Hayes: Who is calling the shots for a napping President Trump?
“It’s hard to believe that this is the person who’s actually running the country minute to minute, leaving us to wonder who’s filling the power vacuum of the napping president,” says Chris Hayes.
Video is 8:34 minutes
The video also covers Trump’s egregiously racist comments about Somalia.
Trump DOJ set to seek to re-indict Letitia James on Thursday.
New reporting from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian says federal prosecutors are scheduled to seek to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James Thursday. Sen. Chris Murphy reacts.
MOGADISHU (The Borowitz Report)—A new poll released on Thursday reveals that a broad majority of Somalis have “no interest” in immigrating to a country led by what they termed a “shithole president.”
Though 78 percent of Somalis called current conditions in the US “just too violent,” the nation’s so-called shithole president drew their harshest criticism.
In the words of one Somali, “When I travel abroad from Somalia, I’m not embarrassed when people ask me where I’m from.”
Another remarked, “In Somalia, they would never let an alcoholic run the armed services.”
Yet another said, “Look, Somalia isn’t perfect, but at least we have a leader who can stay awake.”
“Trump has a habit of using the word “exonerated” in ways that suggest he doesn’t know what it means. He is not alone.”
Related video at the link.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was already in a politically precarious position. The controversy surrounding his handling of the administration’s deadly boat strikes in international waters has sparked calls for his resignation, and even several congressional Republicans have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the former Fox News host’s management at the Pentagon.
And then things took a turn for the worse on Wednesday, when the Pentagon inspector general’s office released its findings in the investigation into the Signal chat scandal. […]
According to a source who read the report, which was shared with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the acting Inspector General for the Department of Defense found Hegseth ‘violated policy by using a non-approved device,’ contradicting the secretary’s claims that he did nothing wrong.
[…] the report concluded Hegseth shared classified information, failed to preserve records and put military operations and servicemembers at risk when he communicated in the Signal chat with 19 people.
[…] By now, the basic elements of the “Signalgate” controversy are probably familiar: Top members of Donald Trump’s national security team participated in an unsecured group chat to discuss sensitive details of a military operation. They also accidentally included a journalist, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, in their online conversation.
The final paragraph of Goldberg’s piece on the fiasco read, “All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security [!]. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group — which, at the time, included me — ‘We are currently clean on OPSEC.’” (“OPSEC” meaning “operations security.”)
In other words, the defense secretary was certain that he and his colleagues — while chatting on a free platform that has never been approved for chats about national security or classified intelligence — had locked everything down and created a secure channel of communication. [Ignorance or stupidity made manifest]
[…] there’s no denying it included highly sensitive information about times and targets, much of which was put there by Hegseth himself.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth told his colleagues. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) — also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).” At one point, the defense secretary literally wrote, “THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.”
This led to an investigation, […] Hegseth […] would not turn over his phone for the probe.
As the public learned of the IG’s findings, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell said of the report, “The Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth.” The Pentagon chief himself added that the investigation was a “total exoneration.” [Delusion. Lies. Gaslighting the public.]
[…] This isn’t a close call: The manifestly unqualified Hegseth was already juggling several scandals. Now an investigation from his own department has concluded that he shared classified information, failed to preserve records and put military operations and American service members at risk.
[…] That Hegseth isn’t walking out of the Pentagon with his belongings in a cardboard box right now is itself an indictment of the administration and of members of Congress responsible for its oversight.
“The arrest is the first known break in a five-year manhunt that has fueled intense speculation and conspiracy theories.”
A man has been arrested in the Jan. 6, 2021, pipe bomb case, and is expected to appear in court later Thursday […]
No arrests had previously been reported in connection with pipe bombs discovered outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican National Committees on the same day as the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
The bombs, which the FBI has described as “viable” but did not detonate, were believed to be planted the day before. […]
The federal agency responsible for supporting the nation’s libraries and museums has reinstated all grants terminated by President Donald Trump, complying with a federal court ruling that found the executive order mandating the cuts to have been unlawful.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the only federal agency responsible for funding libraries. This year, the White House ordered it to scale down to a “minimum presence,” forcing it to slash its spending by millions.
But in a November ruling, the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island found that the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the IMLS was unlawful.
[…] The Trump administration had gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services in March, ordering the agency to dismantle as much of itself as possible. In response, staff at the agency were placed on administrative leave.
[…] In April, the attorneys general of 21 states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s executive order dismantling the agency, along with several others. In his ruling last month, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell found that the administration’s efforts to diminish the agencies had been “arbitrary and capricious” and that the president did not have the unilateral authority to refuse to spend congressionally appropriated funds. […]
Wall Street Journal: “For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year”
“Almost a quarter of a million more children are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024”
One of the greatest public-health achievements of recent decades has been driving down child mortality around the world. Now, that long-running decline is reversing.
The number of deaths of children under 5 years old is projected to rise this year for the first time in decades, the Gates Foundation […] said in a report Thursday. […]
Commentary from Talking Points Memo:
President Trump’s unlawful dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development has contributed to the first rise in global child mortality since at least 1990, according to a new report from the Gates Foundation. Nearly a quarter of a million more children under 5 are projected to die worldwide in 2025 than in 2024.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Thursday called a federal vaccine advisory committee “totally discredited” ahead of a vote on whether to change hepatitis B vaccine guidelines […]
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to vote on a recommendation to no longer advise birth doses of the hepatitis B vaccine for mothers who are negative for the virus or don’t know their status, instead recommending an “individual-based decision-making” approach.
Cassidy, who worked as a liver specialist in Louisiana for many years, has long supported the use of the hepatitis B vaccine. When ACIP originally considered changing the guidance in September, Cassidy spoke out forcefully against proposed alterations, saying Americans should not have confidence in revised guidance.
[…] “Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children,” wrote Cassidy.
[…] Siri has been part of several lawsuits challenging vaccine requirements across the country. He also worked on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s failed presidential bid in 2024. Last year, he requested that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoke approval of the polio vaccine, drawing the ire of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a polio survivor.
[…] a delay in hepatitis B immunization could lead to thousands of preventable infections and millions in added health care costs.
[…] here are a bunch of updates on how Minneapolis is responding to Donald Trump sending his ICE terrorists into Minneapolis to prey upon Somali immigrants. For instance, the PD is refusing to cooperate with [ICE]. [Good news]
Related, the terrorists have arrived in New Orleans. [Bad news] […]
“Trump expected to receive Fifa’s new peace award”
Robbie Williams, Andrea Bocelli and the Village People are to perform as part of a “world-class entertainment line-up” during Friday’s draw for the 2026 men’s football World Cup. The draw for next year’s tournament will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, with model and TV personality Heidi Klum, comedian Kevin Hart and actor Danny Ramirez co-hosting the event.
The Village People will perform YMCA to cap off an event that promises have distinctly Trumpian overtones. The disco hit became a staple at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies and Mar-a-Lago fundraisers.
[…] The tournament takes place in the US, Canada and Mexico next summer, running from 11 June to 19 July in 16 cities.
Adding another layer of Trump connection, Fifa also plans to unveil its new “Peace Prize – Football Unites the World” during the event. The award is widely expected to go to Trump after his calls to receive a Nobel Peace Prize this year. The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, attended Trump’s inauguration in January […]
Expanded to 48 teams and 104 matches, the World Cup will span venues from Mexico City to Vancouver and from New York to Los Angeles, with the bulk of games staged in the US as Fifa looks to tap into the world’s biggest sports market.
Trump overhauled the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in February, becoming chair of the organisation and firing its president, Deborah Rutter.
“The shooting of two National Guard members has prompted the Trump administration to crack down on Afghans who entered the U.S. after assisting American forces during the war.”
In the days and months after the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Thomas Kasza and some of his fellow U.S. Army Special Forces members focused their attention on the Afghans who had fought alongside them.
These Afghans who risked their lives for the U.S. were prime targets of the Taliban. Remaining in their homeland was akin to a death sentence.
“Given how they served exclusively alongside U.S. Green Berets, they were by default among those highest on Taliban target lists,” said Kasza, who was one of many military veterans who assisted their former Afghan counterparts in leaving the country and resettling in the U.S.
After the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House last week, Kasza and other U.S. war veterans find themselves having to come to the defense of their former Afghan partners yet again. […]
“It is definitely not fair to group all Afghans that helped us during our time in Afghanistan in that same basket as this individual,” said Ben Hoffman, a Green Beret with five deployments to Afghanistan.
Another Green Beret, Dave Elliott, said many of the Afghans he is in touch with are now “terrified” over their fates in the U.S.
“They’re fearful they’re going to be sent back to a country where we have had documented cases of our guys being killed in retribution attacks,” said Elliott […]
The Green Berets worked with a specially trained unit of Afghans who would go out in front of the Americans on missions to identify and disable improvised explosive devices, a highly dangerous job that resulted in dozens’ being killed. Other Afghans who came to this country after their government collapsed in 2021 worked with U.S. forces as interpreters and drivers and in other roles.
“These guys didn’t want to leave Afghanistan,” Elliott said. “They left Afghanistan because the U.S. broke it and handed it back to the Taliban and they had no other choice.”
[…] Even before the shooting and the Trump administration actions, many Afghans who settled in this country were already struggling to find jobs while trapped in a legal limbo without work permits.
[…] many of the Afghans experienced several years of war and are now living in an unfamiliar country where they don’t have access to the mental health resources afforded to U.S. military veterans.
“A lot of these guys have a lot of the PTSD struggles that we do, and even way worse,” Hoffman said. “And there’s no way for them to get help except out of pocket [Lack of resources !]
[…] “Some of these guys were in combat 365 days a year, for five or 10 or 20 years,” she [Geeta Bakshi, a former CIA officer who served in Afghanistan] added. “They face many of the same difficulties as veterans do, and they don’t have the resources and the support that veterans do.”
[…] “Green Berets are built to operate with and through a host-nation partner,” he said. “If the future partner of a Special Forces detachment sees America so willing to renege on promises made, how likely is it that they will be willing to put their lives on the line to aid in advancing the interest of another nation that will readily ignore their sacrifice?”
In Georgia this week, Democrat Mary Robichaux won the mayoral race in Roswell, defeating incumbent Republican Mayor Kurt Wilson, who enjoyed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s backing.
More campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
[…] this might seem difficult to believe, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a notorious conspiracy theorist, filed the paperwork this week to run for governor in Minnesota in 2026. If he moves forward with his candidacy, Lindell would run as a Republican.
The New York Times and its veteran intelligence reporter, Julian E. Barnes, filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon on Thursday, accusing the Defense Department of trampling on reporters’ First Amendment rights through a sweeping new set of reporting restrictions.
Those rules—implemented in October—bar journalists from gathering or publishing any information that the government hasn’t explicitly cleared, including declassified documents and off-the-record conversations. […] Reporters who refused to sign were warned that their access would be suspended.
Many walked. According to the Times, six of its journalists handed in their Pentagon badges, joining dozens from across major newsrooms who also refused to agree to the terms.
The Times’ complaint is the first major legal challenge to the policy, seeking not only to block the restrictions but to restore the press passes of reporters now covering the world’s largest military bureaucracy from the outside. In the meantime, what’s left of the on-site Pentagon press corps is dominated by far-right outlets […]
In its filing, the Times calls the Pentagon’s rules “exactly the type of speech- and press-restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment.” The lawsuit argues the policy “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories [to] the public beyond official pronouncements.”
A broad array of outlets declined to sign the agreement: The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Atlantic, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, HuffPost, and Breaking Defense, among them. Even Fox News and Newsmax—typically friendly to Republican administrations—balked.
The Times is asking a federal judge in Washington to halt the rules. […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin challenged heavy U.S. pressure on India not to buy Russian fuel if the U.S. could do so as he began a two-day state visit, where he was embraced on arrival by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Putin spoke in comments to Indian broadcaster India Today, aired hours after landing in New Delhi for a visit during which both countries are seeking to boost mutual trade and expand the variety of items in transactions.
Putin is playing to the Indian crowd by talking about oil. India, like China, has little native oil so they have to buy it someplace.
India wants to buy raw resources from the resource rich Russia. They have basic goods and electronics that would sell well in Russia. They are not as willing as China to anger the entire west and/or lie about their trade. They don’t care much about what is happening in Ukraine though, their concern is the complex relations between India/Russia/China.
Russia’s major goal is convincing India to buy more oil and other resources just to get money. Putin would love to buy what they can from India. Mostly electronics because India isn’t willing to sell Russia arms and ammunition directly. As a secondary point, getting Putin out of Russia and back on the international stage works in Russia’s favor also.
It’s a complex situation but they are pretty sure to come to some sort of deals. Putin wouldn’t have gone to India if they didn’t have something lined up.
BTW I have forgotten which state has a literal flat-Earther as major Republican politician among all the political turbulence. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Republicans in that state do in the 2026 elections.
“Cloudflare Has Blocked 416 Billion AI Bot Requests Since July 1”
“Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince claims the internet infrastructure company’s efforts to block AI crawlers are already seeing big results.”
AS THE LARGE language models powering generative AI tools slurp up ever more data across the web, Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince said at WIRED’s Big Interview event in San Francisco on Thursday that the internet infrastructure company has blocked more than 400 billion AI bot requests for its customers since July 1. […]
“FBI Says DC Pipe Bomb Suspect Brian Cole Kept Buying Bomb Parts After January 6”
“The 30-year-old Virginia resident evaded capture for years after authorities discovered pipe bombs planted near buildings in Washington, DC, the day before the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.”
FEDERAL AGENTS ON Thursday announced the arrest of a suspect charged with planting the two pipe bombs discovered near the US Capitol complex on the eve of January 6, 2021. Authorities identified the man as Brian J. Cole Jr., a resident of Woodbridge, Virginia. The arrest marks a major break in a case that has vexed authorities for nearly five years.
Cole, 30, is charged with transporting an explosive device across state lines with the intent to kill, injure, intimidate, or destroy property and with attempting to damage and destroy the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees by means of an explosive device. If convicted, he would face the prospect of decades in prison.
According to an affidavit, investigators linked Cole to the bombs through a combination of surveillance footage, historical cell-site data, and years of purchase records showing he bought each major component used to construct the devices. Agents allege Cole acquired the same model of galvanized pipe, matching end caps, and nine-volt connectors, among other items, across multiple hardware stores in northern Virginia in 2019 and 2020.
Cole continued buying components used in bomb-making after his bombs in the Capitol were discovered, agents allege, listing the purchase of a white kitchen timer and two nine-volt batteries from a Walmart on January 21, as well as galvanized pipes from Home Depot the following day.
Senior Trump administration officials quickly cast the arrest as a vindication of their own leadership, claiming the case had gone cold. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she hoped the arrest would restore public trust following what she characterized as a “total lack of movement” on a case that had “languished for four years.” In their telling, the breakthrough was proof that the case only advanced once they were empowered to “go get the bad guys” and stop “focusing on other extraneous things,” as FBI deputy director Dan Bongino put it.
“Though it had been nearly five years, our team continued to churn through massive amounts of data and tips that we used to identify this suspect,” said Darren Cox, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
The bombs were planted near the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees the night of January 5, 2021, as Congress prepared to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump. Both failed to detonate, but their discovery the following day added to the chaos and confusion unfolding as a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol building, causing millions of dollars in damage and injuring approximately 140 Capitol and Metropolitan Police Department officers.
The FBI says the pipe-bomb suspect moved through the Capitol wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, mask, gloves, and Nike Air Max sneakers, placing one device in an alley near the RNC and another beneath a bench outside the DNC. The bureau has consistently said that the devices, built from threaded metal pipe, a kitchen timer, and homemade black powder, were “viable” and could have been lethal, though it remains unclear whether they would have detonated absent intervention.
A passerby spotted the RNC bomb the following day and reported it to Capitol Police, who logged the call at 12:42 pm. A police countersurveillance team discovered the second bomb at the DNC headquarters at around 1:05 pm. Then-vice-president–elect Kamala Harris, who was on site at the time, was evacuated. US Secret Service agents had conducted a security sweep earlier that morning—including with a bomb-sniffing dog.
Perimeter failures were extensive at both sites as police responded simultaneously to breaches at the east front and west front of the Capitol building. Security footage captured two civilians walking by the RNC bomb more than half hour after its discovery, with no officers nearby to hold a blast perimeter. At the DNC building, numerous cars and pedestrians passed through what should have been a secured zone.
[…] Bongino played a significant role in his previous life as a right-wing influencer in criticizing the agency he now helps lead over its perceived lack of process in the case.
Bongino called the failure to identify a suspect “the biggest scandal in FBI history” on his podcast in January, adding that the agency already knew the name of the bomber and “just doesn’t want to tell us, because it was an inside job.” [bullshit]
Last month, far-right media outlet the Blaze, founded by Glenn Beck, claimed it had identified the alleged suspect as a former Capitol Police officer, basing its findings on an analysis of how the person walked. Bongino dismissed the allegations as “grossly inaccurate,” but the report led to many on the right once again slamming Bongino and his boss for failing to find the bomber.
Despite little being known about the suspected bomber, far-right figures online were already speculating on Thursday morning before he was officially named that he was a member of “antifa.” Others simply didn’t believe that the FBI had arrested the right guy: “Let’s see what they’ve got,” Republican congressman Thomas Massie wrote on X, adding, ”I’m not buying it.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Anton Petrov:
“Wow! Asteroid Bennu Discoveries Spark New Questions About Life’s Origins”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSwGcF5R3KM
It is nice to view science news that require us to look up from this squalid political and economic mess to issues like the origin of life.
“The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Is Detaining People for ICE”
“Louisiana’s hunting and wildlife authority is one of more than 1,000 state and local agencies that have partnered with US immigration authorities this year alone.”
THE LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT Of Wildlife And Fisheries (LDWF), typically responsible in part for overseeing wildlife reserves and enforcing local hunting rules, has assisted United States immigration authorities with bringing at least six people into federal custody this year, according to documents WIRED obtained via a public record request.
According to the documents, LDWF signed a memorandum of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May, which gives the wildlife agency the authority to detain people suspected of immigration violations and to transfer them into ICE custody. Since then, at least six men entered ICE custody after coming into contact with or being detained by LDWF officers. None of the men were issued criminal charges at the time they came into contact with LDWF officers, the documents show. Two of the men were known by ICE to have been in the country legally at the time the agency took them into custody.
The documents also indicate that at least one “joint patrol” took place in a Louisiana wildlife management area in which LDWF agents were accompanied by officers with Customs and Border Protection and the US Coast Guard. The memorandum of agreement between ICE and LDWF makes no mention of CBP or the possibility of working with the agency as part of the agreement. However, the documents indicate that a relationship with CBP may have been facilitated through LDWF’s partnership with ICE.
LDWF partnered with ICE under the agency’s 287(g) program, named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that enables officers and employees at the state or local level to perform some of the functions of US immigration officers, such as investigating, apprehending, detaining, or transporting people suspected of violating immigration law.
As of December 3, exactly 1,205 agencies have partnered with ICE through the 287(g) program. (An additional eight agencies are currently pending approval from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.) Some 1,053 of these agreements were signed this year, meaning enrollment has increased by 693 percent compared to the end of 2024. The LDWF is one of just three state wildlife agencies—the others being the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources—that have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, according to public ICE records. All three agreements were signed this year.
The marked expansion of the 287(g) program this year has generated relatively little attention. However, the documents from the LDWF indicate that the state and local agencies enrolled are actively detaining people not guilty of any crimes, and facilitating their arrests and possible deportation.
[…] The report claims that on October 23, two LDWF officers patrolling the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area heard several gunshots in an area where “people often illegally target shoot.” The suspects, three men in their twenties, all cooperated with LDWF at the scene. When asked to show their weapons, they showed the officers a pistol, an AR-15, several magazines, and a few dozen rounds of ammunition. The officers confirmed that none of the firearms were stolen. One of the men also showed the officers where they had been shooting.
The men showed identification—a Louisiana ID card, a Honduran ID card, and a Honduran passport, respectively—when asked, but did not have the appropriate permits for being in a Wildlife Management Area and firing a weapon. The two men who fired weapons were issued three civil citations, while the one who didn’t was issued two. At some point during LDWF’s interactions with the men, the agency called immigration authorities.
“Due to the unknown immigration status and them possessing firearms, we made contact with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI),” the report reads. A HSI agent reportedly told LDWF that one of the men had a final removal order, one had “pending” immigration proceedings, and one man had legal parole to be in the US. When LDWF contacted the local ICE field office, ICE sent two agents to the scene.
Upon arrival, the report claims, “The ICE Officers made several phone calls and they decided to take custody of all three subjects.” All three men were placed in handcuffs and escorted to the ICE officers’ vehicles.
It’s unclear if any of these men were deported, but based on information in the report, none of them appear to currently be in ICE custody, according to the agency’s detainee locator.[…]
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and the architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
One senior White House official said that McCrery Architects and its CEO James McCrery would no longer be in the picture, after clashing with the president over the scope of the project, particularly the size of the ballroom, But two White House officials strongly denied McCrery was fired; they said he instead will remain on the ballroom project as a consultant.
The new architect is Shalom Baranes Associates, a Washington, DC-based firm that previously designed the General Services Administration’s national headquarters, according to the company’s website.
Trump wants to make the ballroom even bigger, and McCrery apparently objected. The new size isn’t clear yet but I’m guessing it will be bigger then the rest of the White House at this point.
In a chaotic meeting Thursday rife with misinformation, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel — whose members Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired in June and replaced with a group that has largely expressed skepticism of vaccines — once again delayed an expected vote on hepatitis B vaccines.
New York Times:
The Food and Drug Administration has chosen Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, a sports medicine doctor and epidemiologist who has been a senior adviser, to run its drug division, according to a statement from the agency Wednesday evening. She will lead the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which oversees novel prescription, over-the-counter and generic drugs.
“Video shows second strike hit before survivors could flip boat, lawmakers say”
“The footage was shown on Capitol Hill, where Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who oversaw a deadly attack on alleged drug smugglers, faced a day of difficult questions about the operation.”
Video footage showing a U.S. military strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea shows two people attempting to flip their capsized vessel when they were attacked again, multiple lawmakers said Thursday after meeting with the Navy admiral who oversaw the controversial mission.
The recording was shown during meetings on Capitol Hill featuring Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander who oversaw the Sept. 2 operation that entailed four strikes in all. The attack killed 11 people, including the two people who survived the first blast that hit their boat.
Democrats emerged from the meetings alarmed and vowed to press ahead with congressional probes into the attack’s legality. Some Republicans who have been staunchly loyal to the Trump administration defended the operation.
Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” The two survivors, he said, were “in clear distress” after their boat was “destroyed.”
“The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military,” Himes and Rep. Adam Smith (Washington) said in a joint statement Thursday. Smith is the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat. “Regardless of what one believes about the legal underpinnings of these operations, and we have been clear we believe they are highly questionable, this was wrong.”
[I snipped comments from some Republicans, like Tom Cotton, who called the strikes “righteous.”]
[…] Calling for help could indicate the men were still able to move drugs, but it doesn’t make them combatants who pose a threat and can be killed, said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces on the law of war for seven years. “It’s a pretty flimsy argument,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
“There was no boat. There was wreckage. There was no radio. There were two guys clinging to a tiny non-awash portion of the keel of a capsized boat,” said one lawmaker familiar with Thursday’s congressional briefings and the video that was shown. […]
“Texas officials drew the new congressional map to help Republicans gain up to five additional seats in the House in next year’s midterm elections.”
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a new congressional district map in next year’s midterm election that was drawn to maximize Republican political power. [Bad news!]
Granting an emergency application filed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the conservative majority paused a lower court ruling that said the map was unlawful because Republican lawmakers, at the direction of the Trump administration, explicitly considered race when drawing new districts.
The unsigned order said that Texas is “likely to succeed on the merits of its claim,” including that the lower court “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith” when assessing the state legislature’s motives.
The ruling appeared to be 6-3, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
The map was drawn with the aim of adding up to five additional Republican House seats.
The decision marks a win for President Donald Trump, who filed a brief urging the court to rule in favor of Texas.
The Supreme Court had provisionally put the decision on hold Nov. 21 while the justices weighed what next step to take, in an order signed by Justice Samuel Alito.
Traditionally, states draw new districts once a decade after the census shows how populations have shifted. But this year, Trump, worried about the narrow Republican majority in the House, has repeatedly pushed Republican-led states to draw new maps outside of that normal timeline.
A Trump administration letter earlier this year said the state could be subject to a federal lawsuit if it did not eliminate “coalition districts” in which nonwhite voters of different races constitute the majority.
[…] In the Texas case, the three-judge lower court invalidated the new map on a 2-1 vote, with the majority opinion authored by Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee.
While politics played a role in the maps being redrawn, there was “substantial evidence” that it was a racial gerrymander in violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, he wrote. [!]
In asking the Supreme Court to block the lower court ruling, Texas’ lawyers argued in part that it was too late in the election cycle for federal judges to intervene. The lawyers also said that the new map was clearly designed for partisan gain and denied that there was any racial motive. [Well, yes, it was for partisan gain, but it was also a racially-based gerrymander.]
“This summer, the Texas legislature did what legislatures do: politics,” they wrote. [Not a good excuse.]
The lawsuit was brought by six different groups of plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the Texas NAACP and two members of Congress, Texas Democratic Reps. Al Green and Jasmine Crockett.
In a court filing, one group of challengers said that “the entire thrust of the governor’s justification for authorizing redistricting” was to remove and replace the coalition districts, meaning that race and not partisan politics was the motive.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson @18:
I have forgotten which state has a literal flat-Earther
“Federal officials failed to secure the new indictment against James, whom Trump has targeted, after a judge said the previous one was secured by an unlawfully appointed prosecutor.”
[…] James, a frequent political target of President Donald Trump’s who had successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him, had previously been indicted by a grand jury on one charge of bank fraud and another of making false statements to a financial institution.
