been charged with crimes and none were asked to prove their citizenship during their detainment.
“Do you have anything you want to say to them,” she asked, “or the millions of American citizens across the country that are watching this and horrified at what your department is doing?”
“Well, context is critical in each of these situations to know the full range of what happened in each of these situations before and after the incident and their arrest,” Noem replied.
“Secretary, not a single one was charged with a crime,” Jayapal said. “You have actually turned the United States government against its own residents, and you’ve had multiple chances to take accountability, to apologize to these folks and others across the country, but you have failed to do it. Yours is a case of failed leadership, Secretary. You need to resign, be fired, or be impeached because you don’t have the right to lead this agency.” [video]
No apologies, no clear answers, and no meaningful defense of her department’s actions—the Trump administration way.
birgerjohanssonsays
Oops! “Game Theory Expert: America WILL Lose Iran War! – Professor Jiang”
Re: JM @399, Lynna @402. Follow-up to 377. Alex Finley (Ex-CIA):
The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle had been set to help in the Baltic against the Russian threat. Instead it is being redirected to the Med to protect military assets in the Middle East.
Phillips OBrien (Strategic Studies prof): “The willingness of major European states such as Britain and France to send their military forces to actively defend counties in the Middle East but not to defend Ukraine shows how Europe has a distorted sense of its own interests. To put it less kindly, they have it all ass-backwards.”
*Distracted boyfriend meme*
________Major war in Europe in its 4th year
____(<.<) Coalition of the willing
Mideast air war into its 1st week
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @408 quoting Afshon Ostovar:
“Once the smoke clears, if there’s not a complete regime change, then the people who will be in charge of Iran will be associated or the actual command of the IRGC,”
Both Iranian and Israeli media reported a strike on an Assembly of Experts site in Qom, a city south of Tehran. But they differed on the outcome. Israel’s Kan News, citing a senior Israeli official, said the assembly was meeting to pick a replacement for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said no such meeting was taking place at the time.
Fars, another Iranian news agency, said the assembly is conducting voting sessions remotely and by other secure methods. The announcement of a new leader could come soon, it reported.
[…]
A temporary leadership council is in place until a successor is appointed. It’s made up of three people: President Masoud Pezeshkian, senior cleric Ayatollah Alireza Arafi and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a hardliner who serves as the head of the regime’s judiciary. Khamenei’s second-eldest son, Mojtaba, who Iranian media have reported is alive is widely speculated to be a front-runner
Mojtaba Khamenei, a hardline cleric […] has never run for office or been subjected to a public vote, but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of the supreme leader, cultivating deep ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). […] The 56-year-old younger Khamenei has never discussed the issue of succession publicly […] largely kept a low profile […] For nearly two decades, local and foreign-based opponents have linked Khamenei’s name to the violent suppression of Iranian protesters.
Rando 2: “We also just murdered [Mojtaba’s] parents, his wife, and his [sister], so good luck getting a peace deal.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Rando 1: “The ShamWow infomercial guy is running for congress as a Republican and the last 2 seconds of his ad are WILD. [Video]”
Marisa Kabas: “Nothing could have prepared me for those last two seconds. Nothing.”
Rando 2: “This is the first time where I really can’t tell if this guy is actually doing performance art to skewer Republicans or not.”
Rando 3: “The failed ‘as seen on TV’ pitchmen to conservative shill pipeline is fascinating. does anyone else remember the pillow guy?”
Four years after getting into […] an incident that spawned a cringe-worthy mug shot and headlines like “ShamWow Guy Beats Up Cannibal Hooker”
[…]
He refused to answer questions about how much money he raked in, but the chamois cloths can be bought wholesale in bundles of three for $.50. Vince sold them in packs of eight for $19.95, plus shipping and handling. Like most infomercial producers, Vince didn’t invent the products he’s known for pitching. He found them by scouring flea markets, trademarked better names, and made funnier ads.
Militant Agnosticsays
birgerjohansson @414
Oops! “Game Theory Expert: America WILL Lose Iran War! – Professor Jiang”
The school is adjacent to a naval base belonging to Iran’s most powerful military force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC. Satellite images […] show that, in 2013, the school building was part of the base. Roads led to and from other areas of the base to the school building that was struck on Saturday. But by September 2016, satellite images show, the same building had been walled off and was no longer connected to the base.
Was the strike based on outdated information? […] Video footage of the area appeared to show that the IRGC base was also struck
[…]
two students were also killed at Hedayat High School in Tehran.
Uzair Rizvi (OSINT): “Iran media reports that another girls school was targeted by US-Israeli air strikes in Urmia city. Fortunately, no casualties reported. [Photos]”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to 359. Israel sent ground troops occupying Lebanon, btw. That’s what ‘invasion’ meant in the prior comment.
The IDF just ordered the *entirety of south Lebanon* to be forcibly displaced. […] Keep in mind that Israel has never stopped bombing south Lebanon since the ‘ceasefire.’ [Map]
And this [statement] was in January 2024. The goal is lebensraum.
“Everything between the Litani and Israel must be under the control of the IDF,” said [politician Avigdor Liberman], likening it to the post-World War II military occupation of Germany. “If Lebanon won’t pay in territory, we haven’t done anything.”
Zuri Linetsky (Fmr humanitarian assistance): “This is illegal. It also counter-productive. It’s literally what caused Hezbollah to form. This might work in the short-term but Israel can’t sustain this over time. And the blowback, which high may be years in the making will come. And it will be bad.”
Elia Ayoub: “It will be a disaster for Israel, which is now completely taken over by men who have put all of their eggs in the Trump basket.”
Elia Ayoub: “Netanyahu […] has turbocharged the decline in Israel’s popularity in the US. […] In a matter of a decade, Israel went from being a bipartisan consensus to becoming toxic to Democrats and even many Republicans.”
Elia Ayoub:
Spent most of the night just waiting for my mum to get to the airport and leave (which she did thankfully) while hearing that Hazmieh, where most of my family lives, was bombed by the Israelis who have also been bombing Dahieh, which borders the airport, non-stop all night.
Oh great now I also have to look up whether [UK] Labour’s most recent xenophobic policies is going to affect my mum’s existing visa as she’s coming from Paris on her Argentinian passport. Man I’m sorry, but how do Labour supporters sleep at night? Dump that morally broken party already.
Holy shit. These people shouldn’t be near sharp cutlery, let alone seats of power. [Video clip]
Sen. Mullin (R-OK): “This is war.”
Manu Raju (CNN): “You concede this is war?”
Mullin: “We haven’t declared war.”
Reporter: “You just said it’s a war.”
Mullin: *stammer*
Jack Murphy (NatSec journalist):
the unreality of this war is wild. People posting that thousands of Kurds are fighting the regime for the CIA, while the Kurds say it isn’t happening. Every video of a missile attack I just have to assume is AI whether it is real or not.
* The “thousands of Kurds” story ran on Fox, NY Post, Israeli I24, and Jerusalem Post—citing anonymous US and Israeli officials. NY Post said, “A top official in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq vehemently denied that ‘Iraqi’ Kurds were involved in the offensive.”
Rando 1: “A war that isn’t a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that’s happened in my lifetime.”
Rando 2: “Baudrillard would be shitting his pants.”
Drew Harwell (WaPo): “The White House just posted a video mixing real footage from the Iran strikes with a killstreak animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.”
GottaLaff: “Criminal wars that murder people are nothing but PR and games to the thugs in the WH.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Commentary on Lynna’s 411, where Steve Witkoff lied about uranium.
Elia Ayoub: “It’s truly incredible that with the Americans and Israelis making up claims of potential Iranian WMDs, there is virtually no mention anywhere in most of the mainstream coverage so far that the *only* Middle Eastern state with undeclared nuclear weapon is Israel.”
Wikipedia: “Estimates of Israel’s stockpile range from 90 to 400 warheads […] Israel maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity, neither formally denying nor admitting to having nuclear weapons […] Western governments, including the United States, similarly do not acknowledge the Israeli capacity.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Nancy Youssef (Atlantic): “The preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day, a congressional official told me.”
Rando: “no wonder they’re about to beg congress for more money. The wild part is that at this rate the money they want is only enough for 50 more days, if that.”
Dmitry Grozoubinski (Fmr diplomat):
So, in launching a huge bombing campaign on Iran they apparently didn’t plan for:
– Who [possibly] takes over;
– Interceptor shortages from sustained drone retaliation;
– How to defend US bases in the region;
– Threats to ships in the Strait of Hormuz; and
– How to evacuate Americans with airspace closed.
Iranian sailors who survived a US submarine strike in the Indian Ocean are recovering […] at least 87 were killed […] 32 rescued sailors were being treated for minor injuries [Another 60 are unaccounted for.]
A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000 miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. [Reuters article]
[NYT article] So the US Navy fired on and sank a vessel returning home from a joint exercise that the US Navy also participated in… is that skating kinda close to the line of perfidy?
Rando 1: “[IRIS Dena] was Iran’s newest, most sophisticated, and largest-class vessel (1 of 4 frigates in their navy).”
Southpaw: “However significant to them, it’s a smaller warship in concrete terms—1,500 tons displacement. Compare that to a US Navy frigate, 7,000+ tons, or a Virginia class sub, 8,000-10,000 tons.”
Rando 2: “The USN left the survivors to die. The only help they got was from the Sri Lanka Navy. Fucking war crimes.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Sanho Tree (Institute for Policy Studies): “Iran can still exercise a ‘nuclear option’ of sorts without using nukes at all. Water wars are the new Mutual Assured Destruction.”
Sanho Tree: “If pushed to the brink, Iran could easily depopulate much of the region. […] just a few, cheap Shahed drones costing between $30,000 to $50,000 to produce.”
From the 1970s onward, the oil money bought a solution: desalination plants. Today, the region relies on nearly 450 facilities to stop everyone going thirsty. […] About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman—all now under Iranian attack. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants […]
Under international law, the desalination plants are protected. But I have seen enough Middle Eastern wars to know the weight of the Geneva Conventions when missiles and bombs start flying. And they are: Iran has attacked a power station in Fujairah, UAE that keeps one of the world’s largest desalination plants running. In Kuwait, debris from a drone interception caused a fire in one of the country’s plants.
[…]
The good news is that water is so strategic—and so human—that any Iranian direct attack on them would be considered a massive escalation, so perhaps is a step too far for Tehran.
Still, Iran doesn’t have many options to prevail. Militarily, it cannot escalate against the combined Israeli-American war machine. Its only options are hunker down, in the hope that a long-lasting conflict becomes economically too painful for its enemies, or go after so-called soft targets like energy sites, airports and water installations. From its actions, it’s clear the Islamic Republic has chosen to hit soft targets and hunker down
[…]
the history of the Middle East teaches us that the unthinkable has already happened when it comes to water supplies. Back in 1991, the Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein deliberately opened the taps of a key Kuwaiti oil pipeline, spilling the crude into the Persian Gulf. The aim was twofold: hamper an amphibious landing by the US and its allies to liberate the country, and pollute the sea in the hope of damaging the nearby Saudi desalination plants.
[…] the risk is real—whether by targeting desalination plants deliberately, or by accident due to a stray missile or drone.
Rando: “The US destroyed water works, sanitation plants, power plants, bridges over the Tigris etc. during the first Gulf War.”
Former NIH institute directors, autism researchers, and advocacy leaders established an independent board today to coordinate work among nongovernment autism research funders and create a scientific agenda
[4 video clips] Sen Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) badly breaking the arm of a Marine veteran protesting the Iran war.
Imagine serving as a Marine and then being injured at home, on purpose, by a sitting Senator while exercising your constitutionally-protected rights.
[…] Please note that security is perp walking the Marine out of the hearing WITH HIS BROKEN ARM TWISTED BEHIND HIS BACK. […]
We just witnessed a marine veteran [in uniform] interrupting the hearing. [Two Capitol Police] pulled him out, [tackled him to the ground,] got his arm trapped in a door, [Sheehy and another cop joined in pulling] broke his arm […] It was a very, very intense situation. […] He’s my friend. He couldn’t stand what they were saying anymore, so he spoke up [from the back of the audience]. […] He’s actually running for Senate in North Carolina. His name is Brian McGuinness. […] And they all just kept their eyes forward. [Four-star generals] Those cowards.
[…] h/t to Charlotte Clymer. This is from her Instagram.
Rando:
Sheehy’s own account of the incident is wildly self-congratulatory: “Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation.”
Instead, THREE clownishly inept Capitol Police are ineffectually grabbing they guy, and then Sheehy comes in to make the situation worse. When no one is able to get the guy’s hand unstuck, Sheehy just walks away. Heroic stuff, truly.
Brian McGinnis […] faces three counts of assault on a police officer, as well as three counts of resisting arrest and crowding, obstructing and incommoding in the unlawful demonstration.
McGinnis is […] a Green Party candidate. The incident happened during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing. […] The Capitol Police statement called McGinnis “an unruly man who started to illegally protest during a hearing, put everyone in a dangerous position by violently resisting and fighting our officer’s attempts to remove him from the room.” […] “Protests are not allowed inside the Congressional Buildings,” Capitol Police added.
Not violent, but definitely resisting. He stubbornly tried to hold his position, continued speaking, as they shoved, pulled, and carried him out—their combined mass bumbling along the way.
James Talarico speaks for the first time since winning the Democratic nomination for his Senate race in Texas. Video is 10:34 minutes
birgerjohanssonsays
Militant Agnostic @ 418
Aaargh! My apologies.
I made a ‘Trump error’ and did not watch the video to the end.
Silver lining: There was no footage with human faces tacked on ape bodies.
.
Before it went off the rails he made some valid comments about how a prolonged war might play out.
.
As for why the anthropomised personification of “incompetence” would launch a war, we need to look no further than Israeli + Saudi Arabian lobbying, coupled with a dementia patient getting a rush from the previous two “Special military operations” and wanting a new fix.
.
I am worried about deliberate destruction of desalination facilities. It is not as any of the participants (and I include USA under Hegseth/Trump) give a damn about the rules of war. If the Iranians feel they are losing they have no reason whatsoever to hold back.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem misled Congress on Tuesday about the powers of her controversial top aide Corey Lewandowski, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and four current and former DHS officials.
Lewandowski has an unusual role at DHS, where he is not a paid government employee but is nonetheless acting as a top official, helping Noem run the sprawling agency. For months, members of Congress have asked the agency to detail the scope of his work and authority.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked Noem whether Lewandowski has “a role in approving contracts” at DHS. Noem responded with a flat denial: “No.”
But internal DHS records reviewed by ProPublica contradict Noem’s Senate testimony. The records show Lewandowski personally approved a multimillion-dollar equipment contract at the agency last summer.
That was not a one-off. Lewandowski has approved numerous contracts at DHS and often needs to sign off on large ones before any money goes out the door, the current and former department employees said.
Last year, Noem imposed a new policy that consolidated her and her top aides’ power over all spending at DHS, requiring that she personally review and approve all contracts above $100,000. Before the contracts reach Noem, they must be approved by a series of political appointees, who each sign or initial a checklist sometimes referred to internally as a routing sheet. Typically, the last name on the checklist before Noem’s is Lewandowski’s [!], the DHS officials said.
Noem Denies That Lewandowski Has “a Role in Approving Contracts” at DHS. [video]
Under federal law, it is a crime to “knowingly and willfully” make a false statement to Congress. But in practice, it is rarely prosecuted.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson reiterated Noem’s claim. “Mr. Lewandowski does NOT play a role in approving contracts,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Lewandowski does not receive a salary or any federal government benefits. He volunteers his time to serve the American people.” Lewandowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Several news outlets, including Politico, have previously reported on aspects of Lewandowski’s involvement in contracting at DHS.
There have been widespread reports of delays caused by the new contract approval process at the agency […]
A similar sign-off process exists for other policy decisions at DHS. One of the checklists, about rolling back protections for Haitians in the U.S., emerged in litigation last year. It featured the signatures of several top DHS advisers. Under them was Lewandowski’s signature, and then Noem’s. [Images at the link]
Lewandowski is what’s known as a “special government employee,” a designation historically used to let experts serve in government for limited periods without having to give up their outside jobs. (At the beginning of the Trump administration, Elon Musk was one, too.) Special government employees have to abide by only some of the same ethics rules as normal officials and are permitted to have sources of outside income.
Lewandowski has declined to disclose whether he is being paid by any outside companies and, if so, who.
Is Lewandowski getting kickbacks from all those contracts he signed?
Spain is against this disaster… Govts are here to improve people’s lives… It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are unable to fulfill that mission use the smoke of war to hide their failure, and in the process, fill the pockets of a few.
We are not going to be accomplices to something that is bad for the world and contrary to our values and interests simply because of fear of reprisals… We have absolute confidence in the economic, institutional & moral strength of our country.
On Sunday, according to the U.S. military, Kuwaiti forces shot down three U.S. F-15s in a “friendly fire” incident. Fortunately, the crews were able to safely eject and survived. The sad truth is that such incidents are common in modern war. One of the highest-ranking U.S. officers to die in World War II, General Lesley McNair, was killed in Normandy by U.S. bombs, not the Germans.
The shocking aspect of the story is the value of the equipment destroyed: A new F-15 costs U.S. taxpayers $97 million. So that’s almost $300 million lost in seconds. And we should think about what could have been done with that money other than launch a war without a clear plan or an exit strategy.
There are many reasons to be disturbed by Operation Epic Fury. Donald Trump has taken America to war, not only without Congressional authorization, but without even trying to make a case to the American people. Other than the hope that Iranians will rise up and overthrow the Ayatollahs’ regime, the war has no clear plan for either victory or exit. This strongly suggests that the rush to war was a Trump ego tantrum rather than a carefully planned campaign. […]
One of the reasons to be disturbed by this war is the extraordinary amount of money the U.S. government is either laying out now or will have to lay out in the future to replace the spent munitions.
The modern American way of war is extremely capital-intensive, deploying massive amounts of equipment while putting relatively few people in harm’s way. […] It’s certainly a lot more rational than Pete Hegseth’s talk about “warrior ethos” — are soldiers supposed to flex their biceps at attacking drones?
But the U.S. military’s reliance on munitions rather than manpower can create two problems.
The first problem is that modern munitions, which are highly sophisticated and complex, can’t be produced on short notice, and Trump has already used up many missiles and other weapons in his various military ventures. […]
In a Truth Social post last night Trump insisted that the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited supply” of “medium and upper medium grade” weapons, which is in effect confirmation that stocks of high-grade weapons are on the verge of of exhaustion. [yep]
[…] the cost becomes a serious concern even for a nation as wealthy as America.
Linda Bilmes of Harvard’s Kennedy School estimates that Trump’s largely unsuccessful bombing campaign last year against the Iran-backed Islamist Houthis in Yemen — a far softer target than Iran itself — cost between $2.76 billion and $4.95 billion. Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump’s one-day strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, cost between $2.04 billion and $2.26 billion.
The current war is being waged not only with massive bombing but also with the use of large numbers of expensive interceptors to defend U.S. bases and U.S. allies against Iranian drones and missiles. So in just a few days we have surely incurred billions of dollars in cost. And if this war continues for an extended period, the costs could easily rise to the twenty to thirty billion dollar range. [!]
[…] consider what else could have been done with that money.
Conservatives complain constantly about the level of federal spending, claiming that we are spending more than we can afford on social programs. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposes harsh cuts in nutritional and healthcare assistance, supposedly because the cost of food stamps and Medicaid is excessive. This, despite the fact that study after study has shown that the long run costs of not providing food stamps and Medicaid are far higher than the cost of providing them.[!]
[…] Put it this way: SNAP — the Supplemental Nutritional Food Assistance Program, formerly food stamps — spends an average of about $2,400 a year per recipient. CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program administered under Medicaid, provides comprehensive health care for about $3,000 per child.
So just replacing those three jets shot down over Kuwait — each of them, remember, with a price tag of $97 million — will cost about as much as providing 125,000 Americans with crucial food aid or providing healthcare to 100,000 American children. And the war might very well end up costing 100 times as much as the price of those jets.
Now, I support the U.S. government spending whatever it must to keep the nation secure. But the Trump administration, which hasn’t provided any coherent rationale for the war, is hardly bothering to pretend that it has anything to do with national security. […]
Why are Americans so negative about this war? First, they believe it has been foisted upon them: Trump hasn’t bothered to give them a reason for it. Second, Americans – already disillusioned by false promises about DOGE (remember those) and tariffs – sense, correctly, that there is no strategy here. Third, the public senses, also correctly, that the little people will bear this war’s cost. There has, of course, been not even a whisper from Trump about shared sacrifice, about, for example, taxing billionaires to pay for the money being spent on missiles and bombs.
Ordinary Americans feel that Trump is setting billions of dollars on fire with no idea how that is supposed to work out, and that they will end up paying the price. And they’re right.
Last Night In Texas We Saw The Future: More Voter Suppression
“Here’s what we’re going to do about it”
On Tuesday in Texas, Democratic voters in Dallas and Williamson Counties, Texas, had their work cut out for them if they wanted to vote. They had to figure out, on the day of, where their polling places were. That’s because the local Republican parties backed out of the years-long tradition of holding joint primaries, and that information wasn’t communicated widely. One voter reported showing up at his polling place and being sent somewhere else, a 15-minute drive away, only to be told to return to the original location. This is just flat-out voter suppression— designed to deny people their right to vote.
It feels like a test run for the midterm elections.
According to posters on Twitter who had receipts in the form of videos like this one, Black and Brown voters showed up to vote, only to be told that the polling place was “only for Republicans.” This type of last-minute gambit is appalling. […]
We expect and try to prepare our communities for those experiences. We shouldn’t have to.