James has denied any wrongdoing.
Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former personal attorney to Trump with no prior prosecutorial experience, presented the case to a grand jury on her own in the first go-round — and that case was declared void on Nov. 24 when a judge found Halligan’s appointment was unlawful.
The Justice Department initially vowed to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, but ultimately decided to seek a new, untainted indictment against James, a source familiar with the deliberations told NBC News earlier this week.
The new case was presented to a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, by different prosecutors.
The failure to secure an indictment on Thursday does not bar prosecutors from attempting to do so again in the future. [I guess the Trump team can just keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.] […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re JM @23:
I’m guessing it will be bigger then the rest of the White House
Ooh, Witkoff could get Russian blueprints for the Chernobyl sarcophagus.
“The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
[Anakin and Padmé meme]: Ah, too close to the election? So you’re going to put off the Louisiana v. Callais ruling until after the midterms, right?
Lawrence Hurley (NBC):
[Nov 19]: Um… This is an actual judicial opinion (dissenting in the TX gerrymandering case).
The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent.
[Dec 04]: The Supreme Court sided with this dissent.
As Justice Kagan begins her dissent by pointing out, what is even the point of trial, of fact-finding, of clear error, of standards of review, when the Supreme Court simply ignores every single part of that and decides everything purely on the papers without any real consideration of the facts?
[…] the facts are what they want them to be, and quite frankly if District Courts disagree, they can pound sand because they’re not the ones in charge. […] It’s not just liberal judges they’re doing this to. They’re doing this to plenty of conservative judges too; judges who actually spent weeks and weeks poring over the details […] perhaps I’m overreading the extent to which the lower courts are going to be upset, but as someone who cares deeply about *facts,* I’m mostly just frustrated about the extent to which this Court doesn’t.
The ceremony is largely symbolic—the agreement was already signed over the summer and critics still see obstacles to its implementation.
[…]
they nearly descended into all-out war earlier in the year. In January, M23 rebels backed by thousands of Rwandan soldiers captured eastern Congo’s two largest cities. President Trump declared the June deal “a glorious triumph” and has since claimed to have ended over 30 years of war
[…]
Under its terms, Rwanda is meant to withdraw its troops and stop supporting the M23, a rebel group led by Congolese ethnic minority Tutsi commanders.
Congo is supposed to eradicate a militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)— which Rwanda’s government views as an existential threat. Ethnic Hutu extremists founded this militia when they fled to Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which killed nearly 800,000 Tutsi civilians.
The US is close to an institutional collapse across multiple public health agencies. Trump/RFK have purged anyone with expertise, many have fled and they’ve been replaced w functionaries who are either incompetent or malicious. I don’t think many understand how close to the edge we are right now.
90% of senior FDA staff are gone. Almost all of the living previous FDA commissioners have come out to the alarm.
Meanwhile former top CDC officials have warned that the agency has been hollowed out. [A quarter of its workforce] Thousands of staff are gone.
NIH is in tatters. Insiders speaking out are being fired.
While there have been news articles reporting all of this, no one has yet put together the pieces to show how bad things are across the board, what it means for human lives. Without a functioning FDA, CDC and NIH we are in big trouble.
In people with allergies, [the antibody] IgE is produced in response to proteins that do not usually cause harm, such as those found in peanuts, cat dander and other allergens. […] The vaccine triggers the production of antibodies that bind to IgE and stop it from binding to immune-cell receptors. That leaves less IgE available for generating an immune response
[…]
The vaccine is a promising scientific concept, but it’s still at a very early stage
The plane landed, slightly ahead of schedule, just moments before the incident happened at about 11pm. The drones reached the location where Zelenskyy’s plane was expected to be at the exact moment it had been due to pass. The drones then orbited above an Irish Navy vessel that had secretly been deployed in the Irish Sea for the Zelenskyy visit.
[…]
It is not yet known who launched and controlled the drones or where the drones are now. […] the fact that the drones had their lights on has led security forces to suspect that the aim was to disrupt the flight’s arrival […] the drones in the Irish Sea were large, hugely expensive […] The drones are believed to have been quadcopters as they were able to hover
[…]
Zelenskyy’s visit to Dublin went off without any major hitches.
Commentary
A useful reminder that Zelensky is engaging in all this furious shuttle diplomacy at massive personal risk to his own safety.
Ireland is a country of 5 ish million people—the idea it is gonna have the ability to respond to a major power drone attack (if that’s what it was) is pretty fanciful.
Galaxies residing in a huge filament of dark matter have been found to be mostly rotating in the same direction that the filament is spinning. It’s a discovery that challenges what astronomers think they know about how the environment influences galactic evolution.
The filament is a thread in the cosmic web, which is made of mostly dark matter and laced with ordinary matter, that spans the entire universe. Located 140 million light-years away, the filament has a nested structure. At its heart is a row of 14 galaxies almost precisely placed in a line 5.5 million light years long and 117,000 light-years wide, and all are rich in hydrogen gas that’s required for forming stars. This row of galaxies is then embedded in the larger filament that’s 50 million light years in length and is home to about 300 galaxies in total.
he row of galaxies is extraordinary not because they are aligned in a narrow band, but because many of them are rotating in the same direction as the filament itself. Think of each galaxy, slowly rotating around its axis, and then picture those galaxies perpendicular to the long axis of the filament and rotating about that spindle at 68 miles (110 kilometers) per second in the same direction as they themselves are spinning on their axis. All together, it is one of the largest cohesive rotating structures known in the universe.
‘500 tons of cocaine’: Trump pardons trafficker who helped flood U.S. with drugs. Chris Hayes on the pardon of ex- Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández: Trump keeps justifying the killing of more than 80 men on boats in the Caribbean as a way to save Americans from drugs, but just this week he pardoned a man who helped traffic more than 500 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
MAGA backlash builds as GOP women turn on Mike Johnson. Republican women from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Elise Stefanik are increasingly losing faith in Mike Johnson’s leadership, according to new reporting. Democratic Whip Katherine Clark weighs in.
A useful reminder that Zelensky is engaging in all this furious shuttle diplomacy at massive personal risk to his own safety.
Yes, agreed. I’ve been thinking about the risks Zelensky takes. He is both dedicated and brave.
Sky Captain @33, yep. Sometimes it seems like a slow slide downhill toward catastrophe, but really this decline that will lead to institutional collapse has been quite rapid.
Sky Captain @32, so it is all just theater. Trump gets to pose as a peace maker while Congo and Rwanda continue to fight. Eventually, Trump will blame someone else for his failures in this instance. As an aside, I find it hard to characterize how much I despise Trump spouting flapdoodle and bunkum like ““a glorious triumph.”
Sky Captain @31, this is a good summary of Justice Kagan’s dissent:
[…] as someone who cares deeply about *facts,* I’m mostly just frustrated about the extent to which this Court doesn’t.
“There’s no shortage of questions about Brian Cole Jr. and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore.”
Related video at the link.
Hours before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, someone placed pipe bombs outside Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C. This led to a five-year manhunt that finally produced a breakthrough.
Federal agents arrested a suspect Thursday morning, taking Brian Cole Jr. into custody. The Virginia man, who lives roughly 23 miles south of Capitol Hill, has been charged with transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials, according to charging documents filed in court.
[…] NBC News reported that Cole is cooperating with the FBI and has already shared important insights. From the report:
The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.
This dovetails with a related account from MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, who reported that the suspect confessed to agents Thursday that he planted the bombs near the Capitol — and indicated he supported Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his interview.
These developments are obviously new, and as the investigation continues, officials will likely get a clearer sense of the suspect’s motivations.
But based on these initial reports, the suggestion that Cole might’ve somehow been aligned with Joe Biden or the left more broadly appears untrue.
It also raises questions anew about the relevance of Trump’s pardons for those who also went to Capitol Hill in January 2021 after embracing his false election conspiracy theories.
Cole is expected to appear in court on Friday afternoon. He has not yet entered a plea.
Those who steer clear of conservative media outlets may not realize that, for many on the right, a suspect in the Capitol pipe-bombs case was identified several weeks ago. An outlet called The Blaze cited a “gait analysis” last month and told readers that there was a 94% match between the suspect and a former Capitol Police officer. [FFS!]
Assorted far-right figures, including some Republican members of Congress and prominent Trump administration officials, took the reporting seriously, which was unfortunate: The “gait analysis” was wrong, and the former Capitol Police officer wasn’t the suspect.
But before far-right conspiracy theorists got this aspect of the story wrong, they had gotten a bunch of other things wrong.
Take FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, for example.
Last fall, the week before Election Day 2024, Bongino told listeners to his conservative podcast that there was “a massive cover-up” in the pipe-bombs case and that the bombs might’ve been placed outside Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C. as part of an “inside job” launched by the federal government. [Yikes! Yikes! Yikes! How deluded and twisted is Bongino?]
Earlier this year, Bongino went further, telling his audience that the FBI knew the identity of the bomber and “just doesn’t want to tell us because it was an inside job.” [As noted in comment 20.]
Eleven months later, Bongino helped lead a press conference to announce the arrest of a suspect in the case. If the FBI and the Justice Department have the right guy, then clearly this was not “an inside job” and those conspiracy theories were wrong.
How, pray tell, does the FBI deputy director explain peddling conspiratorial nonsense that his own agency appears to have debunked? As it turns out, Bongino was given an opportunity to explain himself during a Thursday night appearance on Fox News. [social media post and video]
Host Sean Hannity noted Bongino’s earlier comments about the case, to which the FBI deputy director responded, “You know, listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions. That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now.” [Wow. That is not a good excuse.]
So let me see if I have this straight: Bongino was a far-right media personality who used his platform to tell the public, among other things, about his conspiratorial beliefs related to the pipe-bombs case. Two months after peddling these claims, the president tapped him to help lead the FBI.
And now, however, Bongino seems willing to acknowledge that he didn’t know what he was talking about (or that he embraced certain positions because they were more lucrative) — which naturally raises a whole bunch of questions about why he was hired for a key federal law enforcement position and why anyone should find him credible going forward.
Bongino was saying, in effect: “I am an asshole, a mind boggling doofus, and you can’t trust me.”
The Trump DOJ is urging a judge to jail pardoned Jan. 6 defendant Taylor Taranto who has been alarmingly wandering the neighborhood of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in recent days. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who convicted Taranto at a bench trial this year for a threat to federal buildings and for bringing weapons to President Barack Obama’s D.C. neighborhood, did not immediately send Taranto to prison but ordered him to return immediately to his home in Washington state for the holidays, Politico reports.
Link. The link leads to a presentation of various, current news reports.
Summary
– U.S. diplomats asked to review H-1B visa applicants’ LinkedIn profiles
– says H-1B visa applicants, others should not have engaged in “censorship”
– H-1B visas are crucial for the tech companies, many of whose leaders supported Trump
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced increased vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, with an internal State Department memo saying that anyone involved in “censorship” of free speech be considered for rejection.
H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty fields, are crucial for U.S. tech companies which recruit heavily from countries including India and China. […]
The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be traveling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said. [Strange definition of “censorship.”]
[…] “You must thoroughly explore their employment histories to ensure no participation in such activities,” the cable said.
The new vetting requirements apply to both new and repeat applicants.
“We do not support aliens coming to the United States to work as censors muzzling Americans,” a State Department spokesperson said […]
Officials have repeatedly weighed in on European politics to denounce what they say is suppression of right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, accusing European authorities of censoring views like criticism of immigration in the name of countering disinformation.
[…] The Trump administration has already significantly tightened its vetting of applicants for student visas, ordering U.S. consular officers to screen for any social media posts that may be hostile towards the United States. [I think they mean “hostile towards Trump and authoritarians like him.”]
As part of his wide-ranging crackdown on immigration, Trump in September imposed new fees on H-1B visas.
Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly accused the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden of encouraging suppression of free speech on online platforms, claims that have centered on efforts to stem false claims about vaccines and elections.
Trump wants to be free to spread disinformation. And he wants to admit to the USA only H-1B visa applicants who also are on his disinformation bandwagon.
IRELAND: Russia is suspected of being behind a hybrid warfare campaign using drones to disrupt airspace around European airports. In the latest incident, five military-style drones triggered a major security alert in Ireland, arriving in the flight path of visiting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shortly after his aircraft passed by. “Officials are treating it as a potential attempt to disrupt flight operations rather than to attack a target,” the Irish Times reported.
The Secretary of Defense taking extrajudicial killing requests from podcast hosts. [Screenshot]
Andrew Kolvet’s Bio: Christian. […] producer of The Charlie Kirk Show.
Kolvet: Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.
Hegseth: Your wish is my command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.
Commentary
The irony of Hegseth saying this the same day Trump stood inside an institute that he renamed for himself and declared world peace.
He’s legit doing the ‘x likes and I’ll y’ for crimes against humanity, it’s disgusting.
Cameo but for murder.
Hey Pete, you know there’s no statute of limitations for murder, right?
Patrick Shea (Former attorney): “Pardons don’t apply to international law. In fact, it is a violation of international law for state actors to use pardons or amnesty in an attempt to shield war criminals from justice. When the rule of law is restored, these thugs, all of them, need to be on the first flight to the Hague.”
The Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The George W. Bush administration, the U.S. administration at the time of the ICC’s founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama administration subsequently re-established a working relationship with the Court as an observer. […] Senate must approve the treaty by a two-thirds majority before it can take effect.
[…]
the U.S. has participated in various international courts including the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Nuremberg trials, and the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The Trump administration released its “National Security Strategy” on Thursday night, but the document reads more like a manifesto advocating for white supremacy than a supposed national defense plan.
The document calls on Europe to restore its “Western identity” and “civilizational self-confidence,” echoing the language of white supremacist movements. It also advocates against migration to the United States and Europe, which has long been cited as a goal of supremacists seeking to purportedly preserve white culture.
The Trump strategy argues that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and blames organizations like the European Union and other international groups that supposedly “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
White supremacists have historically argued that white civilization is under assault from non-white infiltrators who are undermining existing governments. The document gives a stamp of approval to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which Trump has previously endorsed while opposing the migration of non-white people to America.
This theory has inspired numerous acts of violence, including the 2022 mass shooting at a grocery store in New York, a 2015 mass shooting at a South Carolina church, and a 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pennsylvania, among others.
The national security document also offers praise for the “growing influence of patriotic European parties,” which is clearly a reference to bigoted, nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. The German government has labeled AfD as a “proven right-wing extremist organization,” and AfD leaders have used Nazi slogans and engaged in Holocaust denialism.
Vice President JD Vance has complained about criticism of AfD, writing in May, “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”
National security strategies do not typically offer endorsements of white nationalism.
[…] this administration has chosen to embrace racism and white supremacy, and it adds to the litany of actions Trump has undertaken to support bigotry and to attack the existence of non-white people.
[…] it sounds very much like the handiwork of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, who is arguably the most virulently racist figure in Trump’s inner circle. [Yep. True.]
Now they want the world to share in their bigoted approach.
Dangerous. More or less Nazi-like obsession with racial purity, plus lots of Trump’s authoritarianism, plus Stephen Miller’s basic evil. Very bad indeed.
Mike Johnson branded himself a “wartime” speaker of the House during a Friday appearance on Fox Business. He also claimed he and President Donald Trump work nearly every hour in the day doing who knows what for the American people. [video]
Host Stuart Varney.Varney: Do you work 18 hours a day?
Johnson: More, more. And I have to because President Trump works 21 hours a day. [bullshit … and even if true, that would counter productive and probably dangerous]
Stuart: I see you on TV all the time, always surrounded by hostile media [inaudible].
Johnson: Oh yes, it’s a really fun job, Stuart. […]
Stuart: Are you enjoying it? I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Speaker, but I’ve got to get to grips with the job you’re doing.
Johnson: I mean, I’m a wartime speaker in a real sense, and so it’s not the most enjoyable job in the world. [WTF?] But I do love what we’re doing. I love the team I work with. We have a unified Republican Party. [not true] If we didn’t, Stuart, we would not have delivered on all the things that we have this year. There’s much more ahead of us, and this team is excited about it.
“Donald Trump Isn’t Some Self-Aggrandizing Tinpot Dictator! He Appoints People For That.”
“Say hello to the Donald J. Trump Institute Of Getting His Piece.”
Donald Trump, who is, somehow, president of the United States, still hasn’t been awarded that Nobel Peace Prize he so feverishly covets […] But as a participation trophy, the US State Department yesterday announced that the US Institute of Peace will now be known forevermore, or at least until someone with a crowbar is sent over there, as the “Donald J. Trump US Institute of Peace,” because that name will “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.” Say, did you hear he’s ended around 50 or 60 wars since taking office? He’ll tell you all about it if you let him, even if he has to make up some or all of the wars.
As you’ll recall, in the early days of his second administration, Trump illegally tried to dismantle the institute, a think tank for international conflict resolution whose congressional charter created it as a nonprofit entity that’s supposed to be independent of the executive branch. There was even a brief armed standoff as DOGE goons seized the building to change the locks.
The administration is actually still embroiled in litigation over control of the institute, but what the hell, now that Trump’s name is on it, the Supreme Court will have to agree that whatever laws created the institute, it’s his now. The building was owned by the former Institute of Peace board, but Trump fired all the members and the building is for now under control of the General Services Administration. Trump may use it as collateral for refinancing some of his other trash palaces, who knows?
Oh, did we mention that yesterday, while the Trump administration continued to insist it isn’t war-criming, the Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth ordered the extrajudicial murder of yet another four people, in an illegal drone strike on a boat supposedly carrying drugs? You know, just to underline the Orwellian renaming of the peace institute. Appropriate too, since the Institute of Peace was created in the year 1984.
To mark the completely meaningless addition of the new sign, a White House spokesbot with the designation “Anna Kelly” said,
“The United States Institute of Peace was once a bloated, useless entity that blew $50 million per year while delivering no peace. Now, the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which is both beautifully and aptly named after a President who ended eight wars in less than a year, will stand as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”
She added, “Congratulations, world!”
To reflect Trump’s amazing work in ending wars all over the globe, we recommend that the renamed building be left completely vacant, with the electricity off. [LOL]
In related news, SFGATE reported yesterday that the National Parks Service has changed the federal holidays that qualify for free admission to America’s national parks, eliminating both Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, because they are illegal and promote idleness, adding free admission on the important American holiday of June 14, which is close enough to June 19th that Black Americans can easily make the switch and celebrate the birthday of their real saviour and best friend, Donald J. Trump. And if they don’t like it they can, as Great Leader said this week of one subset of Black American citizens, just “go back to where they came from” and stop complaining.
Yeah, subtle messaging about who counts as American, isn’t it?
No, in case you are wondering, no living president has ever had a federal building (if that’s even what the Institute of Peace building ends up being) named for him while he was in office. Nor has any branch of the US government ever treated the birthday of a sitting president as a holiday. But that’s OK, because things are changing here in the Trump States of Trumpmerica, and it’s a very good thing that you will like and accept, because after all, he won the 2024 election with 100 percent of the vote, that’s what all the history books say now.
Trump’s Blessing be upon you, fellow Trumpmericans! Everything is getting much better now, thanks to our wise beloved leader!
“JD Vance Welcomes All Jews To Participate In Christmas”
In yet another seasonal blunder that’s become almost as much a Hanukkah tradition as wondering how kids in olden days got excited about dreidels […] Vice President JD Vance’s office sent out invitations to a Hanukkah celebration at the Veep’s residence that treated the Jewish holiday as just one more part of Christmas. Twice!
But don’t worry, it wasn’t a mistake; it was actually a conscious decision […]
Here’s the invite, spotted by Jewish Insider reporter Gabby Deutch, who posted the image to social media Wednesday […] “Hanukkah” at least got the biggest typeface, but it’s underneath a heading that’s all about the Christian holiday”: [Image]
[…] “CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF CHRISTMAS AT THE VICE PRESIDENT’S RESIDENCE.” [Image]
Super-classy, and very Christmassy, because Jesus is the reason for the season. Kind of has nothing to do with Hanukkah, though […]
As The Independent reports, a spokesman for Vance explained that “The same branding for invitations was used for all holiday parties at the Vice President’s Residence,” so it was simply a matter of keeping design consistency, not any sort of religious message, silly. The spox continued blathering, “The Vance family is celebrating 50 historic years of Christmas at the Vice President’s Residence. They look forward to welcoming all of their guests.”
Donald Trump and JD Vance’s America is a Christian Nationalist America, so of course even Jewish holidays are part of the same Judeo-Christian (but really, just Christian) heritage we all share. Just remember that the “Judeo” part is silent, like the “t” in “Christmas” or the “Donald Trump” in “Epstein Files.”
We can only hope that this year’s Trump and Vance Christmakkah parties don’t turn out like the 2020 Hanukkah bash at the Trump White House, which ended up being a COVID-19 superspreader event.
As every story about this deliberate error points out, this isn’t the first time presidential Hanukkah cards have similarly fucked up. In 2008, the George W. Bush White House sent out invitations to a Hanukkah reception, but the cards had the same image as their Christmas cards, a picture of a snowy White House with wreaths in the windows and an olde-fashioned horse-drawn wagon delivering a Christmas tree.
But the other outlets didn’t go to the bother of tracking down that ridiculous image, while Yr Wonkette did: [image]
t least the Bush team had the sense to apologize instead of insisting that Hanukkah was intentionally treated as a subcategory of Christmas. Sally McDonough, Laura Bush’s press secretary, said that “Mrs. Bush is apologetic,” but it was an oversight that “just slipped through the cracks” as the Bushes were preparing to leave the White House. […]
A few days later, the White House sent out new invites to the reception, with an image of the menorah given to President Truman by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion after Truman was among the first world leaders to recognize Israel’s statehood in 1948. [image]
Included in the second-try invitation was a smaller card reading “Please accept our apologies as the invitation you previously received had the incorrect artwork.” Pretty classy, although it would have been even better if it had added that “those responsible have been sacked.”
And while it wasn’t a president, just a failed presidential candidate, Yr Wonkette will always be delighted by the festive greetings in an old email by Wisconsin’s future Gov. Scott Walker, from his time as Milwaukee County executive. Walker replied to Milwaukee attorney Franklyn Gimbel that he’d be happy to put up a menorah in the Milwaukee County Courthouse, and added a festive closing: “Thank you again and Molotov.”
Way better holiday tradition than that Adam Sandler movie! May your own Hanukkah be incendiary extraordinary!
“As the president threatens Venezuela, Russia and China are filling the information vacuum.”
President Donald Trump has said he won’t rule out anything when it comes to removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power. Yet he is missing an important tool from the arsenal: the Voice of America.
Since Trump’s March executive order dismantling the news agency, most of VOA’s 1,300 staff members and contractors have been fired or placed on administrative leave, its website has been frozen and the 83-year-old broadcaster has gone dark for the first time since its founding during World War II.
Before being shuttered, VOA’s weekly Spanish-language audience in Latin America was more than 100 million people, according to an audience survey released in January by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That’s especially important in Venezuela, where the regime of Nicolás Maduro has closed most independent media outlets and continues to harass journalists. Around eight journalists are in prison. Many more have fled.
Until Trump’s edict, the broadcaster focused on communicating U.S. foreign policy to Venezuelans, including letting audiences hear unfiltered news conferences, briefings and congressional hearings focused on Maduro’s political repression, corruption, economic mismanagement and, yes, Maduro’s drug trafficking ties. VOA reporters reported inside the country on last year’s presidential elections — which Maduro stole. VOA traveled with opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and interviewed eyewitnesses to Maduro’s election rigging.
No doubt Maduro celebrated VOA’s shortsighted closure. The vacuum is being filled by outlets the regime and its allies control. In addition to the Russia Today TV network, the Chinese Communist Party uses the Xinhua News Agency and CGTN, Beijing’s global broadcasting network, to peddle anti-American content. On Sunday, for example, CGTN aired a segment in which man-on-the-street Venezuelans decry Trump.
VOA itself isn’t going to dislodge Maduro from power […] But in a world of propaganda disguised as fact, the VOA had established itself as a trustworthy source of news in Venezuela.
The fired employees are fighting the broadcaster’s closure. Congress can act by restoring VOA funding, so America’s voice can be heard again.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Brad Moss (Natsec attorney): “The FBI now consists of ‘Uber for drunks’.”
[Patel] ordered that the security detail protecting his girlfriend escort one of her allegedly inebriated friends home after a night of partying […] Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, asked FBI agents on her security team at least two times […] to drive her friend home, and agents objected […] But Patel insisted they do as Wilkins requested and in one case called the leader of Wilkins’ security detail and yelled at him to do so.
[…]
it was already disturbing that Patel had pulled elite tactical agents away from their SWAT mission to drive his girlfriend around town. […] the director instructed tactical agents to use their time on yet another person the FBI had no reasonable duty to protect.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Rando: “The National Security strategy could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just published the 14 words instead because that’s what it amounts to.”
[Section heading]: What Should The United States Want?
This is an, um, interesting phrasing, especially with “Should” italicized. […] Why not say something like “The goals of foreign policy”? […] it imposes US desires on the rest of the world.
Many of the “wants” in this section are directly controverted by actions of the Trump administration.
* safety
* protection from propaganda
* a resilient national infrastructure
* world’s strongest blah blah blah economy
* remain the world’s most scientifically… advanced… country
* maintain “soft power” (Sorry, but [laughing tears emoji x3])
[…]
We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere […] that supports critical supply chains
Starting a war with Venezuela hardly seems a good way to do this, but whadda I know.
[…]
Three paragraphs of Praise To Our Leader, who gives us these principles. […] Predisposition to Non-Interventionism. Like in Venezuela and Argentina. […] they love to declare things for the entire world, as Trump declared the airspace over Venezuela closed.
a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.
Sen.Ted Budd (R-N.C.) said Friday he will lift his remaining holds on President Trump’s nominees to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the department approved disaster recovery funds for his state.