So far this cycle, the president of the United States has asked state Republican leaders to draw new, rigged voting maps so he can try to retain Republican control of the House. He tried to pass a major voter suppression law, the SAVE Act. And he has repeatedly called on Republicans to “nationalize” elections, which is to say to take control away from local folks who are charged with running them. It’s an open call for mass voter suppression. Last night was yet another wake-up call.
As we have recently discussed—and it bears repeating—voting is a right, not a privilege. Increasingly, Republicans, frequently motivated by the leader of their party, feel free to treat it like a privilege, one that exists only for them. I hate the advice I’m about to give, because it should be easy for every qualified American to vote, but the reality is, we are going to have to work hard and fight to be able to exercise that right this year. That means:
– Advance planning so you can register to vote, stay registered, vote, and make sure your vote is counted […]
– Using your financial resources to obtain, and if you can, help others get the ID they need through groups like VoteRiders.
– Getting involved with your local League of Women Voters to help spread advance education about polling places and voting requirements in your community.
The time to figure out where you’re going to plug in is now. […] Sharing information with friends and family is critically important, and something each of us can to do make sure everyone is up to date or important details like changes in polling places.
But there’s more.
Last month, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan. He held that the government could not be sued for intentional nondelivery of mail. That, of course, includes mail-in ballots. The decision was 5-4. In a dissent authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor […]
Although Konan is about the delivery of residential mail, its impact on voting will be far-reaching, removing any consequences of even intentional misdelivery or withholding of mail-in ballots. That’s alarming in the context of a government office that has a history, under the leadership of Trump crony Louis DeJoy, of using anti-voter tactics. [!!]
[…] Trump is undoubtedly pleased by the Supreme Court’s recent opinion, given his well-documented hostility toward mail-in ballots […] with no consequences for even intentional failure to deliver mail, there could be a disruption of ballots from, say, certain parts of certain counties in advance of election day.
That’s not to say that Konan should permit the Post Office to do this, and there are other laws that protect elections. But increasingly, we live in a world where we have to contemplate the worst case scenario and prepare for it when it comes to voting if we want our votes to count.
Many people, and especially those who are ill, away for school, have a disability, or must travel on election day rely on mail-in voting. Eight states permit elections to be conducted entirely by mail: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington state. Nebraska and North Dakota permit counties to opt in to mail-in voting. […] If the Court ends the counting of late-delivered ballots, it will undoubtedly disenfranchise voters who may not hear about the new rule in time and appreciate the consequences. […]
The only real answer to this debacle is that voters who routinely use mail ballots need to advance their timelines, and people who need to apply for an absentee mail ballot should do so as soon as possible and mail it in as soon as possible. It will be increasingly important to track your ballot’s delivery and make sure it gets counted. [!!]
Everything Trump touches dies. Sadly, even the Postal Service.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa
We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against “shaheds” in the Middle East region. I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security. Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security and protect the lives of our people. Glory to Ukraine!
Video at the link. Video features Karoline Leavitt.
Exactly six years ago this week, as Americans were starting to come to terms with the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump said he didn’t believe the World Health Organization’s assessment on fatality rates. To support his contention, the president pointed to nothing in particular.
“This is just my hunch,” he said.
A few weeks later, Trump touted ineffective COVID treatments that had no scientific merit. Asked about his rationale, the president told reporters, “I feel good about it. That’s all it is. Just a feeling. You know, I’m a smart guy.” [JFC]
His “feelings” proved wrong, of course, but the rhetoric offered a peek into a ridiculous perspective: Trump, a former television personality and the least experienced president in American history, not only has a great many hunches, he also has an unnerving habit of assuming his hunches are true and acting on them.
All of this came to mind anew on Wednesday. NOTUS reported:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that President Donald Trump made the decision to strike Iran because he ‘had a good feeling that the Iranian regime was going to strike’ U.S. assets and personnel in the region.
The Trump administration has said that the U.S. faced imminent threats from Iran, which necessitated the strikes that began early Saturday. But it has not communicated specific intelligence or information beyond the fact that Iran possesses ballistic missile capabilities, as it has for years.
[Israel and Saudi Arabia certainly knew to tailor their pressure campaign to fit Trump’s feelings.]
Pressed further, Leavitt suggested the president acted on his feelings.
“This decision to launch this operation was based on a cumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America, and the president’s feeling, based on fact, that Iran does pose an imminent, indirect threat to the United States of America,” she told reporters. [video] [The “based on fact” part is bullshit.]
[…] As an analysis in The New York Times explained:
Sitting beside Germany’s chancellor in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Trump offered a brief moment of insight into the decision-making process in the White House on the most consequential of matters: Whether to take the country to war.
His decision to order the attack on Iran, he said, was mostly a matter of gut instinct about Iranian intentions.
“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” Trump said, adding, “I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen.”
A normal American president, before launching a war, might consult with the National Security Council, among others. The incumbent president, however, appears to prefer his gut, which wouldn’t be quite so terrifying if (a) he had some idea what he was talking about; and (b) we weren’t talking about matters of life and death.
President Trump on Thursday announced that he was firing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and replacing her with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla).
“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” he announced on Truth Social.
Trump thanked Noem for her service, stating the former South Dakota senator “has served us well.” […]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—While Americans strongly disapprove of Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran, a new poll released on Thursday shows overwhelming support for sending Stephen Miller there.
Over seventy percent of those surveyed “strongly approve” of sending Miller, who bested such other popular choices as Kristi Noem, JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt, Pete Hegseth, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
If Trump moves forward with such a deployment, however, he could run afoul of international law, since the use of Stephen Miller against a civilian population violates the Geneva Conventions and would likely be considered a war crime.
Markwayne Mullin has been the butt of many jokes recently for his many contradicting and stupid comments on the war/not war so, of course, that’s the one Trump chooses for replacing Noem. The only requirement for any cabinet job is to be able to debase yourself for the god king which Mullin has been doing perfectly.
birgerjohanssonsays
On the issue of corruption in high places.
Rachel Maddow Show (Audio Only). 27 minutes.
“Shock Move: Marshals Seize Banned Files from Judge Cannon’s Chambers”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qHL87fYSIZ4
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @436:
the cost becomes a serious concern even for a nation as wealthy as America.
There is no cost too great when The Orange Turd’s ego needs stroking. Pretty much why he has gone bankrupt in nearly every one of his businesses. But this time, it is OUR money he is pissing away.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @435: There are 3 more clips in the replies with what happened before and after the Marine’s injury. Traditional outlets have been omitting those. You can scroll down from your link, or follow mine @427. The after parts are mostly the witness telling others about it—I transcribed and added a couple clarifying details.
“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy in Venezuela,” Trump told Axios, referring to Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez, who took over after the US captured Nicolás Maduro.
Trump said he would not accept a successor who continues the policies of Iran’s former supreme leader.
Trump has apparently forgotten that he didn’t want Rodriguez either, he sort of accepted her when it became clear that she had the control and support of the government.
Noem becomes the first cabinet secretary to be fired by Trump in his second term. […] The final straw for Trump was Noem’s combative hearing Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The president watched the testimony and was apoplectic about her performance, telling advisers that evening he would remove her […] He also began calling members of Congress and asking for replacement ideas […]
Noem’s decision to allot more than $200 million for an ad campaign, featuring herself urging those living illegally in the U.S. to self-deport, had already rankled the president for months for its self-promotional style. At the hearing, Noem told senators that the president had signed off on the ad campaign—an assertion that upset Trump, who told senators and advisers he hadn’t
[Screenshot of Trump’s post]
Mullin will be his next nominee for secretary of DHS, although Trump doesn’t word it that way. Finally, he says Noem will have a new federal role in a new initiative soon to be announced.
[…] all of the “Noem out, Mullin in” posts and stories are failing American democracy right now! Trump is announcing his nominee. That’s it. If the Senate majority wants to confirm him, they’re a part of this […] And that matters come November.
[…]
Although, of course, Trump could try to do something illegal, I do not believe Trump could appoint Mullin as “acting” DHS Secretary under either the Federal Vacancies Reform Act or the DHS order of succession.
Rando 1: “I had the same thought: is Trump saying he’s not going to bother with confirmation? But it would be the funniest thing ever if Mullin’s confirmation takes months or, better yet, it totally bungled.”
Sky Captain @447, the police escorting the marine really did continue to bend his broken arm behind his back. And that was after they were right there when the sound of the breaking bone was practically in their ears. It does look like it was Sen Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) who provided the force that broke the marine’s arm.
Other than that, the first part of the police trying to eject the protestor from the chamber looks like bumblefucking all the way. Sheesh.
The marine was definitely disturbing the entire room. He was loud and insistent.
Noem’s decision to allot more than $200 million for an ad campaign, featuring herself urging those living illegally in the U.S. to self-deport, had already rankled the president for months for its self-promotional style. At the hearing, Noem told senators that the president had signed off on the ad campaign—an assertion that upset Trump, who told senators and advisers he hadn’t.
“The second Iranian warship to pass near Sri Lanka’s territorial waters since yesterday is believed to be part of a group of three Iranian navy vessels returning from an international maritime event in India,” […] “The second ship contacted local authorities in Sri Lanka, indicating it is running into engine trouble and asking to call into port.[“]
Sri Lanka’s government, meanwhile, “has to walk on eggshells” […] it has not taken either side in the ongoing war
Sri Lanka has evacuated 208 crew members […] Sri Lanka’s navy will also take over the second vessel and shift it to the northeastern port of Trincomalee for safekeeping amid fears that it could be a target
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a resolution to curb President Donald Trump’s military authority in Iran, sending a clear message to the country and world: GOP lawmakers are — at least for the moment — unwilling to put a check on the president’s operation in the Middle East, and there’s little Democrats can do about it right now.
Associated Press:
Republicans invoked the war in Iran and the prospect of retaliatory terrorist attacks as they made another unsuccessful effort Thursday to pass a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats are insisting on changes to immigration enforcement operations as part of the measure and blocked it from advancing. The procedural vote was 51-45, falling well short of the 60 that Republicans needed to proceed with the measure.
Some two dozen states challenged President Donald Trump’s new global tariffs on Thursday, filing a lawsuit over import taxes he imposed after a stinging loss at the Supreme Court. The Democratic attorneys general and governors in the lawsuit argue that Trump is overstepping his power with planned 15% tariffs on much of the world.
The Trump administration, bracing for more U.S. casualties and considering whether to put troops on the ground in Iran, has begun reaching out to Tehran’s domestic opposition as potential allies to foment an uprising against the regime.
Wall Street Journal:
Russia is one of the biggest winners in the early days of the largest U.S. military confrontation in decades, as Iranian missiles deplete stocks of Patriot interceptors that Ukraine needs for its defense.
Catholic priests in Rhode Island preyed on hundreds of children for decades, and were protected by bishops more concerned with the church’s reputation than the victims, according to a new report on clergy sexual abuse that echoes findings elsewhere. The report, released Wednesday by Attorney General Peter Neronha, follows a multiyear investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island.
[…] In keeping with Trump’s habit of rewarding ousted loyalists with diplomatic posts, the president offered Kristi Noem a consolation prize of sorts, announcing that she’ll soon serve as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.” I have no idea what that means, though Trump apparently intends to elaborate over the weekend.
In the meantime, there are a couple of angles to keep in mind going forward. The first is that congressional Democrats demanded Noem’s ouster as part of the negotiations over funding for DHS, and the latest developments might actually help move policymakers closer to a deal to end the ongoing shutdown.
The second, however, is that for Noem’s many critics, her departure is the first step, not the last.
[…] responding to the president’s announcement, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote online, in reference to Noem: “Turns out lawlessness is not a winning strategy. See you at Nuremberg 2.0.”
A variety of other Democratic lawmakers responded to the news with similar statements, emphasizing the need for “accountability.”
The DHS secretary will soon lose her job, but she won’t soon be forgotten.
During an education nutrition event Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a platitudinous prescription for the mental health crisis facing young people, which the Trump administration has actively exacerbated.
“We have a spiritual malaise in this country. Suicide is now—for certain groups of kids—the highest cause of death,” he said. “We need to start bringing people together and give them a sense of connection, give them a sense of community. And one of the ways to do that is to encourage them to go through this ancient ritual of making a meal with their family and then eating a meal with the family.” [video]
Kennedy added, “President Trump understands that we’re engaged right now in spiritual warfare and that the malevolent forces want to drive us apart.”
Unsurprisingly, Kennedy neglected to mention that the Trump administration cut off funding for the 988 Lifeline, which offered support for one of those “certain groups” with an elevated risk of suicide: LGBTQ+ youth.
He also left out the $1 billion in cuts to federal grants for school-based mental health services, casualties of the GOP’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich budget.
On its face, encouraging family dinners sounds like good advice to follow. But—like many of Kennedy’s statements—when the rubber meets the road, there are no policies or resources offered to actually achieve what he’s promising.
Israel unleashed a major bombardment just after midnight on Friday on a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, in another sign that Lebanon is fast becoming a new front in the widening conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran.
A series of airstrikes caused huge explosions in the Dahiya area, on the outskirts of the city, in the most intense attack since a cease-fire in late 2024 halted fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
At least three buildings totally collapsed. Hundreds of displaced people were sleeping on the streets of downtown Beirut, some huddling around small fires to stay warm.
The intensified bombardment came not long after Israel military officials acknowledged that their forces had moved deeper into Lebanon than previously disclosed and Israeli armed vehicles began massing at the border.
The Israeli military had said earlier that it was going to hit targets in the Dahiya, warning people to evacuate to the north and setting off a panicked exodus on Thursday.
[…] Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said at a news conference in Tampa, Fla., that U.S. air attacks had seriously damaged Iran’s air defenses and missile capability. He said the retaliatory ballistic missile attacks by Iran have decreased by 90 percent since Saturday. Retaliatory drone attacks, he said, had decreased by 83 percent. [Is that a statement we can believe? Does Pete Hegseth tell Adm. Brad Cooper what to say?]
[…]
Noem thanked Trump on X for appointing her as the “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas” after she was ousted as homeland security secretary.
She said she looks forward to working with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren.”
“The Western Hemisphere is absolutely critical for U.S. security. In this new role, I will be able to build on the partnerships and national security expertise, I forged over the last 13 months as Secretary of Homeland Security,” she said.
Noem touted “historic accomplishments” under her leadership at DHS when it comes to safety. She said that “we delivered the MOST secure border in American history, 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S., we have located 145,000 children, FEMA delivered disaster relief at a 100% faster rate, we ushered in the golden age of travel, saved the American taxpayer $13 billion and revitalized the U.S. Coast Guard.”
“After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Finland joined NATO and has been accelerating and revamping its defense plans.”
Helsinki is set to ease its ban on nuclear weapons, allowing the import, transport and storage of the devastating armaments on Finnish territory, Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said Thursday.
Häkkänen told a press conference that the country’s legislative ban on nukes, dating back to 1980, was no longer relevant in the current geopolitical context. “The legislation does not meet the needs that Finland has as a NATO member,” Häkkänen said, according to regional media. […]
Häkkänen said nuclear weapons would be allowed to be transported onto Finnish territory if national defense needs required it, Finnish media reported. The minister declined to provide specific scenarios, but ruled out the possible deployment of nuclear warheads on Finnish soil.
Finland is a signatory to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Within Europe, France and the United Kingdom possess their own nuclear weapons, while the United States stores nuclear warheads in several NATO countries including Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @460 quoting RFK Jr.:
We have a spiritual malaise in this country. […] encourage them to go through this ancient ritual of making a meal with their family and then eating a meal with the family.
Because the best thing to to when one feels malaise is gather in groups and handle everyone’s food.
two first responders and the parent of a slain child have told Middle East Eye. “When the first bomb hit the school, one of the teachers and the principal moved a group of students […] The principal called the parents and told them to come and pick up their children. But the second bomb hit that area as well. Only a small number of those who had taken shelter survived.”
[…]
Two strikes on the same target are often characterised as “double-tap” strikes, particularly if there is a brief pause between them and medics and other civilians arriving at the scene are killed in the follow-up attack. […] a war crime.
a health clinic and other buildings near the school were also struck. […] Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury College who specializes in satellite imagery, said the imagery was consistent with a precision airstrike. […] “Almost all the buildings [in the compound] are hit.”
[…]
But Lewis said it’s more likely that the strike was the result of an error. Satellite images show that the school and clinic buildings were both once part of the base. The school was separated from the base by a wall between 2013 and 2016. The clinic was walled off between 2022 and 2024. Lewis believes it’s possible American military planners had not updated their target sets.
Iranian officials have blamed the US and Israel for the attack, however neither country has accepted responsibility. Israel says it was not aware of any operations in the area, while US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Washington was still investigating the incident and that it would “never target, civilian targets”.
An ongoing internet blackout in Iran has made it difficult to independently verify details of the incident.
In a lengthly phone interview, President Trump marveled at the success of the military operation against Iran and expressed no concern about what comes next.
“I hope you are impressed,” he said to me. “How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better. How do you like the performance?”
I said nobody questions the success of the military operation, the concern is what happens next.
“Forget the next,” he answered. “They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back.”
Commentary
I question the success.
My God, Jonathan Karl, have some self respect or quit your job. Why would you, a journalist for more than 30 years, say that to someone you’re interviewing and then why would you admit it in public? Inside-the-Beltway journalists suffer from a specific kind of brain rot that the vast majority of journalists avoid.
if they’re so ‘decimated’ that we don’t even need to worry about what comes next, why tf are we still there and no one in your administration is willing to even engage on the question of a timeline for ceasing hostilities?
Is decimated more destructive or less destructive than obliterated?
Fascism is the aestheticization of politics. Exhibit #52,024
a commission overseeing changes received more than 32,000 comments, mostly in opposition, from the public. […] Nearly 100 people were expected to speak at a public forum on Thursday hosted by the National Capital Planning Commission (NPCC). The panel had been scheduled to vote during the forum but delayed the vote given the volume of feedback. “We’re going to take the time to deliberate, and we’re going to have a final vote on April 2,” NCPC chairman Will Scharf said
WHOA. Camp East Montana in El Paso opened in August and quickly became the deadliest ICE facility, with infamously terrible conditions.
Now ICE is closing it, just as they plan to open up a detention camp nearly three times larger in a converted warehouse just outside El Paso. [WaPo article]
Grace Bell, who is in her 30s and was born without a viable womb, says her little boy Hugo, who is now 10 weeks old, is “simply a miracle”.
Bell and her partner Steve Powell, from Kent, paid tribute to the “kindness and selflessness” of the donor and her family for their “incredible gift”, while also thanking medical teams in Oxford and London who supported their journey.
This is a big step forward for women born without a functional womb, a more common problem then you might think.
This isn’t actually the first birth from a transplanted womb but previous transplants were among close relatives.
The Swedish GlobalEye is using a Canadian airframe from Bombardier (more famous for propellers). This will be the replacement for AWACS.
I see Trump and Vance have put their stamp on NATO but not in the way they expected.
We have been discussing this propulsion for more than half a century. I was hoping space sails would be available for a rendez-vous with Halley’s comet in the 1980s.
“The tenure of the worst Secretary of Homeland Security since the agency was formed has come to an end in spectacular and humiliating fashion,” says Chris Hayes on Trump firing Kristi Noem. Rep. Jamie Raskin weighs in.
MS Now confirmed Lewandowski’s departure Friday morning, following reports that he was expected to leave the agency alongside Noem.
I figured this would happen one way or another, he gets fired, he leaves on his own or he hangs around until the next head of DHS fires him. Lewandowski only had a job because of Noem, had an off the organization chart special position and a lot of power. The only thing that might have saved Lewandowski is that he was also a friend with Trump and that is more likely to get him a job someplace else in the administration.
A superior court judge in Indiana has blocked the state’s near-total abortion ban from being enforced — because it isn’t an absolute ban.
The Raw story title is awkward. The judge has backed the American Civil Liberties Union’s novel logic.
The case, resting on a novel legal theory, was brought in Marion Superior Court by the American Civil Liberties Union, seeking a religious exception from the abortion ban under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would effectively allow those who disagree with the law to not follow it.
As evidence that the law applies, the ACLU pointed to the ban’s exception for rape survivors — a common provision many Republican lawmakers slip into abortion bans in an attempt to make them more palatable to the general public.
But allowing abortion in cases of rape doesn’t do anything to advance the state’s given reason for the legislation, argued the ACLU — namely, to protect the unborn as human life. Therefore, the law doesn’t have a compelling interest for existing outside of the religious beliefs of the lawmakers who made it, and it follows therefore that, just as it doesn’t bind survivors of rape, it shouldn’t bind people whose sincerely held religious beliefs actually endorse or require abortion in certain circumstances.
The ACLU is taking this route to cast the entire ban as a religious matter, which is largely true at a practical level. It is almost entirely people taking a religious view of the matter that are in favor of hard bans. It will be interesting to see if this holds up on appeal. I sort of expect this gets appealed the whole way up to the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court will overturn it in an awkwardly worded position that allows more religious laws as long as they are not explicitly religious.
“The president believes he’s entitled not only to choose officials to serve in his executive branch, but also to choose leaders in foreign lands.”
Related video at the link.
With Ayatollah Ali Khamenei having been killed as part of the ongoing war in Iran, there’s great uncertainty surrounding who will lead the Middle Eastern country going forward. Evidently, Donald Trump doesn’t just have some ideas on the subject, the president also expects to be directly involved in answering the underlying question. MS NOW reported Thursday as part of the network’s live blog coverage:
Trump told Axios in an interview today that he must be involved in picking the next supreme leader of Iran.
Several news outlets have reported that the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is favored to succeed his father. Trump said that would be ‘unacceptable’ to him and dismissed the regime’s process of picking a new supreme leader, which is carried out by senior clerics who make up Iran’s Assembly of Experts.