Budd had holds on Sean Plankey, who was nominated to be director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Pedro Allende, who was nominated to be under secretary for Science and Technology.
His announcement comes after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved $29 million in reimbursements for Hurricane Helene recovery projects in North Carolina.
He previously lifted his hold on James Percival, who was nominated to be the agency’s general counsel, after FEMA approved another $155 million. […]
However, he also noted that there’s still more funding that has yet to be approved.
“While I have released my holds on DHS nominees, I will continue to engage all relevant federal agencies to make sure Western North Carolina receives the focus and attention it deserves, particularly the final distribution of funds to the municipalities and state agencies in desperate need of financial relief,” he said.
[…] Under its Public Assistance Program, FEMA provides grants to help states, tribes, local governments and some nonprofits to respond to major disasters. These grants fund projects like debris removal and restoring infrastructure.
The Trump administration has taken a critical eye to FEMA. Noem and Trump have floated axing the agency entirely, though they are expected to ultimately shrink its role rather than eliminate it.
The review council set up by the administration is expected to soon publish a list of policy reform recommendations.
“The CDC’s change to hepatitis B vaccination is even worse than it seems”
“The new recommendations portend even more harmful shifts ahead.”
A seismic shift in the nation’s approach to public health occurred Friday, one that was foreseen the moment Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee with vaccine skeptics. The panel voted to end the universal birth-dose recommendation for hepatitis B, a bedrock of the childhood immunization schedule for more than 30 years. Though the vaccine will still be available to parents who request it, the change will have many negative effects and might be even more alarming than it initially seems.
The biggest shift is that the vaccine is no longer recommended for all babies. Instead, the committee says that for infants born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B, parents and clinicians should decide on their own whether to give the birth dose — and, if they skip it, to wait until at least two months of age to begin vaccination.
On the bright side, the policy doesn’t change care for the babies at highest risk: Infants born to mothers known to have hepatitis B will still receive the vaccine, along with a preventive immunoglobulin, to reduce the risk of perinatal transmission. And families who want their newborns to receive the hepatitis B shot can still choose it and have it be covered by insurance.
But this new approach attempts to solve an issue that doesn’t exist. There is no evidence that the birth dose is unsafe, and no evidence that waiting until two months offers any advantage to safety or efficacy. What ending the universal recommendation does do is inject complexity into a system that already struggles to reach every infant, especially those whose families lack a regular pediatrician or whose mothers’ hepatitis B status is recorded late or inaccurately. It also implies that the birth dose carries some risk that warrants hesitation, when no such risk has been shown.
Plus, transmission doesn’t just happen mother-to-baby. Hepatitis B can spread through casual contact, including shared household items, small amounts of blood or saliva on toys and surfaces. Everyday interactions such as sharing spoons or cups, handling a baby with microscopic cuts on one’s hands or even inadvertently mixing up toothbrushes can be enough to transmit the virus. A study cited by CDC staff concluded that as many as 1 in 10 children with hepatitis B acquire it through such exposures.
Several committee members suggested that parents could try to identify whom around their newborn might pose a risk, but that is simply not practical. Families cannot be expected to screen every relative, friend or child care provider for hepatitis B, particularly when many adults don’t know their own status. [So true.]
And the stakes for infants are high: About 90 percent of infected babies go on to develop chronic hepatitis B, a lifelong incurable disease that can silently damage the liver for decades before it manifests as liver failure. [!] Many will develop liver cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of less than 20 percent.[!]
Universal newborn vaccination has helped drive childhood hepatitis B infections down from 18,000 cases in 1991 to just about 20. Why change a policy that has been so effective? [!]
That’s not all. The hepatitis B vaccine is currently given as a three-dose series, and all three doses are needed to be considered fully protected. The advisers voted to change this process. Now, after just one dose, parents are supposed to ask their clinician about doing a blood test to check antibody levels. If the antibodies meet a threshold of 10 milli–international units per milliliter, then presumably no further shots are needed.
That might sound reasonable: If someone is already immune after one shot, why not forgo the others? Except no evidence supports this approach. [!!] Even proponents of the change could produce no data, despite repeated requests, demonstrating that a single dose provides reliable protection or that, after one shot, the new antibody threshold is an appropriate marker of lasting immunity. This guidance is not only baseless but dangerous, as it gives families false assurance that their children are protected when they might not be. [True]
Taken together, the changes point to a disturbing and consequential shift: Health policy decisions are no longer being rooted in solid science, but in speculation and suspicion. Listening to the proceedings, it was as if data no longer mattered; the only thing guiding these appointees are their deeply held belief that vaccines are the source of harm rather than the lifesaving tools they are. [Sigh. All too true.]
The advisers ended their meeting with an outline for even broader changes they plan to make to the childhood immunization schedule. […] which once-controlled disease will be first to return?
U.S. Southern Command said Thursday that the Defense Department carried out another ‘lethal kinetic strike’ at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s direction on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed four men. … It’s the 22nd military strike reported by the Trump administration against alleged drug-carrying boats in recent months.
he Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review President Donald Trump’s bid to upend birthright citizenship. A ruling for the government would discard the long-held understanding of automatic citizenship for people born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned the U.S. could be about to ‘betray’ Ukraine, according to a leaked transcript of a call between European leaders strategizing about how to protect Kyiv.
President Donald Trump may remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board at will, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges in Washington, D.C., reverses lower-court rulings blocking Trump’s attempts to fire members of the key labor and employment panels.
A federal judge in Florida on Friday ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the federal sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to the cases overrode a federal rule prohibiting the release of matters before a grand jury.
The Trump administration’s ultimatum to stop regulating social media platforms in exchange for tariff relief does not appear to have persuaded officials with the European Union. On Friday, Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, was hit with a $140 million fine for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, a set of transparency laws designed to curb the corrosive powers of tech platforms like social media sites.
Meta Platforms is planning cuts to the metaverse, an arena Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg once called the future of the company. … Meta has seen operating losses of more than $77 billion since 2020 in its Reality Labs division, which includes its metaverse work.
Remember when we learned in 2018 that the United States would host the 2026 World Cup along with Mexico and Canada? Back then, it seemed like an amazing opportunity to be part of an inherently multicultural sporting event that draws the largest crowds possible.
Yeah, that feeling is gone now. Now, the World Cup is just another vehicle to curry favor with President Donald Trump by celebrating Donald Trump, and it’s so gross. Friday’s World Cup Draw, where country names are drawn out of pots to create matchups, kicked off not with soccer, but with obsequiously praising Trump, including presenting him with the ugliest trophy ever.
This state of affairs was likely inevitable because the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, is basically Trump if Trump ran a sports governing body. Infantino loves dictators, money, and making decisions in secret so there’s no accountability, using his position to hand out money to ensure loyalty. […]
It was also inevitable that Infantino […] invented the FIFA Peace Prize on the fly to present to Trump during the draw. According to Trump, he has ended eleventy wars, a claim that does not hold up under scrutiny, but that little detail wasn’t going to stop Infantino from giving Trump a consolation prize since he can’t nab a Nobel Peace Prize.
This is where the comically ugly trophy comes in. It’s so ugly that even The New York Times called it ugly. You can go see for yourself—or not, if you feel like this thing might haunt your dreams. [Image at the link]
The trophy is a bunch of weird, elongated, witchy hands reaching up from the base of the trophy to grab a globe, with Trump’s name appearing below. […]
Infantino literally bowed when he presented it to Trump and also gave him a gold medal, and then let Trump give a little speech praising himself: “This is truly one of the great honors of my life. Beyond awards, we saved millions and millions of lives. The fact that we could do that, so many different wars that were able to end in some cases right before they started, it was great to get them done. I want to thank my family, my great first lady Melania. Thank you very much. You are going to have an event the likes of which the world has never seen. The world is a safer place now, the United States a year ago was not doing too well and it’s the hottest place anywhere right now.”
Well, if by “hottest,” you mean “most hellish,” then sure.
Infantino said that the award was “on behalf of football-loving people around the world,” which is probably a surprise to most football-loving people around the world and also a surprise to the rest of FIFA. The 37-member council wasn’t involved in creating the award, the 211-member FIFA Congress didn’t vote to create the award, nor did they vote on who would win. [!]
[I snipped text describing some of Trump’s recent bad/illegal actions that have disturbed the rest of the world.]
Even the World Cup itself is not exactly a peaceful thing under Trump. During the Club World Cup earlier this year, a smaller lead-in to the 2026 World Cup, Customs and Border Patrol said they would “act as security” in Miami and told the local news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel would also be there, and any non-citizens needed to have their papers on them.
Vice President JD Vance also made sure to tell people from other countries who come to watch the Cup to make sure to get the f*ck out when things were done: “Of course everyone is welcome to come and see this wonderful event. We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games,” Vance said. “But when the time is up we want them to go home, otherwise they will have to talk to [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem.”
Nothing says peace and football-loving like threatening to deport soccer fans, right? FIFA and Infantino should be up in arms about a host country behaving this way, but corrupt people love corrupt people, and Infantino and Trump are a match made in hell.
DC Metropolitan Police just shared a tiny bit more body cam footage from the March US Institute of Peace raid in response to my FOIA lawsuit […] One clip shows USIP President George Moose being escorted out.
[Video clip]
Moose: Good evening. I’m surprised to meet you here.
MPD: Yeah, unfortunately. How ya been.
Moose: Well, we were fine. We’ve had better days. On St. Patrick’s day, we would’ve expected a little better.
MPD to another: You’re not allowed to wear green.
Moose: I get to pinch you. Okay, so you know we’re gonna see you all in court.
MPD: Yeah we figured that.
Moose: We thought you guys were our friends.
MPD: We are your friends.
Moose: Alright, I… will take that… and hope to see that demonstrated down the line.
Another clip […] shows the same white shirt cop addressing three USIP staff members outside the building. He says “Obviously there’s gonna be lawsuits on the back end of this, and civil stuff.”
We’ve heard so much about the DOGE raids but have very little physical evidence of what they were actually like. It’s weird to be able to see an instance of it actually happening—the mundanity of it all. How the cops were jovially complicit.
Sky Captain @69, the banality of evil. And the surprising tendency of people to be nice to each other when face to face … no matter what the circumstances.
[House Speaker Mike Johnson] told a reporter this week that Americans worried about the rising cost of living need to just “relax” and wait for the provisions in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that Republicans passed earlier this year to kick in.
“We are exactly on the trajectory of where we’ve always planned to be. Steady at the wheel, everybody. It’s gonna be fine. Our best days are ahead of us,” Johnson said.
[Gaslighting the public. Also, “just relax” when you may not be able to pay your heating bill this winter? Johnson is both clueless and arrogant.]
However, the bill will actually make the affordability crisis worse for low-income Americans by cutting tens of billions of dollars in Medicaid and food stamps. [!!!]
What’s more, Affordable Care Act subsidies that make insurance more affordable for millions of Americans are set to expire at the end of the year. If they are not extended, millions will see their premiums more than double. […] preventable catastrophe too.
Worse than that, President Donald Trump’s tariffs are hurting the economy, forcing companies to conduct layoffs from the levies and economic uncertainty. Other companies have raised prices for consumers—the exact opposite of what Americans voted for in 2024. And some Americans are even forced to pay the tariffs themselves, getting surprise bills for online orders.
[…] Ultimately, Republicans are screwed in the 2026 midterms because none of their plans will lower costs—the issue that Americans care about the most.
And as the GOP freaks out over its waning majority, it’s turning the House into a total disaster, warring not only with Johnson but with each other.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed it up perfectly on Thursday.
“Donald Trump is fighting with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting with the House Republican Conference. Corey Mills is fighting with Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace is fighting with Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson is fighting with Elise Stefanik. Elise Stefanik is fighting with Lisa McClain,” Jeffries said.
He then continued, “The whole thing is a mess. The 119th Congress has turned into a bad episode of ‘Republicans Gone Wild.’ And here’s the problem. Republicans are so busy fighting each other, they can’t be bothered to fight for the American people.”
How it started: New York state Attorney General Letitia James in 2022 bringing a case that got Donald John Trump, his two sons and their perjuring accountant legally declared before all the world frauds, con men and liars, and that Trump the elder owed the State of New York $364 million plus interest for all his blatant scams, like making his Florida roach motel worth $18 million at tax time, and $739 million at loan time, and his New York penthouse triple the footage it actually was at loan time, or when he wanted to get on a list of Glossy Magazine’s Top 100 Rich Assholes.
[That’s certainly a damning summary. “frauds, con men and liars”]
How it went: Donald John Trump somehow again getting elected president of the United States of America, vowing to rain down great vengeance against his political enemies, and screaming on his web platform for PAM to hurry up and install his former(?) personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan so she could indict Letitia James and James Comey and Adam Schiff NOW!!! Because “they impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!)” […]
And then Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte and Ed Martin, the Weaponization Czar of Naming, Shaming, and peeping into women’s windows, allegedly sent two guys, Robert Bowes (who was nominated for a spot on the Consumer Finance Protection Board in Trump’s first term) and Scott Strauss (a voter-fraud conspiracy-theory spreader), to pose as FBI agents and delve through private mortgage documents. Based on some tip he got from Crazy Eddie, BTW.
[…] Now a second grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has refused to indict Attorney General Letitia James on the ridiculous charges that she unfairly took a tax break on a second home. The same flimsy thing that they’re investigating Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook about. You will recall, James’s first indictment on two felony counts got thrown out with James Comey’s, on account of Lindsey Halligan being not legally appointed to the job (and no other prosecutors having been willing to sign off on the sham indictments).
And now it appears this second grand jury was quickly convened, this time by Roger Keller — a prosecutor shipped in from Missouri, known to sport MAGA hats around St. Louis — after every other single prosecutor in the office refused to bring it, and the previous prosecutors wrote a detailed memo about why not. And then at least three of them quit or got fired for that.
And this Roger Keller could not indict that ham sandwich either! Federal grand juries are known to indict more than 99 percent of the time […] Will PAM be able to find someone else to go after James a third time because this is KILLING her REPUTATION and CREDIBILITY? We shall see! But it sure does look more selective-prosecution-y each time!
Also the second-home-tax-credit thing is hard to prosecute, because prosecutors have to show beyond a reasonable doubt an intent to defraud for financial gain, and at the moment they signed, not afterwards. And James intended to let her niece live in the house for free, which she put in writing. And James only made $1-$5k in rent revenue over five years, way under the market rate, barely even enough to cover basic maintenance. And, James is not a idiot. She had lawyers review everything. Not only was the property not for James’s financial gain, the woman comes off like a saint.
[…] reportedly Bill Pulte’s own dad and stepmom also did a homestead-exemption-on-a-second-home-tax-credit thing, though they really did rent out their second home for profit in the first year, while claiming it and another home as their primary residence at the same time. Tsk tsk!
Oh hey, is Bill’s dad Mark or his father Bill senior the “friend pulty the developer” that Jeffrey Epstein refers to in those emails, the one Epstein said was helping him drive up the price of a house to a Palm Beach record with Trump, to the benefit of a Russian? Bill’s father Mark and grandfather Bill were both Florida real estate developers. Just asking questions!
Anyway, up in Maryland, it seems the attempted prosecution of Adam Schiff sounds to be going even worse! [LOL] Now Pulte and Martin are also accused of improperly sharing sensitive grand jury information, plus sending fake FBI agents to do investigating, derp! Even doofus Todd Blanche is reportedly worried that those two [guys] may have tainted the investigations into James, and also Adam Schiff, too.
Christine Bish, a California realtor who’d accused Schiff of mortgage fraud for whatever reasons, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Greenbelt, Maryland. Bish was hoping to help Trump out, and was surprised instead to find the prosecutor’s office and FBI much more interested in respectively subpoena-ing and discussing her communications with Pulte, Bowes, and Strauss. Awkward!
[…] Bish sounded surprised to learn that Bowes and Strauss, who had represented themselves to her as “investigators,” were actually not with the FBI.
[…] And based on a referral from Senate Democrats, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is reportedly probing Pulte too. For what it’s worth these days, under Trump.
It’s funny, but also sad. The harassment is the point, and James, Comey, and Schiff should not have to pay for lawyers or spend their time on this bullshit. [So true.]
Last word to Letitia James! From October, but still works. You can’t expect her to make a statement every time Trump’s lackeys trip […]! She has an actual job to do. [video]
[…]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @70:
the surprising tendency of people to be nice to each other when face to face
I’m sure the alternative was not far from their minds.
birgerjohanssonsays
Here is a fun little distraction from the ongoing apocalypse.
Anime: Introvert guy sewing outfits for cosplay (as seen in parody made by Grimmjack)
“My Dress-Up Darling Abridged – Episode 1 (S1) ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bMjiwW5vYwQ
At trial, a police officer testified that Zuffante had confessed […] prompting Zuffante to interject and accuse the detective of lying; he took the stand [losing his 5th amendment protection.] […] The officer had taken no written notes during the interrogation, only filing a report a week later. With just Zuffante’s word against the officer’s, he was […] sentenced to twenty years in prison.
[…]
Hawaii Supreme Court sided with him last week […] holding that police have a constitutional obligation to record interrogations. The ruling means that law enforcement in the state will now be required to record all interrogations taking place inside police stations. It also requires police to record them outside stations “when feasible.”
[…]
But the court didn’t rely on the U.S. Constitution in arriving at its decision—instead, it relied exclusively on the Hawaii Constitution, which contains similar language.
Justice Todd Eddins, who authored the majority opinion, took pains to spell out that this was intentional […] “No United States Supreme Court opinion has tackled the recording of custodial interrogations. If a case did though, we would still look to our state constitution first.” […] The Hawaii Constitution’s due process clause “offers safety to Hawaii’s people that exceeds the federal constitution’s suddenly fluid protections,”
[…]
“If children can record everyday events with ease, law enforcement cannot claim hardship to record perhaps its most consequential investigative act.”
The article describes some of his other spicy rulings.
Eddins ended [another recent] opinion saying, “State constitutionalism makes it easy to consider Roberts Court jurisprudence white noise.”
[…]
Hawaii’s approach is by no means universal: Many state supreme courts prefer not to independently develop the meaning of their state constitutions’ rights and liberties. Instead, they’ve either imported federal courts’ interpretations of the U.S. Constitution (a process that is generally known as “lockstepping”) or declined to explain what their state constitution means.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Have I Got News for You S70E9 | Hannah Fry” [they have a surprisingly cool bishop]
@71 Lynna, OM: Johnson is just repeating the White House line here. Trust us, everything is OK, everything will get better next year, after the election. Don’t question the great leader and vote Republican.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed it up perfectly on Thursday.
“Donald Trump is fighting with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting with the House Republican Conference. Corey Mills is fighting with Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace is fighting with Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson is fighting with Elise Stefanik. Elise Stefanik is fighting with Lisa McClain,” Jeffries said.
He then continued, “The whole thing is a mess. The 119th Congress has turned into a bad episode of ‘Republicans Gone Wild.’ And here’s the problem. Republicans are so busy fighting each other, they can’t be bothered to fight for the American people.”
Jeffries is being too generous. If the Republicans were organized they would be fighting against the American people but right now they are too divided to push Trump’s agenda.
Trump accepts FIFA peace prize despite ‘fuming’ over media coverage of his age. Trump received the first FIFA peace prize, finally earning the peace prize he desperately wanted. Meanwhile, he is “fuming” over media reports of his declining mental and physical health, Asawin Suebsaeng reports. He and Donna Edwards join Chris Hayes to discuss.
CDC Panel ends recommendation for newborn hepatitis B shot. Earlier today, a CDC panel voted to end the recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, despite a 99% drop in cases since in the 30 years since it was implemented. Brandy Zadrozny joins Chris Hayes to discuss RFK Jr.’s influence on the anti-vaccination shift and what this change may mean for access to the vaccine.
Video is 9:00 minutes. This is a really good presentation.
President Trump has stamped his name on the distinct building that once housed the U.S. Institute of Peace, which DOGE commandeered and hollowed out in the early days of his term.
Trump hanging his shingle on the headquarters of an effort to globally spread diplomacy and charitable works would be ironic enough without the backstory of how his people took it over.
Back in March, DOGE stormed the building with a panoply of armed officers. FBI agents arrived unannounced at the home of the Institute’s security chief, as DOGE tried to force its way into the building. DOGE members threatened the federal contracts of all of the Institute’s ex-security contractors to get them to fork over the key.
“This conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigations, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies — the Metropolitan Police Department, Department of State security police, the FBI — to carry out Executive Order 14217 — all of that targeting, probably terrorizing, the employees and the staff at the Institute when there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals,” a federal judge said in a hearing over the Institute’s seizure. “Why?”
The case is still pending at the appellate level, though the government has been granted access to the Institute in the meantime.
The building, steps away from the Lincoln Memorial and topped by sweeping, white, dove-like wings, sits as a monument to Trump’s destruction both at home and abroad — his own Ministry of Peace.
Link. The link leads to a compendium of recent news reports.
Always angry and pugnacious, LazerPig deals with the exaggerated claims that tanks have become obsolete.
“BuT tAnKs ArE oUtDaTeD bEcAusE dRoNeS!1 (re-upload)”
Shortly after American-born Robert Prevost was elected Pope, J.D. Vance and his wife stopped in to visit with the new pontiff.
In addition to a Chicago Bears shirt, Vance brought the American Pope two books by St. Augustine. This gift represented a bond between the two men: Vance chose St. Augustine as his patron saint when he converted to Catholicism, and the Pope was previously head of the worldwide Augustinian order.
It’s an open question whether Vance ever read either of the books, since Augustine spends a good amount of time lecturing against pride, encouraging humility, and preaching compassion for immigrants. But even assuming Vance still somehow clings to a highly selective edit of the saint (“An unjust law is no law at all,” means Vance can do anything he wants, right?), it looks like he’s going to have to denounce the guy in the big hat.
Because Vance’s vampire boss [Peter Thiel] says the Pope may be the Antichrist.
Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel is probably best known for three things: Company names stolen from The Lord of the Rings, trying to drain the blood of young people so he can live forever, and foisting J.D. Vance on America. But there’s another side to Thiel.
He’s not just a technofascist seeking to build an AI-fueled authoritarian surveillance state. He’s also an absolutely bonkers pseudo-religious nutcase who views everyone who stands in his way as an agent of … Satan. [!] And that includes the Pope.
Thiel has hosted a series of lectures for a very select audience in which he’s warned that the Antichrist—harbinger of the apocalypse—is in the world today, making trouble for all the good little AI billionaires. […]
People like Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, other environmental activists, AI safety advocate Eliezer Yudkowsky, anyone else who suggests regulating AIs before they destroy humanity, and people who are worried about nuclear war. […]
Thiel’s view of the Antichrist “is that of an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times”. […] this is a profoundly unbiblical concept.
Several times in the Greek versions of the gospels, there are mentions of someone being “antikhristos,” which is exactly what it sounds like: opposed to Jesus and his teaching. Another term, “pseudokhristos,” is used to describe people who spread statements falsely attributed to Jesus. In both cases, these terms are applied, not to a particular individual, but to anyone seen as interfering with the message of Christ.
The idea that the Antichrist is an evil potentate who will usher in the end of the world was created after everyone involved with the Gospels was long dead. It’s the vision of a 10th-century French monk, Adso of Montier-en-Der, who compiled centuries of speculation to turn an adjective into a title. […]
most of Adso’s biography of the Antichrist has been conveniently discarded. He was supposed to be Jewish, born in Babylon, and to rule the world from a throne in Jerusalem. But all that stuff gets in the way of lots of fun speculation and flinging an Antichrist label onto anyone you hate.
The Antichrist is also supposed to be empowered to perform all sorts of miracles and be capable of resurrecting the dead. So if a 22-year-old Swedish woman best known for shouting environmental concerns into a microphone is secretly the Antichrist, she’s been seriously holding back.
Thiel’s Antichrist obsession goes back to at least the 1990s and borrows themes from French-American philosopher René Girard to posit that the left is intrinsically anti-Christian and the natural home for the Antichrist. […]
Thiel [,,,] can’t seem to distinguish between technology and God. As The Washington Post reported, Thiel’s lectures have only grown more “intense” over recent months.
… recordings offer new detail about how the billionaire seems to place those who would critique or regulate tech developers into a religious good-vs.-evil worldview, where the future of all creation depends on giving innovators free rein.
[That’s sounds like Thiel views himself as God, or perhaps as the embodiment of the ultimate good.]
As Wired reported in September, Thiel also has some very odd notions of what’s good and what’s evil. He doesn’t just draw his thinking from Girard. He also frequently quotes Nazi attorney Carl Schmitt.
You know you live in strange times when one of the most influential billionaires in the world—an investor who lit the financial fuses on both Facebook and the AI revolution, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir and launched the career of an American vice president—starts dedicating his public appearances primarily to a set of ideas about Armageddon borrowed heavily from a Nazi jurist. (As in: the guy who rapidly published the most prominent defense of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives.)
That Nazi is a big part of Thiel’s philosophy [!]. According to Thiel, anyone who raises doubts about the benefits of new technologies is evil. And anyone who tries to generate unity is suspect. […]
Right on target for a billionaire who has also declared that democracy and freedom are “not compatible.”
So maybe it’s not so strange that the vampire billionaire of the apocalypse has found a new potential Antichrist hiding under a big pointy white hat. Thiel has reportedly warned J.D. Vance about getting too close to “the woke American Pope” and fumed that Leo may actually be … the A-word.
This warning appears to have come after Pope Leo cautioned AI developers “to ensure that emerging technologies remain rooted in respect for human dignity and the common good.” The Pope also warned students against using AI to do their homework.
“AI can process information quickly, but it cannot replace human intelligence,” he said. “And don’t ask it to do your homework for you. It cannot offer real wisdom. It misses a very important human element.”