Trump explicitly told Axios, “I have to be involved in the appointment,” a position he continued to emphasize in others interviews Thursday. Indeed, Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl: “We don’t want them to put anybody in there unless it is approved by us.”
There’s no shortage of problems with this, starting with the inconvenient fact that the president knows very little about Iran and its potential future leaders, and the idea that he would be capable of making a responsible choice is plainly ridiculous. [True]
Complicating matters, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to insist that the ongoing military offensive is not a regime change war. But the Pentagon chief and his boss can’t both be right: Either this isn’t a regime change war, or this is a war in which the United States has killed a foreign leader with plans to choose his successor. [!] The administration probably ought to choose one talking point or the other.
But stepping back, there’s a broader element to this that’s often overlooked: Trump seems to like the idea of selecting foreign heads of state — and his list isn’t limited to Iran.
For example, he appears to have positioned himself as the person who’ll choose Venezuela’s new leader after his administration bombed the South American country and took Nicolás Maduro into custody.
Two weeks ago, at a White House news conference, Trump offered support for Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, adding that he “essentially” put him in the office.
A week before that, a reporter asked him if he has “a veto” on Nouri al-Maliki possibly returning to the prime minister’s office in Iraq.
“We’re looking at a prime minister, we’ve got some ideas,” Trump responded, as if the decision would be made by the White House. [JFC]
We’re not just talking about Trump’s habit of endorsing foreign candidates and hoping they’ll win elections in their respective countries. Rather, this is a situation in which the president believes he’s entitled not only to choose officials to serve in his own executive branch, but also to choose leaders in foreign lands. [!]
I continue to think about the Americans who supported the GOP ticket in 2024 because they believed Republicans would pursue a foreign policy based on restraint and non-interventionism, and just how spectacularly wrong they were.
The legitimate MSNOW channel organizes its shows with playlists.
For Maddow, there’s one for audio of full episodes and one for clips.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna, OM @478
He thinks he is a Roman emperor, granting kingship to client kingdoms. Or a Soviet leader, issuing veto if the premier of a Warshaw Pact country appears too ‘liberal’.
.
Trump On Rising Gas Prices During Iran Operation: ‘If They Rise, They Rise’
The list of questions surrounding the ongoing war in Iran is not short. At this point, neither Donald Trump nor anyone on his team has explained in a coherent way why the administration launched this offensive, what its objectives are, what the plan is to achieve those goals, whether the war is legal or how long it’s expected to last.
In case that weren’t quite enough, we also don’t know how much this war of choice is costing, though an answer is starting to come into focus. MS NOW reported Thursday as part of the network’s live coverage:
The war with Iran is costing the U.S. an estimated $1 billion a day, according to two congressional sources with knowledge of the matter. Based on that estimate, the U.S. has spent at least $5 billion on the war since it began on Feb. 28. … The estimate was first reported by The Atlantic.
Whether that daily price tag will rise or fall in the near future is the subject of some debate. While it’s true that one MS NOW source said the costs will likely decrease as the U.S. deploys fewer costly interceptor missiles, Politico reported that some congressional Republicans believe the Pentagon is now “spending as much as $2 billion a day on the war.”
[…] we’ll need additional clarity. Indeed, Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, has formally requested that the Congressional Budget Office nail down the specific details.
In a written press statement, Boyle concluded: “Taxpayers deserve a nonpartisan estimate of the financial and economic impact of President Trump’s reckless war in Iran that has already led to the tragic deaths of American service members. … American families don’t want billions of dollars wasted on an unnecessary war — they want lower costs and affordable health care.”
Time will tell what the CBO finds, but the lawmaker’s political observation was notable in large part because it reflected his party’s messaging strategy. Indeed, consider what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference on Thursday:
We’ve seen Republicans, led by Donald Trump, plunging America into another endless conflict in the Middle East, spending billions of dollars to bomb Iran, but they can’t find a dime to make it more affordable for the American people to go see a doctor when they need one. Can’t find a dime to make it easier for Americans who are working hard to purchase their first home. And they can’t find a dime to lower the grocery bills of the American people.
As the president and his White House team prepare to go to Congress to ask for more money to cover the cost of the war, it’s a safe bet that the public will be hearing a lot of rhetoric like Jeffries’ in the coming days, weeks and months.
birger @471, we have discussed this before. Do not post AI slop in this thread.
Please review this link, which was posted earlier in this thread when jean pointed out that you had posted a link to AI slop.
“Spot checking and sometimes debunking quotes, memes and fake news stories about, or ascribed to, Rachel Maddow.”
“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!).”
More at the link.
In addition, the video you referenced in comment 471 looks and sounds like AI slop.
Correction to comment 482, I meant to say that the audio file does not sound like something Rachel Maddow would say. It is audio, not video. However it does immediately raise one’s suspicion that it is AI slop. Not a legitimate source to post here.
Oil prices have risen about 20% this week, with U.S. crude oil at $82 per barrel this afternoon.
Consumers are seeing gasoline prices 27 cents higher since last week, up to $3.25 per gallon on average as of today, according to AAA.
Commentary:
[…] At a White House event on Thursday afternoon, the president boasted that he and his team took “decisive action to help keep down the oil prices,” adding that the cost of oil “seems to have pretty much stabilized.” [blatant lies]
As is too often the case with Trump, he appears to have made this up. The morning after he made the comments, prices continued to climb.
What’s more, when the president wasn’t peddling nonsense, he was expressing indifference. “I don’t have any concern about it,” Trump told Reuters when asked about the higher prices at the pump. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.”
[…] Behind the scenes, Politico reported that administration officials are desperate to find ways to lower prices. But at this point, they appear short on ideas.
Shortly before Christmas, the president used his social media platform to tout something he called “The Trump Effect,” claiming that he was singlehandedly responsible for gas prices.
As costs climb, and Americans are introduced to the idea of “warflation,” the concept of “The Trump Effect” is taking on a very different kind of meaning.
“The more the president insists the economy is amazing, the more we’re confronted with evidence to the contrary.”
Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 50,000 new jobs being created in the United States in February. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals fell far short of those expectations. CNBC reported:
Nonfarm payrolls fell by 92,000 for the month […] February marked the third time in the past five months that payrolls declined, following a sharp revision showing a drop of 17,000 in December.
At the same time, the unemployment rate edged higher to 4.4% as jobs declined across key areas.
There is no good news here. In fact, during Joe Biden’s four years in the White House, there wasn’t a single month in which the U.S. economy actually lost jobs.[…] The economy not only shed jobs in February, it also lost jobs in two of the last three months, three of the last five months and five of the last nine months.
All told, Donald Trump has been in the White House for 14 months, and during that time the cumulative total is 150,000 jobs. Over the 14 months preceding Trumpt’s return to power, the American economy added 1.74 million jobs.
That’s a stunning reversal, which the Republican administration has made no credible effort to explain or justify.
On the contrary, Trump publicly insists on a near-daily basis that the U.S. currently has the single greatest economy in the nation’s history. The latest employment report clearly proves otherwise.
To contextualize the data, I put together this chart to show month-to-month totals since the 2020 election. The blue columns point to Biden’s presidency, while the red columns point to Trump’s. [chart]
It remains to be seen whether the president responds to the developments by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (again).
[…] If Trump has created the greatest economy in history, why has American job growth slowed to its lowest pace since the Great Recession?
[…] Noem is out. Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin is in. But there is an endless supply of other figureheads for Trump to name to nominally run DHS, while he and Stephen Miller via Tom Homan pull the strings from the West Wing. The mass deportation operation for which no one is more responsible than Donald Trump grinds on mercilessly and lawlessly.
Is Noem the worst DHS secretary in history? As with Pam Bondi’s historically bad run as attorney general, it feels like an inapt point. They are ciphers, meant to fill a TV role cast by Trump and to respond to his every whim and impulse, not run giant organizations or make independent decisions. Donald Trump is the worst DHS secretary in history, and worst attorney general and … you get the point.
There is a tendency in news coverage to reward Trump by covering the action — a firing — rather than his failure on every level. It results in a weird herd-like dynamic where everyone piles on to reject the obviously foolish person who was fired and thereby associate themselves with the powerful actor who did the firing. Which is, well, insane here and in the many other instances of Trump’s serial firings of officials who do exactly what he said in the way that he directed it done for the reasons he articulated.
[…] This is a guy whose entire political persona is rooted in performative firings on a realty TV show. That formula resonates for a lot of Americans, as much as I wish it were otherwise.
The mass deportation operation is Trump’s singular political obsession for his entire time in national politics. It would have happened with or without Kristi Noem. It will continue until Trump and Trump alone decides otherwise.
Birger, as a general guideline, I think you are going to have to stop trusting YouTube. The YouTube platform does not adequately moderate content. One has to check other sources every time.
A reporter who faced death threats in her home country could now be sent back by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Nashville Noticias staffer Estefany Rodríguez was detained by ICE in South Nashville on Wednesday morning. There was no warrant for her arrest. [!] Her attorneys have filed an emergency petition in federal court seeking a writ of habeas corpus, or an immediate review of whether or not her detention is legal.
Rodríguez, who was in the car with her husband — a U.S. citizen — has been following all the legal steps to citizenship. In her job, Rodríguez has reported several stories that hold ICE accountable, and it’s unclear whether her detention was retaliation. As of Thursday afternoon, she was in Alabama en route to an ICE processing center in Louisiana.
A citizen of Colombia, Rodríguez originally entered the country lawfully on a tourist visa in March 2021, then applied for political asylum. According to Joel Coxander, her immigration attorney, Rodríguez was forced to flee Colombia and seek asylum because of her work as a journalist. She covered armed and militant groups and had received threats, which Coxander has seen […]
The first time Rodríguez had any contact with ICE was Jan. 8, when she received a G-56 letter requesting that she come to the office for “processing and additional information” on Jan. 26. The letter also stated that she would be issued a Notice to Appear (NTA), an official charging document initiating an immigration court case. “Come in so you can help ensure the best outcome for your case,” the letter read. Coxander said this language is common across these types of letters.
“So ICE sends out these letters to citizens who’ve never had any contact with [them],” he said. “The letters just say, like, ‘Hey, please come by the ICE office.’”
“They’re invitations,” he emphasized. “They don’t say they’re required. They say, ‘Come in so we can help ensure the best outcome for your case.’ They cite no legal requirement to come. […]”
“If you don’t want to delay the processing of your case and to help ensure the best outcome,” read the bottom of the letter, “IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you make every effort to keep this appointment.”
Before Jan. 26, Rodríguez, her husband and Coxander compiled folders full of documents and prepared to attend the appointment. They planned to lay out arguments as to why ICE shouldn’t begin removal proceedings through the NTA or take her into custody. Then, on the agreed-upon date, the ice storm hit Nashville, and nobody could go anywhere. ICE’s ERO office was closed. [important detail]
On Feb. 10, Rodríguez received a letter with a makeup date for the appointment: Feb. 25.
Two days before the appointment, her husband and Caleb Mundy, an agent of Coxander’s, visited the ERO office. They were confirming, Coxander said, that Rodríguez actually had to show up. They wanted ICE to send the NTA directly to the attorneys.
“She’s not in the system,” the duty officer told them after running her Alien Registration Number. “This appointment’s not in the system.” [!]
Mundy double-checked if Rodríguez needed to show up, and the duty officer said no. [!] Another agent took a look at the case, then they took her letter and gave her a check-in sheet stating that Rodríguez should return on March 17, when everything would be resolved.
[…] Early on March 4, when she was stopped in her car, Rodríguez said she was shown an NTA rather than an arrest warrant.
Mundy showed up to the ICE office that morning around 8:15 a.m. He said the Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer (SDDO) told him Rodríguez’s arrest was justified because she was considered a flight risk for missing two meetings. [JFC! The bit about missing two meetings is misinformation.]
The SDDO also said that Rodríguez hadn’t shown up in the system because she hadn’t had a previous interaction with ICE.
“She’s being told, ‘We’re holding it against you that you didn’t do this thing we told you you didn’t have to do,” […]
“Joel had prepared a mountain of evidence,” for the first hearing, Mundy said, in favor of Rodríguez being released on her own recognizance. “And we didn’t get to present it until she was already arrested.”
[…] he’s always admired Rodríguez’s courage in continuing to report on ICE for Noticias, up close and personal, when she knew she was putting herself at serious risk.
“That’s pretty brave,” Coxander said, “because she understood the whole time that she could be at risk of getting picked up — not even as a reporter, just by physically being present.”
Coxander found it ridiculous that Rodríguez would be considered a flight risk and likely criminal.
“Her husband and attorney literally went to the ICE office two days before the appointment. […]”
“She is somebody that has been trying to follow the rules the whole time.”
A GoFundMe has been set up for Rodriguez’s family and her legal bills.
UPDATE, 3:30 p.m.: This is the full statement from Nashville Noticias:
On March 4, Estefany Rodríguez, a reporter for Nashville Noticias and Univision 42 Nashville, was with her husband, Alejandro Medina III, outside the gym located at 2615 Murfreesboro Pike, when the vehicle they were traveling in (marked with the Nashville Noticias logo) was surrounded by several other vehicles. Several men got out and demanded that our colleague be taken into custody for reasons that the legal team will specify at a later date.
Estefany Rodríguez was taken to a detention center.
Estefany Rodríguez holds a degree in journalism from Colombia, her native country, where she has worked for several years at various news outlets. She joined the Nashville Noticias team in 2022, covering social, family, health, police, and immigration issues.
Nashville Noticias LLC expresses its respect for the laws of the United States and hopes that this situation will be resolved favorably for our colleague so that she can be released soon, as she needs to reunite with her young daughter and husband to continue her legal process within the framework permitted by law. Her legal team at MIRA Legal, as well as the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Coalition (TIRRC), are providing legal representation in the case and will have details on the progress and responses from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Tennessee Federal Court.
Nashville Noticias will also be providing updates on its social media platforms and website, nashvillenoticias.com. We trust in the justice system of the United States of America.
That “trust in the justice system of the United States” does not seem to be justified.
From Talking Points Memo, same link as in comment 486.
The Latest From the Middle East …
Before we dive into the news, a reminder that Iran is much larger than most Americans realize. Comparing it to European countries as a frame of reference, only Russia and Ukraine occupy a larger land area. Iran’s population is larger than those of Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain.
– U.S. military investigators “believe it is likely” that the United States was responsible for Saturday’s strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran, Reuters reports, citing two unnamed U.S. officials. The NYT’s own analysis indicates the school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as U.S. attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
– The U.S. sinking of the IRIS Dena (an Iranian frigate, not a destroyer, as I described it earlier this week) has complicated relations with third countries. It has caused consternation in India, from where the ship was returning (unarmed, the Iranians say) after joint military exercise that included U.S. participation. Three Australian nationals were embedded with the U.S. military aboard the submarine that sank the Iranian warship.
– Israel launched an assault on Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.
– Four Democrats joined the House GOP majority to block a war powers resolution that would have asserted some congressional independence from President Trump.
President Donald Trump told CNN Friday morning that Cuba “is going to fall pretty soon.”
“Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon, by the way, unrelated, but Cuba is gonna fall too. They want to make a deal so badly,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash in a phone interview when touting US military success in his second term.
“They want to make a deal, and so I’m going to put Marco (Rubio) over there and we’ll see how that works out. We’re really focused on this one right now. We’ve got plenty of time, but Cuba’s ready — after 50 years,” he added, explaining that Iran is the current priority.
He added of Cuba: “I’ve been watching it for 50 years, and it’s fallen right into my lap because of me, it’s fallen, but it’s nevertheless fallen right into the lap. And we’re doing very well.”
A day earlier, Trump said at the White House that it’s only a “question of time” before American Cubans can return to their home country, appearing to say that’s next on the administration’s agenda after the ongoing war with Iran.
“He’s doing some job, and your next one is going to be, we want to do that special Cuba,” Trump said Thursday referring to his Secretary of State. “He’s waiting. But he says, ‘Let’s get this one finished first.’ We could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen. If you watch countries over the years, you do them all too fast, bad things happen. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to this country.”
“EXCLUSIVE: Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say”
Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war […]
The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities. [!]
Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
[…]Moscow has called for an end to the war, which it labeled an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.” [Well Moscow would know.]
[…] The Iranian military’s own ability to locate U.S. forces has been degraded less than a week into the fighting, the officials said.
[…] Iran has fired thousands of one-way attack drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. military positions, embassies and civilians, even as the joint American-Israeli campaign has hit more than 2,000 Iranian targets — including ballistic missile sites, naval assets and the country’s leadership.
[…] When asked this week about his message to Russia and China, which are among Iran’s most powerful backers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he didn’t have one and that “they’re not really a factor here.” [Hegseth is a willfully ignorant doofus.]
Two of the officials familiar with Russia’s support for Iran said that China did not appear to be aiding Iran’s defense […]
In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Washington referred to Beijing’s diplomatic efforts to engage with partners in the region since the war began and said that the conflict should be “immediately ceased.”
Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran’s strikes against U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars and temporary structures, like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed.
The CIA’s station at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, also was struck in recent days. [important details]
Iran is “making very precise hits on early warning radars or over-the-horizon radars,” said Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. […]
Iran possesses only a handful of military-grade satellites, and no satellite constellation of its own, which would make imagery provided by Russia’s much more advanced space capabilities highly valuable — particularly as the Kremlin has honed its own targeting after years of war in Ukraine, Massicot said. [!]
Nicole Grajewski, who studies Iran’s cooperation with Russia at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, said that there had been a high level of “sophistication” in the Iranian retaliatory strikes, both in what Tehran has targeted and in its ability in some cases to overwhelm U.S. and allied defenses.
“They’re getting through air defenses,” she said, noting that the quality of Iran’s strikes appeared to have improved even from its 12-day war with Israel last summer.
[…] Russia’s assistance reshuffles how various countries have engaged in a proxy war since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Throughout that conflict, U.S. adversaries including Iran, China and North Korea have provided Russia with either direct military aid or material support for Moscow’s vast defense industry. The United States has given Ukraine tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and shared intelligence on Russian positions to improve Kyiv’s targeting.
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X that the Trump administration had requested assistance in helping protect against Iranian drones and that Kyiv would provide “specialists” in response.
Iran has been one of Russia’s chief backers during the Ukraine war, sharing the technology to produce cheap one-way attack drones that have repeatedly been used to overwhelm Kyiv’s air defenses […]
[…] the Kremlin sees possible advantages in a prolonged war between the U.S. and Iran, including higher oil revenue and an acute crisis that distracts America and Europe from the war in Ukraine.
[…] Still, the lack of direct military involvement from Moscow is in part a sign of its need to focus elsewhere, Massicot said.
The Kremlin, she said, is “very much considering this is not their problem and not their war. From a strategic calculus perspective, Ukraine is still far and away the number one priority.”
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has a new idea, and it’s one that might sound fine at first but is really just straight-up racism and America First blather.
Carr is pushing to force telecom firms to require all their call centers to employ only people proficient in English. American Standard only please, not that fussy British English, apparently. He’s also spitballing whether consumers could demand a transfer to a U.S.-based representative or require call centers to disclose where they are located. Ultimately, he wants telecoms to onshore all their workers. […]
Carr also wants to hang the pernicious problem of robocalls around the necks of foreign call centers. But it’s Carr himself who invented the “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative, where he invited big business to give him a wish list of all those pesky regulations they’d like repealed. You will not be surprised to learn that robocalls have therefore wildly increased since Trump took office.
[…] Carr announced this in conjunction with his approval of the Charter-Cox merger, where Charter Communications committed to onshoring their workforce.
What Carr is unsubtly implying here is that somehow woke Democrats and deceitful foreign companies are the reason your call center representative is in another country and not a native speaker of English. But the reason call center jobs in America disappeared is that American businesses made those decisions to cut their cost, and by 2017, that had killed 500,000 American jobs.
It isn’t entirely clear that Carr even has the authority to do this, but that hasn’t really stopped it. Carr came in hot from the jump, primed to turn the FCC into a fully Trumpy tool, and he’s delivered.
He’s going after late-night and daytime talk shows to try to force them to include conservative voices. Unsurprisingly, conservative outlets don’t have to do the same with liberal voices because Carr isn’t including talk radio, for … reasons.
He’s “suggesting” broadcasters sign a pledge to be more patriotic by starting the day with the Pledge of Allegiance and the like, a suggestion that broadcasters will essentially have to comply with in order to get Carr to approve any mergers.
Speaking of mergers. Carr made a lot of noise about how Netflix merging with Warner Brothers raised huge antitrust concerns, but those magically disappeared when Paramount forced a merger with Warner Brothers instead. That merger was just dandy because Paramount has already paid the appropriate fealty to Trump and ensured that it will go full MAGA.
[…] Giant broadband providers are not going to love the notion of taking on a huge increase in call center costs, and this administration’s fondness for letting big businesses run wild will likely prevail. But in the meantime, Carr will get a lot of mileage out of this xenophobic nonsense.
Remember last fall when a group chat of Young Republicans leaders leaked, revealing their use of a breathtaking array of slurs? If you thought that embarrassing event would stop other conservatives from starting their own bigoted group chats, you were wrong.
Enter Abel Alexander Carvajal, the secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party.
That very same fall, he started a group chat for conservative students at Florida International University, according to the Miami Herald, which obtained leaked texts from the WhatsApp chat. n less than three weeks, it was overrun with racist, antisemitic, and homophobic slurs, including reportedly over 400 uses of the N-word and its variations.
While the chat did have FIU students in it, its members weren’t random young conservatives with no standing in the Republican community in Florida. Besides being started by the county party’s secretary, it reportedly included the head of FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter, Ian Valdes, as well as the former recruitment chair of the College Republicans, Dariel Gonzalez.
Valdes offered such deeply racist thoughts as: “We need to have a moratorium on immigration temporarily unless it’s someone from a first world country. … Yeah I obviously mean whites.”
Valdes also changed the group chat name from “Uber-[r-word] Yapping” to “Gooning in Agartha.” Those not extremely online probably don’t know what “gooning” means: It’s slang for extended periods of often compulsive male masturbation. But the real problem with that name is “Agartha,” a mythical Aryan civilization and a fable so beloved by Nazi commander Heinrich Himmler that he reportedly wasted money trying to find it in Tibet.
Edgy young right-wingers have glommed onto this racist Atlantis idea, and naming your chat after it is a clear signal you are a straight-up Nazi.
[…] The U.S. president is a white nationalist. His administration is primarily focused on abusing immigrants of color. The Department of Homeland Security has turned its social media accounts into Nazi-friendly meme factories run by 21-year-olds.
This is exactly who these people are. They are just sad that more of them got caught.
“The president’s shruggy nihilism extends to Iranians, US soldiers, and you.”
In the week since launching Operation Epic Fury, President Donald Trump’s war without an apparent endgame has killed 787 Iranians, a death toll the administration has made clear it is hellbent on expanding. It includes at least 175 Iranians, mostly young children, who were killed at Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school as US strikes targeted a nearby naval base.
Trump’s self-made crisis has now killed at least six American service members, including Sgt. First Class Noah L. Tietjens, who had been finishing his final deployment in Kuwait when a retaliatory drone attack killed him. As of Friday, more than 120 people in Lebanon are reported dead as the war expands across the Middle East.
This White House, like many White Houses before it, invites the possibility of death when it declares war. But has an administration ever been so naked in its lust for it? Take Pete Hegseth, who on Wednesday could barely contain his enthusiasm for dead Iranians:
Death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.
Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.
Later, when asked about the US service members killed, Hegseth’s excitement quickly curdled into petulance. “The press only wants to make the president look bad,” he complained, suggesting that reporting on dead Americans is not only bad publicity but evidence of traitorous behavior.
[…] where Hegseth cheers on mass death, the president himself offers a shruggy nihilism. Consider that in the first three days of war, the president opted for a leisurely stay at Mar-a-Lago, where he posted two videos of himself briefly talking about the war on Truth Social. From there, Trump went forward with a previously scheduled $1 million-a-head fundraiser because he “had to eat dinner anyway.” Once back in the White House, Trump ignored questions about Iran and, instead, urged reporters to gaze upon some new statues erected in the Rose Garden. On Monday, he finally gave a brief, five-minute briefing on the war that featured updates on his ballroom renovations.
That’s all before a more troubling attitude emerged. “I guess.” That’s how Trump responded when Time asked whether Americans should be concerned about the possibility of retaliatory attacks here in the US.
“[…] Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Unlike Hegseth, who appears drunk on performance as he thirsts for death, Trump’s thoughts on death here are eerily relaxed. They are notable because they appear to lack thought. No, this is not a man remotely bothered by mass death. He simply does not care. Again, such insouciance might not be new when it comes to America’s thirst for war. But carrying it so openly and inelegantly is something else entirely.
an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and a dozen other individuals in 2015 that centered on allegations of money laundering, drug trafficking and the procurement of Eastern European prostitutes for high-profile clients […] It began after an informant told authorities that Epstein was involved in the illicit funding and distribution of so-called club drugs, including ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamines […] None of the individuals were charged with any offenses as a result of the investigation. It’s unclear how long the investigation remained open and what authorities ultimately learned from it because the complete case files have not been released.
[…]
Beginning in 2009, when Epstein was released from state custody in Florida after pleading guilty to charges that included soliciting a minor for prostitution, at least eight US government agencies, including the [FBI], the DEA, the US Treasury Department and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, conducted their own investigations into Epstein […] law enforcement agencies kept tabs on Epstein by tracking his movements, building dossiers on his connections and following his money as it moved through offshore accounts. Foreign governments did likewise.
Ron Wyden (Senator D-OR): “With every new development in this story I am even more gobsmacked that Epstein and his co-conspirators escaped accountability over and over and over again. There’s more to come from my investigation. Stay tuned.”
birgerjohanssonsays
In a few days you should get
“Scathing Atheist 677: AI Slopaganda Edition” free at Youtube.
.
I got the Patreon version, where Noah discussed replacing the magician performing at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, and use his magician skills to steal Trump’s phone from under his nose to forward the incriminating contents to Hillary Clinton.
(Downside: Noah would go to prison forever and probably “kill hilmself” in his cell, but it would be worth it.)
“When Donald Trump’s most controversial aide starts advising officials not to listen too much to attorneys, it’s best not to look away.”
In Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part II,” a character named Dick the Butcher tells a confederate, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” There’s long been debate over the meaning of the line, but the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a 1985 opinion that he interpreted it to mean that “disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”
This came to mind while watching White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speak at the “Americas Counter Cartel Conference” on Thursday, where he had quite a bit to say to a group of Latin American military leaders. [social media post, with video]
At the heart of Miller’s pitch was the idea that it was necessary to combat drug cartels, not through law enforcement techniques or border control, but rather by using deadly military force.
“[What] we have learned after decades of effort is that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem,” he said. “There are elements of the problem that require a criminal justice solution, to be sure, but just as we fought al-Qaida and fought ISIS with the tip of a very lethal sphere [sic], the reason why this is a conference with military leadership, and not a conference of lawyers, is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power.
“And I see some heads nodding up front because they understand you’re dealing with a lot of lawyers in your own country, I’m sure. You have my permission not to listen to them.” [His “permission,” who needs his permission? Arrogant doofus. Also ignorant.]
Dick the Butcher would be proud.
The comments came roughly two months after the controversial White House aide told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the United States is entitled to acquire Greenland, arguing: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
As 2026 got underway, The New York Times reported that Miller is an enthusiastic advocate of “a strongman’s view of the world.” The report added that, according to Miller, “using brute force is not only on the table but also the Trump administration’s preferred way to conduct itself on the world stage.”
Two months later, as Miller advises Latin American military leaders to disregard their lawyers’ guidance and Miller’s boss wages an unnecessary war in Iran, the relevance of that sentence lingers.
JMsays
@497 Lynna, OM
“[What] we have learned after decades of effort is that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem,” he said. “There are elements of the problem that require a criminal justice solution, to be sure, but just as we fought al-Qaida and fought ISIS with the tip of a very lethal sphere [sic], the reason why this is a conference with military leadership, and not a conference of lawyers, is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power.
Because al-Qaida and ISIS don’t exist now. You would think he could at least find a better example. Historically using the military to solve problems of crime has done badly. It rarely works, it often makes the situation worse and it often corrupts the military.
JMsays
@491 Lynna, OM:
Intelligence is probably the one thing Russia can give to Iran right now. Russia doesn’t have any military gear that they can spare that Iran needs. Russia needs all of the drones, artillery, ammunition and supplies it can make and is running out of air defense itself. They are already selling what oil they can to Iran. They have already been sharing information on building better drones back and forth but most of the Russian designs are derived from Iranian ones anyways.
When reading that you also have to consider who would want to leak that information. That sort of high level military leak doesn’t happen by accident. Connecting the two countries ties the Iran conflict to the Ukraine one, it would be foolish to reduce air support to Ukraine if that just means some Russian drones will be transferred to Iran and fired at US targets.
The Pentagon has confirmed that US forces struck Iranian targets using weapons that are copies of Iran’s own Shahed 136 suicide drones.
When Operation Epic Fury began on the morning of February 28, involved in the action was Task Force Scorpion Strike, the US military’s first one-way-attack drone squadron, based in the Middle East.
Just to point out, the new US low cost drones are also copies of the Shahed drone. The US military was caught off guard by the predominance of drone warfare in Ukraine and to get a saturation attack drone of their own up quickly they copied the Shahed.
Trump’s creation: A Europe that spends more on defense — and can stand up to the US
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-4/#comment-2293238
Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-4/#comment-2293237
Has ICE Debuted New ‘No Lying’ Policy?, by Josh Marshall
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-4/#comment-2293236
Trump falsely claims that the U.S. is ‘the only country that has mail-in ballots’
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-4/#comment-2293235
“My Daughter Lived the Liam Ramos Nightmare. It Turned Out Worse for Us.”
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-4/#comment-2293233
“A stay is not permission for the loser of a case to hijack the property of the winning party.” A report from WIRED
Lynna @496 in the last 500: Here’s the second half.
Slate – My daughter lived the Liam Ramos nightmare. It turned out worse for us.
Zelenskyy to Trump: Here’s how to pile pressure on Putin
“The Ukrainian president sat down with POLITICO for an exclusive interview at the Munich Security Conference.”
That’s live coverage that is presented via video. Not yet complete.
Other coverage from a different Politico source:
Link
Sky Captain @3, thanks for posting the rest of that Slate article!
In other news, as reported by MS NOW:
An Associated Press report, as summarized by Steve Beenen:
See also:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-4/#comment-2293237
Has ICE Debuted New ‘No Lying’ Policy?, by Josh Marshall
Associated Press:
Not good. Looks like Trump is planning another military offensive action.
Washington Post:
Good news, as reported by The New York Times:
MS NOW:
Washington Post:
GovExec – ‘Suicide is only one option’: Social Security staff newly assigned to phone duties raise concerns over training
On the new opposition leader of the Aussie reichwing parties – LNP coalition :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-14/what-we-know-about-angus-taylor-policies/106342170
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/dark-universe/could-the-milky-way-galaxys-supermassive-black-hole-actually-be-a-clump-of-dark-matter
NBC – ‘Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this’: A family’s nightmare in ICE detention
ProPublica – A federal tool to check voter citizenship keeps making mistakes
* Broderick has a quote saying SAVE’s positive results are accurate, and the negative results mean unknown. Which sounds okay, except that SAVE automatically reports negatives as crimes.
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel):
* Cheryl Rofer: “The presumption of regularity is that the government has done a competent job of preparing its case and is presenting the case honestly.”
Wheeler linked the document and posted a screenshot of the footnote, which was a wall of citations and quotes like this:
The Onion: RFK Jr. Mandates All Americans Drink Mysterious Glowing Liquid.
.https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/alexei-navalny-killing-russia-latest-5HjdSM8_2/
^ sorry, posted too soon.
Putin murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny with epibatidine poison, from poison dart frogs.
.https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/alexei-navalny-killing-russia-latest-5HjdSM8_2/
Predator: Badlands (2025) | Sisters Torn Apart — Ya Seeks Revenge For Her Mother.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/mQ76teWJ6TM
Trump Forced to Abandon Blanket Tariffs on Steel Now
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mj-rL0nBv3Y
Trump Faces Sudden Catastroph at Midterms…IN FLORIDA!! Alex Vindman is running for the senate and expleains the situation.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FSgQ3s327T4
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/private-cabin-new-scrutiny-on-noem-lewandowski-s-close-relationship-amid-dhs-chaos-2487243843848
Video is 8:02 minutes
Link
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: Researcher skeptical of ‘Havana syndrome’ tested secret weapon on himself.
“In 2024, a Norwegian researcher skeptical that pulsed-energy weapons could do damage to human brains built a device and tested it on himself. It didn’t go well.”
Doctors Without Borders suspends some work at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital due to presence of armed men
U.S. military reports a series of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria
“U.S forces carried out 10 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria between Feb. 3 and Thursday in retaliation for a December ambush that killed two American soldiers.”
@20 birgerjohansson:
Have to give Putin some style points there. Navalny was already in a Russian prison camp, there are any number of boring ways he could have been killed. But no, Putin went to the lengths of doing something from a murder mystery just to be exotic and interesting.
The Hill: Noem says she’s ‘still in charge’ of DHS
If you have to publicly announce that you are in control then your losing control.
Steven Dennis (Bloomberg):
Rando:
JM @30, I think your conclusion is true. I think Kristi Noem was also making that point about being in charge because she wants to order ICE agents to patrol election sites during the midterm elections.
Chris Hayes quote @24: “Noem and her unofficial number two, Corey Lewandowski”
“What is Corey Lewandowski’s job exactly?”
“Under Secretary.”
—Robert A. George (Comedian)
WaPo – Trump tells soldiers to vote GOP in campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg
Ian Bassin (Lawyer): “The commander in chief telling troops who they have to vote for is itself a presidency ending impeachable scandal.”
Interesting analysis by a military historian of methods of opposing a much more powerful state, with thoughts on the anti-ICE protests here in Minneapolis.
Link
CNN – Trump administration deported some migrants at a cost of $1 million each
* I guess the eighty percent was mostly that El Salvador / Venezuela prisoner swap. Some deportees might’ve traveled on their own. And a few ferried by the US gov.
(Testing if the link works)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9MTEa45FjXY
Every single state: Trump’s approval/ disapproval rate visualised.
It has gone significantly worse the last few weeks.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9MTEa45FjXY
11.000 year old mesolithic bones.
“Northern Britain’s oldest human remains are of a young female child, DNA analysis reveals”
.https://phys.org/news/2026-02-northern-britain-oldest-human-young.html
When this girl lived, people in Anatolia were already building temples.
@34 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
Notice also how bad his argument is. Fort Bragg isn’t some local reserve base or training facility where the soldiers will have some local and historical sympathy with the name. Fort Bragg is a huge facility with soldiers from all over the US, most of which are indifferent and some of which won’t like being at a base name for a Confederate general.
He can’t think of a better way to appeal to them because he has no empthy for them and went with the name because he is obsessed with naming places. The soldiers are aware that he has worked to cut funding to the VA and otherwise tried to cut their support and money so even though soldiers lean right wing they probably are not big fans.
birgerjohansson @20, JM @29.
Dan Kaszeta (CBRN expert): “Russia does not actually need a rare tree frog from Ecuador to get the toxin that killed Navalny.”
Rando: “dart frogs in captivity stop producing their toxins due to their different diet (millions of fruit flies). So synthesis of epibatidine does seem far more likely. […] Dart frogs are whole niche hobby within herpetoculture (reptile & amphibian keeping). Some hobbyists create incredibly beautiful mini-rainforests in terraria, with rare plants, and automated systems for misting etc.”
Toxin used to poison Alexei Navalny was synthesized at the same institute that created the Novichok nerve agent
* Novichok of course was used in another of Putin’s poisonings.
I almost imagined a Trump CIA op screwing up an assassination with harmless frogs… before remembering the oafs just smash-and-grabbed a head of state. They can’t even spell subtle.
A black female lawyer was reportedly assaulted by two uniformed police officers in Oshawa Ontario.
The lawyer was working in a in Interview room 10 minutes after the courthouse closed. She was charged with trespassing.
Source : https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2026/02/07/environmental-breakdown-isnt-a-distant-possibility-its-a-threat-to-world-stability/
Palate Cleanser Coral Pink Sand Dunes Tiger Beetle a critically endangered Coelopteran found in just a tiny area on the Utah-Arizona border.
The dunes are pink not the tiger beetle BTW.
See :
https://beetlesinthebush.com/2011/11/03/cicindela-albissima%E2%80%94the-coral-pink-sand-dunes-tiger-beetle/
Plus : https://azleader.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/coral-pink-sand-dunes/
WA goes repressive authoritarian and erodes the right toprotest too, sigh :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/wa-government-introduce-new-protest-hate-speech-laws/106347042
Latest epsiode of If you are Listening here – How QAnon and Epstein blew up the justice system – under 25 mins long & on the Epstein files.
22 mins long
How Spiders Survive Winter is Cooler Than You Think
Well, this surprises me esp given the existence of the Greenland Shark which I’d always presumed had southern counterparts & thought Great Whites might’ve roamed pretty close to that far too..
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2026-02-11/shark-filmed-in-deep-antarctic-waters/106222014
Emphasis added.
Social media censorship latest YouTube BANS Pro-Palestine Activist Guy Christensen – ten mins long.
Vale Kudelka. Respect. Bloody good cartoonist and good human being. Rest in power. :
Source: https://theconversation.com/as-beautiful-as-they-were-powerful-jon-kudelkas-political-cartoons-were-made-with-true-conviction-275538
Pauline Pantsdwon and that song plus more discussed here –
I Don’t Like It: The Pauline Pantsdown Story – under 15 mins long. So many memories.
Wish they were’t relevant now – but they are.
Referencing this song – Pauline Pantsdown – I Don’t Like It! – 3 mins 20 secs. Old 1990’s classic satirical song that got a racist Aussie polly really riled up. See above.
(Full of Aussie politics refs from the 90’s so ..yeah.)
Also Sammy J’s poem The Girl From Ipswich Town – 3mins 15 secs again lotsa old Aussie poliical refs here. Still FWIW.
Oh and so wish this was too outdated to be relavent these days in Aussie politics.
See wikipage here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Hanson
Plus or the horrifying modern truth :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/story-lab-one-nation-polling/106322978
They wwere afringe far reichwing party but they are bing normalised and the Overton window ia pushed outta the house , down the streetand right to teh rubish dump and the furthest end of our politics sadly.
But then that’s a really disturbing, awful, all too common trend these days.
Reform in UK, Trump kult in the USA..
(Plentiful loud expletives.)
@ ^They = One Neuron party & Pauline Hanson obvs.
Needless to say is needless to say but so many needlessly say it – coz is it so needless or needs must we say for is it so needless to say it?
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-minnesota-ice-tom-homan-metro-surge“>Trump’s Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota was a failure by every metric
“The Trump administration has claimed “great success” in a city that actually put Donald Trump on his back foot.”
Related video at the link.
The Hill: DOJ sends letter to Congress with list of people named in Epstein files, including Trump: Report
The DOJ was required to provide this by the law that forced them to make redacted Epstein files public. It seems to be a pile of legalese that is as intentionally obscure as possible.
The list of officials and “politically exposed” people appears to be everybody named in the file other then victems and Epstein himself. Elvis turns up on the list because he was mentioned once in a conversation.
This is DOJ officials making absurd claims that are difficult to disprove because only the redacted files are public.
YouTube link
Pam Bondi Hearing, the SNL cold open.
Followup to comment 32.
Noem boasts of Trump administration ensuring ‘we have the right people voting’ ahead of midterms
New York Times link
“Deep in China’s Mountains, a Nuclear Revival Takes Shape”
“Satellite imagery of secretive nuclear facilities reveals Beijing’s efforts to expand its arsenal, just as the last global guardrails on nuclear weapons vanish.”
Satellite imagery is available at the link.
More at the link.
New York Times link
“18 Days, 20 Lives: New Yorkers Who Didn’t Survive the Cold”
“Freezing days and nights claimed the lives of a grandmother, a dancer, a dispatcher […].”
Individual stories are included at the link.
Washington Post link
“Trump tells soldiers to vote GOP in campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg”
“Army policy prohibits partisan displays, and most service members refrained from cheering.”
re Lynna @66:
The Medal of honor is awarded only for conspicuous gallantry and risk of life above and beyond the call of duty during combat against an enemy force. I have doubts that anything that happened in that dubious raid meets the criteria. The Orange Turd just loves receiving and giving out awards.
“Shut Up About The BLOODY Emu War : A Full History of Australia’s Worst Defeat ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=n76hbNOO6z4
Woman detained by ICE after Hawai’i visit
Elon Musk:
Commentary
South African refugees are left to fend for themselves
Cord Cutters news: Babylon 5 Is Now Free to Watch On YouTube
The plan is to upload one per week and only the initial episode is uploaded right now. If they stick with uploading it I will binge watch the whole thing at some point.
The video quality does not appear to be the best. Babylon 5 is early computer special effects and the visual effects are not the best at times. The quality of transfer does not appear great, a common problem with early digital cameras. They didn’t record at super high resolution so moving the video to a different resolution or re-encoding it causes video effects. It will still be great to see the whole thing in order when/if it all gets uploaded.
Forgotten Weapons: The AI Paradox: Results of My Thumbnail Experiment
Forgotten weapons is a long running Youtube channel dedicated to fire arms. This video has nothing to do with that. It is about a test the author did using an AI generated thumbnail for one of his videos. Turns out that the results were consistent, the AI thumbnail attracted more viewers that watched more of the video but comments from fans was universally negative. Interesting short discussion of what is involved and how it effects people generating video.
My opinion is I don’t care if they use AI to generate a thumbnail as long as it’s actually related to the video. For regular content creators generating an interesting thumbnail is an annoying bit of drudge work and may be click bait. I would rather a quick AI pic then a hand composed pic that isn’t really connected to the video.
Link
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ty42uz67qbam52si5yduwwaa/post/3mevugl5gqc2l
See also: Reuters link to an article that is better because it adds context:
Rubio is clumsy when it comes to diplomacy.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dsssax6ne5ghruk6velxnbp4/post/3metkrirmia2u
Good photo at the link.
See also: EUROMAIDAN Press link
‘Not ready for prime time’: A federal tool to check voter citizenship keeps making mistakes, by ProPublica
Link
Unfortunately Lennon may be the exception. County clerk Brianna Lennon ran elections in Boone County, Missouri.
Lynna @ 74
Someone clumsy ar diplomacy being appointed to this position in the government? That is very on brand for The Idiot (TM)
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
S13 E01: Olympics, ICE & DHS: 2/15/26:
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=NpPWFsONyiM
“John Wilkes Woof” indeed.
Britain:
“Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain [far right party]: REAL Threat to Nigel Farage & Reform UK in 2026?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=njbb0EFK_TA
Bart Ehrman
Was Jesus a CopyCat? The Role of John the Baptist in the Ministry of Jesus.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=il9D90R4Myk
BTW the Cristian apologist David Wood is useful for skeptics as his faith gives him the energy to dig through boring islamic writings (my mind would melt after ten pages) to find contradictions in a rival religion.