[…] Thiel is taking the fight right to the man he installed as America’s second-in-command in a way that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Catholics who don’t source their opinions from Nazi Germany.
[…] the main backer of the likely GOP nominee for president is accusing the Bishop of Rome of being an agent of the end times — and telling Vice President Vance to disregard the pope’s moral guidance.
For most of the billionaires hurtling the world toward AI destruction, fame and money are sufficient cause to light humanity’s last bonfire of the vanities. For Thiel, this is a religious fight. Will we have the evil that comes with peace and environmental reform, or will we enjoy God’s bounty of unregulated pollution and unchecked AI?
Either way, Thiel plans to be here to see how it turns out. If he can keep filling his veins with fresh, young blood.
In March, Donald Trump issued an executive order to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a fairly small agency that distributed federal funding to libraries and museums around the country. The order was supposedly aimed at paring back federal agencies to only cover “statutory functions” while eliminating all unneeded spending. (But a grandiose ballroom bigger than the White House itself is an absolute necessity. […])
Axing IMLS didn’t “save” a huge amount of money; in 2024, the agency issued around $266 million in grants and research funding. Most libraries get the bulk of their funding from local and state taxes. But the federal funding covers stuff like library staff training, computer networking, interlibrary loan, and special services for folks with disabilities [!] — and remember, the Trump people consider “accessibility” just as “unfair” as DEI, because why should people with disabilities take “our” tax money?
The cuts’ impact to small town and rural library systems around the country was real and nasty, since they’re more dependent on IMLS funds. Some cut back services like interlibrary loan and access to ebooks and audiobooks, which sharply reduced reading options in places where the selection of physical books was already limited.
In my state, Idaho, funding dried up for audiobooks for blind Idahoans, as well as for an early learning program that got books to kids whose homes might not have any, and for a digital program that “provides Idahoans free 24/7 access to online education, business and recreation resources.” [!!]
So now the good news: 21 states sued to block the executive order, and last month a federal court in Rhode Island ordered that the funding be restored to IMLS and six other federal agencies Trump attempted to send down the Memory Hole with his EO.
District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. wrote that Trump’s order was “arbitrary and capricious,” and that no, Donald, you do not have the power to just refuse to spend funds Congress appropriated […]
The question presented in this case is a familiar one: may the Executive Branch undertake such actions in circumvention of the will of the Legislative Branch? In recent months, this Court — along with other courts across the country — has concluded that it may not. That answer remains the same here.
And while there’s always the possibility that the administration might appeal the decision, because spending taxpayer money on lawyers is good but spending it on helping people learn things is bad, in this case, it looks like the administration intends to restore the library funding, if not necessarily the other programs. On Wednesday, the IMLS announced on its website that, “Upon further review, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has reinstated all federal grants. This action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination.”
[…] that sounds pretty definite. The brief notice advised grantees that they can now “access the agency’s electronic grants management system” for information on getting the money Congress wanted them to have.
[…] since it’s a case brought by states, the ruling actually applies beyond just the 21 states that sued. […]
Now all they have to contend with is the continued threat from Rightwing crusaders who want to have all the librarians arrested […] Hey, if you’re in one of the places where the documentary The Librarians is screening, check it out! It’ll probably be a top contender for Best Documentary next year. Here’s the trailer: [video]
And while you wait to see the film, check out “On The Media’s” interview with Louisiana high school librarian Amanda Jones, one of the librarians featured in the film. [https://www.wnycstudios.org/ ]
[…] Since the ceasefire came into effect on Oct. 10, 20 living hostages and the remains of 27 others have been returned to Israel. The body of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, has yet to be recovered despite a weekslong search effort. Israeli authorities have steadily released Palestinian prisoners and detainees — both living and dead — as part of the exchange.
Israel has repeatedly said all hostages must be returned before a Phase 2 deal, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week stressing the need for an “intensive and immediate effort” to complete the commitment.
Israel agreed to halt its assault on the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire, but flare-ups and violence have persisted, with Israeli strikes killing more than 350 people since the ceasefire began, taking the death toll in the enclave beyond 70,000, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
The first phase also included a commitment to expand the flow of aid into Gaza, but U.N. experts say the number of trucks permitted to enter has never reached the agreed target of 600 per day.
Israel said Gaza’s Rafah crossing in the south will soon reopen to allow Palestinians to enter Egypt, but it will not reopen the crossing in both directions — another commitment under the deal — until Gvili’s remains are returned.
And as Phase 1 sputters along, analysts warn that Phase 2 presents a host of complex challenges, from security arrangements to competing governance demands, that could slow or even stall the process.
[…] While Trump’s peace plan stipulates that Hamas will disarm, the group has reasserted control of Gaza during the first phase of the ceasefire and shown no immediate signs of disarmament.
[…] Gerges [Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics] also feared that “we will never see the actual implementation of what Phase 2 is supposed to be,” adding it was “an illusion” to call what’s happening in Gaza a ceasefire, “because the Palestinians, particularly civilians, continue to be killed on a daily basis.”
“Even though the humanitarian situation of the Palestinians has improved a bit, it’s still catastrophic,” he said.
The video referenced in comment 85 relates personal stories of prisoners that include accounts of sexual assault and rape on both sides of the conflict, Palestinians and Israelis.
Donald Trump has launched a crusade to convert European politics to his cause, mobilizing the full force of American diplomacy to promote “patriotic” parties, stamp on migration, destroy “censorship” and save “civilization” from decay.
The question is whether Europe’s embattled centrists have the power, or the will, to stop him.
In its newly released National Security Strategy document, the White House set out for the first time in a comprehensive form its approach to the geopolitical challenges facing the U.S. and the world.
While bringing peace to Ukraine gets a mention, when it comes to Europe, America’s official stance is now that its security depends on shifting the continent’s politics decisively to the right. [Unfortunately true.]
Over the course of three pages, the document blames the European Union, among others, for raising the risk of “civilizational erasure,” due to a surge in immigrants, slumping birth rates and the purported erosion of democratic freedoms.
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” it says. “As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
With its talk of birth rates declining and immigration rising, the racial dimension to the White House rhetoric is hard to ignore. It will be familiar to voters in Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, where far-right politicians have articulated the so-called “great replacement theory,” a racist conspiracy theory falsely asserting that elites are part of a plot to dilute the white population and diminish its influence. “We want Europe to remain European,” the document says. [!!]
“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” the document reads — making it “an open question” whether such countries will continue to view an alliance with the U.S. as desirable.
The policy prescription that follows is, in essence, regime change. “Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” the strategy document says. That will involve “cultivating resistance” [!] within European nations. In case there is any doubt about the political nature of the message, the White House paper celebrates “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” as a cause for American optimism.
In other words: Back the far right to make Europe great again.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, European leaders have kept up a remarkable performance of remaining calm amid his provocations, so far avoiding an open conflict that would sever transatlantic relations entirely.
But for centrist leaders currently in power — like Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Keir Starmer in London and Germany’s Friedrich Merz — the new Trump doctrine poses a challenge so existential that they may be forced to confront it head-on. [!]
That confrontation could come sooner rather than later, with high-stakes elections in parts of Britain and Germany next year and the possibility of a snap national vote ever-present in France. In each case, MAGA-aligned parties — Reform U.K., the Alternative for Germany and the National Rally — are poised to make gains at the expense of establishment centrists currently in power. America, it is now clear, may well intervene to help.
[…] What is worse for leaders like Macron, Merz and Starmer is that the Trumpian analysis — that a critical mass of voters want their own European MAGA — may, ultimately, be right.
These leaders are all under immense pressure from the populist right in their own backyards. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. is on track to make major gains at next year’s regional and local elections, potentially triggering a leadership challenge in the governing Labour Party that could force Starmer out.
In Paris, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally tortures Macron’s struggling administrators in parliament, while the Alternative for Germany breathes down Merz’s neck in Berlin and pushes him to take ever harder positions on migration. […]
What? Am I supposed to feel sympathy for the leader of the most evil organization in human history just because some capitalist parasite criticizes his performative “altruism?”
This is the point where I’d insert the clip of Ken Watanabe in the Godzilla movie saying “Let them fight.”
A federal judge ruled last week that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist, had been unlawfully appointed […] As a result, the judge ordered the dismissal of the high-profile indictments against [James Comey] and [NY AG Letitia James].
[…]
one judge removed Ms. Halligan’s name from a court filing and questioned the administration’s argument that she could still hold the job. Days earlier, a magistrate judge hearing a different case had raised similar concerns
[…]
Though the administration vowed to appeal […] it has yet to do so or even seek to pause it while pursuing an appeal. […] Pressed to explain the Justice Department’s rationale, Nicholas Patterson, the senior prosecutor in court, said that his office had been instructed to continue using Ms. Halligan’s signature in court filings […] “The reasoning behind that has not been provided, your honor[“]
[…]
The [Trump admin’s Office of Legal Counsel] has told department officials that because Judge Currie’s order did not require a specific measure to be taken, like removing Ms. Halligan, she could stay even though the judge declared her appointment invalid
Southpaw (Lawyer): “If your appointment is invalid, you never had the job in the first place.”
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “This is the same Office of Legal Counsel which furnished the Murder Memo enabling the killing spree at sea.”
Rando:
“Sorry, no, that’s illegal.”
“And?”
“And you’re the Department of Justice.”
“And?”
“And so you should stop doing it!”
“And?”
Brandon Friedman (Former Obama HUD): “Laws aren’t real. They exist solely on account of buy-in from society’s participants. Once one side disengages, you no longer reside in a society based on laws. You live in a society based on power and armed force. I am begging folks to accept this so we can get moving.”
Randos
The soccer guys gave him a trophy of a bunch of hands touching the ball because Trump doesn’t play by the rules.
Isn’t that how George Costanza kept his job? Just keep showing up?
“Oh yeah, what’s the judge going to do, clarify that I specifically must be removed?”
So she is not a government employee and needs to have a contract with the government to receive compensation. She has been paid illegally. And her orders/directions to government employees have been and are only suggestions by a non-employee.
What would be the point of her remaining? If every defendant could just get their case dismissed?
It might be really funny to watch courts give her the legal equivalent of the silent treatment. “Weird, nobody signed this brief. Also I only heard a faint buzzing sound instead of an opening statement for some reason.”
Southpaw (Lawyer): “If your appointment is invalid, you never had the job in the first place.”
Akira @88:
What? Am I supposed to feel sympathy for the leader of the most evil organization in human history just because some capitalist parasite criticizes his performative “altruism?”
I choose to deplore the history of bad deeds done by (or allowed to continue) by the Catholic church, while simultaneously being appalled by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel’s “anti-Christ” nonsense.
It’s another bleak week in the courts, which is a distressingly common thing right now. How do you feel about religious fanatics getting to lie about abortion because Jesus says it’s cool? [That’s good way to put it. Accurate.] Are you down with giving the manifestly incompetent Jeanine Pirro multiple ways to indict people, which is necessary since she sucks at it?
We do have one bright spot here: Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl—remember those conspiracy theorists?—are actually facing some consequences for their actions. […]
If you love Jesus, you can lie about the abortion pill
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that New York cannot enforce a law barring the dissemination of misinformation about the abortion pill, because freeze peach.
Anti-abortion types have touted that the abortion pill can be “reversed,” which is both wrong and dangerous. In 2019, researchers from the University of California, Davis, looked into whether progesterone could stop a medication abortion after someone has taken the first pill in the two-pill process. Out of 12 women in the study, three suffered vaginal bleeding so severe that they needed to be rushed by ambulance to a hospital. And the study authors then determined it was too dangerous to proceed, so they ended it.
But plaintiffs in the case really want to be able to tell people this is a safe and real thing women can do. [They want a license to lie … when the result may be women dying.]
Let’s face it: If this case were about anything other than abortion and conservative Christians hating it, this would be a slam dunk for New York. […]
But these plaintiffs are compelled to share lies about a supposed abortion-pill reversal process because their religion says so, and that means it’s free speech, and they get to keep doing it.
Maybe Pam Bondi will like this judge now
Remember how poor U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro kept getting no-billed by federal grand juries when she tried to bring inflated criminal charges against people scooped up in President Donald Trump’s so-called crime crackdown?
Well, she came up with a neat little trick to solve this: Go to a local grand jury instead, get an indictment, then walk that back over to federal court.
It’s unhinged, but Judge James Boasberg just signed off on it, saying that the interplay of federal and D.C. laws is complex and therefore Pirro gets to have even more bites at the apple with her wildly overcharged cases.
Funny thing is, Boasberg has been the subject of relentless attacks from Attorney General Pam Bondi. She filed an absurd ethics complaint merely because he dared to tell the administration to turn around the planes filled with detainees heading for Venezuela, and then had the gall to tell the Justice Department it can’t defy court orders. […]
Law school tuition is too damn high and it’s … the ABA’s fault?
Yes, that’s the logic of the Federal Trade Commission, but this isn’t really about tuition. It’s about the administration’s desire to replicate the recent Texas plan to cut the American Bar Association out of the law-school approval and accreditation process and instead let the state Supreme Court decide which Texas law school graduates will get admitted to the bar.
While this might sound benign, it’s scuzzy as hell. ABA accreditation provides both standardization and standards, meaning that it addresses both what law schools need to cover and at what level of quality and service. Texas’s proposal would result in nothing but fly-by-night, unaccredited law schools lobbying Texas justices to sign off on their sketchy schools.
The other problem here is that if Texas decides that students from unaccredited schools can sit for the Texas bar, those students likely could not sit for the bar in other states, which would require graduation from an ABA-accredited school. [!]
This is all part of the administration’s attack on accreditors generally, because god forbid you impose any rigor or quality on higher education. How is Trump going to have Trump University 2.0 if these stupid accreditors hang about? [LOL]
The FTC’s logic here is that since the ABA has a “monopoly” on accreditation, it has led to a shortage of lawyers, to which: lol.
The nation has over 1.3 million practicing lawyers, and the lawyer bubble has persisted for years, with law school graduates sometimes having double the unemployment rate of non-lawyers. […]
Blast from the past: Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl
Conspiracy theorists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl were everywhere in the first Trump administration, pulling the absolute weirdest stunts.
Remember when they held a press conference to falsely announce that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had hired a 24-year-old boy toy for sex, only for said boy toy to be unable to stop laughing behind the podium? Or when Wohl went to Minneapolis to “investigate” Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and declared the city a hellhole where he received death threats, except the threats he reported to police appeared to have been made … by him from an alt account? [They lie all the time, but never get better at lying. In this case, practice does not improve their skill.]
Burkman and Wohl also committed crimes, such as using robocalls designed to suppress Black voters during the 2020 election. The robocalls had misinformation about voting by mail, particularly that it put people in a public database that would allow police to track them down and allow credit card companies to find them and collect debts.
In a rarity for conservative activists, however, these two fucked around and found out and were prosecuted or sued in multiple jurisdictions. And they just agreed to a no-contest plea in Michigan, which netted them a year of probation, which is a lot better than New York, where they are on the hook for over $1 million in fines. [State level court decisions, so I don’t think Trump can pardon them.]
Ed Martin seemingly can’t stop deleting government records
Oh, Ed Martin. We just can’t quit you because you just can’t quit being an unethical jackass. It seems that the pardon attorney/director of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group/special attorney […] may have a problem with concealing and destroying records.
However, since the DOJ won’t voluntarily provide records or information via Freedom of Information Act requests, watchdog organization American Oversight sued the DOJ to try to unlock these records or to confirm that Ed’s a little heavy with the delete button.
Martin has been here before. When he worked for Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, his alleged deletion habits ultimately forced the state to pay $500,000 to a lawyer who was allegedly fired after raising an issue about the office.
Martin is one of the key people helping Trump exact retribution from people he perceived as having wronged him. Of course, he’s not going to keep a paper trail—come on.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki weighed in Thursday on the discourse around Pentagon media access, calling out the new “press corps” for consisting of mostly conservative influencers.
“What is so interesting right now in Washington is what is happening with the Pentagon press corps. It actually surprised me what they did,” Psaki, now a host on MS NOW, told late-night comedian Stephen Colbert in an appearance on “The Late Show.”
“I could not get over — they had ‘the press corps,’ I’m going to put them in quotes because it includes Laura Loomer and James O’Keefe and this crew is not a real press corps.” she continued later, using air quotes. “So, this week has been quite a week, as you outlined in your monologue […] anyone watching might have questions for Pete Hegseth.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has accused the media of trying to sabotage President Trump’s agenda, revised press access rules in October. To obtain or renew a Pentagon pass, journalists are now required to sign a contract acknowledging that information from the Defense Department needs to be “approved for public release” by an official before it is reported out — “even if it is considered unclassified.” [!]
Most of the nation’s top news organizations, including Fox News and Newsmax as Psaki pointed out, declined to sign onto the new policy and have since lost access to the building.
The administration instead credentialed a number of Trump-friendly figures, including many who have never covered defense or a press briefing in person before.
Earlier this week, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson held a rare briefing as the Defense Department and Hegseth face scrutiny over rising tensions with Venezuela and strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Among those asking questions were Loomer, O’Keefe and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). [I snipped examples.]
Psaki suggested their performance was lackluster and defended legacy media.
“They had a press briefing with them, where they could ask anything they wanted, and they made no news, no news at all, which is pretty remarkable,” she said late Thursday.
“But I will say, what’s encouraging to me at least, is all of the outlets that did not sign the pledge, that no longer have desks in the Pentagon, they have been making tons of news, they have been reporting,” Psaki added.
The New York Times announced Thursday it is suing the Defense Department for infringing on reporters’ rights with the new rules. The lawsuit argues that the updated press policy violates journalists’ First and Fifth Amendment rights and “will deprive the public of vital information about the United States military and its leadership.”
Trump, who has ramped up his attacks on the media since returning to the White House, has defended Hegseth’s decision to implement the new restrictions.
“I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” the president told reporters at the White House in October. “The press is very dishonest.” [What a load of propaganda and bullshit.]
[…]
Lordy, Trump has released a “national security strategy” manifesto and it is no mere white supremacist dog whistle, somebody freebased the Daily Stormer, pulled an [all-nighter] with Vlad Putin, and Stephen Miller did the writeup […]
It’s a brain-twizzler of doublespeak and gaslighting, the declaration of a rogue state gone mad. It describes the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” which is “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” And then some:
Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as “Enlist and Expand.” We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea. We will expand by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.
Then it goes on to say this is not just the goal for the Western Hemisphere, ALL the hemispheres! North, South, East, West … wherever there be oil, gas, or minerals, the sun shall never set on Trump’s supply-chain empire.
Honk a bongload before you try to analyze this:
As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.
Donny don’t wanna dominate, but dominating the dominators for domination-thwarting is Don’s dominion!
In the Indo-Pacific, says the manifestato, the US will intervene however is needed to maintain “freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials.”
[…] China sure has Trump by the nut-hairs with those rare earth minerals he needs for companies to deliver all of this technology he’s promising, and to keep the AI bubble floating. A tangle he got his very own self into!
But we recognize you have a choice in economic and security partners.
It’s sure not a high bar for any other country to be a more reliable anything-partner now, with this unstable felon grifter and chicken-outer at the helm. Consider polite trading with stable Canada, eh? They are reducing their defense spending with the US and have been getting closer to Europe, joining the European Defense Pact and considering swapping out a planned purchase of F-35 fighter jets for Swedish Saabs. And as to China, Canada seeks to double its non-US exports, so they’re now closer than ever. China has replaced the US as Germany’s top trading partner too! Everybody is hanging out without us.
In the Middle East, continues Trump’s decree, there also, the doctrine shall be to get involved with anything that might stand in the way of oil and gas supplies!
And Europe. This asshole has the fucking gall to mansplain Western European identity to Western Europe. The place literally being bombed and overrun right now by Democracy-hating Russian hordes. Trump, or whoever wrote this, wants to “support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
Civilizational self-confidence! It is Europe that had the confidence to say FUCK YOU NO to the Trump/Witkoff/Kushner surrender-to-Russia plan. No to Prump-Tootin demanding Ukraine not join NATO, or tell NATO what to do with its forces. European countries have said NO, we’re not going to share intelligence with the US any more, and especially not if it makes us complicit in murder, and NO, we’re not going to abandon our promises to Ukraine because Trump weasels. Only one person here has a “confidence problem,” and a civility problem, the felon who signed off on this document in giant Sharpie scrawl.
Defense Department officials have said that while the US is still shipping weapons to Ukraine now, just in time for Christmas […] starting in 2027 it will no longer remain NATO’s “primary conventional defense provider,” whatever that exactly means. But sure, it’s Europe and NATO’s fault for not having the confidence that Trump would not do what he just done did […]
And how the fuck is the US entitled to any kind of fucking position to be telling NATO or Europe what to do about any got damn thing?
Yet Trump (or whatever chud wrote this) (Stephen Miller) instructs Europe that the very most important threat it faces right now is the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” With the immigrants and the NATO etc., though, not Russian invasion, of course.
Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness. But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.
Europe, not known for its creativity or industriousness in, art, music, literature, theater, film, etc. [nice bit of understated humor]
[…] Won’t somebody think about the Russian propaganda bots and the poor neo-Nazis who cannot wave swastika flags on the street and sieg heil rund um die Straßen? […]
It’s not about who is European by birth or culture, but who looks the part when MAGA chuds go on package vacations there. By this paper-bag test, bad news, Kash Patel, you are not American. You either, Usha Vance. […]
[…] We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.
Have the confidence to buy our goddamn hormone-pumped beef […]
This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.
Only one side is making risk, pal. And the world has been watching the US “diplomatic engagement” playing out the past 11 months (and decade) already. After Trump tried to serve Putin breaded halibut in mayonnaise instead of chunks of Ukraine on a platter in Alaska, he has been angrier than ever, bombing Ukraine a record-breaking amount, buzzing into NATO airspace and testing the delivery systems in Russia’s nuke triad. […]
Now the Irish are investigating a group of drones that appeared in Dublin Bay in the flight path of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s plane on Monday night as he arrived for a state visit. And French military have confirmed soldiers opened fire on five suspected drones spotted over a nuclear submarine base there on Thursday night. Belgium and Denmark have had similar incursions. [Some new drone-spotting reports there.]
Anyway, hey guys, is it CIVILIZATION to invade another country? Murder 86 boaters in international waters and bomb the survivors while they cling to burning wreckage and call for help? How about gassing babies and disappearing their parents? To bomb hospitals and playgrounds with drones? Are these Western civilization-y things? Or are they more Russia or Nazi things?
How about bribery? Now that USAID is gone, the manifesto makes clear, if a foreign country wants help, they have to play by The Don’s rules, and put some sugar in America’s bowl. We have already seen how that’s been working out with El Salvador, Eswatini and such.
LOL this paragraph:
Competence and Merit – American prosperity and security depend on the development and promotion of competence. Competence and merit are among our greatest civilizational advantages: where the best Americans are hired, promoted, and honored, innovation and prosperity follow. Should competence be destroyed or systematically discouraged, complex systems that we take for granted—from infrastructure to national security to education and research—will cease to function.
[HAHAHAHAHA!]
That explains the Fox News hosts, a guy with a brain worm, Big Balls, failed beauty-queen lawyers, etc. […]
There is only one entity destroying all that is good about Western Civilization, and he’s projecting harder than Leni Riefenstahl.
Actual Western European culture is health care so you don’t go into bankruptcy over an infected tooth. Edible school lunches and drinkable school water. Sex education for everyone, and abortion and gay marriage. No death penalty. Freedom of and from religion. The birthplace of liberal arts colleges! Less air pollution, fewer pesticides, more locally sourced food. Mandated 14 weeks of maternity leave. Equal protection before the law. Respect for international borders. Honoring treaties and friendship. Coalition governments. Walkable cities. Erasmus grants. Hazelnut gelato. Spicy little mustards. A late-night kebab stand in every village. Due process. The International Criminal Court!
“Winter is coming. Not all weather offices are ready.”
“As the cold season looms, National Weather Service offices in more than half a dozen states, from Maine to Wyoming, are experiencing vacancies.”
As snow blankets a broadening swath of the United States and meteorological winter sets in, the National Weather Service remains constrained by a severe staffing shortage, despite a Trump administration commitment to refill hundreds of jobs cut by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service.
The administration gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the Weather Service, permission to post 450 critical roles — seeming to acknowledge that DOGE had gone too far in a push for cuts that resulted in some 550 firings, resignations and early retirements. Back in June, National Weather Service Director Ken Graham called the ability to rehire “fantastic news” that would enable “timely and accurate forecasts and warnings.”
But months later, offices in more than half a dozen states, from Maine to Wyoming, have vacancies, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization (NWSEO), citing the latest figures tracked by the group. The unfilled roles include meteorologists, technical experts and scientists who work to deliver accurate forecasts and warnings to communities around-the-clock.
In some locations, nearly half of the meteorologist roles were left vacant.
[…] many of these specialized and demanding jobs have historically taken up to a year to hire for […] Any shortages could put communities at risk, weather experts said.
[…] Federal hiring stalled during the 43-day government shutdown. The shortages are widespread across some of the coldest, snowiest parts of the country.
[…] Rapid City, South Dakota, the gateway to Mount Rushmore, has seven meteorologists on staff, and was short six by the last count. There were several other vacancies, including a science and operations officer — the top research position — and a senior service hydrologist, the lead on flood forecasting. Rapid City’s vacancy rate under Biden was 17 percent; under Trump it rose to 42 percent.
[…] the government shutdown might have delayed the required background checks. Even if people are hired, […] they might have the qualifications but not the institutional knowledge of those who were fired or chose to resign early this year.
[…] At an East Coast office, the first snowstorm arrived last week. The employee said his office navigated the snowfall, but that was largely because the storm proved relatively uneventful. Even then, people had to work overtime.