And unlike some Christians I know he is intellectually honest, and does not misrepresent what he finds.
.
Tragically, he has fallen in the same “Islam is the great enemy” cognitive cul-de-sac as so many other Christians and seems to accept what media like Fox News says.
Rupert Murdoch has a lot to answer for.
Follow-up to comment 66.
Trump’s efforts to politicize the U.S. military become even more brazen and radical
“The more the president delivers highly partisan messages to active-duty troops, the more he targets a bedrock principle of the United States.”
Related video at the link.
Ignoring reality, Trump eyes elections changes ‘whether approved by Congress or not’
“Trump’s first elections power-grab was a ridiculous move that failed in the courts. His second will arguably be even worse.”
Trump struggles to explain the point of his team’s nuclear talks with Iran
“You said that the Iranian nuclear sites have been totally obliterated,” a reporter told the president. “What’s left to go after?” His answer fell short.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tom-homan-gets-big-mad-on-the-sunday
“Tom Homan Gets Big Mad On The Sunday Shows”
Real life for schools in Minneapolis: what it is like when Trump’s administration surges ICE personnel into a city:
Washington Post link
More at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/i-didnt-come-here-for-art-tabs-mon
https://www.wonkette.com/p/fcc-finishes-copypasting-bad-bunny
Owner of North Texas warehouse says it won’t sell or lease to feds for ICE facility
[Virginia] With state backing, Augusta County says no to ICE facility
MN Reformer – FBI won’t provide evidence in Alex Pretti killing
New Jersey launches ICE reporting website
* Like Minnesota’s form.
It’s The Munich Security Conference, Starring AOC, An Astronaut, And The Woman Who Warned Everybody!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/its-the-munich-security-conference
New York Times link
“Judge Orders Slavery Displays Restored at George Washington’s Philadelphia Home”
Epstein pal will reportedly keep cushy new gig at CBS News
You may soon need a passport to vote. Trump is making it harder to get one.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-nominee-is-huge-racist-if-you
“Trump Nominee Is Huge Racist, If You Can Believe It”
And yet, Jeremy Carl is up for a high-level State Department post.
Robert Duvall R.I.P.
He was 95 years old.
MS NOW:
Link
Related video art the link.
New York Times:
New York Times, reporting on the effect of vaccine research being curtailed:
More:
New York Times:
Trump publicly condemns Israel’s president for the Trumpiest of reasons
“When the president can’t abuse his own pardon power to reward an ally, he demands that others abuse their pardon power in order to make him happy.”
For Trump, rapid-fire policy gimmicks come and go at breakneck speeds
“The more desperate Trumpt becomes, the more he starts throwing out ideas he thinks people might like […]”
Trump’s private company files trademark for ‘President Donald J. Trump International Airport’
A man was detained by ICE when agents pretended to be stranded motorists.
Lynna @104
He will wait until wildfire season to ground all the De Havilland Canadair 515 and CL 415 water bombers.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @105
A good reason to not name an airport after him.
Are you now or have you ever been an actual Sky Captain
Militant Agnostic @108: A tongue-in-cheek honorary title bestowed by someone for often coming to their aid, and other’s. We watched a lot of movies too. The Jude Law film wasn’t among them, but I imagine that was the nym’s inspiration.
* others’
Mary Trump shares her insights
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tJB4Jd1h_oY
A nice, refreshingly normal lady from a family of grifters and predators.
Comparison EU and USA
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C7HoFDWZi/
-Remember, EU also contains several former east bloc nations who started from a very liv level 1992.
First Robert Duvall
Now Jesse Jackson RIP
As Jackson became a visible politician alongside Jimmy Carter it is perhaps not surprising he passed away a year after Carter, both were pretty old. I recall both from my youth.
They took my job!
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CSXbAa3Tt/
Rachel Maddow
‘Ignorance is Strength’: Republican Judge shuts down Trump’s history re-write in devastating ruling.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ng9lX35JcE8
British Trump wannabee Nigel Farage just claimed the “mini-budget” by Liz Truss (which made the Pound collapse and forced Liz Truss to resign after the shortest career as prime minister ever) was “the best budget ever presented”.
Translation: He is every bit as stupid as the American blob, but -like Boris Johnson – he has the social skills to conceal the malign parts of his personality.
.
Boris Johnson was on Swedish TV two days ago and managed to be charming despite having caused immense damage during COVID through his arrogance.
.
People like Johnson and Farage are more dangerous than Trump because they can pose as ‘normal’ while Trump gives off alarming vibes to everyone except those who share his values.
Militant Agnostic @107, yes. LOL. That sounds like something Trump would do.
In other news: Political catastrophe: Republican governor botches ICE prison decision
Video is 9:35 minutes
Maddow: Trump’s bag of tricks lose their magic as his poll numbers crater
Video is 3:50 minutes
Rubio beclowns himself dancing to Trump’s tune; U.S. security suffers with Rubio’s distractions
Video is 6:03 minutes
‘Ignorance is Strength’: Judge shuts down Trump’s history re-write in devastating ruling
Video is 5:52 minutes
Already in a hole, Trump keeps digging on Gateway tunnel project fiasco
It’s a problem when the president accuses his own White House of confirming a story he considers “fake news.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/europeans-declare-rubio-a-slightly
Trump’s latest offensive against Maryland’s Wes Moore comes with a clear subtext
“The more the president fixates on the Democratic governor, the more it seems he’s scared of Moore’s political potential.”
Follow-up to birger @113.
Link
CBS bends the knee, again, to Trump. Stephen Colbert isn’t having it:
Link
Your Tax $ at work: Noem’s two queen beds, a buffet bar, and a lounge with wet bar and wine chiller.
More at the link.
Ukraine has turned the tables on Russia, thanks [in part] to Russia’s sudden inability to use Starlink. [social media post from Ukrainska Pravda]
From WarTranslated (Dmitri):
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3ilzhrzkar3icae4mfyupmqp/post/3meyv5xas7c2k
Video with English subtitles is available at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/laissez-les-bon-temps-rouler-tabs.
Washington Post link
“I covered Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign. The racism he faced was undisguised.”
“The obstacles he faced — including those from his party’s establishment — were overt and subtle.”
@124 Lynna, OM:
For the infantry the Russian government shutting off Telegram probably had more impact then Starlink. The government cut if off because too many Russians were getting news outside Russian control. It turned out that a good number of Russian officers and soldiers were using Telegram for passing orders, information and even communicating during fire fights. This left a good chunk of Russian infantry disconnected from the central command and easy pickings for Ukrainians.
It is reassuring that DJT would never be able to assemble architecture in an ideologically coherent manner, all he can do is commission some bland neoclassical kitsch.
“The Evil Genius of Fascist Design”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tjrG7CT3vIg
MS NOW:
NBC News:
Other news, JM made a good point in comment 127.
MS NOW:
Steve Benen made the point that McLaughlin exited with her credibility in tatters. That’s so true.
New York Times:
New York Times:
New York Times:
Even in a White House known for corruption, the president’s objections to the Gordie Howe International Bridge appear quite brazen.
DHS’ controversial scrutiny of protesters and critics draws fresh scrutiny
Rubio praises Orbán — and finds a new way to beclown himself in the process, by Rachel Maddow
“Rubio stood side by side with the Hungarian prime minister, despite his own supposed revulsion at the European leader’s dictatorship just a couple of years ago.”
Related video at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rest-in-peace-jesse-jackson
“Rest In Peace, Jesse Jackson”
“The civil rights icon was 84.”
The Hill – Jan. 6 disbarment opinion sets an example for Republicans nationwide
Family Guy Theory
“The Moment They Resolved The Stewie Paradox”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7VHcAYOoWNQ
Latest news about our Aussie hate-mongering Islamophobe of the fringe but sadly increasingly popular One Neuron party :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-18/pauline-hanson-partially-apologises-for-muslim-remarks/106357130
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/17/mapping-forced-displacements-and-settler-attacks-by-israel-in-the-west-bank
Saw this last night on fb but AJ reporting it here :
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/2/17/swiss-commentator-slams-zionist-israeli-bobsleigh-team-at-winter-olympics
Kinda double standard & odd that Russia is banned from the Olymics but not Israel ain’t it?
Which reminds me, I saw Leathal Weapon II* again a few nights agao which made me reflect on how if it twas amde now it would be considered uber-woke and have the reichwing screaming about it – Mel Gibson & all – and the South African villains of that Apartheid era would now be the Israelis of this one.
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_Weapon_2
Artemis update :
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-will-fuel-up-its-artemis-2-moon-rocket-for-the-2nd-time-on-feb-19-will-it-leak-again
[North Carolina] Data centers threaten energy affordability. Data centers account for about 80% of Duke Energy’s projected energy demand.
Gizmodo – AI companies bought out all of Western Digital’s hard drives for 2026
Rando: “Generally not a fan of line graphs that suddenly go vertical. [Chart: Price of RAM, $150 in Oct ’25 to $400 Dec ’25]”
PCGamer – Many consumer electronics manufacturers ‘will go bankrupt or exit product lines’ by the end of 2026 due to the AI memory crisis, Phison CEO reportedly says
Commentary
I predict Iran will do what Putin, Netanyahu and Zelenskyy have all on occasion done successfully in the face of Trump’s threats – make soothing noises and wait for his attention to shift elsewhere. But it didn’t work for Maduro – perhaps the dancing was what prevented it working for him.
JM@127,
That’s amusing – do you have a source handy?
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/on-thin-ice-kristi-noem-under-fire-as-dhs-faces-shutdown-fallout-2487748675858
Video is 7:45 minutes
New Coast Guard allegations add to Kristi Noem’s growing list of troubles
Link
Wall Street Journal: “Eric Trump Invests in ‘Low Cost Per Kill’ Drone Company”
Wall Street Journal link
FDA reverses course, agrees to review Moderna’s flu vaccine
“Decision comes shortly after rejection sparked major controversy”
Good news.
ICE violence is up over 290% under Trump
Cartoon: The Washington Post-mortem
Follow-up to comment150.
Link
Cartoon: Housing crisis made E-Z
Washington Post link
“Trump officials limit FEMA travel to disaster areas amid funding lapse, emails show”
“It is highly unusual for a government shutdown or funding lapse to impede ongoing disaster recovery efforts.”
Washington Post link
Republicans don’t just want seniors working later, they also want kids working earlier
Hegseth welcomes radical Christian nationalist to lead an official Pentagon prayer service
“Pastor Doug Wilson’s role at an official event at the Defense Department should be seen as a scandal worthy of scrutiny.”
After Starlink was shut down, infiltration groups in the ‘grey zone’ lost communications and Ukrainan forces seized the opportunity.
“Ukraine Takes Back What’s Theirs… Russia Forced Into humiliating retreat.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pl-2XMve76A
https://www.wonkette.com/p/is-it-a-sin-to-be-white-is-it-illegal
Louisville Courier Journal link is available at the main link.
Washington Post link
“White House taps Jay Bhattacharya, CDC critic, to lead agency for now”
“The co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which rebuked the CDC’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, will oversee the nation’s leading public health agency.” [aiyiyiyi]
U2 releases Renee Good tribute song ‘American Obituary’
“These songs were impatient to be out in the world,” singer Bono said of the band’s surprise new EP, “Days of Ash.”
“Doctor Who Did The Terminator – Twice”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HUej5B7a2WI
The Daleks and the 1966 WOTAN.
“Doctor Who Did The Terminator – Twice”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HUej5B7a2WI
The Daleks and the 1966 WOTAN.
@148 KG
The Guardian: Russian crackdown on Telegram app prompts rare criticism from soldiers, pro-war bloggers and officials
Reuters: Foreign spies can see Telegram messages sent by Russian soldiers, Ifax cites minister
Apparently the Russian government is not going to entirely ban Telegram for troops in Ukraine for the time being. I can only guess how bad the situation on the ground is that the Russian government is backing up. They talk about foreign intelligence but the real problem for the general use of Telegram is that it isn’t entirely controlled by the Russian government, it’s too easy for outside information to make it in.
Anton Petrov:
“Study Suggests We Were Wrong About Einstein’s Wormhole Idea”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5-orZ05poqw
An Einstein-Rosen bridge is not a wormhole, but a mirror in time that completes general relativity.
JM @148, thanks for that update. Seems like secure communications would be important. /sarcasm
In other news, as reported by Associated Press:
ProPublica – Amid mass ICE arrests, Trump pardon recipient Juan Orlando Hernández given special treatment
Rando: “Casually learning that the deputy director of the federal prison system is a Trump-pardoned drug trafficker, which qualifies as an ‘oh by the way’ in this story.”
Good news, as reported by CNBC:
Sky Captain @171, JFC!
In other news, as reported by Associated Press:
Follow-up to comment 93.
Associated Press:
Laughable and horrifying at the same time: laughable that the Trump administration would even bring this case before a judge… and horrifying that Trump’s DOJ is classifying any group of people as domestic terrorists even when that is not reality-based. In addition, all kinds of puffery and performance theater was enacted when the judge objected to a shirt bearing the images of civil rights leaders.
“Scathing Atheist 670 De Icinging Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tS-f5va4r6o
PS Ken Paxton screws up.
Rep. Joaquin Castro knocks ICE for deporting 2-month-old, family: ‘Heinous’
https://www.wonkette.com/p/lets-celebrate-a-year-of-rfk-jr-by
Kansas Senate overrides governor’s veto of anti-trans ‘bathroom bill’
Rando: “A party representing only 45% of Kansas registered voters shouldn’t have a supermajority and all the fuckery that comes with it.”
The Handbasket – For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they’re leaning on this Dept. of War program
Crossposted
“Scathing Atheist 674 Measle Memory Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=rTBz0PF7sCk
Scientific Frontline – 5,300-year-old Egyptian ‘bow drill’
CBS News: Minnesota judge holds lawyer for DOJ in contempt as tensions flare over immigration cases
I believe this is the first actual contempt of court. The US released the man in custody after being ordered but didn’t return all of his property. Including his identification documents, without which he is likely a walking target for Trump’s ICE.
Adding to JM @183.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
Commentary
Discovery of Pluto day today -18th feb 19230 so only a few mins left but stil
Happy Discovery Day Pluto!
On this day back in 1930 some 91 years ago, Kansan farmboy turned astronomer discovered the 9th Planet and still my favourite one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Discovery
Follow-up on space mirrors.
Sam Lawler (Orbital dynamicist):
Rando 1: “It’s open for comments worldwide. Right?”
Sam Lawler: “Yes, anyone can submit a comment!”
Rando 2: “Completely unrealistic. Is this really about launching that much or is it about generating hype before trying to sell something or raise money?”
Will Stancil:
MPR – ICE drawdown? Indications point to steady enforcement activity outside the Twin Cities
The Rookie
he‘s dead——Yeah, well, bullets will do that#therookie
.https://youtube.com/shorts/nerYq98I7c0
Just in.
.
Former prince Andrew arrested.
.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office – live .https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2026/feb/19/police-arrest-former-prince-andrew-mountbatten-windsor-sandringham-latest-updates
birgerjohansson@189,
Can Lord Peter Mandelson be far behind? The evidence in the two cases seems to be much the same, so far as I’ve seen: emails to Epstein containing confidential information acquired through an official position.
KG @ 190
I have no idea, the investigation and prosecutions of these kind of high flyers tend to take a long time. First, the prosecution wants to criss every t to rule out any loophole. Once there is a prosecution, the lawyers for the defence will do everything to slow down the process.
Very important lore.
“Why Can’t the Water Goddess Aqua Purify Alcohol Alone?”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/sIOZaUjJEio
DeSantis Law Collapses Into Chaos As International World Cup Warning Revealed
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gXrjsybDntI
.
The kind of people who pays thousands of $ for tickets are hardly the demographic that immigration authority should be concerned with, but now the orchs in the government are scaring the audience away.
“When that Man is Dead and Gone” (1941) Anti-Hitler Song by Irving Berlin
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UM1Rn3PD3Z0
For some reason I recalled this song…
Understanding ‘Snowball Earth’ extreme climates when the world is covered in ice
.https://phys.org/news/2026-02-snowball-earth-extreme-climates-world.html
Two obvious questions would be: “how the ☆¤●*@ can organisms that need oxygen survive under the ice? And how can photosyntetic organisms survive?”
Prolonged grief disorder: Why some people cannot move on from the death of a loved one | New Scientist .
.
.https://share.google/viNB81eiIraQ5g6Ds
Spitting Image:
The Andrew Arrest Special: The “Sure-To-Be-Shanked Redemption” Compilation
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zgr0XZGoTiA
Anyone else having issues with the FTB site blog here loading lately?
Could just be my old desktop computer..
Yeah, DNS is pointing to the wrong IP for some people. For me, it’d been intermittent the past day or two, then down all of today. I did a WHOIS lookup to get a current working IP (104.21.58.227) and edited my HOSTS file to bypass DNS—a temporary workaround that shouldn’t be left in place.
HJ Hornbeck alerted the tech. For him, one mobile browser worked another didn’t. On his laptop, no browsers worked. Other bloggers noted downtime, too. PZ’s been posting.
ACLU: “The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.”
David Perry (Journalist, historian):
Rando:
Adding to 186.
Sam Lawler: “Fun fact to keep you awake tonight: Just had a chat with an atmospheric chemist, and the best comparison she could come up with for the pollution that would result from burning up 1 million ‘AI datacenter’ satellites in Earth’s atmosphere is a nuclear war. […] purely looking at soot and particulates/aerosols, not radioactivity.”
Rando: “‘AI winter’… truly scary…”
Sam Lawler: “Oh god what a horrible term.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
Rando 1: “Trying to imagine their take on child custody in divorce.”
Rando 2: “It’s also notable that the memo itself is dated yesterday. So not only is the substance thin, it’s an after-the-fact justification for a policy already in place.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:
Daniel Nichanian (BoltsMag)
Gothamist – Taking page from Adams, Mayor Mamdani proposes NYC library cuts
Steve Vladeck (Law prof):
Commentary
Missing the Point: “[Screenshot: It’s a Wonderful Life, Bank run scene] You’re thinking of the $175 billion in tariff money all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in the White House ballroom, the renaming of the Department of Defense, the $10 billion transfer to the Board of Peace, and a hundred other unauthorized actions.”
Jarrett Renshaw (Reuters): “Trump was speaking with a room full of US governors at the White House when he was handed a note from an aide informing him of the Supreme Court decision”
Justin Baragona:
Then came a press conference.
Nikki McCann Ramírez (RollingStone):
Chris Geidner (Law Dork):
Rando: “He invoked a different law, which allows a temporary 150 day tariff. One that I believe Kavanaugh suggested.”
Elie Mystal (The Nation):
Elie Mystal:
Lawfare – Importers can recover unlawfully collected IEEPA tariffs, but only if they follow strict refund procedures
Follow-up to 183, 184.
Roger Parloff (Lawfare):
* Rando: “every single instance of ‘again’ is footnoted! So not hyperbole.”
Roger Parloff:
Eric Umansky (ProPublica):
The Guardian – US citizen shot and killed by federal immigration agent last year
Domain registrations reveal UAE network moving $90B in Russian oil amid sanctions crackdown
NYT – Bridge owner donated $1 million to a MAGA super PAC less than a month before meeting Lutnick to get Trump to blast his competitor
Follow-up to 205 on the nixed tariffs.
George Pearkes (Financial analyst):
George Pearkes: “New 10% tariff is under Section 122 [150 days, max 15% to respond to intl payments problems, w/o investigation]”
Rando: “The best part about this for him is not the tariffs per se, but his ability to impose them arbitrarily and at will. I don’t think he’s going to have the patience to follow through on anything that takes more than a few days and/or requires an investigation.”
Follow-up on the Guinea-Bissau sudy that JFK Jr. funded.
Rando: “Jesus christ, they forged a signature on an Ethics Board review in order to run a *single blind Hepatitis B vaccine trial on infants* in Western Africa.”
Elizabeth Jacobs (Epidemiologist):
RollingStone – New documents reveal a controversial vaccine study’s unusual path to CDC approval
Elizabeth Jacobs: “I’m pleased to see that the researchers’ university has launched an investigation. These events call into question whether human subjects protections were in place for any of the studies previously conducted in G-B.”
Independent – Reporter detained in Cameroon while investigating Trump admin’s Africa deportations
Human Rights Watch
Follow-up to 210 on how refunds of the nixed tariff are transferrable.
Wired – Trump’s Commerce Secretary loves tariffs. His former investment bank is taking bets against them (July 2025)
Metacurity – DOGE linked to potential Russian, Chinese access to OPM systems
Kel McClanahan (National Security Counselors):
The Rage – Hackers expose age-verification software powering surveillance web
LinkedIn uses Persona for verifying blue check accounts
Eric Columbus: “Did Trump make up the hospital boat story out of embarrassment after learning Denmark had to rescue *our* submariner and provide them urgent medical care in Greenland? All signs point to yes!”
WaPo – Trump’s talk of sending a hospital ship to Greenland puzzles leaders
Rando: “Trump won’t give health care to American citizens.”
Follow-up on those 10% tariffs announced @205.
Justin Wolfers (Econ prof): “The President had literally months to prepare his response to the Supreme Court ruling, yet couldn’t even stick with his decision on the s.122 (temporary) tariff from Friday to Saturday, raising it from 10% to 15%.”
Eric Columbus: “I think that was the plan all along. Section 122 allows temporary tariffs up to 15% so Trump announced a 10% worldwide tariff last night just so he could up it to 15% today and sound tough. [Screenshots]”
AP News – Armed man shot and killed at Mar-a-Lago gate
Miami Herald: “the deputy was wearing a bodycam.”
MN Star Tribune – ICE detained a Minnesota teen, labeled him an ‘unaccompanied minor,’ and lost him
NBC – DOJ fires another new U.S. attorney hours after judges appointed him to replace Trump loyalist
Halligan’s the one who misspelled Virginia, repeatedly.
Prior firings were a NJ AUSA in July replacing Alina Habba, and a NDNY AUSA last week replacing John Sarcone.
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Whiskey Pete is going to seize the means of AI production so he can 1) engage in mass surveillance of Americans and 2) shoot without human intervention. Dystopias this bad would be deemed unrealistic.”
Reuters – Anthropic digs in heels in dispute with Pentagon
Tim Carmody (Writer):
Commentary
James Grimmelmann (Law prof):
Sam Harsimony (Splitting Infinity):
Follow-up to 216.
WSJ – The Greenlandic bricklayer behind Trump’s plan to send a hospital ship
#216, #222 (Hospital ship to Greenland) — I am very confident that this is one of Trump’s many brief enthusiasms which will be quietly dropped by everyone involved in it, in very short order. Those who manage Trump will never tell him no, of course, but they’ll emphasize and probably inflate the cost, and casually point out things Greenlanders said which will make Trump angry (anything other than abject submission and gratitude), and Trump will stop caring about it.
Assuming Trump even remembers making the promise a week later.
Possible scenario: one of the many falsehoods that he will add to his repertoire will be the claim that he did, in fact, send a hospital ship to Greenland, even if if never happens. He’ll remember the AI image, and saying he wanted to do it, and confuse the memory with reality.
*sigh* I’d developed a favorable opinion of Wired over the past year.
Mashable – ‘Wired’ cover on tech’s ‘gay mafia’ ignites controversy
The image reminded me of this ridiculous sketch.
WKUK – Tall People (6:12)
From the Wired article’s comments
/Archive.today is glitching at the moment, so the main article text at the Wired link is paywalled.
Follow-up to 211.
Guinea-Bissau stops vaccine study funded by Trump administration
WHO – Statement on the planned hepatitis B birth dose vaccine trial
Criticism from the highest level (Danish language, paywalled)
The WHO statement didn’t name the university, but the university should be ashamed of the international attention the study brought.
Follow-up to 179.
Laura Jedeed (Firewalled Media):
Rando: “This will allow an ID checker in voting lines to determine if you ‘match’ the gender on your license and stop someone from legally voting.”
Erin Reed – Kansas sends letters to trans people demanding the immediate surrender of drivers licenses
Rando: “These laws will not improve one single person’s life. They will serve only as a way to incarcerate people for who they are, with the hopes that the inmates will add a little extrajudicial justice into the mix. That is it. This is beyond taking away someone’s civil rights. This is eliminationist.”
Adding to 226.
AP News
Rando:
Rando 1: “Every bit of this story is infuriating.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:
The second article fills in how things began.
Congressman Kennedy calls for investigation after missing man found dead
Investigative Post
Rando 2: “Important local context is that [Detective Richard Hy]—who closed [the missing person case] before they found him—has a history of doing bullshit hack racist ‘joke’ videos about policing in addition to other misconduct.”
Kyle Cheney (Politico):
Quinta Jurecic (Atlantic): “The pileup of blatantly unlawful conduct by the government in this case is astonishing, as is the fact that the Supreme Court [had] allowed the govt to go forward with this program in a shadow docket ruling. I wrote an overview back in June.”
Mark Stern (Slate):
Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):
Rando: Because it’s long term economic suicide, not because of any moral objections.
Marisa Kabas: Right.
Marisa Kabas:
Law Dork – SCOTUS rejects private prison company GEO Group’s attempt at avoiding accountability
Reuters – ICE struggles to vet recruits
Keevin Kruse: “This is a scandal for ICE, but also an indication of just how much they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. They’ve had multiple applicants with outstanding warrants for their own arrest walking in looking to play cop. That’s apparently how dumb some of these goons are.”
Rando: “Fired them. Not arrested them. When they had an active warrant.”
Anthropic responded to Hegseth’s ultimatum @221
Meanwhile, AI greed is strangling the smartphone industry, like @146.
Bloomberg – Smartphone market set to shrink 13% due to memory chip crisis
WaPo – Judge: IRS broke law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ in giving DHS data
Commentary
Trump appoints Leo Brent Bozell III, a defender of apartheid in the 1980s, as ambassador to South Africa
Donald will host this year’s G-20 at his Doral golf club, a business near Miami, FL, in December.
The Guardian – Melania Trump to lead UN security council session
Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof): “Oh for fuck’s sake.”
Matt Szafranski (Attorney): “Hillary did this—as Secretary of State. Melania holds no office of diplomatic authority. The president, Secretary of State, or anybody along the food chain to the UN mission has a place to do this. Melania does not.”
Middle East Eye – Family of Francesca Albanese sues Trump admin over sanctions (Feb 26)
Middle East Eye – Francesca Albanese: Why I’m accusing 63 nations of complicity in the Gaza genocide (Nov 2025)
A 43 minute interview video and excerpts at the link. This pretty much covers it.
From the video
From the excerpts
Follow-up to 228. More details, just as infuriating.
HuffPo – Security footage contradicts DHS story after disabled refugee dies in Buffalo cold
Noem’s luxury ‘deportation’ jet is the tip of the ICE-berg
Backstory of the planes’ origins at the link. Five Boeing 737s came from Avelo, a company that had been doing deportation flights until it announced stopping in January and reducing its fleet. DHS bought some leftover jets to carry on.
Rando: “They just can’t make them fast enough for her.”
Gillian Brockell (OP): “Literally. The G7 is on a years-long back order, and she still got to cut to the front of the line to get one, but she has to wait for the other.”
Follow-up on Noem’s blanket.
Wonkette – Kristi Noem’s leaving (a bag of d*cks) on a jet plane
Wonkette – Government still shooting lasers into sky like Yosemite Sam
Rando 1: “The pentagon cannot be trusted with lasers, and the CBP cannot be trusted with drones, so this is as happy a medium as we’ll likely ever get.”
Rando 2: “I thank the valiant women and men of the United States military for shooting down a Gestapo drone over US airspace. Thank you for protecting us from these fascists.”
The Hill – Hegseth cancels troop attendance at top-ranked schools
Commentary
Follow-up to 221, 233.
Aaron Rupar:
Reuters: “the Pentagon said it will declare the startup a supply-chain risk”
Alan Rozenshtein (Law prof): “The silver lining, such as it is, is that, unlike the DPA, where the government has a reasonable case, the case for supply chain risk is extremely tenuous. Anthropic will sue, and I expect this to be quickly enjoined by the courts.”
Commentary
Quinta Jurecic (Atlantic):
Re 239 (Military shoots down CBP drone).
Marcy Wheeler sez:
https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3mfsulmzon22w
(That last little glyph is the popcorn emoji)
Follow-up to 179, 226, 227.
The Handbasket – How Kansas Republicans weaponized the law to target 300 trans driver’s license holders
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: “Making them pay to have their licenses invalidated and then reissued is yet another thing they can sue about.”
Denver authorizes local police to detain ICE agents for excessive use of force
James Ball (Journalist):
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Pentagon and Anthropic clash over AI guardrails
Video is 8:17 minutes
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Republicans are interviewing the wrong president in Epstein probe, says Hayes
Video is 9:03 minutes
Sky Captain @199:
Thanks for that useful information.
Also, many thanks to Sky Captain and others who posted in The Infinite Thread while I did not have access.
Sky Captain @187, I’ve noticed an increase in deceptive tactics by ICE personnel.
Federal immigration agents arrested a Columbia student after allegedly gaining access to her apartment by posing as police in search of a missing child
Oregon state Rep. Ricki Ruiz said three people were detained in his district after ICE agents posed as utility workers.
This is an increase in deception … something worse on top of ICE personnel wearing masks.
Follow-up to comment 248.
This is some of what PZ posted on bluesky.app:
The Economist – Donald Trump’s oil embargo reveals a solar boom in Cuba
re Lynna @250: I lost access a week ago, and I have been jonesing for my FTB fix all week. ;-P As much as I loved Ed Brayton’s writing, I am glad PZ got it resolved.
Sky Captain @226 and 2227, thanks for posting that. I had not realized that the demand by Kansas officials that all trans truck drivers be returned (because they are supposedly invalid) was also a ploy to justify voting restrictions.
And, (sheesh), this part is so disturbing:
Typically incompetent (?) and/or Orwellian:
johnson catman @252: Yes, it was frustrating. We all depend on The Infinite Thread.
Welcome back all. Missed you Lynna. Heckuva day to return.
[Video/Transcript] Trump’s full statement on Iran attacks (8:31)
Phil Stewart (Reuters): “Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine are monitoring Iran operation from Mar-a-Lago”
Anjali Dayal (Intl Relations prof): “Melania Trump actually is presiding over a UN Security Council meeting Monday, and apparently they scheduled that knowing they were going to launch an illegal war on Saturday morning.”
Justin Ling (Journalist):
Aljazeera: “In June last year, US attacks targeted Iran during talks. The US’s Operation Midnight Hammer came towards the end of a 12-day war Israel initiated with Iran that month. […] Eight months later, the US and Israel have launched yet another attack as both sides had just ended a round of talks in Geneva.”
Elia Ayoub (Journalist): “nuclear talks were underway. Oman, the negotiating party, said they were close to a deal. Israel and the US bombed Iran to make sure no deal can ever be reached. It is incredibly delusional to conclude anything else.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/peace-within-reach-as-iran-agrees-no-nuclear-material-stockpile-oman-fmCommentary
David Kaye (UN special rapporteur):
Anjali Dayal: “emphasize illegitimacy, not procedure. […] if you don’t reject the premise of bad acts, you risk normalizing them.”
European Journal of Intl Law – The American-Israeli Strikes on Iran are (Again) Manifestly Illegal
https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-american-israeli-strikes-on-iran-are-again-manifestly-illegal/Reuters – Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed
From text quoted by Sky Captain in comment 240:
“Wicked”?
The word “wicked” is doing a lot of work there. It reveals Hegseth’s totally bonkers devotion to extreme right wing ideologies that are combined with fundamentalist Christian Nationalist beliefs. That is a particularly toxic brew. Hegseth’s judgement cannot be trusted at any level.
Sky Captain @255: “Heckuva day to return.
Yeah, no kidding. I saw that. U.S. and Israel launch major attack on Iran
Follow-up to comments 255 and 257.
Additional details, as posted by NBC News:
So, in addition to being illegal and unconstitutional, the strikes ordered by Trump were hasty, premature, and possibly unnecessary if the diplomatic talks were ongoing.
Most of this is from Aljazeera’s live posts. (an outlet in Qatar, a country Iran targeted).
Aljazeera – A timeline of talks and threats leading up to attacks
Aljazeera:
Aljazeera: “The number of people killed in an Israeli strike on an elementary girls’ school in Minab [Iran] has now risen to 85, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.”
Alan Fisher (Aljazeera):
Christiaan Triebert (NYT): “We obtained the first publicly released satellite image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran, after it was struck by Israel/US. There are several destroyed buildings. Current whereabouts of Iran’s supreme leader are unknown; compound used as his official residence.”
Aljazeera:
[Video] NBC – Full interview: Iranian foreign minister reacts to U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran (29:20)
Aljazeera:
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
Aljazeera – How has Iran responded?
Aljazeera: “several residential buildings in the Bahraini capital were targeted, according to the Interior Ministry. Online video footage, verified by Al Jazeera, shows an Iranian drone striking a tower in Manama.”
https://xcancel.com/BricxNews/status/2027788781760483382Aljazeera: “A drone [from Iran] has targeted Kuwait International Airport, resulting in ‘minor injuries’ to a number of employees, in addition to ‘limited material damage’ […] according to The General Authority of Civil Aviation in Kuwait.”
Aljazeera:
NetBlocks: “Metrics show #Iran has been offline for 12 hours after the regime imposed a nationwide internet blackout amid US and Israeli military strikes. While most countries work to stay connected in times of international conflict, Iran has again silenced its own population.”
Kel McClanahan: “there is Starlink in Iran and if there’s a cyberattack on the hardwired internet infrastructure the regime can use it and won’t that lead to a fascinating congressional hearing.”
Follow-up to comments 255, 257 and 258.
Additional details, as posted by NBC News:
Follow-up to comments 255, 257, 258, 259 and 260.
Josh Marshall:
Link
Here is PZ’s update to the tale of what went wrong with Free Thought Blogs, and how the problem was partially resolved (for now).
Link
Washington Post link
Iran’s supreme leader killed in strike, Israeli officials say.
Kate Starbird (Disinfo researcher):
Kate Starbird: “My team was collaborating with the Stanford team, and we saw their research unfold in real time. Then we were all attacked & defunded. And now, we’re watching the Trump admin use our work to justify their wars and their own federal election interference in the midterms.”
Wired – Hacked prayer app sends “surrender” messages to Iranians amid Israeli strikes
Rachel Maddow puts the Iran strike into perspective and that needs to get a lot of attention because it shows that this is another corrupt action from this piece of shit, the so-called US President.
Link to the youtube video on the MS NOW channel (so the real official video).
Sky Captain @264, that reporting deserves more than one “oh for fuck’s sake!”
I appreciate this summary:
This is perhaps the most important point to remember:
Also, contrary to what Trump says:
The whole Trump approach is appalling.
Jean @266, thanks for posting that link.
Rachel Maddow’s presentation is excellent. Maddow is thorough, as usual.
I find Maddow’s fact-checking particularly useful. Unlike the Trump administration, Maddow does not make claims she can’t back up with facts. Maddow provides sources, examples, historical context and intelligent analysis.
As one commenter noted: “Thank goodness for Rachel Maddow’s brilliant reporting♥️”
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
Mark Chadbourn
Mark Chadbourn: It’s impotence. They can’t hit military targets so they’re lashing out at soft options.”
Trump:
Cheryl Rofer: “It sounds like Trump plans to bomb Iran for a while, then declare peace and say ‘Over to you, Iranians.’ Then blame the Iranians when they can’t put their country back together.”
Anjali Dayal (Intl Relations prof), Live-skeet of the UN meeting that just concluded
More coverage of Trump’s war against Iran is available at
https://www.ms.now
The video referenced in comments 266 and 268 is also available here. (MS Now link instead of YouTube link)
New Yorker link
“Donald Trump Launches a War of ‘Epic Fury’ on Iran” by Robin Wright
Text quoted by Sky Captain @269:
JFC. I am beyond fed up with Trump’s incoherent threats. Trump’s stated, all-caps goals are equally incoherent.
(Oops, Al Jazeera’s logo threw off my spelling.)
Al Jazeera: “The governor of Minab, a city in southern Iran, announced that the death toll from the US-Israeli bombing of a school in the city has risen to 115.” (Another post said 170 students were in the elementary school.)
Al Jazeera: “The United Arab Emirates’ Defence Ministry has said it destroyed 132 missiles and intercepted 195 drones launched from Iran.”
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
re Lynna @271:
This should be hammered on continuously. The Orange Turd, in his oblivious stupidity, withdrew from a deal that would have kept Iran in check. He hated it because he is a fucking racist and thought that a black man could never administer a deal like he could since he is the ultimate deal-maker. In reality, The Orange Turd is, as Rex Tillerson said, a fucking moron. He has failed at nearly every business he has tried to operate. He is using his position to grift and steal as much as he can, and the country, and the world, suffers as long as he is living. The republicans in congress are useless because they are mostly sycophants kissing his ass. I am sick of his bullshit and want him disappeared to the CECOT prison and all his ill-gotten assets seized.
Al Jazeera: “Iran’s Fars news agency […] says Khamenei was killed at his office while ‘performing his assigned duties’ in the early hours of Saturday morning.”
Al Jazeera: “The Fars agency has reported that the government has declared 40 days of public mourning in the wake of Khamenei’s killing. It also announced seven days of public holidays.”
Al Jazeera: “The IRGC-aligned [Fars] news agency is reporting that the supreme leader’s daughter, son-in-law, and grandson have been killed in a strike.”
Al Jazeera:
johnson catman @274, yes, it is important to remember that Trump abandoned the JCPOA (the nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated).
Trump (and his lackeys) made a difficult situation much worse. And then he piled on a bunch of sanctions; failed at the negotiating table several times; probably scuttled diplomatic efforts so that he could join in Israel in prosecuting war against Iran; and is now bragging about how many Iranians he killed (leaving out the school children of course).
From ABC coverage of Trump’s State of the Union address:
Follow-up to comment 276.
Many media outlets sane-washed Trump’s State of the Union speech. Fox News went further and celebrated the speech with over-the-top praise (and repetition).
In that speech, Trump reiterated the delusions/lies that underpin his so-called policies. Trump lied not just on the subject of Iran, but on just about every other policy/plan/goal he mentioned. None of that should have been sane-washed or ignored.
About that foundation of lies:
Link.
I have provided some of the embedded links. More embedded links to sources are available at the main link.
Trump used a lot of other people and tragic situations in order to ramp up sympathy applause. Even during that showman-like exercise, Trump lied.
During his SOTU address, Trump manipulated our admiration for the brave actions of others. A pilot who kept his helicopter from crashing even after he had been shot in the leg four times, and who maneuvered to keep his crew safe during the kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela was put on display and given the Medal of Honor. Yes, the young pilot did an admirable job, but no Trump should not get to wallow in the applause as if Trump himself had earned it. Why the fuck was Trump kidnapping other country’s leaders in the first place?
As reported by the Associated Press:
The guy appeared using a walker. President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were kidnapped on January 3. Yeah, almost two months ago. And Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover still cannot walk unaided.
The SOTU address was watched by about 32 million people on February 24. Not really old news yet. Not yet really thoroughly examined for falsehoods. Not yet really analyzed for the predictive bluster pointing to war against Iran, or to the continued harassment of immigrants …
Politico – FEMA taps billions for disasters, warning Dems of ‘dire’ shutdown impact
Samantha Montano (Emergency management prof):
Rando: “It’s also politically nonsensical—the DRF is not a regular annual appropriation, and in such a scenario, the Dems would simply say, ‘We’ll approve a clean DRF plus up right this minute, just send it over, Mr. Speaker, lives are at stake.'”
Samantha Montano: “Exactly.”
Dear Lynna,
Glad you’re back helping to inform us.
I have seen a number of insightful articles that show tRUMP may be squandering lives just to take people’s attention off his crimes and how he is destroying this country:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/116352/sunday-thought-trump-s-real-reason-for-war
Sunday Thought: Trump’s Real Reason for War by Robert Reich | March 1, 2026
and the article below also lists many of tRUMP’s war lies –
https://www.alternet.org/trump-iran-2675420174/
MAGA Flips Out As Old Trump Tweets Come Back To Haunt Him
by Sarah K. Burris | March 1, 2026
Follow-up to Sherman @279.
That article written by Robert Reich is good.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed by Iranian airstrikes against American bases in the Middle East, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes.
Who benefits from Trump’s war in Iran? The answer is disturbingly clear, by Rachel Maddow
Link
Follow-up to comment 283.
Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms
The meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity.
Search for victims of strike on girls school in Iran has ended with 165 dead, Fars news says
Follow-up to 221, 233, 241, 246.
The day Hegseth doomed Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI announced a deal:
https://xcancel.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175Mike Masnick (Tech Dirt):
Rando 1: “Or he knows perfectly well what it means but wants to be able to say he got some promises for PR purposes.”
Rando 2: “The fact that Altman repeatedly uses the illegitimate term DoW clearly shows that he is a sycophantic suck-up.”
Dara Lind (American Immigration Council): “OpenAI’s head of natsec partnerships, as of TODAY, was trying to deny that NSA was part of DoD (‘DoW’).”
https://archive.is/t7p7UMike Masnick:
Amos Toh (Brennan Center): “DoDD 3000.09 *does not* prohibit fully autonomous weapons. It’s a framework for *authorizing* autonomous weapons, including weapons that do not require human confirmation between target ID and firing. NSA surveillance sweeping up Americans’ communications overseas is also traceable to EO 12333.”
Atlantic – Inside Anthropic’s killer-robot dispute with the Pentagon
Lawrence Chan (AI researcher): “This, of course, did not stop OpenAI from blatantly misrepresenting this language in the blog post and in Sam Altman’s tweets! […] Their blog post also has this hilarious line: ‘We don’t know why Anthropic could not reach this deal, and we hope that they and more labs will consider it.'”
Last summer, I excerpted an interview with Karen Hao who wrote a profile of Sam Altman and OpenAI.
US government is accelerating coral reef collapse, scientists warn
Link
Putin’s friendship has limits — as Iran just found out
“Leaders in Damascus, Caracas and now Tehran have all discovered that Russian support only goes so far.”
Trump is boasting, bragging and just enjoying himself immensely.
Link
Starmer lets Trump use UK bases to strike Iran’s missile depots
“The U.K., France and Germany say they have agreed to work together with the U.S. and allies in the Middle East on potential “proportionate defensive action” against Iran.”
I do not like it when I hear that people are going to work with Trump. And WTF is a “proportionate defensive action?’
I snipped blather from Trump-lackey Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, in which Graham claimed that the USA cared more about the Iranian people than the U.K., France and Germany. That’s bullshit and propaganda.
Followup to comments 276, 277, 279 and 280.
Takeaways From Trump’s Plodding, Scattered, and at Times Eerie State of the Union
Nitasha Tiku (WaPo):
Commentary
Dan Simonson (Computational linguist):
Nate Ledbetter (History professor):
Nate Ledbetter: “Oh lord, just had the horrifying thought of this paired with tech’s implicit reflection of societal biases and things are going to get so much worse for minorities of all kinds as we deploy this bullshit, isn’t it?”