[…] no one has been able to give the office’s typical presentations to local emergency management services, explaining how to best respond to weather in coordination with the Weather Service. […]
“If unlawful force is being used by any law enforcement officer against any person in this city and one of our officers is there, absolutely, I expect them to intervene, or they’ll be fired,” O’Hara said […] officers may physically intervene in the case of unlawful force, they would stop short of arresting ICE agents.
[…]
Minneapolis is the latest community in the crosshairs of Trump’s mass deportation plan. […] O’Hara has directed his officers to increase their presence at Somali community centers. […] “This is where George Floyd died because of the actions of Minneapolis Police […] Our officers here have a duty to intervene,” he added, saying that duty extends “not just from law enforcement, from our own agency.”
[…]
[A civilian observer] standing guard over the mall acknowledged they’d seen police in the area as well as federal agents, but they were skeptical that MPD would intervene […] “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Villerius said. “I hope that he’s sincere and actually wants the police to be confrontational with ICE,”
Vampires in Anime
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=i_49ERlMo28
“Actually, I Am” seens genuinely fun. And “Karin” is a reverse vampire, injecting blood into people and improving their health. Good luck finding US media investing into concepts this odd.
Alucard in “Hellsing Ultimate” is as badass as Deadpool.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Jelling Stone: 3D scans reveal power of a Viking queen – BBC News”
Britain: Churches fight back against racist hate.
“Tommy Robinson’s Christian Hypocrisy Just Got EXPOSED”
Tommy Robinson is not even his true name.
birgerjohanssonsays
Apologies for fucking up the tread again. Not wearing glasses.
.
This is a Ukrainan blog, but still interesting. Tanks are not obsolete, if used right.
The president has disparaged other women in the White House press corps in the past few weeks, calling them “piggy,” “stupid” and “ugly.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday attacked another female White House journalist, this time disparaging CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as “stupid and nasty” after she questioned him about the soaring price tag of his White House ballroom renovation.
“Caitlin Collin’s of Fake News CNN,” he wrote on Truth Social — misspelling the CNN correspondent’s name — “always Stupid and Nasty, asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago. I said because it is going to be double the size, and the quality of finishes and interiors has been brought to the highest level.”
Trump has long resorted to personal barbs when confronted by women, and has been quick to insult their appearance or intelligence, sometimes in vulgar terms as he did with his 2016 Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.
His screed on Saturday follows multiple recent instances in which he mocked women reporters who asked him questions or wrote stories he did not like.
Last month, when Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey pressed him on his relationship with the late disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump snapped at her, saying, “Quiet, piggy” — an insult he reportedly has used on other women in the past.
Days later, during a press conference with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump chastised ABC News’ Mary Bruce, who asked about slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khasshoggi, calling her a “terrible person” and “fake news.”
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said. “It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions.”
Last week, upset about a New York Times article on his signs of aging, Trump, 79, slammed Katie Rogers, who co-authored the story, as “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”
And in the wake of the National Guard shooting, when CBS News reporter Nancy Cordes pushed back on his false claim that the Biden administration did not vet Afghan nationals who entered the country, Trump grew irate.
“Are you stupid?” he said. “Are you a stupid person?”
“Inflation, in fact, has not decreased under Trump, and it’s certainly not stopped in its tracks,” the “Morning Joe” economic analyst said Friday.
Related video at the link. The video is the full presentation by Rattner.
“Morning Joe” economic analyst Steve Rattner broke out his charts on Friday to fact-check Donald Trump’s false claims about the economy, which he said have “no basis in reality.”
During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said he had inherited the “worst inflation in history” but had since stopped it “in its tracks.”
As Rattner showed, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump did not inherit the worst economy in history. Instead, the U.S. experienced its worst inflation in the 1970s, during the oil embargo.
As to the president’s claim that his administration has stopped inflation “in its tracks,” the former Treasury official said the data showed otherwise. When Trump took office, inflation was about 3%. While inflation did decrease early in the administration, Rattner said it then “went right back up.”
“Inflation, in fact, has not decreased under Trump, and it’s certainly not stopped in its tracks,” he added.
The “Morning Joe” economic analyst moved on to the president’s false claims about affordability. “You heard him say that it’s a ‘con job’ by the Democrats,” he said. “That is certainly contrary to what everybody thinks, including most Republicans.”
Rattner highlighted that wage growth among lower-income Americans has decreased since Trump took office. “So the idea that when you see people lose this much purchasing power over this long a period of time, that we don’t have an affordability crisis is completely fictitious,” he said.
The former Treasury official then took Trump to task over his claim at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting that his administration had reduced drug prices by as much as 900%.
“Most of us took sixth-grade and seventh-grade math. He says we’re going to reduce drug prices by these huge numbers. Let’s just do basic math here: If you have a $60 drug and you get a 50% price cut in that drug, it costs $30. If you have a $60 drug, and they cut the price by 100%, it’s free, right?” Rattner explained. [social media post]
“When those go down by 200%, what happens? They give you the drug for free? They pay you $60 to take the drug?” Rattner asked. “Obviously, the idea that drug prices can go down by these amounts is ridiculous. The price of something simply cannot go down by more than 100%.”
[…] On Saturday morning, Podcast host and stockbroker Peter Schiff — host of The Peter Schiff Show — pointed out the obvious. He told Griff Jenkins, host of Fox and Friends Weekend, that Trump’s economic policies will make life “more unaffordable” than under former President Joe Biden.
Trump […] did not miss Schiff’s prediction of ‘worse-than-sleepy-Joe’ economic carnage. He was not happy. […]
Jenkins started the segment by saying that Trump was about to set off on a “coast-to-coast tour on his economic agenda, an effort to sell his affordability message ahead of the 2026 midterms.” He then introduced Schiff. And said:
He’s [Trump] taking Trumanomics on the road. And it comes as we’re learning from Axios reporting that minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are going all in on their affordability message. What’s your take?
Schiff wasted no time getting to the point.
Well, you know, unfortunately, Trump economics has too much in common with Bidenomics.
You know, the biggest problem is the runaway government spending that is continuing under this administration.
So we’re gonna have bigger deficits that the Fed is now gonna be funding with rate cuts. And I think a return to quantitative easing. And all that means is that life is gonna get a lot more unaffordable under Trump than it was under Biden.
Jenkins tried a lifeline.
But President Trump will be honing in on this tour about his fact that gas prices are lower, the billions of dollars of investment in energy and AI sectors, just a litany of things that he will do. Will Americans — will it resound with Americans?
Schiff swatted the gas price benchmark away while pointing out that one piece of good news doesn’t make for a happy story.
Yeah, well, I mean, gas prices may be a little lower for now. I don’t think they’re gonna stay this low much longer.
But most other prices are higher. I mean, yes, they’re not rising at nine percent a year yet, but they’re continuing to rise. And so if people couldn’t afford things before Trump was elected, those things are more expensive now. And I think that the inflation rate is going to accelerate, you know, as Trump’s term progresses, and you know, the policies continue to impact prices.
Jenkins again tries to find a silver lining to Trump’s storm clouds, saying that “wages are growing.” However, he soon steps on his own optimism by pointing out that among Gen Z, 57% believe “that things are headed in the wrong direction for them, which is up from 6% last year.” (I think he meant to say which is up 6% last year — no from)
The host and his guest then have a back-and-forth on the prospects of home buying for the young. Schiff blames high home prices on the government. He says the solution is therefore for the government to get out of the way. Which he claims will lead to “a reduction of 20%, 30% or more.” Although, in the next breath, he adds
“That would create another financial crisis because now you’d have a lot of people defaulting on their mortgages because they no longer had home equity.”
Call me confused. Does Schiff want lower house prices or not?
Regardless, as mentioned above, Trump took time out of his 147-hour workweek to post his take on Schiff’s economic theories on Truth Social. As always, he based his rebuttal on ad hominem.
Why would Fox and Friends Weekend (of all things?) put on a “Stockbroker” named Peter Schiff, a Trump hating loser who has already proven to be wrong. Either the show made a mistake, or it is heading in a different direction.
Trump then lied.
He thinks prices are going up when, in fact, they are coming substantially down. Gasoline hit $1.99 a gallon yesterday, in certain states, and is down BIG since Biden. Other prices are almost all down. Biden caused the AFFORDABILITY CRISIS, I’M FIXING IT, along with everything else! Much of it, like the Border, is already fixed.
[Saying it louder, putting it in all caps, or repeating it doesn’t make it true.]
Facts: Oklahoma has the cheapest gas prices at $2.393 a gallon for regular. The prices for almost everything else have gone up. So to say “I’M FIXING IT” is what advertisers call ‘puffery.’ And clear thinkers call ‘wishful thinking’ or ‘bullshit,’ depending on their delicacy.
[Trump] finished with another splash of vitriol.
Check out the “booker” who put this jerk on!
This invective may be a crowd-pleaser for the MAGAs. But many Americans would settle for making America civil again while they wait for a President who is up to the job.
sensationalized news headlines circulating about the Chernobyl containment structure. […] The way this is being reported is extremely irresponsible.
There is a hole in the containment structure, about 10 feet across. No other damage is reported. That hole can allow some of the dusty radioactive material to escape.
That is what “can no longer do its job of containment” means. Rain can get in through the hole and degrade materials inside. But remember, it’s a ten foot hole in a structure that’s larger than a football field. So it’s not good, but most of the containment is still effective. I would like to see numbers in these reports, but reporters are allergic to them.
Rando 1: “Translation: It’s not going to nuclear explode like it does when it catches fire in Sim City 4.”
Rando 2: “I vote for patching the hole and not panicking. Also, for not having explosive drones hit the thing.”
Cheryl Rofer: “The danger of falls [off the roof] will be the greatest hazard.”
KGsays
birgerjohansson@76,
Richard Coles isn’t a bishop, just an ex-vicar. His elder brother is the well-known rapist Andy Coles; information in Richard’s autobiography led inadvertently to Andy being outed as one of the UK “spycops”: police officers who infiltrated non-violent protest groups and in many cases including his, had sexual relationships with female members of the group they infiltrated without disclosing their identities, then later vanished from their partner’s lives.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Cheryl Rofer: “The story, over and over again, of metals companies.”
the company contends that because it is no longer producing magnesium, it cannot afford to pay for further environmental cleanup it is responsible for nor should it have to until operations resume. […] [The EPA said] it will take “well over” $100 million to clean up the plant’s decades of environmental problems. And a long list of creditors—from contractors and customers, to local, state and federal governments—claim they have stacks of unpaid bills. […] Whether the company’s remaining resources will pay off its many creditors, or whether the court prioritize the environment remains unknown.
[…]
“Given the plethora of environmental problems with the land which [US Magnesium] has heavily polluted over the past many years,” the division wrote in its filing, “it is highly unlikely any potential buyer would purchase its business other than” […] the parent company, Renco.
[…]
“The Debtor has gone through this charade previously,” attorneys for the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands wrote in their objection, “when it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy 24 years ago in the Southern District of New York, and used this same play-book: file bankruptcy as far away as possible from its Utah operations (or now, former operations), cleanse the company’s assets through a Bankruptcy … [sell] to its owner, and thus escape payment of its debts.”
[…]
Liquidating the company could mean workers’ pensions go unpaid, the nation permanently loses its largest producer of a vital mineral and the state and EPA are stuck figuring out how to pay for the mess.
“Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be ‘running’ for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas (a State where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded!), as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison – And probably still do!” Trump wrote. “Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”
Trump was apparently under the impression that Cuellar would change party. It isn’t clear why Trump expected this. It’s likely he talked to somebody but it’s also possible he just expected that Cuellar would do him a favor after he did a favor for Cuellar. Trump is one of those oblivious people, he fills the ranks around himself with self serving people like himself and yet is constantly surprised when they prove to be as untrustworthy as he is.
Trump, according to the report, personally likes Noem. But the report also states top White House officials have been “frustrated” with her leadership — specifically her employment of chief advisor Corey Lewandowski, who has been characterized with having an “outsized role” at DHS. (Lewandowski denied the report in a statement to the Bulwark, writing “none of that is true.”)
While the president has stood by Hegseth in public, he has shown less enthusiasm behind closed doors, The Atlantic reported Friday, citing several unnamed sources familiar with White House discussions.
“[Trump] is starting to tire of the scandals surrounding Hegseth and does not push back when others suggest Hegseth is not up for the job, an outside adviser to the White House and a former senior administration official told us,” The Atlantic reported.
Rumors of this sort have been floating around for most of Trump’s term in office. Most of the people on his cabinet shouldn’t have the job and were selected more for being yes men then anything. These rumors are more serious but I think they say more about infighting at the White House then Trump seriously considering replacing somebody. As long as they are willing to say “Yes sir” when Trump orders them to do things and appear loyal to Trump their jobs are fairly secure.
Still, there could be a major loser in the White House infighting or Trump may decide that somebody has to go. If that does become the case who gets fired is likely to depend on who last had a scandal that made the news more then history of problems or how serious they are.
Ukrainian forces continue to hold positions within Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad while Russian forces are complicating Ukrainian logistics in the area.
The Russians claim to have already captured these cities while Ukraine says they are still in heavy fighting. The ISW assessment is that the Russians are slowly winning but it’s a street by street battle situation.
Away from Pokrovsk the Ukrainian’s appear to have made some small advances. The fog of war is getting worse, as the grey zone created by drones where it’s dangerous for either force to be gets wider. Near the more active areas it’s getting harder to even determine where the lines are.
The Kremlin appears to be increasingly leaning on India to alleviate domestic labor shortages and is setting conditions for India to support drone production for Russia’s war effort. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov announced on December 5 that Russia may accept an “unlimited number” of migrant workers from India under the new bilateral labor mobility agreement signed on December 5 in New Delhi.
This is ugly but I suspect it won’t go well for India. These migrants are going to look for work but they are going to be treated badly, not paid and some will end up fighting for the Russian army.
Head of the Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, stated on December 5 that Russia is in discussions with India to localize production of Russian drones, such as Lancet loitering munitions, in India.
At this point both sides are talking about technology sharing but India doesn’t really have technology Russia wants. India has avoided selling arms or ammunition to Russia but with India starting up production of drones based on Russian designs the situation bears close monitoring.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 108
Than you for the correction.
His brother a rapist? Holy sh*t!
.
At least that is not genetic, so Richard should be OK.
(He is an old pal of the investigating journalist sitting next to him on the panel)
This time the rapist was never invited, unlike wossname that gross ‘comedian’ that got outed for SA a couple of years’ back.
.
And this is a reminder: Men do not notice the creeps, because – unlike Epstein – most creeps do not shed their camouflage in the company of men.
BTW the leaders of the Church of England have little to be proud of but at least the lower ranks occasionally show moral courage in opposing the likes of Farage.
birgerjohanssonsays
Addendum: If men doing SA pop up this frequently -just in connection with TV- it has awful implications for their frequency in the general population.
KGsays
Beyond awards, we saved millions and millions of lives. The fact that we could do that, so many different wars that were able to end in some cases right before they started, it was great to get them done. – Trump, quoted by DailyKos, quoted by Lynna, OM@68
Huh – that trophy should have been mine! I’ve ended well over a hundred wars before they started, indeed mostly before the countries concerned had any idea they had some sort of dispute! Most notably, perhaps, the vicious war between Andorra and Lesotho, which would certainly have led to billions of deaths if I hadn’t stepped in to remind them that they are both landlocked countries, and thousands of miles from each other.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 115
Your achievements pale beside mine. I prevented the time-travel war that killed 80% of the world’s population.
And this begs the question – does America have any credible national ideology left? Isolationism? Aggressive imperial predatory capitalism does no nonger work on the rest of the world, China has proven that.
Is USA going to spend a half-century like France or Britain, clinging on old memories? I doubt it can afford a bloated military as the economic competition from the rest of the world ramps up, but Dubya showed illusions of strength live on.
The New Safe Confinement Structure at Chernobyl is a double-layered metal structure outside of the sarcophagus that was built around the ruined reactor to confine the radioactive materials. […] In February, a Russian drone blew a hole about 10 feet across in both layers of the NSC. The IAEA recently sent a mission to Chernobyl to investigate the extent of the damage and the repairs needed.
[…]
The poor reporting seems to come from an attempt to use this [IAEA] Director-General’s statement […] for sensational value. To be fair, the IAEA wrote it so that was easy to do. I suspect that the phrasing has to do with IAEA formalities. The IAEA can be stodgy and not always easy to understand. […] The statement is also part of a campaign to get more money to do the repairs. […] damage to the structure will increase if the hole isn’t fixed as soon as possible.
birgerjohanssonsays
Trump Has Massive Meltdown as Texas Democrat DEFIES Party Switch
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MXxUkngbaOo
Hmm… If you induce more meltdowns, he will probably get more erratic. Short term, this means he will do more damage but he will also stumble over his own feet more often. Keep this up until the midterms and then you can contain his legislative agenda.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Shocking Number Of Young Republicans Admit They’re Racist” (according to survey by the conservative Manhattan Institute)
@117 birgerjohansson: Putin never had any ideology, this was one of his attractive features to begin with. As long as he was entirely practical and didn’t try to take some great view of history he could get along much better with neighbors. Even after Putin became a dictator he was able to build trade with other countries. As long as he was just trying to build up Russia’s industrial base and wealth other countries didn’t have a problem with him treating the Russians badly.
It wasn’t until he got this idea of recreating the Russian Empire and the unity of the Russian people did he become a military threat. This wasn’t an ideology he could spread any other way as everybody that wanted to hear it was already part of Russia.
birgerjohanssonsays
Annoyingly people at Youtube have started to recycling news items from a year ago or more with ‘bad news for Trump’ themes. This must be a clickbait thing.
JMsays
@126 birgerjohansson: I’ve been getting some click bait fake news also. Some channels using stolen art and AI voice overs to mimic Rachel Maddow pretty well. Take or fake some static shots from the Rachel Maddows show and use AI voice over to read a script and it looks like a clip from her show at first glance.
Two months into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration gave states an ultimatum: Cooperate with his team’s immigration crackdown or lose your federal homeland security funding.
Oregon and 19 other states including Illinois, New York and California fought back and won. A federal judge ruled in September that the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t attach such strings to its grants, which states rely on for counterterrorism and emergency planning. For Oregon, nearly $18 million was at stake. The money in the past has paid for everything from bomb detectors to a security analyst’s salary.
But after winning in court, Oregon officials logged in to a federal grant website to formally accept the money, only to find the button to do so was disabled. They thought it might be a system glitch until they talked to counterparts in other states. The button did not come back online. [Looks like the Trump administration ignoring court orders.]
Homeland Security officials signaled to the states that despite losing in court, they were likely to appeal. If states wanted the money now, they would have to sign a declaration promising to cooperate with immigration enforcement if they lost in the future. States argued this would violate the judge’s order, and they won in court again. [!!]
Finally in October, the department officially removed the immigration wording to which states had objected and that the judge had said wasn’t legal.
But the administration continued to dangle the money out of reach. This time, the department rolled out a whole new set of criteria that made it harder for all states — “sanctuary” or not, blue or red — to obtain any federal terror or emergency management funding at all. They required states to estimate their populations’ net of people who had been deported and they dramatically tightened the deadline for spending the money. [!]
[…] Meanwhile, a quieter battle has been playing out over money to fight the extremist threats that emergency management officials say actually exist in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.
Oregon auditors reported that data from a security think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts the state at No. 6 nationally for violent extremist attacks from 2011 to 2020. In more recent years, the FBI announced a set of attacks on electrical substations in Oregon and Washington they suspected to be the work of neo-Nazis, as well as a series of Portland area ballot-box fires that the agency linked to an extremist of unspecified ideology.
“Insurrection, conflict, violence, bombings, all those kinds of things — the dollars that we use absolutely are invested to help prevent, and help us prepare to respond to, those types of incidents,” said Mark Ferdig, who runs the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization in the Portland area, which is funded almost entirely by grants from the Department of Homeland Security.
But in social media posts and in press briefings, the White House indicated that Trump doesn’t trust Portland to use federal funding in ways that match the president’s priorities.
[I snipped blather and lies from Karoline Leavitt.]
[…] Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security and past president of the National Emergency Management Association, said states should not be compelled to align themselves with any federal administration’s politics when money for disaster victims and counterterrorism is on the line.
[…] The administration’s latest iteration of changes to homeland security grants has added obstacles that, this time around, threaten to make every state a casualty.
[…] While all states are affected now, sanctuary jurisdictions like Oregon remain the main force battling the administration in court. (Oregon’s sanctuary law, originated in the 1980s and enhanced in 2021, bars law enforcement officers from participating in immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant.)
Oregon estimates that without the federal money, two-thirds of its counties won’t be able to perform basic emergency management functions to prepare for and respond to disasters.
[…] Portland emergency managers started getting nervous about federal funding in early March, when they noticed that FEMA had temporarily turned off several of the computer systems used to pay grants to state and local governments. There was no warning.
[…] Weeks later, the administration made its first attempt to withhold emergency funds from sanctuary states, prompting the lawsuit from Oregon and 19 other states.
[…] State and local counterterror funding is being withheld “because it was perceived by this administration to be all directed against the right,” McCord [Mary McCord, a former acting assistant attorney general for national security under President Barack Obama] said. “It is a multifaceted strategy of trying to say, ‘There is no violence on the right. The violence is all coming from the left.’” [Not true]
“The figures don’t include arrests made by Border Patrol [!], which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities in recent months.”
More than a third of the roughly 220,000 people arrested by ICE officers in the first nine months of the Trump administration had no criminal histories, according to new data.
The data, which includes ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to Oct. 15, shows that nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records have been swept up in immigration operations that the president and his top officials have said would target murderers, rapists and gang members.
“It contradicts what the administration has been saying about people who are convicted criminals and that they are going after the worst of the worst,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
The figures provide the most revealing look to date into the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. They were shared by the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, which obtained them through a lawsuit brought against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The data is compiled by an internal ICE office that handles arrest, detention and deportation data. The administration stopped regularly posting detailed information on ICE arrests in January.
For arrestees with criminal histories, the data doesn’t distinguish between those with a history of minor offenses and those who have committed more serious crimes, like rape and murder […]
And the figures do not include arrests made by Border Patrol, which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina. Border Patrol sweeps are currently underway in New Orleans. [!]
Border Patrol and ICE are both under the Department of Homeland Security but they are two different agencies with two different missions. Border Patrol agents typically operate along the southern and northern borders, but recently hundreds have been sent into the interior of the United States to track down undocumented immigrants.
“That is the black box that we know nothing about,” Ruiz Soto said. “How many arrests is Border Patrol doing? How many of those are leading to removals and under what conditions?” […]
More at the link.
JMsays
Lei’s Real Talk: General Liu and The Hidden Trial Audio the PLA leaked
During the Tiananmen Square events the Chinese general who naturally would have been in command of suppressing the students refused to do it. The general, Xu Qinxain, was in charge of the military forces charged with guarding the capital and the leadership of the CCP. He was ordered to suppress the students but refused. He was arrested, tried and served a couple of years in prison before going into house arrest for the rest of his life. A leaked video of the secret military trial of Xu Qinxain has reached the internet. It ended up in the hands of one of the surviving students who now lives in the US.
The video itself is interesting but Lei is more concerned with why it was leaked now. It obviously plays into the hidden conflict between political figures and military figures for power in China.
Amnesty International released findings from its investigation into the Everglades Concentration Camp (Alligator Alcatraz), which was built by the Florida Division of Emergency Management. They found evidence of torture, among other human rights violations. [Screenshot of an excerpt]
More on the role of FDEM and their director Kevin Guthrie in facilitating these human rights violations here. [Disasterology Blog (Sep 1)]
Moscow regards Washington’s updated National Security Strategy as “consistent with our vision.”
Vladimir Putin’s press secretary on Sunday praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial new National Security Strategy as largely in line with Russia’s view of the world.
[“Controversial” is not a strong enough word. That “National Security Strategy” is a white supremacist propaganda document. It also reads like a racist/nazi-like rant written by Stephen Miller. As Sky Captain highlighted in comment 58, quoting a commentator: “The National Security strategy could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just published the 14 words instead because that’s what it amounts to.”]
[…] “The adjustments we are seeing, I would say, are largely consistent with our vision, and perhaps we can hope that this could be a modest guarantee that we will be able to constructively continue our joint work on finding a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, at the very least,” said Dmitriy Peskov per local media.
In an interview, Peskov said Trump’s administration differs fundamentally from previous U.S. governments and that the president is able to change the country’s foreign policy orientation because he is “strong”. [Russia fluffing up Trump’s ego.]
Trump’s strategic roadmap, released Dec. 4, announced no less than a realignment of the geopolitical order and echoed the themes of the racist “Great Replacement Theory” to claim that Europe faces ‘civilizational erasure’, including from migration.
The U.S., which has been an interventionist power globally since the end of the Second World War, is shifting its focus to the Western hemisphere, according to the document — which Peskov noted does not refer to Russia as an adversary, unlike previous iterations.
The document also casts doubt on whether some European nations are reliable long-term members of NATO. […]
The alliance — which Trump has publicly undermined on numerous occasions — has struggled for influence in U.S.-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The NSS document outlined Washington’s intention to focus on “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” [!]
More at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
JM @ 127
Thanks.
Motor history
“Volvo TP21 Sugga (“Sow”) — The Offroad Swedish Military Legend”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=fijoVzSz88k
More practical than the Jeep, with space to function as a staff car complete with radios. Annoying AI voice, otherwise OK.
birgerjohanssonsays
Bannon in trouble with MAGA As Gross Epstein Emails Surface
Yes, I really enjoy the series.
The first appearence of hair and fur is poorly understood, but this is when proto-mammals started to turn into something recognisably mammalian.
Btw this started a period when our ancestors were mostly small and short-lived, losing the genes for regeneration and repair other lineages have.
When the dinosaurs were gone, mammals had to re-evolve the genes needed for longer life spans.
Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based security system that’s supposed to protect against theft. Instead, it turned these Porsches into driveway ornaments.
The issue was first reported at the end of November, with owners reporting identical symptoms of their cars refusing to start or shutting down soon after ignition. Russia’s largest dealership group, Rolf, confirmed that the problem stems from a complete loss of satellite connectivity to the VTS. When it loses its connection, it interprets the outage as a potential theft attempt and automatically activates the engine immobilizer.
It’s funny when it happens to Russia but this will eventually happen by accident to some major company in the west and in a more global war this sort of stuff will be shut off intentionally.
“Siri famously petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. His ongoing work with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. matters.”
Exactly one year ago this week, when there was still some question as to whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would become the nation’s next health secretary, The New York Times published an unsettling report about one of the nominee’s associates. The Times, among a variety of other outlets, reported that RFK Jr. was choosing federal health officials for the incoming administration with the help of a lawyer named Aaron Siri.
For much of the public, that name probably seemed unfamiliar, but for those who follow anti-vaccine efforts, the news was immediately recognized as important: It was Siri, for example, who petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.
The Times’ report added, “Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.”
Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, was not pleased. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Kennedy ignored the advice. Indeed, after the longtime anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist took the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services, Siri’s name popped up quite a bit. In September, for example, after Susan Monarez was fired as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she testified before a Senate committee and spoke about RFK Jr. urging her to meet with Siri. A month later, the Times reported that Siri “has played a role in vetting candidates for departmental jobs.”
Last week, the problem went from bad to worse. NBC News reported:
An anti-vaccine lawyer who has regularly sued federal and state health agencies spoke Friday at a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel — an unheard-of departure for the committee, which for decades was a trusted source for vaccine recommendations.
After Siri’s lengthy anti-vaccine presentation before the CDC’s once-respected Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (better known as ACIP), MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny wrote online, “This panel is anti-vaccine theater. It’s a cruel joke.”
[…] The Washington Post reported that public health advocates were “shocked” to see the CDC giving Siri such a platform, adding, “The unusual scene of an attorney with no medical degree making a scientific presentation drew condemnation from health organizations and lawmakers.”
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former medical doctor who chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS, wrote online the day before Friday’s meeting, “Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”
Nevertheless, despite the circumstances, Siri’s side is winning: On Friday, ACIP, stocked with Kennedy loyalists, voted to stop recommending a life-saving hepatitis B vaccine to infants. [See comments 8, 24, 20, 60 and 78]
Cassidy described the regressive and radical step as a “mistake” — though as is too often the case, the powerful senator declined to respond with anything meaningful.
“Faustino Pablo Pablo was deported to Guatemala despite his urgent warnings to immigration officials that he faced serious danger in his home country.”
It happened again.
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to quickly seek the return of a man it deported to Guatemala in violation of an immigration court’s finding that he was likely to face torture there.
U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama scolded the administration for the “blatant lawlessness” of its decision to deport Faustino Pablo Pablo to Guatemala, despite the man’s urgent warnings to immigration officials that he faced serious danger in his home country.
Guaderrama, an El Paso, Texas-based Obama appointee, ordered the administration to return Pablo by Dec. 12 and to provide daily updates about its efforts in the meantime. The judge noted that the administration repeatedly acknowledged the “unlawful” and “wrongful” nature of the man’s deportation and had, in recent days, suggested it would seek to bring him back to the United States.
But despite a “tentatively scheduled” flight on Thursday, the judge said, Pablo was not returned to the country and appeared to remain in Guatemala.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said that should Pablo return, he’ll be redeported somewhere else
.
“This illegal alien from Guatemala has a final order of removal from an immigration judge issued in 2015. He received full due process. One thing is certain: he is not going to be able to remain in the U.S. We will deport him to another country,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement on Saturday.
“If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period,” she added.
Pablo’s situation is strikingly reminiscent of the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who the administration abruptly sent to El Salvador in March, despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order that he was likely to face persecution at the hands of a local gang. Abrego’s case drew national headlines after a judge ordered the administration to quickly facilitate his return — prompting fierce resistance from the White House and top Homeland Security officials, who denounced Abrego and excoriated judges that ruled against them.
The administration has acknowledged several other improper deportations, including a man sent to El Salvador despite a court-approved settlement agreement barring his deportation while his asylum claim was pending, a man who was sent to Mexico despite immigration officials’ acknowledgment that they had no record of a “credible fear” interview to determine whether he might face persecution, a man deported to El Salvador — where he remains incarcerated — despite a federal appeals court order barring his deportation, and a transgender woman deported to Mexico despite an immigration court order finding she was likely to be tortured there.
Pablo entered the United States illegally in 2012. Though an immigration judge ordered his removal, the judge also concluded that he would face torture “by, or with the consent or acquiescence of, the Guatemalan government.” After he was released from immigration detention in 2013, Pablo resided in California and reported regularly to immigration officials until Nov. 5, when he was abruptly detained at an immigration check-in. […]
On Nov. 17, Pablo was transferred to El Paso and told he was being prepared for deportation to Guatemala. He quickly sued to secure his release from detention but was nevertheless deported on Nov. 20, before Guaderrama could intervene.
“By the time the Court ordered [the administration] not to remove Pablo Pablo, he had arrived in Guatemala City,” Guaderrama wrote.
Trump pardoned sports executive Tim Leiweke — who was convicted by Trump’s own Justice Department — after a round of golf with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who was one of Leiweke’s lawyers, the WSJ reports.
[…] The Trump DOJ says it will be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Ed Martin to decide which people and which crimes are covered by Trump’s sweeping pardons related to the 2020 fake electors scheme and other Big Lie related offenses.
[…] Under a new Trump administration policy, Americans will no longer have free access to national parks on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day or Juneteenth, but will now have free access on June 14 — President Trump’s birthday, which coincides with Flag Day.
[…] Over the weekend, the 38th episode in the eruption sequence that began at Kilauea volcano last December was particularly vigorous, with a laterally-jetting lava fountain knocking a remote camera on the crater rim out of commission [video at the link]
Link. The link leads to a collection of disparate news reports.
Josh Marshall: “Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger”
Simply extraordinary stuff coming out this morning about the battle over what used to be Time Warner and now goes by the name Warner Bros Discovery (which includes CNN in addition to the more lucrative media stuff).
The company had agreed to be acquired by Netflix. So Paramount — now the vehicle of the Ellison family successor and a Trump state media entity-in-the-making — has launched a hostile takeover effort to swoop in and gobble up WBD for itself. In its public pitch, it has openly advertised to shareholders that it is the better acquirer because the Ellisons are tight with Trump, and the White House will never let a Netflix deal go through. Trump, in comments yesterday, as much as agreed.
Trump has refashioned antitrust oversight to be little more than a personal veto for the Trump family. Friends can do mergers; foes can’t. Indeed, the indifferent and uncommitted can’t either. You need to get right with the Trump family.
[…] Now we learn this: who else is part of the hostile takeover bid? None other than Jared Kushner. Yes, Jared […] And wait, there’s more! Just moments ago I saw that it’s not just Jared: the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis are also in on the deal. Backstopping the deal is a fund, RedBird Capital, seen by many as a stalking horse for China.
My main interest in all of this is narrow and specific: the fate of CNN. The outlook for the institution seems bleak over time. Netflix, as I understand it, doesn’t care about it and doesn’t want it. In economic terms it’s an afterthought, if not a liability. This is really about the streaming wars and to a secondary extent the content producing entities that feed it. But Paramount does want CNN because either neutering it on behalf of Trump (´à la CBS) or turning it into a Fox News competitor is part of its alliance with Trump, and more general commitment to oligarchic rule in the US. [Red alert for more propaganda coming soon.]
When I say CNN’s outlook looks bleak in general, it’s because no company looking to run it as a business has much interest in acquiring it. It’s not some huge profit center. And owning it is a major liability inasmuch as allowing it to run as anything like a legitimate news operation almost guarantees Trump harassment. The companies that have a strong interest in acquiring it are those who want to Fox-ify it as a favor to Trump and reap secondary benefits from doing that favor even if they lose money on CNN itself. So it’s hard to see how these incentives lead to anything good even if Paramount doesn’t manage to grab it in this round.
Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, according to a regulatory filing.
Why it matters: Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case.
– Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.
Zoom in: Affinity Partners was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
– Per the tender offer, each of those parties “have agreed to forgo any governance rights – including board representation – associated with their non-voting equity investments.”
– Each of them also was part of Paramount’s original WBD bid on Dec. 1, although fellow partner Tencent subsequently left the group.
The bottom line: WBD could be the second major takeover Kushner has been involved in this year, having previously played a key role in the take-private agreement for gaming giant Electronic Arts.
Despite Trump’s ceaseless claims of a “Golden Age,” […] even lifelong GOP voters are pointing fingers at a White House that seems completely checked out.
The bad news kicked off on Monday when outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that the U.S. economy lost 1.1 million jobs this year, the worst performance since the height of the pandemic in 2020. That’s a staggering 54% increase over the last year of President Joe Biden’s term, making Trump the worst president for job creation across the 21st century so far. Yikes!
Those job cuts are also accelerating into the holiday season, a period when most presidents enjoy a seasonal bump in employment. Small businesses slashed 120,000 jobs in November according to payroll processor ADP, with most of those layoffs concentrated among firms employing fewer than 50 people.
Meanwhile, the tech titans who make up the core of Trump’s donor base posted record profits this quarter. For Republicans who once positioned themselves as champions of small business, Main Street has now become an afterthought […]
[…] Trump also raised eyebrows this week when he made the incoherent claim that “affordability is a hoax” created by Democrats and that prices are actually falling across the country. In a year defined by increasingly out-there gibberish, Trump’s claim that Democrats invented the idea of higher prices deserves a place in the MAGA Hall of Shame.
[…] Apparently Democrats don’t need to say anything else, because a majority of Americans now blame Trump directly for failing to combat rising prices from the gas pump to the grocery store. A Politico poll published on Thursday found that nearly 40% of Trump voters now say the cost of living is “the worst I can ever remember it being.” Worse for Trump, over 20% of Republicans said he bears responsibility for the bad economy, not Democrats. […]
During Trump’s Cabinet meeting on Tuesday (where the president decided to take a little snooze), Vice President JD Vance pledged to fix the entire U.S. economy—sometime next year. That’s quite a vibe shift from Trump’s bold 2024 promises to fix the economy “on Day 1,” and yet another reminder that Trump, Vance, and their MAGA cronies are flying blind in the face of a growing economic crisis.
Working families across the country don’t have a year to wait for Republicans to fix the economy they broke.
A new Brookings Institution study found that American families are struggling to make ends meet in every part of the country, red states and blue states alike. 20% of middle-class wage earners can’t even afford to live in their own cities anymore due to rising rents and higher overall cost of living. Fully half of Latino and Hispanic families and 39% of Black families report being unable to afford basic necessities. […]
How many billionaires does it take to fill a lagoon with millions of gallons of industrial wastewater?
Apparently, just one.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has caused quite a stir in Florida’s Space Coast region after the Amazon founder’s aerospace company sought a permit to dispense up to 450,000 gallons of “industrial wastewater” daily into an onsite pond that drains into the Indian River Lagoon.
Locals and environmental activists have been showing up in protest to try and block the pending approval.
“They could be building reservoirs. They could be filtering and reusing water. They have thousands of acres in the wildlife refuge to create regional retention systems. They are brilliant engineers,” resident Stel Bailey told Florida Daily.
“So why are they being instructed to dump into the lagoon instead of being challenged to innovate?”
However, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection ultimately gets to decide on whether or not Bezos gets the green light.
With Lee Zeldin setting the tone as an Environmental Protection Agency chief who doesn’t believe greenhouse gases negatively impact the environment and who openly sought to “drive a dagger” through the heart of “climate change religion,” Bezos likely isn’t facing too much of an uphill battle. [sigh]
But the Indian River Lagoon stands to lose much more […] the lagoon is home to over 50 endangered species, including the Florida manatee.
[…] history shows that Blue Origin has been quick to cough up cash for fines rather than play safe with the environment.
According to documents obtained by Florida Today, Bezos’ company was fined three times for exceeding pH minimums and failing inspections.
Now that Donald Trump is back in office, though, Bezos can breathe a sigh of relief. After all, things got much easier for the space industry in August when the president signed an executive order that would “streamline” the permit approval process and “eliminate or expedite the [department’s] environmental reviews for, and other obstacles” to granting launches and reentry licenses or permits.
Looks like all of Bezos’ sucking up to Trump really paid off.
[…] Last month, Doug Burgum’s Department of the Interior did away with a blanket protection of any species on the endangered list or those threatened with extinction. Now, economic factors will have to be considered as well.
[…] But, don’t worry, Bezos is making up for the rocket runoff in other ways. He and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, are reportedly committing just over $102 million to various nonprofit organizations that combat homelessness throughout the 2026 calendar year.
In case you’re wondering, that amounts to roughly 0.025% of Bezos’ over $400 billion net worth.
Why is it always the most vociferous proselytizers of the Christian religion who seem to be the most thoroughly ignorant of what’s actually in that Bible …].
Last week, a Jewish active duty military member contacted the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) about just such a woefully ignorant commanding officer. This commander had forbidden any non-Christmas holiday decorations in his command, including any recognition of Hanukkah, as the Jewish military member wrote:
“Earlier this week our commander announced that only Christmas decorations were allowed in the headquarters facility where I work and under his command. He made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable ‘wokeness’ which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military. The next day there were four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.”
When the Jewish military member went to the commander and asked if Hanukkah decorations were permissible, this was the commander’s response (emphasis added):
“He seemed upset and said that since ‘it is well known that Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas’ Jewish personnel should be satisfied when they see a Christmas display that it also includes Hanukkah. Obviously that statement is just FUBAR!”
And then this Christmas-only commander proceeded to impart his knowledge of Hanukkah to his Jewish subordinate :
“He also stated that since the events of Hanukkah occurred several hundred years after the birth of Christ, this shows that Hanukkah is part of Christianity. Also incredibly insulting and just plain wrong. The Maccabean rebellion involving Hanukkah occurred more than one and a half centuries prior to the birth of Christ.”
Apparently, this holier-than-thou commander hasn’t read the part of his revered holy book where Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Dedication, a.k.a. Hanukkah. [!] Now, this isn’t some little minor story about Jesus going to the temple. This is when Jesus supposedly first asserted his divinity, uttering the words, “I and the Father are one,” followed by some of the Jews trying to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:22) — sort of a big deal event in the Jesus story that you’d think any Christian as devout as this Christmas-only commander would know about. But, no, he doesn’t have a clue. […]
Here’s the whole email from the Jewish military member who, like thousands of others across our hyper-Christianized MAGA military, is having to endure this level of ignorance and bigotry from their Christmas-crusading commanding officer:
From: (Active Duty Military Member/MRFF Client’s email address withheld)
Subject: Commander only allows Christmas decorations and calls Hanukkah the “Jewish Christmas”
Date: December 5, 2025 at 1:20:42 PM MST
To: Information Weinstein
This message is to Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF.
Thank you for helping us through the difficulties we are experiencing here at our U.S. military installation.
I am a Jewish active duty military member. My spouse is also in the active duty military. We are starting a family. My spouse is also Jewish.
Earlier this week our commander announced that only Christmas decorations were allowed in the headquarters facility where I work and under his command. He made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable “wokeness” which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military. The next day there were four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.
He says he has an “open door policy”. So I made an appointment to come see him and asked about whether we could also have Hanukkah displays up. He seemed upset and said that since “it is well known that Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas” Jewish personnel should be satisfied when they see a Christmas display that it also includes Hanukkah. Obviously that statement is just FUBAR!
He also stated that since the events of Hanukkah occurred several hundred years after the birth of Christ, this shows that Hanukkah is part of Christianity. Also incredibly insulting and just plain wrong. The Maccabean rebellion involving Hanukkah occurred more than one and a half centuries prior to the birth of Christ.
The commander made it very clear he wasn’t going to move on this. He has no interest or any clue in how his statements might be viewed as antisemitic or prejudicial.
My wife and I agonized over this as to what to do? My immediate supervisor (name and rank and title withheld) suggested that I contact you and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. We know that it would be fruitless to file an EEO or inspector general action. We significantly fear many different types of reprisal if we directly take this on. This is why we decided to reach out to Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF to at least let people know what has happened here. I’m sure our current Secretary of Defense would condone it. And perhaps even the President. But this is as much as we can do at least anonymously. As you promised to us please do not reveal any of our identification information at all. How is it “woke” to allow so many Christian nativity scenes all over our headquarters complex but to not allow even one little display, perhaps a single small menorah, for Hanukkah? Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF thank you for being the avenue through which we can express our shock and anger at our commander’s hateful decision.
(Active Duty Military Member/MRFF Client’s name, rank, AFSC/MOS/SFSC, unit, and installation all withheld)
A winter solstice celebration might be the most authentic thing they could do
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Charging the commanding officer with anti-semitism seems both correct and appropriate given that is the go-to complaint by this administration against Universities.
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I think for a lot of these people “Christian” is little more than tribalism.
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Look, they are finally getting to what they wanted to do all along; to impose their world view on everybody else, by violence if necessary. All of their talk about “free speech” and “freedom of religion” were a ruse.
“The rate will hit $15 per hour in dozens of localities, though the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour.”
The minimum wage for workers will increase in 19 states and 49 cities and counties next month, with the wage floor reaching $15 per hour in dozens of localities […]
Though the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not increased since 2009, many state and local governments continue to increase minimums through legislation or scheduled increases tied to inflation.
An annual report from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit advocating for workers’ rights, found that 88 jurisdictions will raise their minimum wages by the end of 2026.
In January, Nebraska’s minimum wage will increase from $13.50 to $15 per hour, while Rhode Island will see an increase from $15 to $16 per hour.
All workers in Denver will see the minimum wage increase from $18.81 to $19.29 in January and the minimum in Flagstaff, Arizona, will increase from $17.85 to $18.35 per hour.
The increases come as rising costs of housing, food and utilities are pinching more workers across the country […] Those costs are particularly challenging for lower-income workers, who are most likely to be affected by minimum wage changes.
[…] Inflation has significantly eroded the buying power of the federal minimum wage since 2009.
Advocates say raising the wage floor helps low-wage workers cover the rising cost of essentials and boosts the economy by putting more money into the pockets of people who are likely to spend it. But many employers, especially small businesses, argue that raising the minimum wage forces them to cut workers or raise prices.
In Rhode Island, lawmakers this year proposed legislation that would raise the minimum wage $1 per year, culminating with a $20 per hour minimum in 2030. But backlash from business groups and economic uncertainty led the Democratic sponsor to successfully push for a “more measured approach” that includes hikes for the next two years rather than five, reaching a $17 hourly minimum by 2027.
[…] The minimum wage remains stagnant at $7.25 in 20 states, according to the National Employment Law Project. Those are primarily conservative-led states including Alabama, Iowa, Texas and Wyoming.
Last year, Missouri voters approved a ballot measure ensuring paid sick leave and boosting the minimum wage to $15 per hour, with future increases tied to inflation.
But Republican lawmakers took aim at the changes in Jefferson City this year.
In a move Democrats called “absolute disdain” for workers, GOP lawmakers passed a bill repealing the paid sick leave provision and nixing the annual minimum wage increases tied to inflation. Missouri’s current $13.75 minimum wage will still rise to $15 next month but is no longer subject to future increases. […]
-Bust up monopolies
-Boost unions
-$20/hr fed minimum wage
-Ban Wall Street from buying homes
-Pass M4A [Medicare For All act]
-Universal childcare
-Get rid of Trump’s tariffs
-Enact UBI [Universal Basic Income]
-Tax the rich
These are crucial steps to making America affordable again. […]
[…] Vladimir Putin is praising Trump’s new “Security Strategy” of leaving Europe to deal with Russia all alone as perfectly aligning with his own vision. Imagine that. […]
The narrative of the murders somebody did on September 2 of two boat-bombing survivors in the Caribbean continues to shift! Now, according to members of the House and Senate armed services committee who saw video and talked to Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley behind closed doors last Thursday, the time between the first strikes on the boaters and the ones to finish off the survivors was 41 minutes. A very long and coincidentally timed dump for Secretary of War/Defense Pete *HIC* Hegseth to have taken! And the boat was not even headed in the direction of the US, but towards Suriname, in the opposite direction. So much for Hegseth knowing for sure it was Tren de Aragua coming to poison America.
[…] Bruna Ferreira, the Brazilian-born mother of Karoline Leavitt’s nephew and godchild recently deported for overstaying her visa as a child, disputes her public portrayal as a criminal and absentee mom. “I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister. I made a mistake there, in trusting. … Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
[…] The Wisconsin Supreme Court has taken up a case to decide if ICE can hold detainees in local jails.
JFC!! “Trump administration plans to end prison rape protections for trans and intersex people, memo says.” PRISM link
[…] The Department of Education still exists, and is now demanding hundreds of fired employees in the Office for Civil Rights return to work to help slog through a backlog of cases. […]
“The justices seem likely to allow the president to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a nine-decade old precedent that insulated some agencies from political influence by the executive.”
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to allow President Donald Trump to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a 90-year-old precedent that curbs executive power to dismiss the heads of agencies Congress set up to be independent.
A ruling in favor of Trump’s position has been widely expected by legal experts because the justices have been chipping away for years at the precedent, known as Humphrey’s Executor. Many of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have expressed support for the idea known as unitary executive theory, which holds that the Constitution gives the president broad authority to fire officials which Congress cannot limit.
During roughly two-and-a-half hours of arguments on Monday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. referred to Humphrey’s Executor as a “dried husk” and said the contemporary FTC bore little resemblance to the one that existed at the time of the high court’s 1935 ruling that insulated its commissioners from removal by the president without cause.
“It was addressing an agency that had little or no executive power,” Roberts said.
A decision to strike down Humphrey’s Executor and allow the president to fire Democrat Rebecca Slaughter could usher in one of the largest changes to the structure of the federal government in decades. It would hand Trump a major victory in his quest to exert tighter control over the federal bureaucracy and concentrate power in the White House.
The court’s three liberal justices expressed alarm at the idea of handing the president unfettered control over roughly two dozen agencies that regulate everything from product safety to elections to nuclear energy.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Solicitor General D. John Sauer “you are asking us to destroy the structure of government,” while Justice Elena Kagan added “you end up with massive, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”
“Independent agencies exist because Congress has deemed some issues should be handled by non-partisan experts,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “Having a president come in and fire all the doctors and scientists and replace them with loyalists is not in the interest of the American people.” […]
More at the link.
“Not in the interest of the American people.” True.
“Trump to announce $12 billion tariff relief for farmers”
President Donald Trump on Monday plans to announce a $12 billion relief assistance package for farmers […]
The group, a key segment of the president’s base, faced fallout from Trump’s tariff policies, which have heavily impacted the American agriculture sector.
[…] up to $11 billion of the aid will go to the Agriculture Department’s new Farmer Bridge Assistance program, created to support American crop farmers. The remaining $1 billion will go toward aid for commodities that the FBA does not cover. Congress would still need to approve the deal, but lawmakers — especially from agriculture-heavy states — have been clamoring for such a move.
Farmers nationwide have been grappling with low crop prices and challenging tariffs that have pushed many into bankruptcy. As The Washington Post reported in October, about 181 farmers filed for bankruptcy protection in the first half of the year, a 60 percent increase from the previous year and the highest six-month reading since 2020, according to U.S. court records.
Earlier this spring, Trump’s tariffs on China prompted the country to halt purchases of U.S. soybeans. Then, the president offered a $20 billion bailout to Argentina, whose soybean crop sales to China have replaced those from U.S. farmers. Later, Trump announced that the United States would buy beef from Argentina to bring down prices for U.S. consumers, opening a new rift between Trump and cattle ranchers.
Trump’s commitment to helping Argentina and its embattled president, Javier Milei — a political ally — appeared at odds with his “America First” policy platform, raising rare objections from some in his base, even as many say they still trust Trump to act in their best interest. […]
“The decision comes after an appeals court found her appointment to the post was unlawful.”
Former Donald Trump personal attorney Alina Habba said Monday she will no longer serve as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey in the wake of an appeals court ruling that found her appointment was unlawful.
In a statement posted on X, Habba wrote, “as a result of the Third Circuit’s ruling, and to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love, I have decided to step down in my role as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.”
[…] In a separate statement on X, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she was “saddened to accept Alina’s resignation.”
[…] Bondi said the 3d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling had made it “untenable for her to effectively run her office,” and that she was naming her a “senior advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.”
She said that DOJ is appealing the ruling that disqualified Habba from her post, and “we are confident it will be reversed.”
“Alina intends to return to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey if this occurs,” Bondi wrote.
Several immigrants ready to take their citizenship oaths at Boston’s Faneuil Hall this week were told they could not proceed because of their countries of origin.
The same situation is playing out across the country.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has instructed its employees to halt immigration pathways to people from 19 countries deemed high risk, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Somalia.
The naturalization ceremony is the final step to becoming a U.S. citizen, a process that takes years to complete.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu expressed outrage at the situation over the weekend.
“It’s despicable and it is deeply painful to see this happening across the country but to feel it at the cradle of liberty in Boston at Faneuil Hall a place that represents the foundation of this country and the very values that have made our nation who we are,” Wu said
Several people said they received cancellation notices through an online portal but the notices provided no further guidance.
USCIS has said this pause is part of an effort to strengthen its screening processes and keep criminals from entering the U.S. […]
Given the NFL’s enormous cultural footprint and its loyal following in the United States, common sense might suggest that political leaders would want to align themselves with the league, if for no other reason than to side with the American mainstream.
Donald Trump, however, can’t seem to help himself.
Five years ago, Politico highlighted the president’s “decadeslong grudge against the NFL” and the eagerness with which he has incorporated the league into his broader “culture war strategy.”