Jess Calarco (Sociologist):
Rando: “This admin is also incapable and unwilling to hire subject matter experts, so they want every crutch on earth. Just a den of know-nothing thieves.”
X Is Drowning in Disinformation Following US and Israeli Attack on Iran
“WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.”
Sky Captain at 293. Thanks for posting this:
Yes, that rings true. But in some cases it is also true that they no longer have enough people around who know how to do the work.
I think this Rando you quoted has it right:
The WIRED article reference in comment 294 notes that AI has been used to post some of the misleading or inaccurate slop that is flooding X.
NewScientist – AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war games
New York Times link
“Oil Prices Jump 10% After Iran Attack, Pointing to Economic Risks”
Reuters – Pentagon tells Congress no sign that Iran was going to attack US first
A new front, sort of. Lebanon’s Hezbollah abandoned the Nov 2024 ceasefire, which Israel had been violating daily to attack that country all along.
Israel bombs Beirut after Hezbollah launches rocket attack
Al Jazeera – Hezbollah enters the fray. Why now?
Al Jazeera:
BBC – Nine dead in missile attack on Israel as Iran strikes
Mark Chadbourn (Journalist):
Jonathan Karl (ABC):
On camera, Jonathan Karl said they were “possible candidates within the structure of the Iranian government”.
Commentary
Aaron Rupar:
Southpaw (Lawyer):
Lynna, OM@291,
Trump is reportedly “very disappointed” that Starmer’s U-turn took several hours. Bizarrely, some time after the illegal bombing campaign started, the leaders of the UK, France and Germany urged Iran to return to negotiations. Is it still gaslighting when the distortion of reality is so transparent? The Spanish government has refused to allow the use of its military basesto assist Trump’s attack on Iran.
Lynna, OM@282,
I’m not convinced by Rachel Maddow’s claim that the Gulf States are behind the American assault on Iran. Sure, they hate and fear the rival tyranny that is Iran under the mullahs, but it’s very little threat to them in the near term (having already suffered severe damage and loss of influence in the “12 Days’ War” last year. And in the longer term, an Iran in chaos could well produce millions of refugees, the Gulf closed to shipping, missiles and nuclear materials in the hands of non-state actors… I think it’s simply about the domestic political plights of Trump and Netanyahu – and the splits among the Democrats over how to respond suggest that for Trump at least, it’s working. Whether it will continue to do so is another matter. It’s unlikely that the mullahs’ strongly institutionalised regime can be brought down by bombing and as days turn to weeks and months and (probably) a trickle of American casualties continues and inflation receives a boost from the disruption, it will begin to look like another “Forever War” even if US ground forces are not sent.
Sorry, @283 should be @282.
Ali Ahmadi (Geneva Centre for Security Policy):
Nonilex: “the War Powers Act gives presidents that limited power for a 60-day military action ONLY in case of ‘a national emergency created by attack upon the United States,’ a condition that Democrats say was not met.”
Jonathan Karl (ABC):
Rando 1: “Well I guess they won’t try to kill him now!”
Aaron Rupar:
Cheryl Rofer: “‘Kill them all, God will know his own,’ is a rule of engagement. Not one that has been found to be honorable through the ages. I am mortified to be an American.”
PassBlue: “Melania Trump is still scheduled to chair the UN Security Council mtg on Monday 3PM on the topic of ‘children, technology & education in conflict’ 2 days after US/Israeli strikes in Iran (inc reportedly hitting a girls’ school).”
Rando 2: “Help is on the way.” —Donald Trump Feb 2026
Anjali Dayal: “Kind of him to fill out the indictment himself, isn’t it. All his successors will need is the will to use it.”
UNESCO-listed Golestan Palace in Tehran damaged in strikes:
Phil Stewart (Reuters):
Rando 3: “In the invasion of Iraq 2003-2007, the U.S. and UK shot down 9 aircraft. All U.S. and UK. The combat command imposed a rule requiring their approval to fire on aircraft. Simply because the only fighters in the sky belonged to them. No matter what the radar/IFF said.”
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel): “Yeah, and this is made worse bc no one in Trump’s vicinity coordinated common defense before starting a war.”
Rando (Retired AF doc): “Ejecting from aircraft subjects a body to massive force. Up to 30% sustain spinal fractures and there’s a 10% fatality rate. Glad they all survived but there’s a cost beyond the insane cost of the planes themselves.”
Sky Captain @296, so NOT an imminent threat then.
KG @303, Perhaps Rachel Maddow was not so much placing blame on the Gulf States for the assault on Iran, but she was instead pointing out that they stand to benefit. Almost as if they had rented the USA’s military by sending multiple bribes to Trump and his family. Not exactly a one-to-one or a quid pro quo. We know the Gulf States could have asked Trump to NOT attack Iran because it would cause instability in the region. It looks to me like letting Trump and Israel get away with it is part of the story.
In my comment 306, I meant to refer to Sky Captain’s comment 298.
Somewhat related to comments 296 and 302: Trump’s military offensive in Iran leads to mysteries that shouldn’t exist
“Wars are not supposed to be riddles. The fact that the White House has initiated an international guessing game is itself a scandal for the ages.”
Embedded links at the main link lead to additional sources.
Sky Captain @299, “Israeli jets have bombed Lebanon’s capital.” It does not surprise me that Netanyahu would exploit the current situation in order to increase his attacks against Lebanon, but it is depressing to see that news. Yes, the war in the Middle East is expanding.
Israel has been violation of the truce for some time, and now they are greatly expanding their attacks.
This detail is alarming:
Lynna, OM@306,
My point was that it very probably won’t benefit them, and that I’d expect their rulers to be able to see that.
The next time White House officials invite a foe to the negotiating table, why would anyone trust them to work in good faith?
The Trump administration is testing conversion therapy by medically experimenting on trans people in prisons
Rando: “the Trump administration tried to do something similar last year, and a federal judge blocked it (Kingdom v. Trump). So hopefully the same thing will happen just faster this time??”
The Guardian – Spain denies US permission to use jointly operated bases to attack Iran
Who Do You Think You Are? (Family history magazine)
Rando: “Gemini doesn’t actually know whether it did that or not. It just has a highly-developed skill at piecing words together that sound like a response to being accused of making shit up.”
Rando 2: “Gemini did the same thing with me, it even explained why it was lying so relentlessly even when it told me quite specifically that it wasn’t going to (another lie.)”
KG @309, ah, I see. Good point.
In other news:
Link
Pentagon IG Freezes Boat Strikes Review
Follow-up to Sky Captain @240.
Pentagon Cuts Ties with Top-Tier Schools
Same link as in comment 316.
Judges Under Siege
Alarming. Scary.
Follow-up to Sky Captain @305.
‘No stupid rules of engagement’: Hegseth is high on Iran bloodshed
Comments posted by readers of the article:
Link
Follow-up to comment 319.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/pete-hegseth-can-barely-hide-war
“Pete Hegseth […] Preens Over Getting To Unnecessarily Kill People”
So, we just treacherously started bombing while negotiations were still going on. Remind me again what our leaders called it when another country did that to us? Oh, yeah—“a day that will live in infamy.”
Good news: Justice Department to throw in the towel on Trump’s campaign against law firms
Trump leads critical wartime operation: New Rose Garden decor
Centcom raises ‘Epic Fury’ death toll to 6 service members
Vance pushed Trump to launch larger attack against Iran
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sunday-show-republicans-ready-for
“Sunday Show Republicans Ready For WAR! WAR! WAR!”
YouTube link to Trump Iran War Address Cold Open – SNL
YouTube link to Weekend Update: U.S. Launches Attack on Iran; Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Killed – SNL
From Politico.eu:
From Politico.eu:
Minnesota Star Tribune link
“Greg Bovino, other federal agents investigated for Operation Metro Surge actions”
“Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office is already investigating 17 incidents involving potential unlawful conduct by federal agents.”
That is a paywalled article to which I do not have access.
Potholer54 has this brilliant new yt video –
Americans! (We need to talk about your Health Secretary) (22 mins long) which is funny, informative and I’m loving right now.
Amir Kiyaei:
* Wikipedia – Evin Prison: “the primary site for incarcerating political prisoners, journalists, academics, human rights activists, dual nationals, and foreign citizens accused of espionage or propaganda offenses.”
Elia Ayoub (Journalist who grew up in Lebanon until 2015):
Eiynah Mohammed-Smith (Polite Conversations, grew up Pakistani in Saudi Arabia):
Nathan Kalman-Lamb (Sociology prof):
Eiynah: “It’s obscene.”
Elia Ayoub:
Elia Ayoub:
Rando: “My usual query in response to Israelis making this fatuous argument is—fine. Where is Israel’s FW De Klerk?”
(Klerk’s white-minority gov dismantled South African apartheid.)
Lunar eclipse happening right now outside :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2026-03-03/march-blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-australia/106375618
Tonight’s episode of Foreign Correspondent here – Crumbling Giants: The Ancient Alpine towns of Switzerland under Threat (30 mins long) on melting glaciers and their impact.
Thanks fb memories for bringing back this reminder and info here :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-putin-is-unveiling-invincible-nuclear-weapons-now
Aussie ABC live coverage of the latest war FWIW here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-03/us-israel-attacks-iran-live-updates-middle-east-war-airstrikes/106407178
Whoah! This might be absolutely spectacular to see – & I’m sure the old superstitions about comets as harbingers of doom are just, y’know, that.. Pure co-incidence.. (Yes, I know, it really is & when wouldn’t a comet arrive with our planet being right on the brink of destruction with our wars and human stupidity and shit..)
Also bloody awesome astronomical spectacle potentially, hopefully, maybe coming up if the best predictions here are right :
Source : https://www.astronomy.com/observing/a-new-comet-was-just-discovered-will-it-be-visible-in-broad-daylight/
Raw Story: Trump is calling all reporters ‘in his phone’ to ‘workshop goals’ for Iran war: journalist
Even worse, this apparently isn’t just looking for some advice on how to present the war publicly, it’s looking for advice on what to do now that he has started a war. When Trump isn’t clear on what to do where does he look? Popular news but it seems Fox News isn’t answering the questions he has right now so he is going directly to journalists.
It does without saying that starting a war without clear cut goals is a huge mistake. You can look at what happened later and declare that victory but historically this has rarely worked. The war becomes a muddled mess and it is generally obvious that the declared victory is just trying to save some face. At this point it appears Putin had a more reasonable goal invading Ukraine then then Trump did launching attacks on Iran.
Text quoted by JM @340:
Putin did not have reasonable goals, that’s for sure. Neither does Trump. However, Putin has (and had) hidden goals. Might be the same for Trump. How even more unreasonable are those goals?
In related news: RACHEL MADDOW: Trump’s clown car Cabinet now an alarming liability as threat from Iran spikes
Video is 12:39 minutes. The segment covers more than the summary above indicates.
Minnisota is correct!
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2026/03/02/great-graffiti-cont-28/
But, that is only a start of who should be hanged.
Also,
Looks like the magat-in-chief has shingles, though not medically possible, I hope he finds a way to spread it to the vancehole and I hope it kills them!
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2026/03/02/pop-quiz-165/
Patel’s petty FBI firing spree guts key Iran unit at worst possible time
Video is 6:52 minutes
I suspect Graham was referring to the son of the last Shah, who is being touted as a “transitional figure” by some among Iranian exiles (at a guess, those who were close to the last Shah, who was just as vile as Khamenei, and hope to do very well if his son gains power).
Correction to comment 341: that’s a direct quote from JM, and not JM quoting someone else.
Sky Captain @334, quoting Elia Ayoub:
Well said. Good reminder.
MS NOW:
NBC News:
Strengthening ties with other countries while distancing themselves from the USA.
Washington Post:
Follow-up to Sherman in comment 342.
White House addresses ‘redness’ on the side of Trump’s neck
Variety:
‘Kennedy Center Honors’ Will Be Renamed ‘Trump Kennedy Center Honors,’ With Program Moving to a Smaller Venue ‘Where Ticket Demand Will Be Even Higher’
https://www.wonkette.com/p/hospitals-closing-and-disabled-people
Hospitals Closing And Disabled People Losing Home Care Thanks To Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:k42seaf3ymltmjrbkugsahgc/post/3mg4nxe64d22x
See also: U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus
“Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military”
More at the second link above.
@349 Lynna bothered to find ‘tRUMP’s dr.’s’ response to the neck rash.
While I trust Lynna, my question is, do we believe the tRUMP whitehouse or our own eyes (many photos show serious scabby rash) when we see that everything tRUMP and his magat staff say is a lie?
Lynna let us know about https://www.wonkette.com/p/hospitals-closing-and-disabled-people and wonkette wrote: “Donald Trump excitedly announced on Truth Social that he has stockpiled enough weaponry to allow the United States to fight wars forever and ever and ever”, while “his One Big Beautiful Bill cut a trillion dollars from federal support for healthcare. [!]”
With all the military commanders are saying jebus blesses this war murdering hundreds, maybe thousands already, Congress is a dead dog lying at the side of the road, tRUMP has made the u.n. a toothless old dog; So how can anyone say this country is not a moral abomination?
Follow-up to comment 323
In a stunning reversal, Trump’s Justice Department revives campaign against law firms
“One day after the DOJ agreed to throw in the towel, it changed its mind and demanded the towel back.”
Good news was swiftly reversed. Sigh.
“All parties had agreed,” except Trump I assume.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4k6dakv7cskxttdvfpzadq7e/post/3mg4hh2oiec2l
White House press release is available at the link.
Re: shermanj @342.
*sigh* We had a good streak going.
*Taps the sign*
Lynna (2025-05-26):
This other guideline is off-topic but worth repeating as it rarely comes up.
Lynna (2025-11-05):
Reza Akbari (Institute for War and Peace Reporting):
One of them is a stark overhead view of multiple excavators having dug most of a 5×20 grid of rectangular holes, the rest marked by white outlines. Then the crowd arrived.
Elia Ayoub (Journalist, Lebanese diasporan):
Elia Ayoub: “[Re: loved ones]: We’re relatively lucky for now, but still waiting to see if we can get my mum out as flights were cancelled. Hopefully tomorrow she’ll be able to.”
The Fire These Times podcast – 213 The War on Iran (1:37:18)
Social Media Lab:
Rando: “Free slop!”
CNN: CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say
Pouring gasoline on the fire, along with some gun powder, jellied petroleum and termite. There is a large Kurdish populations in Iran, they already have an unstable relation with the central government. There is also a large Kurdish population in Iraq next door that could provide manpower and would be an essential route for weapons and supplies. Probably also get some coming over from Turkey and Syria if things really blow up, they have a lot of combat experienced Kurds.
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah talks about the somo, or traditional women sex educators in Tanzania. .https://share.google/flSEYaxHfo53dRLpm
OT the Epstein war on Iran is led as competently as you can expect.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yHqUKNN0vQE
The Independent: Pete Hegseth needs an ‘attitude adjustment’ after he aired familiar grievances at Iran briefing, John Bolton says
If you have lost Bolton on promoting a war you have a problem.
Getting a clear statement of the objective that won’t change is probably impossible from Trump. Bolton is right that this is a huge problem and there being conflict between Hegseth and Trump is both a public relation and a military planning problem.
The Onion:
Nation Admittedly Curious To Hear How Trump Pronounces ‘Strait Of Hormuz’
Via PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/noem-defends-aggressive-immigration-tactics-amid-bipartisan-criticism
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-04/iran-hitting-trump-via-gulf-states-after-us-israel-strikes/106412880
@ ^Lasura Tingle’s analysis of the strategy and its issues.
.***
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/this-record-breaking-quadruple-star-system-is-so-jam-packed-it-could-fit-between-jupiter-and-our-sun
Follow-up to 305.
WSJ (Paywalled)
Commentary
The War Zone
Sky Captain @357, thank you.
In other news, as reported by New Republic:
New York Times:
MS NOW:
Associated Press:
Minneapolis Star Tribune:
New York Times:
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘It’s wrong’: Hayes says Trump’s war on Iran is ‘morally reprehensible’
Video is 10:57 minutes
Stephen Colbert:
“U.S. Abandons Citizens Across Middle East | Trump: The Big One Is Coming…”
(At the end, there is a message from a very young Marco Rubio)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UnupeA5oGRs
“The big one is coming” is what I expect Trump is yelling through the bathroom door when Melania tells him to hurry up for the airport cab.
Follow-up to 312.
Mediaite – Trump goes off on ‘terrible’ Spain, says US can ‘just fly in and use their bases’ despite their refusal
Commentary
Elia Ayoub:
Technically Merz did object…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/germanys-merz-rejects-trump-threat-055831799.html…behind closed doors, as I found out when I sourced the quote to a German-language presser.
.
youtu.be/hIUi8LWGPpk?t=908UK “‘corrected” *eyeroll*
/Those were auto-subtitles passed through a translator, but I’ll accept Merz said that.
Jimmy Kimmel: “Lie-A-Tollah”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=41zwxsvPW-w
…or ‘Operation Epstein Fury’
Follow-up to Lynna @291.
The unedited Joint E3 Leaders’ Statement from Britain, France and Germany doesn’t say anything novel. Any action they might ‘enable’ to destroy launch capability at the source has been neither proportionate nor effective so far.
AP News – Macron orders France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean
DW (before the German Chancellor’s White House visit)
re CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @375:
You could try, but then Spain would have the right to tell the US to remove all personnel and equipment from any bases being used, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Radiocarbon dating rewrites angiosperm trees’ lifespan records worldwide.
.https://phys.org/news/2026-03-radiocarbon-dating-rewrites-angiosperm-trees.html
Dendrochronology potential… And this brings me back to my favv topic: Finding driftwood from the whole Black Sea catchment basin, preserved in the anoxic bottom layer of the Black Sea.
Obviously this requires some form of remote sensing to look through the sediments, presumably done by an undersea robot. Radar? Submillimetre radiation? Echo-location?
Maybe a prototype could be used in lake Mälaren, Bodensee or the Masurian lakes as those coincide with European early agriculture.
God Awful Movies!
GAM 546 In God’s Time
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=d5OAuIBB2Q4
I had not intended to post more on this issue but it is quite “important”.
Exact words by the president: “Finally we honor another American soldier, a fallen warria of world. Of wars. And really, terra “.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-t_ahrYC6_0
From “Visibly Defeated Trump Crashes Out During Live Event”, Youtube.
In the “study more history” department…
From this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-caine-iran-war-operations-briefing-2026-03-04/
He might want to ask Britain and Argentina about the fate of the General Belgrano during the Falklands war.
Side note… The Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was sold to Argentina by the US in the 1950s. It was moored in the outer harbor–and, thus, survived–at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack of 7 Dec. 1941.
Dems score upset win in Arkansas special election, giving GOP new reason to worry
-A video essay about tonal shifts in fantasy, the advantages and pitfalls (alas, he repeats himself a lot) “Frieren just got Dark”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=soMgxcv6TcQ
Yeah, like when Gandalf gets worried in Moria you know shit is going down.
In the video referenced in comment 373, Chris Hayes presented a video (with English subtitles) of Netanyahu talking about how he has yearned to attack Iran for 40 years.
There’s also reporting (that Hayes highlighted) revealing that Netanyahu met with Trump last month in order to make sure that Trump remained on the path to war..
Trump’s claim that he pressured Israel was just a knee jerk response. Trump wanted to make sure that the press saw him as top dog, and that Donald J. Trump doesn’t take orders from anyone.
Earlier, Marco Rubio spilled the real beans.
Guardian link
So, Israel decided and Trump followed up by doing what Netanyahu wanted.
And, yes, there was also pressure on Trump from Saudi Arabia.
Washington Post link
“Push from Saudis, Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran”
U.S. intelligence assessments saw no imminent threat, but regional allies argued now was the time to strike.
The full Chris Hayes video is worth watching.
whheydt @ 382
Hegseth has proven himself an idiot numerous times. He got furious with Anthropic when they refused to write a code for Skynet.
He dismissed the team that assess if civilian sites are too close to an intended target, so now a primary school is flattened and more than a hundred girls are dead.
Well done, fuckwit.
.
Kash Patel fired the FBI experts that can protect USA from Iranian retaliation, so he is at the same idiocy level. And I suppose we will get another pandemic while Old Scarecrow is in charge of health.
A different bias:
“Trump Suffers Britain Derangement Syndrome”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dKO9cafyHzM
As I mentioned @ 381 it is not the only syndrome he has. Give him another couple of years and he will have full aphasia.
MS NOW report, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Pressed on Americans stranded abroad, Trump’s answer falls far short
A Trump administration specialty: revealing their own incompetence.
Bas 90 Reborn: Sweden Reactivates its air base doctrine for NATO.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=KQj1QCALff0
(I think I see a trend)
“Trump’s Catastrophic Spain Mistake – Threatens to Kill $ 47B Trade, Hurts America Instead”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gAo29voZ1DY
In Iran, Trump’s ‘worst case scenario’ reflects a woeful lack of imagination
“[Trump’s] vision for the worst-case scenario in Iran bears little resemblance to the actual worst-case scenarios.”
Liberty Law School’s Career Advice
Meanwhile, in the Western Hemisphere …
Texas Tribune reports bad news:
Wall Street Journal reports good news:
Tucson.com reports: “Florence ICE detainee dead after untreated tooth infection.”
Bad economic news puts a new spotlight on Trump’s lies:
Link
re JM@361:
Because that worked out so very well with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
@394 Lynna, OM: So, how many on going conflicts does the president of peace and non-intervention plan to get the US into at once? The answer is zero, Trump doesn’t remember what he plans to do or how many conflicts the US is in.
It does leave me wondering if Putin is somehow behind some of this. If the US can get dragged into too many conflicts at once it would give Trump the excuse to pull a lot of air coverage from Ukraine. That would be a lot of help to Russia and let Russia get back to destroying Ukraine through drone strikes.