Five years later, he’s still at it. NBC News reported:
If the NFL wants to improve its relationship with the current administration, there’s a new way to do it.
Change the name of the sport.
President Trump, who got the royal treatment and then some from FIFA at Friday’s World Cup draw, suggested that the world isn’t big enough for two sports with the same name.
Shortly after FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, rewarded Trump with a hastily arranged and entirely unwarranted new “peace” prize, the American president took a moment to comment on the names commonly associated with the sport.
“But when you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it’s again ‘soccer’ in the United States,” the Republican said. “We seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football. But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called — I mean, this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.” [social media post]
For now, let’s put aside what the political world’s reaction might be if a Democratic president announced that he or she wanted to rename American football. […] Instead, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the familiarity of the circumstances.
It was just two months ago when Trump said he was unfamiliar with Bad Bunny, but he nevertheless considered the entertainer’s role as the Super Bowl halftime performer to be “absolutely ridiculous.”
The president quickly added that he dislikes the NFL’s kickoff rule, saying it looks “ridiculous” and “terrible.” (The rule was instituted last year, but Trump continues to complain about it with unnerving frequency.)
What’s more, earlier this summer, Trump used his social media platform to argue that the Washington Commanders should return to their previous, offensive name, adding, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back. … I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.” (This is a stadium that Trump wants to see named after himself.)
For her part, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also recently said, in reference to league officials, “They suck and we’ll win and God will bless us.” […]
A second flight carrying Iranians deported from the United States has left America, Iranian officials said, as Washington reportedly planned to send hundreds of prisoners back to the Islamic Republic.
The deportations come as tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S. after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites during Tehran’s 12-day war with Israel in June. Activists abroad also have expressed concern about deportees returning to Iran, whose theocracy has been cracking down on intellectuals and executing prisoners at a rate unseen in decades.
A report published Monday by the Mizan news agency, the official mouthpiece of the Iran’s judiciary, quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry official Mojtaba Shasti Karimi acknowledging the deportation of 55 Iranians.
“These individuals announced their willingness for return following continuation of anti-immigration and discriminative policy against foreign nationals particularly Iranians by the United States,” Karimi reportedly said.
[…] Based on the U.S. claims, “the Iranians were repatriated because of legal reasons and breach of immigration regulations,” Baghaei said.
[…] The deportations represent a collision of a top priority of President Donald Trump — targeting illegal immigration — against a decades-long practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In September, Iranian officials acknowledged as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under the Trump administration policy. That month, the first such flight arrived in Tehran.
In the lead up to and after the 1979 revolution, a large number of Iranians fled to the U.S. In the decades since, the U.S. had been sensitive in allowing those fleeing from Iran over religious, sexual or political persecution to seek residency. Iran has maintained only those facing criminal charges face prosecution, while others can travel freely. However, Tehran has detained Westerns and others with ties abroad in the past to be exchanged in prisoner swaps.
Iran has criticized Washington for hosting dissidents and others in the past. U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Iran of hiring hitmen to target dissidents as well in America.
when Jesus supposedly first asserted his divinity, uttering the words, “I and the Father are one,” followed by some of the Jews trying to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:22)
What Jesus is saying [is], “I am the authorized bearer of the divine name [YHWH]. I bear God’s authority. I speak on behalf of God. I can even furtively identify with God. And as a walking talking sentient divine image, to see me is to see God.” […] the [Mediterranean] world was steeped in this ontology that images manifest the presence of the deity
[An immigration judge] ordered the release of Bruna Ferreira, 33, from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center […] more than 1,500 miles from where Ferreira was arrested. Bond was set at $1,500, the lowest amount allowed under the law […] [Her attorney] said he didn’t know exactly when Ferreira would be released, as it depended on ICE receiving the judge’s order and her family paying the bond. Then she will return to Massachusetts and her case will be transferred back to Boston immigration court.
Lynna @ # 154 – I worry about the military personnel who (anonymously) protested against the order of their hyperxian C.O.
Though there may well be multiple commanding officers who “… made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable “wokeness” which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military.” and whose base “[t]he next day [had] four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.”, who had one (or more) Jewish troops ask him about a little menorah (with a wife, also a Jewish active-duty military person, “starting a family”), and who (the C.O.) has a really poor understanding of Middle Eastern history, it would seem likely that would provide enough information for said C.O. to identify MRFF’s complainant.
Or maybe there are lots of personnel who might fit that profile – and their C.O.s will punish all of them. MRFF really should work more discreetly.
I’m looking for book recommendations for modern cosmic horror. I’ve tried reading classics, but I don’t have the cultural background to get any thrills out of it. Now, it may be it’s just not the sub-genre for me. Before I give up on it, though, does anyone have any faves that aren’t based in terror that:
– the fall of Empire means the end of all order
– brown and/or emotionally expressive people can have power
– non-Christian religions are as legit as Christianity
– women have sexual agency
– queer people exist
– pleasure can go unpunished
– the universe is too big and complex to fit in the British Museum
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has, within the past week, scrubbed a large amount of climate change content from its official website […] Information has either been removed completely or “adjusted” to emphasize natural causes. […] previously extensive “indicators of climate change” pages have been scrubbed entirely.
[…]
To be clear: the new, near-exclusive emphasis on natural causes of climate change on the U.S. EPA’s website is now completely out of synch with all available evidence demonstrating overwhelming human influence on contemporary warming trends.
This is absolutely awful. This was one of the best resources for climate indicators data, and my go-to share for help answering public questions. Luckily I captured some of them on my new U.S. climate page a few months ago.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and senior European leaders presented a unified image Monday after President Donald Trump appeared to criticize the Ukrainian leader amid pressure for Kyiv to accept painful concessions to end the war with Russia.
Flanked by the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom at the British Prime Minister’s Office on Downing Street in London, Zelenskyy said unity between Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe was paramount.
The Supreme Court held a crucial hearing Monday on whether presidents have the power to fire heads of independent federal agencies and whether to overturn a 1935 precedent that has bolstered protections from removal for almost a century. The court’s forthcoming ruling in Trump v. Slaughter carries dramatic implications for the modern workings of government, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Monday that the administration wants to ‘destroy.’
Thailand’s military on Monday launched airstrikes on targets across its disputed border with Cambodia, shattering a volatile cease-fire agreement between the two Southeast Asian countries brokered by President Trump. Thai officials said they acted after soldiers stationed near the border came under fire from Cambodian troops on Sunday and Monday morning. Cambodian officials, meanwhile, blamed the Thai military for restarting the fighting.
That is on Trump’s list of wars he supposedly ended.
Three federal judges who rescinded their decisions to retire from active service on the bench after President Donald Trump was elected, thus depriving him of vacancies he could fill, did not violate judicial ethics rules, a chief federal appellate judge has concluded.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services quietly altered the official portrait of Admiral Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person confirmed to a four-star federal position, replacing her legal name with her deadname and digitalizing her picture. The portrait, which had hung alongside previous Public Health Service leaders, had been a visible symbol of historic representation in federal leadership.
On Sunday night, as Donald Trump prepared to host the Kennedy Center Honors, a reporter asked whether Netflix should be allowed to buy Warner Bros., as part of a deal that was announced last week. The president hedged on answering directly, though he said, “I’ll be involved in that decision.” [video]
It didn’t take long for Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to hit on a key problem. Highlighting the president’s comments, the senator asked, “Is that an open [invitation] for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”
Indeed, if recent history is any guide, the president might very well ask for a governmental stake in the merged company as part of the process.
Warren’s point, however, is an important one: There’s no reason for the president to be directly “involved” in the process, especially given the broader context: As MS NOW reported, Paramount is launching a hostile bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the nations of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are helping to finance the deal.
What’s more, CNBC reported that Larry Ellison, the billionaire father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, is close to Trump. Indeed, David Ellison appeared on CNBC and “argued Paramount’s deal will have a shorter regulatory approval process given the company’s smaller size and friendly relationship with the Trump administration.”
On the other hand, The New York Times reported that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has been “personally wooing Trump, including at a recent visit to the White House in which he made the case for Netflix’s bid, according to Bloomberg. Sarandos apparently left that meeting convinced that the White House was on board with his bid.”
Trump soon after confirmed meeting with Sarandos, whom he called “fantastic.”
In case this isn’t obvious, at least in the United States, questions surrounding corporate mergers and acquisitions are not supposed to be answered by executives’ proximity to and relationship with the sitting president. And yet, here we are.
Republicans Try to Remember a World in Which Not All Policy Came From Trump
We’re seeing a phenomenon play out right now that has cropped up repeatedly during both Trump terms.
At the heart of the phenomenon is this: in almost all areas of governance, the Republican Party stands for Trump. Nothing more, nothing less. Members of Congress have accepted this rebranding, or left government entirely. Occasionally, Republicans in Congress muster the ability to buck the president’s demands, but that is a rarity. […]
This creates an issue whenever an urgent need for a new policy proposal arises, and we’re seeing that on multiple fronts right now. First, Republicans in Congress have spent months flailing, trying to figure out a policy to coalesce behind to deal with increasing Obamacare premiums. This problem was not a surprise. It had loomed ever since the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, extended enhanced premium tax credits through the end of 2025. Democrats shut down the government for a month and a half, demanding a solution to the looming health care price hikes. It’s not the kind of thing GOP health care policy wonks could miss […] Reporting indicates that congressional Republicans have this week finally decided to thrust forth a deeply uninspired policy — or perhaps a set of them. It’s still unclear they’ll have the votes to pass anything.
[I snipped the discussion about Republicans not being able to move forward on “affordability,” and on Trump’s shifting, contradictory statements.]
[…] there’s Trump himself. What he wants, he usually gets. Then there’s the billionaires — increasingly, Silicon Valley billionaires — who get to splatter their pet policies and authoritarian proclivities throughout administration documents and orders, even when it cuts against Trump’s populist image […] Then there is the furious and conspiratorial base, who must be tended by servicing what Josh Marshall has called the nonsense debt. This servicing, in Trump II, has taken a new, violent turn, with widespread attacks on immigrants and a clampdown on dissent. Policy documents like Project 2025 channel and interweave each of the threads that make up Trump-era Republican ideology.
Yet it’s only by accident that these objectives sometimes intersect with the needs of governing a country [True!], leaving Republicans in Congress bereft of policies to draw on when confronted with the challenges of any particular moment. […] In 2020, the party didn’t even publish a platform. In 2024, it did: Titled “Make America Great Again!” it promised to bring down prices through slashing government spending, curbing immigration, and opening up more oil and gas drilling — all ideas the administration has put into effect, and all ideas that have done little for the cost of living.
In 2016, writer William Saletan suggested that, for the reasons I’ve just described, the GOP was a “failed state.” It still is — more so now than then. And while there’s some schadenfreude in watching Republican members of Congress attempt, and struggle, to exercise their atrophied policy muscles, there’s little solace in knowing that a failed-state party controls … the actual state.
“The announcement ended what has effectively been a ban on AI chip sales to the world’s second-largest economy and America’s strategic adversary.”
[…] Trump said Monday that he has informed Chinese President Xi Jinping that “the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China.”
Nvidia’s H200 is a generation behind its latest Blackwell chip, which is considered among the most advanced and high-powered AI chips available anywhere.
Trump said the Blackwell chip would not be part of the deal.
Still, the move could be worth billions of dollars for Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company. Nvidia says it has more than $500 billion worth of orders for its best artificial intelligence chips to fulfill this year and next — and that’s before any buyers in China are factored in.
Trump said he will also allow Intel, AMD “and other great American companies” to sell similar chips to customers in China. “The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details,” he said.
Monday’s announcement would end what was effectively a ban on sales of AI chips from U.S. companies to China.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the U.S. government would take a 25% cut of sales of the approved chips, up from a previously announced 15%. [WTF!?]
However, it remains to be seen whether China will allow imports of the chips. After the U.S. said it would allow an even older generation of Nvidia chip, known as the H20, to be sold in China, Xi’s government essentially said it did not want them.
In his social media post, Trump said: “President Xi responded positively!”
Nvidia said in a statement, “We applaud President Trump’s decision to allow America’s chip industry to compete to support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America.”
[…] For months, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been lobbying the White House to permit Nvidia to sell some chips to customers in China.
But Trump’s approval does not mean the issue is a done deal in Washington.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress has expressed serious concerns about allowing Chinese customers to buy American AI chips.
[…] Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said in a statement last week that “denying Beijing access to these AI chips is essential to our national security.”
Democrats have also expressed concerns. Ricketts joined Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware to introduce a “Safe Chips Act.”
[…] Export controls on China would be eased just as relations between Washington and Beijing are thawing.
China recently started accelerating its purchases of American soybeans, and it gave the green light to exports of many rare earth minerals to American buyers.
Speaking at a White House event with farmers earlier Monday, Trump said he believed China might buy even more soybeans than it had originally agreed to. [That’s probably trumpian bullshit.]
Within minutes after Trump’s post, Nvidia shares rose nearly 3% in after-hours trading.
A federal judge ordered the government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk’s SEVIS student record after it was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for exercising her freedom of speech. This allows her to fully engage with the opportunities of her PhD program.
Back in March, a surveillance camera witnessed six thugs in hoodies and masks abduct her on the sidewalk into an unmarked vehicle. All because a doxxing website flagged her for writing an op-ed in a school newspaper urging the university to heed resolutions passed by the student senate: a call to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and divest from Israel.
Communications between Earth and NASA spacecraft were critically vulnerable to hacking for years until an AI found the flaw and fixed it in just four days.
The vulnerability was sniffed out by an AI cybersecurity algorithm developed by California-based start-up AISLE and resides in the CryptoLib security software that protects spacecraft-to-ground communications. The vulnerability could have enabled hackers to seize control over countless space missions including NASA’s Mars rovers, according to the cybersecurity researchers.
the CryptoLib vulnerability would require the attackers to, at some point, have local access to the system
Faint praise for the AI. From the blog post:
The vulnerable function, initialize_kerberos_keytab_file_login(), built a kinit command string from configuration values and executed it via system(). Shell metacharacters in username or keytab_file_path turned configuration into code
Building commandline strings and passing them to a shell process to interpret and execute is bad. And redundant: devs were already coding C, which can execute intended binaries directly. System() is warned about in general for exactly this reason, and though the blog blames the project’s complexity spanning lots of files, that call alone should have been nagged about by humans and static analysis tools.
Devs neglected to sanitize inputs. In this case, a config file could in principle be edited (by someone who already had access) to put commandline stuff where a username was expected. Why anticipate someone might do that? Assume users are malicious or fools, and—in spite of them—try to write code that operates as intended or fails gracefully.
Bobby tables strikes again (different attack, same principle).
Trump suffers frequent failures as Americans push back at every turn. Rachel Maddow looks at a variety of legal tactics and pressure campaigns that are having success against the Trump administration’s overreach in immigration enforcement and the Justice Department’s vendetta prosecutions. Where people push back, Trump loses, or sometimes doesn’t even try to fight, and the more Americans learn that lesson, the stronger the opposition Trump faces.
Maddow: Trump risks shattering U.S. as states seek alternative to decimated federal health expertise. Rachel Maddow explains that as Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gives increasing credence and authority to crackpots, the authority and reputation of American medical expertise is suffering such extreme degradation that science-minded state officials are establishing new fact-based health alliances to advise the public on matters like vaccinations. Former CDC chief Dr. Richard Besser joins to discuss the crisis at the CDC under Trump and Kennedy.
U.S. administration’s foreign policy document roils Berlin.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that parts of the U.S. administration’s new National Security Strategy are terrible from Europe’s point of view.
“Some of it is comprehensible, some of it is understandable. Some of it is unacceptable to us from a European perspective,” Merz told reporters when asked about the geopolitical strategy and how it would affect the transatlantic relationship.
“I see no need for the Americans to now want to save democracy in Europe. If it would need to be saved, we would manage on our own,” he said.
Trump’s National Security Strategy released last week, announced a realignment of the geopolitical order while claiming that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” triggered by excess migration from Muslim-majority and non-European countries.
In the document, the U.S administration also appears to hint it could help ideologically allied European parties, saying “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
[…] “In my discussions with Americans, I say: ‘America first’ is fine, but ‘America alone’ cannot be in your interest,” Merz said. “You also need partners in the world. One of those partners could be Europe. And if you can’t get on board with Europe, then at least make Germany your partner.”
Merz also said Trump had accepted an invitation to Germany in the coming year.
[…] Trump kept up his crusade against countries with large Black populations, attacking migration from Congo and Somalia in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday.
Trump was asked by interviewer Dasha Burns to respond to criticism of his recently released National Security Strategy, particularly to his expressed opposition to nonwhite migration to European countries. [video]
“Europe, they’re coming in from all parts of the world. Not just the Middle East, they’re coming in from the Congo, tremendous numbers of people coming from the Congo,” Trump said. He added, “Even worse, they’re coming from prisons of the Congo and many other countries.”
Later on in the interview Trump attacked Somalian migration to the United States.
“I want to see people that contribute. I don’t want to see Somalia.”
In recent days Trump has repeatedly smeared Somali immigrants as part of his most recent racist obsession. Speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday he said, “It’s not even a nation. It’s just a—people walking around killing each other.”
Days before he also referenced Somalia and said, “Their country stinks, and I don’t want them in our country.”
Trump’s remarks and his decision to target Minneapolis with his latest federal immigration operation has created a state of fear among the Somali immigrant community.
Somali migrants have been a vital addition to Minnesota and other states following the decision to leave their home nation in the fallout from Somalia’s brutal civil war.
“They’re afraid to go out to the grocery store, they’re afraid to send their kids to school,” Minnesota State Rep. Samakab Hussein, a Somali American, told Newsweek.
Trump has integrated racism throughout his presidency, from domestic policy initiatives to foreign policy priorities. His latest comments show he has no intention of retreating and stands by his open bigotry.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to blame the Biden administration for the fact that China stopped buying soybeans from the United States in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Newsmax Tuesday, where she falsely claimed that President Donald Trump had a successful record of getting China to buy soybeans. [video]
Leavitt: Another huge win for our farmers following his successful meeting with President Xi in South Korea, where President Trump convinced President Xi to continue purchasing or begin purchasing again American soybeans, which is something China wasn’t doing under the last administration because they had no respect for our President Biden or for the country at the time.
But now they know President Trump is not messing around. He’s going to stand up for American farmers and American families, and so those purchases have begun from China, and American soybeans are being exported from the United States as we speak because of President Trump. He promised the farmers he would be there for them. He is delivering on that promise.
Posted by readers of the article:
Unfortunately, the statements get repeated on local news as fact with no context. I saw tfg’s soybean lie just last night on our local NBC affiliate.
—————————
Reporters aren’t there for punching back. [Some reporters were denied access to the White House press conferences. Many rightwing doofus were invited to press conferences.]
——————————
The 12 million tons of soybeans China promised to buy under Trump are less than half of the 30 million tons of soybeans China bought under Joe. China’s Latest Soybean Purchase Agreement Falls Short of Replacing Lost U.S. Exports
JMsays
Legal AF: Trump DOJ Makes SHOCK ADMISSION in DEVASTATING FILING
It looks like the DOJ will try to revive the Comey indictment. There is an option that lets the prosecution fix an indictment tossed on technical grounds and continue the case past the statue of limitations. This shouldn’t work in this case because the grounds for rejecting it were serious.
Even if it does get reactivated Comey has additional grounds to get the case dismissed again because they didn’t get reviewed the first time. The case was dismissed at step zero and nothing after that considered. So most of the issues raised with the original case never got resolved.
I suspect that winning this case isn’t the point though. The point is that Trump wants to punish Comey. For this dragging Comey through court for years suits their purpose even if the DOJ lawyers know the case can’t be won in the end.
birgerjohanssonsays
Reese Waters having fun talking about Mike Johnson’s problems.
Somalis? Old-timers like myself may recall the band X Ray Specs (contemporary with Blondie et al) with the singer Poly Styrene.
She was an Irish-Scottish-Somali artist.
Jesse Watters, Fox News host, discusses watching videos of Pete Hegseth’s strikes on civilian boats in international waters:
This is the most popular foreign policy action of Trump’s second term: killing narco-terrorists. You know what the second one is? Bombing the Iran nuclear program. So, the Democrats are now coming out against the two most popular things Trump’s done abroad this year. Dumb. People love these videos. They hit your feed, they’re like, yes, let’s go. Hit them again, and if you’re against it, you sound like a lawyerly, whiny, effeminate weasel.
Commentary from Wonkette:
[…] As JoeMyGod reminds us about Jesse Watters’s masculine insecurity issues, he thinks a lot of things are “effeminate.” (Gay.) He thinks sucking out of straws is gay. He thinks ice cream cones are gay. He thinks eating soup in public is gay. He thinks crossing your legs is gay. He thinks milkshakes are gay.
He has assured audiences that Stephen Miller is a “high-value” man who is “not overcompensating,” and he knows this firsthand because he knows Stephen Miller. He is the one who first used the term “sexual matador” to describe Stephen Miller […]
And of course, as a Fox News host, Jesse is approximately as equally qualified to talk about military stuff as Secretary [Hegseth] himself, himself a former Fox News host […]. Goodness, the things they have in common! Jesse Watters is a man who once bragged that he swindled his now-wife into agreeing to enter a closed space with him by letting the air out of her tires. Meanwhile one time a woman said Secretary [Hegseth] raped her and he paid her off to shut up.
Just typical MAGA guys!
[…] Brian Kilmeade, who said recently that either you are on the side of the drug dealers or you are for these strikes.
Greg Gutfeld [commented]: “Trump just said to America, I hear you, watch this. The sharks are happy. They just got a big free meal.” Later, he said he was fine with there being two strikes, saying “Maybe it’s going to take two strikes. In bowling, they call it a spare,” and “It’s just better for us to kill them in the ocean, make them shark feed, be done with it.” […]
Megyn Kelly has been really turned on by the graphic nature of the boat murders, saying Trump and [Hegseth] should “make it last a long time, so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little,” and “I’d really like to see them suffer.” […]
Podcast weirdo Dave Rubin has gushed that Secretary [Hegseth] is just “blowing up the boats” instead of dealing with stinky old “paperwork.” […]
But yes, of course, Jesse Watters is the weirdest, will always be the weirdest. […]
11.600 years old:
“NEW Gobekli Tepe Discoveries Confuse Archaeology, Labelled the Largest Megalithic Site On Earth”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/3aZRkztXK5M
birgerjohanssonsays
Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems as if Comey is out of danger.
Meanwhile congressman wossname (guy fistbumping with insurrectionists 2021) is threatening to break with Trump over Obamacare.
And MTG going on 60 minutes to say out loud what many Republicans think will prod some others to openly critizise Trump.
I recall from other tumultous political events that at first nothing happens. Then all of it happens at once, like a ketchup bottle.
Recently, I traveled to one of the greatest cities in this great country, Chicago, for a live event at the amazing Harris Theater, right on the edge of Millennium Park.
There, I got to speak with some of the really impressive, creative, resourceful community leaders, who led the defense of the people of that city when Donald Trump’s masked, violent, undisciplined, pseudo-military immigration agents mounted a weekslong attack on it.
I also got to sit down with the historian Tim Snyder, author of “On Tyranny,” a pocket-size guidebook to resisting authoritarianism — something Chicago has been providing a master class on in this first year of Trump 2.0.
One of the things that really stuck with me from that night was when Snyder told the crowd that he’s less worried about there ultimately being a coast-to-coast, totally autocratic Trump dictatorship than he is that what the president is doing to the country may pressure us and damage us in such a way that the U.S. effectively breaks up.
Because Trump is not just consolidating his power over the government, but he is also simultaneously and deliberately breaking the government. And if the federal government is broken — if he destroys it and Americans lose the data and infrastructure and services it provides — well, people are going to start organizing alternative structures to provide those things.
Take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For decades, the CDC has been the gold standard of science and health data, not just for this country but for the world. That was, until now.
You may have heard that, a few days ago, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked CDC advisory panel voted to roll back the long-standing recommendation to vaccinate babies for hepatitis B, even though universal vaccination is credited with virtually eliminating the virus among newborns in the United States.
Later that day, Kennedy’s CDC panel welcomed a lengthy presentation, 76 slides long, about vaccines — not from a doctor or public health expert, but from the secretary’s personal attorney, who has demanded, among other things, that the government should revoke its approval of the polio vaccine — because who among us is not interested in bringing polio back at scale in the U.S.
It’s clear things are weird at the CDC under Trump. And the closer you look, the worse it gets.
The Trump administration has quietly appointed as second-in-command at the CDC a former Louisiana health official [Dr. Ralph Abraham, the head of Louisiana’s health department] who halted that state’s vaccination campaigns and promoted quack cures for Covid-19.
This is what has become of the global gold-standard health organization that our country spent decades building.
So what do we do about this, as Americans, as a country, when the authoritative source our doctors turn to for the best scientific guidance on how to keep us healthy can no longer be trusted?
Turns out, there’s a plan: A few months ago, groups of states in the West and the Northeast formed their own health alliances to provide their residents with guidance about vaccines, based on the best scientific evidence.
After the advisory panel’s hepatitis B vote, these new health alliances rejected the CDC’s advice and told doctors and patients in their states to continue vaccinating at birth.
Just last week in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill ordering his state’s health department to establish vaccine guidelines for its residents, to make vaccines more available to Illinois children, and to require insurance companies to cover them.
After that vote, a former CDC chief, Dr. Richard Besser, said in a statement that if the agency he once ran continues in its current direction, “the health consequences will be devastating. More babies and young children will suffer from severe preventable illness, and some will die.”
“Those of us who care about children’s health cannot allow this to happen,” he continued. “Policymakers, physicians, and families must turn to reputable medical and public health groups for guidance, and health insurers should do the same for informing what vaccines they will cover.”
The word “reputable” is important there. Right now, “reputable” means not affiliated with the increasingly bizarre U.S. federal government.