Bloomberg law: Trump DOJ Pushes to Sideline State Bar Ethics Investigations
Simple attempt to block investigations. If the DOJ says they are investigating a complaint then states are not allowed to do their own investigations. This would trivially let Bondi stop state level investigations by running long DOJ investigations and then declaring no punishment would be applied. If the DOJ runs an investigation for a couple of years and then does nothing it becomes hard for the state to follow up because all of the evidence is now stale.
This rule is probably illegal because it’s a huge overstep of DOJ authority. However, if it goes forward it will have to go to court itself and will gum things up for years.
Follow-up to comment 389.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/day-five-of-operation-epstein-fury
JM @399: “If the US can get dragged into too many conflicts at once it would give Trump the excuse to pull a lot of air coverage from Ukraine. That would be a lot of help to Russia and let Russia get back to destroying Ukraine through drone strikes.”
I agree. And I think your point will be made much sooner than we expect. Trump’s ill-conceived escapades are a horror show that will negatively affect Ukraine.
Politico.eu reports:
Satire.
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-boasts-that-international-criminal-657
Talking Feds with Harry Litman
Harry Litman talks about the latest Trump Epstein file information. The Wall Street Journal has turned up more hidden files. The new DOJ story is that 47,635 files were offline for further review and would be made public.
The DOJ’s problem with covering things up is that the files contain references to other files, making hiding a file difficult. The DOJ has to not only remove the files but also redact every reference to the hidden files. This is what the WSJ tracked down, showing references to Epstein files not in the public files.
Harry Litman also makes the point that the DOJ has produced files multiple times and each time claimed that was all of the files. Essentially hoping that nobody would find that files are missing and people would stop asking for more. This has ruined the DOJ’s reputation on this issue, as long as Trump is president people are not going to believe all of the Epstein files have been released.
Sick in the head Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth is beaming and glowing as he cites death and destruction from the sky.
‘Death and destruction’: Hegseth can’t contain his bloodlust
New York Times link
“Justice Dept., Under Pressure From Trump, Fails to Build Autopen Case Against Biden”
“Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington were unable to build a case, underscoring the department’s increasing inability to follow through on the president’s desire to indict his rivals.”
Who is set to be in charge in Iran now that Khamenei is dead? A powerful hard-line military corps
“Regardless of which cleric is chosen the next supreme leader, the real power is now likely to be in the hands of the heavily-armed force that propped up Khamenei for decades: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
New York Times:
Associated Press:
Wall Street Journal:
MS NOW:
JFC
New York Times:
New York Times:
Kristi Noem is inefficient, incompetent and corrupt. Trifecta.
Noem [questioned] at hearing: ‘Your ICE agents shot them in the face’
Oops! “Game Theory Expert: America WILL Lose Iran War! – Professor Jiang”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YJJRjK2fWnA
Re: JM @399, Lynna @402. Follow-up to 377.
Alex Finley (Ex-CIA):
Phillips OBrien (Strategic Studies prof): “The willingness of major European states such as Britain and France to send their military forces to actively defend counties in the Middle East but not to defend Ukraine shows how Europe has a distorted sense of its own interests. To put it less kindly, they have it all ass-backwards.”
*Distracted boyfriend meme*
________Major war in Europe in its 4th year
____(<.<) Coalition of the willing
Mideast air war into its 1st week
Lynna @408 quoting Afshon Ostovar:
Bloomberg – Israel attacks 88-member clerical body meant to choose Iran’s next leader
* [Video clip] Al Jazeera – Destruction seen after attack on Iran’s Assembly of Experts building
Southpaw: “Successfully killing anyone who might be a negotiating partner is just step one of our awesome non-plan.”
Al Jazeera – Who is Mojtaba Khamenei
Rando 2: “We also just murdered [Mojtaba’s] parents, his wife, and his [sister], so good luck getting a peace deal.”
Rando 1: “The ShamWow infomercial guy is running for congress as a Republican and the last 2 seconds of his ad are WILD. [Video]”
Marisa Kabas: “Nothing could have prepared me for those last two seconds. Nothing.”
Rando 2: “This is the first time where I really can’t tell if this guy is actually doing performance art to skewer Republicans or not.”
Rando 3: “The failed ‘as seen on TV’ pitchmen to conservative shill pipeline is fascinating. does anyone else remember the pillow guy?”
Robert Downen (Journalist):
Texas primaries: ‘ShamWow Guy’ Vince Offer loses
NBC – The ‘ShamWow Guy’ cleans up his act (2013)
birgerjohansson @414
The full length interview goes off the rails at 13:50
The Jesuits, The Illuminati and The Freemasons Oh My!
I also predict America will lose the Iran War, but that is like predicting the Toronto Maple Leafs will not win the Stanley Cup
Follow-up to 285, 358, 386, 406.
NYT – Strike on girls’ school kills at least 175, Iranian state media says (Mar 1)
TNR – The terrifying revelation about Trump’s strike on Iran girls’ school
Uzair Rizvi (OSINT): “Iran media reports that another girls school was targeted by US-Israeli air strikes in Urmia city. Fortunately, no casualties reported. [Photos]”
Follow-up to 359. Israel sent ground troops occupying Lebanon, btw. That’s what ‘invasion’ meant in the prior comment.
Elia Ayoub:
Zuri Linetsky (Fmr humanitarian assistance): “This is illegal. It also counter-productive. It’s literally what caused Hezbollah to form. This might work in the short-term but Israel can’t sustain this over time. And the blowback, which high may be years in the making will come. And it will be bad.”
Elia Ayoub: “It will be a disaster for Israel, which is now completely taken over by men who have put all of their eggs in the Trump basket.”
Elia Ayoub: “Netanyahu […] has turbocharged the decline in Israel’s popularity in the US. […] In a matter of a decade, Israel went from being a bipartisan consensus to becoming toxic to Democrats and even many Republicans.”
Elia Ayoub:
News Eye:
Jack Murphy (NatSec journalist):
* The “thousands of Kurds” story ran on Fox, NY Post, Israeli I24, and Jerusalem Post—citing anonymous US and Israeli officials. NY Post said, “A top official in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq vehemently denied that ‘Iraqi’ Kurds were involved in the offensive.”
Rando 1: “A war that isn’t a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that’s happened in my lifetime.”
Rando 2: “Baudrillard would be shitting his pants.”
Drew Harwell (WaPo): “The White House just posted a video mixing real footage from the Iran strikes with a killstreak animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.”
GottaLaff: “Criminal wars that murder people are nothing but PR and games to the thugs in the WH.”
Commentary on Lynna’s 411, where Steve Witkoff lied about uranium.
Elia Ayoub: “It’s truly incredible that with the Americans and Israelis making up claims of potential Iranian WMDs, there is virtually no mention anywhere in most of the mainstream coverage so far that the *only* Middle Eastern state with undeclared nuclear weapon is Israel.”
Wikipedia: “Estimates of Israel’s stockpile range from 90 to 400 warheads […] Israel maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity, neither formally denying nor admitting to having nuclear weapons […] Western governments, including the United States, similarly do not acknowledge the Israeli capacity.”
Nancy Youssef (Atlantic): “The preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day, a congressional official told me.”
Rando: “no wonder they’re about to beg congress for more money. The wild part is that at this rate the money they want is only enough for 50 more days, if that.”
Dmitry Grozoubinski (Fmr diplomat):
Follow-up to whheydt @382, Lynna @401.
Al Jazeera – Iranian sailors recovering in Sri Lankan hospital after US submarine attack
Southpaw (Lawyer):
Rando 1: “[IRIS Dena] was Iran’s newest, most sophisticated, and largest-class vessel (1 of 4 frigates in their navy).”
Southpaw: “However significant to them, it’s a smaller warship in concrete terms—1,500 tons displacement. Compare that to a US Navy frigate, 7,000+ tons, or a Virginia class sub, 8,000-10,000 tons.”
Rando 2: “The USN left the survivors to die. The only help they got was from the Sri Lanka Navy. Fucking war crimes.”
Sanho Tree (Institute for Policy Studies): “Iran can still exercise a ‘nuclear option’ of sorts without using nukes at all. Water wars are the new Mutual Assured Destruction.”
Sanho Tree: “If pushed to the brink, Iran could easily depopulate much of the region. […] just a few, cheap Shahed drones costing between $30,000 to $50,000 to produce.”
Bloomberg – The Iran War’s most precious commodity isn’t oil
Rando: “The US destroyed water works, sanitation plants, power plants, bridges over the Tigris etc. during the first Gulf War.”
Autism scientists form independent committee to counter RFK Jr.
Claire Zagorski: [CW: injury under clothing, no gore]
Rando:
Sheehy was the former Navy SEAL who shot himself in a national park and claimed he was shot in Afghanistan.
NBC
Not violent, but definitely resisting. He stubbornly tried to hold his position, continued speaking, as they shoved, pulled, and carried him out—their combined mass bumbling along the way.
Legal Eagle’s new clip here – Trump’s Insane Plan To Steal Elections Leaked -30 mins long.
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘We’re about to take back Texas’: James Talarico gives victory speech
James Talarico speaks for the first time since winning the Democratic nomination for his Senate race in Texas. Video is 10:34 minutes
Militant Agnostic @ 418
Aaargh! My apologies.
I made a ‘Trump error’ and did not watch the video to the end.
Silver lining: There was no footage with human faces tacked on ape bodies.
.
Before it went off the rails he made some valid comments about how a prolonged war might play out.
.
As for why the anthropomised personification of “incompetence” would launch a war, we need to look no further than Israeli + Saudi Arabian lobbying, coupled with a dementia patient getting a rush from the previous two “Special military operations” and wanting a new fix.
.
I am worried about deliberate destruction of desalination facilities. It is not as any of the participants (and I include USA under Hegseth/Trump) give a damn about the rules of war. If the Iranians feel they are losing they have no reason whatsoever to hold back.
Kristi Noem misled Congress about top aide’s role in DHS contracts, by ProPublica
Is Lewandowski getting kickbacks from all those contracts he signed?
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents Lucky Ducky, in ‘Silicon Folly’
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:26tsf647wqnoo7umh4ywwz7a/post/3mga6bxhtck2z
Video at the link.
birgerjohansson @430
You wouldn’t have heard the Illuminati stuff even if you had watched to the end. I found the full video because your link interesting.
https://bsky.app/profile/clairezagorski.bsky.social/post/3mgbc3vruoc2e
Video at the link.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/war-is-expensive-for-the-little-people
https://joycevance.substack.com/p/last-night-in-texas-we-saw-the-future
Last Night In Texas We Saw The Future: More Voter Suppression
“Here’s what we’re going to do about it”
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2029611753898742262
White House argues that Trump had a ‘feeling’ about an imminent Iranian threat
Video at the link. Video features Karoline Leavitt.
EXCLUSIVE: from the Wall Street Journal
“Trump Is Preparing to Fire Kristi Noem”
“The Homeland Security secretary’s combative Senate hearing this week was a key factor, advisers say”
I do not have access to this report.
Trump replaces Noem at DHS
This was posted on https://mockpaperscissors.com/
I tried it. It is a fun item.
It’s almost as good as noem being fired.
https://www.oreillyauto.com
search for 121G
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/americans-support-sending-stephen
Re #441
Markwayne Mullin has been the butt of many jokes recently for his many contradicting and stupid comments on the war/not war so, of course, that’s the one Trump chooses for replacing Noem. The only requirement for any cabinet job is to be able to debase yourself for the god king which Mullin has been doing perfectly.
On the issue of corruption in high places.
Rachel Maddow Show (Audio Only). 27 minutes.
“Shock Move: Marshals Seize Banned Files from Judge Cannon’s Chambers”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qHL87fYSIZ4
re Lynna @436:
There is no cost too great when The Orange Turd’s ego needs stroking. Pretty much why he has gone bankrupt in nearly every one of his businesses. But this time, it is OUR money he is pissing away.
Re: Lynna @435: There are 3 more clips in the replies with what happened before and after the Marine’s injury. Traditional outlets have been omitting those. You can scroll down from your link, or follow mine @427. The after parts are mostly the witness telling others about it—I transcribed and added a couple clarifying details.
CNN: Trump says he must have say in picking new Iran leader, calls Khamenei son “unacceptable”
Trump has apparently forgotten that he didn’t want Rodriguez either, he sort of accepted her when it became clear that she had the control and support of the government.
JD Vance or Adolph Hitler
A quiz from Professor Poutine
johnson catman @446: “[…] this time, it is OUR money he is pissing away.”
Yes. All too true. And Trump seems to be especially good at spending other people’s money.
Gift link for Lynna @440. Follow-up to 441.
WSJ – Trump Ousts Kristi Noem from DHS (title since changed)
Chris Geidner (Law Dork):
Rando 1: “I had the same thought: is Trump saying he’s not going to bother with confirmation? But it would be the funniest thing ever if Mullin’s confirmation takes months or, better yet, it totally bungled.”
Marisa Kabas:
Rando 2: “Hah she has no idea!!!! [Video clip: Katy Tur laughing at her]”
Rando 3: “[James Comey] was giving a speech at the LA FBI office when news of his dismissal came on CNN on a screen at the back of the room.”
Newsweek – Tillerson was on the toilet with a stomach bug when told he was being dumped by Trump
Sky Captain @447, the police escorting the marine really did continue to bend his broken arm behind his back. And that was after they were right there when the sound of the breaking bone was practically in their ears. It does look like it was Sen Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) who provided the force that broke the marine’s arm.
Other than that, the first part of the police trying to eject the protestor from the chamber looks like bumblefucking all the way. Sheesh.
The marine was definitely disturbing the entire room. He was loud and insistent.
Sky Captain @451, thank you.
From text you quoted:
We can’t believe Trump. We can’t believe Noem.
Follow-up to 424.
Al Jazeera – Sri Lanka trying to ‘safeguard lives’ on second Iran ship after US attack
Al Jazeera – Sri Lanka evacuates crew of Iranian naval ship after US sank an earlier vessel
MS NOW:
Associated Press:
Associated Press:
Washington Post:
Wall Street Journal:
Politico:
Follow-up to comments 440, 441, 444 and 451
Link
“Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.” JFC
Why is the health secretary talking about ‘spiritual warfare’?
New York Times link
“Israel Bombards Beirut, as Conflict Widens”
Link to an NBC live blog that covers a lot of disparate news stories.
Related video at the link.
Utterly shameless.
Finland to allow import of nuclear weapons
“After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Finland joined NATO and has been accelerating and revamping its defense plans.”
Lynna @460 quoting RFK Jr.:
Because the best thing to to when one feels malaise is gather in groups and handle everyone’s food.
Follow-up to 419.
Middle East Eye – Iranian girls killed by ‘double-tap’ strikes on Minab school
NPR – Satellite images show Iran school strike hit more buildings than earlier reported
BBC
Jonathan Karl (ABC):
Commentary
Vote on Trump’s White House ballroom postponed amid deluge of criticism
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
BBC: First British baby born using transplanted womb from dead donor
This is a big step forward for women born without a functional womb, a more common problem then you might think.
This isn’t actually the first birth from a transplanted womb but previous transplants were among close relatives.
People – Trump says ‘I guess’ Americans should worry about Iran retaliating on U.S. soil: ‘Like I said, some people will die’
/Just the headline. The TIME interview it came from didn’t say much either.
“JUST IN: France Picks Saab’s GlobalEye After NATO’s E-7 Collapses!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=RBVElhgGZwo
The Swedish GlobalEye is using a Canadian airframe from Bombardier (more famous for propellers). This will be the replacement for AWACS.
I see Trump and Vance have put their stamp on NATO but not in the way they expected.
Rachel Maddow (Audio only) One hour video
“Trump Hit with Shock Response as 38 Generals Reject His Authority”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3xl__Y3ERmM
Texas: Longtime GOP Pollster Warns State Has ‘Exact Ingredient’ For Dem Upset
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/frank-luntz-texas-blue_n_69aa95d1e4b0bda876a8a459
Neil deGrasse Tyson | You Voted For Trump ! Why confrontation rarely work
.https://youtube.com/shorts/OAAOV6DUb30
We have been discussing this propulsion for more than half a century. I was hoping space sails would be available for a rendez-vous with Halley’s comet in the 1980s.
“Toward practical laser-driven light sails using photonic crystals”
.https://phys.org/news/2026-03-laser-driven-photonic-crystals.html
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Noem’s tenure is ending in ‘spectacular and humiliating’ fashion
Video is 13:14 minutes
The Independent: Corey Lewandowski out at DHS after rumored affair partner Kristi Noem is fired by Trump
I figured this would happen one way or another, he gets fired, he leaves on his own or he hangs around until the next head of DHS fires him. Lewandowski only had a job because of Noem, had an off the organization chart special position and a lot of power. The only thing that might have saved Lewandowski is that he was also a friend with Trump and that is more likely to get him a job someplace else in the administration.
Rawstory: Red state’s extreme abortion ban crumbles in court as judge dismantles stunning logic
The Raw story title is awkward. The judge has backed the American Civil Liberties Union’s novel logic.
The ACLU is taking this route to cast the entire ban as a religious matter, which is largely true at a practical level. It is almost entirely people taking a religious view of the matter that are in favor of hard bans. It will be interesting to see if this holds up on appeal. I sort of expect this gets appealed the whole way up to the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court will overturn it in an awkwardly worded position that allows more religious laws as long as they are not explicitly religious.
Trump wants to pick foreign leaders, and his list isn’t limited to Iran
“The president believes he’s entitled not only to choose officials to serve in his executive branch, but also to choose leaders in foreign lands.”
Related video at the link.
Re: birgerjohansson @471: That was not Maddow talking about generals. That was an AI impersonator. It’s a common and reportable abuse of that platform. Her show is only published on the MSNOW channel.
The legitimate MSNOW channel organizes its shows with playlists.
For Maddow, there’s one for audio of full episodes and one for clips.
Lynna, OM @478
He thinks he is a Roman emperor, granting kingship to client kingdoms. Or a Soviet leader, issuing veto if the premier of a Warshaw Pact country appears too ‘liberal’.
.
Trump On Rising Gas Prices During Iran Operation: ‘If They Rise, They Rise’
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-gas-prices-iran_n_69a9ffb9e4b0d84f0de1965a
The war with Iran is costing an estimated $1 billion a day. It’s a detail that Democrats appear eager to share with the public.
Related video at the link.
birger @471, we have discussed this before. Do not post AI slop in this thread.
Please review this link, which was posted earlier in this thread when jean pointed out that you had posted a link to AI slop.
“Spot checking and sometimes debunking quotes, memes and fake news stories about, or ascribed to, Rachel Maddow.”
“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!).”
More at the link.
In addition, the video you referenced in comment 471 looks and sounds like AI slop.
Correction to comment 482, I meant to say that the audio file does not sound like something Rachel Maddow would say. It is audio, not video. However it does immediately raise one’s suspicion that it is AI slop. Not a legitimate source to post here.
MS NOW:
Commentary:
Link
Like grocery prices, gas prices are costs that people have to deal with frequently. They won’t forget.
U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February as Trump-era job market continues to suffer
“The more the president insists the economy is amazing, the more we’re confronted with evidence to the contrary.”
Interesting analysis from David Kurtz, writing for Talking Points Memo:
Birger, as a general guideline, I think you are going to have to stop trusting YouTube. The YouTube platform does not adequately moderate content. One has to check other sources every time.
Nashville Banner link
That “trust in the justice system of the United States” does not seem to be justified.
From Talking Points Memo, same link as in comment 486.
Trump tells CNN Cuba is soon going to fall: ‘I’m going to put Marco over there’
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say”
Link
Link
Trump to Mass Death: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
“The president’s shruggy nihilism extends to Iranians, US soldiers, and you.”
Bloomberg – Ketamine, prostitution and money: Details of a secret DEA probe of Jeffrey Epstein
Ron Wyden (Senator D-OR): “With every new development in this story I am even more gobsmacked that Epstein and his co-conspirators escaped accountability over and over and over again. There’s more to come from my investigation. Stay tuned.”
In a few days you should get
“Scathing Atheist 677: AI Slopaganda Edition” free at Youtube.
.
I got the Patreon version, where Noah discussed replacing the magician performing at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, and use his magician skills to steal Trump’s phone from under his nose to forward the incriminating contents to Hillary Clinton.
(Downside: Noah would go to prison forever and probably “kill hilmself” in his cell, but it would be worth it.)
White House’s Miller suggests Latin American military leaders ignore their lawyers
“When Donald Trump’s most controversial aide starts advising officials not to listen too much to attorneys, it’s best not to look away.”
@497 Lynna, OM
Because al-Qaida and ISIS don’t exist now. You would think he could at least find a better example. Historically using the military to solve problems of crime has done badly. It rarely works, it often makes the situation worse and it often corrupts the military.
@491 Lynna, OM:
Intelligence is probably the one thing Russia can give to Iran right now. Russia doesn’t have any military gear that they can spare that Iran needs. Russia needs all of the drones, artillery, ammunition and supplies it can make and is running out of air defense itself. They are already selling what oil they can to Iran. They have already been sharing information on building better drones back and forth but most of the Russian designs are derived from Iranian ones anyways.
When reading that you also have to consider who would want to leak that information. That sort of high level military leak doesn’t happen by accident. Connecting the two countries ties the Iran conflict to the Ukraine one, it would be foolish to reduce air support to Ukraine if that just means some Russian drones will be transferred to Iran and fired at US targets.
The Register: US struck Iran with copies of its own drones
Just to point out, the new US low cost drones are also copies of the Shahed drone. The US military was caught off guard by the predominance of drone warfare in Ukraine and to get a saturation attack drone of their own up quickly they copied the Shahed.