If states and health institutions, and even insurance companies, start turning away from the federal government to create their own health infrastructure across the country, by necessity, that is a very different kind of country than the one we have been living in.
“Two White House cronies will get to figure it out who falls under the umbrella of Trump’s 2020 election pardons.”
About a month ago, amid a flurry of bizarre and controversial pardons, Donald Trump announced a clemency decision that appeared to be especially important to him on a personal level: The president pardoned a large group of people who were involved in his effort to overturn the results of his 2020 presidential election defeat.
The list of beneficiaries read like a who’s who of figures from the Republican’s post-defeat inner circle: Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, et al.
As a practical matter, the pardons were largely symbolic: Of the named beneficiaries, none were facing federal criminal charges related to the 2020 scheme. But what about the unnamed beneficiaries? Politico reported late last week that Trump “stretched the boundaries of the pardon power in unprecedented ways.” From the report:
The pardon’s language is so vague and limitless that it could apply to thousands of people. And now Trump’s Justice Department says it’s up to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Ed Martin to decide who, and which possible crimes, Trump actually meant to cover.
There’s no modern precedent — and maybe no historical precedent, either — for a president to delegate his pardon power to subordinates on a pardon this vaguely worded.
This might seem counterintuitive. When Americans think about presidential pardons and their merits, they tend to think of specific individuals who receive clemency from the White House.
But the incumbent president’s 2020 elections pardon was remarkably broad, applying to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities in, or advocacy for or of any slate of presidential electors … in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election.” [Wow. That is “vague and limitless.”]
Who falls under this umbrella? Therein lies the point. No one seems to know for sure, though it will apparently fall to two sycophantic Trump supporters — the attorney general and the hyper-partisan U.S. pardon attorney — to figure it out. […]
Time will what becomes of these efforts, but it’s hard not to notice the irony of the circumstances. Trump has spent so much of the past year not only condemning Joe Biden on a personal level, but also specifically taking aim at the Democratic president’s pardons. To hear the Republican incumbent tell it, Biden was little more than an “autopen” president, pardoning people without knowing who would benefit from his clemency.
[…] many Republicans, including the incumbent president, have argued that their conspiracy theories about Biden should necessarily invalidate the Democrat’s pardons.
And yet, Trump himself has now signed a pardon so broad that — you guessed it — he may have pardoned people without even knowing who specifically would benefit from that clemency. He’s leaving it to the people around him to make the real decisions, seemingly indifferent to the hypocrisy.
“After resigning as an interim U.S. attorney, Habba will serve as Pam Bondi’s senior advisor on federal prosecutors nationwide. That’s not a good idea.”
Alina Habba’s tenure as an interim U.S. attorney was, by any fair measure, a multifaceted disaster. It also wasn’t altogether legal.
As my MS NOW colleague Jordan Rubin explained, a federal appellate panel ruled last week that a district court was correct to disqualify Habba as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. This week, Donald Trump’s former lawyer took the next logical step and resigned from the post she never should’ve held in the first place.
But as part of her announcement, the Republican lawyer also let the public know about her next gig. From Habba’s written statement:
My fight will now stretch across the country. As we wait for further review of the court’s ruling, I will continue to serve the Department of Justice as the Senior Advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.
Around the same time, Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed in a statement that Habba will be “continuing with the Justice Department” as Bondi’s senior advisor on federal prosecutors nationwide.
It’s possible that this is a meaningless consolation prize, and that Habba will have few meaningful responsibilities beyond her frequent appearances in conservative media.
But if this is going to be a real job, it’s a curious choice.
Even for a president who likes to reward his former lawyers with powerful legal positions, Trump’s decision earlier this year to make Habba a federal prosecutor was bizarre. Not only did she have no experience as a prosecutor, but Habba is also perhaps best known for helping file a bizarre lawsuit targeting Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats in 2022, which proved so ridiculous that a judge imposed harsh sanctions on Habba for bringing “political grievances masquerading as legal claims” to court.
Now, after her brief and embarrassing tenure as an interim U.S. attorney, Alina Habba is slated to advise the attorney general on other lawyers who might hold the job she wasn’t qualified to have, that she did poorly, and perhaps most importantly, that she wasn’t legally permitted to perform. What could go wrong?
As a presidential candidate last year, Donald Trump realized that consumer costs were a priority for voters, so hen said what he thought would get him elected: If returned to the White House, he’d quickly lower costs.
A year ago this week, however, Time magazine published a report on a lengthy interview it did with the then-president-elect, in which he seemed to realize he’d struggle to deliver on this misguided promise. “I’d like to bring them down,” Trump said, referring to grocery prices. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
A year later, amid rising prices and widespread public discontent over his many economic failures, the president has some choices. He could repeat the line he delivered to Time magazine during his transition and tell the public that it’s “very hard” to lower consumer costs […] He could also ask for Americans’ patience and argue that conditions will improve in the coming months and years.
But Trump prefers a different course: He’s decided that gaslighting is the way to go. [video]
In a newly published interview with Politico, Trump boasted, “Prices are all coming down,” adding, “Now everything is coming down.”
A day earlier, at a White House event, the president pushed the same line, insisting that consumer prices “are way down.”
This rhetoric dovetailed with Trump’s recent claims that Americans’ concerns about affordability are a “Democrat [sic] hoax,” a “con job by the Democrats” and a “Democrat [sic] scam.”
That the president is the nation’s most prolific liar is nothing new, but there’s a qualitative difference between regular ol’ lying and self-defeating lying. Often, when Trump peddles nonsense, the American mainstream isn’t immediately sure what to believe, and it falls to media fact-checkers to offer the public guidance on what’s true and what’s not.
But when the president tells Americans that prices on “everything” are “coming down,” no one needs a fact-checker; they just need a wallet.
The more Trump plays make-believe, the more he appears hopelessly out of touch. If he and his team want to know why Trump’s public support has fallen to embarrassing depths, they can start by coming to terms with his failure on affordability. […] brazenly lying about Americans’ own life experiences does more harm than good.
FBI Director Kash Patel’s tenure has been a national embarrassment in a great many ways, but among the most jarring developments this year is the sheer volume of bureau personnel who’ve been purged for political reasons, leaving the FBI destabilized.
[…] That was in August. Things are worse now.
For those concerned with justice and the integrity of federal law enforcement, that’s the bad news. The good news is that many of those who’ve been peremptorily fired are fighting back in court. NPR reported, for example, that 12 FBI agents who were fired this year for taking a knee during racial justice protests in 2020 are now suing Patel and the bureau, alleging unlawful retaliation.
According to the former agents’ court filing, they were backed against a wall in the middle of a protest and took a knee to de-escalate a situation that threatened to escalate. From the report:
The former special agents — who together have nearly 200 years of experience — once received awards for helping disrupt mass shootings, expose foreign spies and thwart cyber attacks.
But they say as elite federal law enforcement agents, they never received training on crowd control, nor did they have riot shields, gas masks, or helmets when they faced down volatile crowds in the streets of Washington, D.C., in June 2020.
The Justice Department inspector general reviewed the incident in 2024 and found no misconduct. Similarly, according to the agents’ version of events, then-FBI Director Chris Wray said they did the right thing under difficult circumstances, and then-FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich told the agents they wouldn’t be punished. [!]
But after Donald Trump returned to the White House, those who took a knee were fired anyway, with Patel accusing them in their dismissal letters of “unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government.” [!]
Commenting on the absurdity of these agents’ ouster, their lawyer told The New York Times, “The country is less safe than it was before these FBI agents were fired en masse.” She added that the abrupt dismissals violated the bureau’s own internal rules, which protect not only the agents, but also the country by “ensuring that people who are highly trained and effective are employed at the FBI.”
Time will tell what may come of the civil litigation, but it’s worth emphasizing for context that they’re not the only ousted FBI personnel who’ve turned to the courts to put things right.
The Associated Press reported last month:
A veteran FBI employee training to become a special agent was fired last month for displaying at his workspace an LGBTQ+ flag, which had previously flown outside a field office, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
David Maltinsky had worked at the FBI for 16 years and was nearly finished with special agent training in Quantico, Virginia, when he was called into a meeting last month with FBI officials, given a letter from Director Kash Patel and told he was being ‘summarily dismissed’ over the inappropriate display of political signage, Maltinsky’s lawsuit said.
What’s more, in August, Patel and his team ousted three experienced bureau leaders, including Brian Driscoll, a widely respected figure among rank-and-file agents who was removed after he helped prevent a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on Jan. 6 cases. [!]
A month later, MS NOW reported on their federal lawsuit, which alleged that Patel “knowingly broke the law when he fired senior FBI executives at the behest of the White House and under pressure from Trump allies.” [!]
These cases are now starting to advance through the legal process, and it’s too soon to speculate about their possible outcomes. But they clearly pose legal and political problems for Patel and the administration.
One of the things I occasionally get paid to do by companies/execs is to tell them why everything seemed to SUDDENLY go wrong […] time for a thread about the Trust Thermocline. So: what’s a thermocline?
Well large bodies of water are made of layers of differing temperatures. Like a layer cake. The top bit is where all the the waves happen and has a gradually decreasing temperature. Then SUDDENLY there’s a point where it gets super-cold.
[…]
I ask [companies] if they’d been increasing prices. Changed service offerings. Modified the product. The answer is normally: “yes, but not much. And everyone still paid.”
Then I ask if they did that the year before. Did they increase prices last year? […] The answer is normally: “yes, but not much. And everyone still paid.” “And the year before?” […] Well, you get the idea.
[…]
too many people see service use as always following an arc. They think that as long as usage is ticking up, they can do what they like to cost and product.
And (critically) that they can just react when the curve flattens. But with a lot of CONTENT products (inc social media) that’s not actually how it works. Because it doesn’t account for sunk-cost lock-in.
Users and readers will stick to what they know, and use, well beyond the point where they START to lose trust in it. And you won’t see that. But they’ll only MOVE when they hit the Trust Thermocline. The point where their lack of trust in the product to meet their needs, and the emotional investment they’d made in it, have finally been outweighed by the physical and emotional effort required to abandon it.
At this point, I normally get asked something like: “So if we undo the last few changes and drop the price, we get them back?”
And then I have to break the news that nope: that’s not how it works. […] You can’t make them trust you again. Classic examples of this behaviour are digital subscription services, where the product gets squeezed over time, or print magazines […] that constantly ramp up their prices a little bit each year until it’s too late.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg keeps trying to do his job, and the Trump administration keeps trying to stop him.
Boasberg, of course, is the judge who ordered the administration to turn two planeloads full of deportees bound for a notorious prison in El Salvador around, an order the administration just straight-up ignored. Since then, Boasberg has been tireless in his efforts to determine precisely what led up to those flights on March 15 and to hold the administration accountable for defying his order.
For nearly nine months, we’ve all watched the administration engage in what can only be described as an escalating series of “Screw you, make me” behaviors.
First, of course, was what actually happened on March 15 itself. Boasberg ordered the administration to turn the planes already in the air around, but they didn’t. […]
After fired Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni came forward as a whistleblower, we learned that DOJ attorney Drew Ensign was lying when he told Boasberg he didn’t know if any planes were leaving that weekend. It turns out Reuveni was at the same meeting as Ensign when they were told that planes would take off no matter what. [!] […]
Reuveni also revealed that then-senior DOJ official Emil Bove, a onetime criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump and now the proud owner of a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as thanks for his service, said the DOJ would need to consider telling the courts “Fuck you” and ignore court orders. That’s a literal “Screw you, make me.”
In the face of all these middle fingers, Boasberg has been trying to conduct contempt proceedings on the matter since April. After a long stallout where the District of Columbia Court of Appeals just sat on it, it’s finally in motion again. [Good news]
Boasberg recently ordered the Trump administration to produce declarations and testimony as to exactly who decided to defy his order and continue the deportations. What was produced was, of course, screw you, make me.
After months of wrangling on this, administration officials have taken a new tack, now saying that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was personally responsible for ignoring his court order. So she submitted a cutesy little two-paragraph declaration that said that she made the decision to “continue to transfer the custody” of the deportees and that she did so after receiving privileged legal advice from DOJ lawyers.
The only other declarations were from those DOJ lawyers, including another former Trump criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, all of which basically just say, “We gave privileged legal advice” and nothing more. Bove even descended from his perch to file a declaration saying he too was just chock-full of privileged advice that he gave to Blanche, who apparently then gave it to Noem.
These aren’t confessions, nor are they attempts to comply with Boasberg’s order. They are taunts that amount to “Screw you, make me.” The administration isn’t going to produce Noem to testify no matter what, and by wrapping her meager declaration in the doctrine of receiving privileged advice, they’re telling the court that they aren’t intending to ever reveal what happened. [!]
These declarations are also the exact opposite of what the administration has argued previously. First, it was that they didn’t think the order to turn the planes around was a court order because it was verbal. Then, it was that the court didn’t have jurisdiction because the planes were in international airspace. So hundreds of men, most of whom had no criminal record, were sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT detention center, court orders be damned.
Now, the administration is essentially saying that yes, it absolutely violated a court order and that decision was made at the highest level and is therefore privileged, and we’re not telling you anything else. Screw you, make me.
Boasberg, nonetheless, is going to keep trying. He’s ordered Ensign to testify in a contempt hearing on Dec. 16, and Boasberg is no dummy here. Ensign was not one of the people who allegedly advised Noem with all that privileged legal advice, but instead was before the court on March 15.
The judge also used his order to get in a well-founded and well-deserved jab at Noem and the game being played here.
“As this declaration does not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order, the Court cannot at this juncture find probable cause that her actions constituted criminal contempt,” he wrote
And gosh, since he can’t determine that and wouldn’t want to be hasty in declaring the Homeland Security chief in criminal contempt, he has no choice but to hear witness testimony from Ensign and Reuveni about it. [smiles]
[…] these are clearly people who have no problem lying under oath, so the demand for declarations and testimony doesn’t worry them. Second, any criminal contempt [the judge] could ever impose could just be wiped away by Trump or by a friendly Supreme Court.
But Boasberg is undaunted, bloodied but unbowed, and his tireless dedication in the face of all of that defiance is nothing less than admirable.
Posted by readers of the article:
Not mentioned here, but giving your client advice to commit a crime is itself a crime, and not protected by Privilege during an investigation of said crime. Mob lawyers know quite well to never actually advise anyone to commit a crime, let’s see if these lawyers are smart enough to have avoided that distinction.
————————
While I commend the judge for not letting them just spout bullshit. The lawbreaking won’t stop until he starts holding people in contempt and making them spend nights inside a cell.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia appeared on CNN Tuesday, where she was asked about the consequences of having President Donald Trump as an enemy. [video]
Greene: As a Christian, I’m not angry at the president. It’s easy for me to say a prayer for him and forgive him. But the part that I have had a very hard time with is the fact that he called me a traitor and, because of his words, that brought serious threats against myself and my family. We had a pipe bomb threat on my home, a pipe bomb threat on my family construction company and staff […]
But the serious one was the direct death threats on my son, and I think that goes beyond anyone’s arguments or disagreements or politics. All of our children and our family’s safety should matter to anyone, no matter if they’re mad at us or disagree with us. […]
“Jasmine, Jasmine Crockett, Queen Of The Wild Senate Frontier?”
The bad news: The Supreme Court let stand Texas’s [gerrymandering] out Democratic seats, because Texas is doing it for political reasons, not racial ones.[bullshit] And Collin Allred announced Monday that he’s dropping his bid for the Democratic nomination for US Senate. The better news, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is running to take the seat of Republican Senator / fossil John Cornyn!
She faces a March 3 primary against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a former teacher. […] [video]
[…] Crockett’s masterful opening ad is nothing but Donald Trump ranting about new star Jasmine CAHCKETT, one of the leaders of the party who’s gonna bring ‘em back, and a low-IQ person, man oh man! [video]
[…] How Trump hates a Black lady lawyer, ever since Fani Willis got him indicted and mug-shotted down in Fulton County, and Letitia James had him, his two sons, and their accountant declared frauds and con men before all the land. He’s surely wearing out the pages of his 1933 Children’s Dictionary of Racist and Sexist Epithets thumbing through for one that rhymes with Crockett.
Anyhoo, she kicked off her announcement with the ad and some Kendrick Lamar. [video]
Quick summary: After some uplifting words about Barack Obama, she gets right to business. If Texas is as red as Republicans keep saying it is, why are they so hard pressed right now? Probably because dollars can’t literally vote (yet), and she won her House seat after being outspent five to one [!]. The last time Texas elected a Democrat to the Senate, Crockett was seven years old (!) and Cornyn was 36. He was elected when she was three, and collects three pensions, paging DOGE! […] If Mississippi and Georgia can flip seats, why can’t she? Texas is 61 percent people of color. […].
And shit is expensive now. “While Americans had to decide between paying the car note or paying the mortgage, Trump’s toughest choice was between Chantilly Lace or Alabaster for his billionaire ballroom.” OUCH, TRUE.
If he and those billionaires see her as a threat, it’s because SHE IS.
And then she went on CNN to say who better to run than her, because the President and Governor cannot keep her name out of their mouths. She rouses to the polls the last kinds of voters Republicans want. [video]
She is excellent at making a viral clip, a necessity these days. She first came to our attention around September 2023, when House idiots were trying to impeach Joe Biden over loving his son too much, and she brought up OUR NATIONAL SECRETS IN TRUMP’S SHITTER instead. [video]
And then last May, in a House hearing that was supposed to be about Hunter Biden’s dong, she took the opportunity to confront Project 2025 contributing author Gene Hamilton on his part of his fascist tome where he wrote that when Trump becomes president they hope to eliminate the Department of Education, deploy the military to shoot protestors, and replace federal employees with “loyalists.” Back when not many people were talking about all that! And now it is reality, sigh. Can’t say she didn’t warn everybody! [video]
And who could forget the House hearing last year that was supposed to be about attacking Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter but instead turned into a catfight, after Marjorie Taylor Greene snitted to Crockett that her “fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
Crockett queried back, “I’m just curious […] if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” [video]
Catchy! Body-shamey in a way of which we cannot approve, but catchy! [Remix video]
That was how it started, and how it’s gone is Marjorie Taylor Greene retiring off to whatever pastures, after making her final stand on the Epstein Files, of all things. And Crockett with a not-crazy shot at becoming the contender for a Senate seat. Just like Some People had said Greene wanted, before she got pushed out of Trump’s inner circle […]
In short, in summary, and in rap form: [video]
Can’t wait to see how these midterms go! [Kendrick Lamar video]
to block the map from going into effect and to force a referendum on the map next year […] they submitted more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state’s office, nearly triple the number required […] A provision of the Missouri constitution gives voters a chance to repeal acts of the legislature if organizers can collect enough signatures in a tight timeframe. The vast majority of the measures that have been put up for a referendum have been repealed.
jellyfish can be used as a food stabilizer. […] The most well-known example in the home kitchen is egg yolk, which allows mayonnaise to bind together. In the industrial food sector, stabilizers are even more crucial. Here, ingredients such as starch, pectin, gelatine, and algal stabilizers are used to achieve the right consistency in everything from ketchup to chocolate milk.
[…]
Jellyfish consist of approximately 1% biological material. The rest is water. So, you could say that, evolutionarily speaking, they are perfectly tuned to hold a liquid together. […] They can emulsify, for example, to make mayonnaise, but also to create foams and gelled oils, which is essentially a type of butter. […] [Researchers] used whole jellyfish [and] freeze-dried them into a white powder […] with very minimal processing
Maybe you’ve heard of “2000 Mules,” a 2022 documentary by far right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza based on completely unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election drummed up by True the Vote, an election denier nonprofit where [Gregg Phillips] has long served in leadership. […] Or maybe you remember when Trump tweeted in 2016 with zero evidence that “millions” of people voted illegally in that year’s presidential election? That was based solely on a previous tweet from Phillips, which was also based on no evidence.
[…]
[Phillips will be the] Administrator of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery (ORR). […] zero experience in disaster response […] refers to himself as “a very vocal opponent of FEMA.” On his Wikipedia page you’ll find an entire section labeled “Allegations of grift, ethical misconduct, philandering, nepotism and cronyism.”
[…]
In 2022, Phillips [was] jailed during a trial relating to [his] election fraud conspiracies after being found in contempt of court by a Texas judge. […] The documentary was so riddled with lies and errors that its distributor Salem Media—the Christian and conservative conglomerate that produces The Charlie Kirk Show—halted distribution
About the job
[A FEMA] staffer explained that the head of ORR oversees putting staff and operations in place to immediately help people, search and rescue, operation centers, coordinating the entire federal response, individual assistance (getting money to people for damaged homes and temporary housing or shelter), mass care, public assistance, debris removal, and “everything that gets a community back up and running again.” The head of ORR needs to have extensive federal state and local experience, decades of experience in high-level disasters and an intimate understanding of all programs. “It is the most important job at FEMA after the administrator,”
Commentary
Whilst you and I struggle with imposter syndrome.
Jfc, just when you think we are at the bottom this admin finds a new way to surprise us.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Leo XIV in Rome on Tuesday, as Kyiv said it was preparing to send ‘refined’ proposals to the United States for ending the war with Russia. Less than 24 hours after he reiterated that Ukraine would not cede land to Russia, Zelenskyy met with the pontiff before holding talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a day after he met with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in London.
The U.S. Navy admiral who is retiring early from command of the campaign to destroy vessels allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela spoke to key lawmakers Tuesday as Congress seeks more answers on President Donald Trump’s mission, which, in one instance, killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of an initial strike.
The Honduran attorney general announced on Monday night that he had issued an international arrest warrant for the country’s former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was recently pardoned by President Trump and released from prison in the United States.
The attorney general said he had asked Interpol to detain Juan Orlando Hernández, who was freed from a U.S. prison last week.
A federal judge on Monday struck down President Trump’s halt on approvals of all wind power projects on federal lands and waters, dealing a significant legal setback to the administration’s campaign against wind farms.
“Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González, NBC News projects.”
Related video at the link.
Democrat Eileen Higgins has won the Miami mayor’s race, NBC News projects, giving the party control of the office for the first time in almost three decades in another victory for Democrats ahead of next year’s pivotal midterm elections.
Higgins, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner, won 59% of the vote to 41% for Republican Emilio González, a businessman and former city manager who was endorsed by President Donald Trump. González conceded Tuesday night, his campaign confirmed.
“Tonight, the people of Miami made history. Together, we turned the page on years of chaos and corruption and opened the door to a new era for our city — one defined by ethical, accountable leadership that delivers real results for the people,” Higgins said in a statement Tuesday night.
While the Miami mayor’s race is technically nonpartisan, the Republican-affiliated candidate has won every election since 2008, and an independent candidate won before then, locking Democrats out of the office since their last win in 1997. […]
[…] Higgins leaned on her role on the county commission to frame herself as focused on quality-of-life issues like affordable housing, infrastructure and streamlining city processes in a way she said would help save the city, and residents, money. […]
I am getting worried about you!
😟
There is a hiatus of five hours since the last post. Either the dominance of sad political news have scared away people from the thread, or the epidemics JFK Jr is spreading has done a Netanyahu on you.
birgerjohanssonsays
HuffPost:
“Trump Now Happy To Openly Disparage ‘S**thole Countries'”
Jasmine Crockett lights up Texas Senate race: Texas wants “a fighter.” Rep. Jasmine Crockett is running for Senate in Texas: “People that are tough and are fighters—that is what they’re looking for, and that’s what it is that I have to offer.”
JD Vance’s Supreme Court showdown could upend midterm campaign finance rules. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments to knock out the last remaining campaign finance regulations in the country—in a case brought by JD Vance. Renowned civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill joins to discuss.
“More billionaire money in politics.”
Video is 9:07 minutes.
“In 2018 [Trump] denied using the racist language. In 2025, he seems to take a degree of pride in using the phrase.”
Related video at the link.
Around this time eight years ago, Donald Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, sparking an immediate controversy. The incident, which happened behind closed doors, was a timely reminder of the president’s racism and its influence on his international perspective.
Eight years later, the Republican’s private racism has become his public racism. The New York Times reported on Trump’s Tuesday night speech in Pennsylvania:
Soon after, a member of the crowd yelled out a crude term that Mr. Trump used during his first administration to disparage Haiti and some nations in Africa. The president laughed.
‘I didn’t say ‘shithole,’ you did!’ Mr. Trump replied with a grin. He then recounted his use of the term at a White House meeting in 2018 to describe countries that he was balking at accepting immigrants from.
After the 2018 incident, Trump and his team insisted that he never actually used the term, despite the claims from those who heard him say it.
On Tuesday night, however, he dropped the pretense.
Describing the 2018 White House meeting, the president told rally attendees, “We want to be honest, because our country was going to hell, and we had a meeting and I say, ‘Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden — just a few — let us have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people, do you mind?” [video]
The message wasn’t exactly subtle: Trump is fine with immigration, so long as it’s white people coming to American soil.
But as important (and contemptible) as the president’s racism is, let’s also not lose sight of the broader political shift: In 2018, Trump didn’t want to be seen as a bigot, so he strenuously denied using the phrase that a room full of people heard him say.
In 2025, Trump seems to take a degree of pride in using the term at a campaign-style address.
His remarks came a week after he referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage.” A New York Times report described it “an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration,” adding that the president’s condemnation “was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry.”
A week later, the brazenness of Trump’s racism was apparent once more.
“The president expects Americans to make sacrifices but doesn’t appear willing to make any sacrifices of his own.”
Related video at the link.
Donald Trump has spent months struggling with a brutal dynamic: The more the president fails to deliver on his economic promises, the more the public turns against him. […]
With this in mind, Trump and his team decided it was time to go on the offensive. They announced plans for a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania where the president would put his best foot forward, presenting a spirited defense of his record while pushing back against assumptions about the slumping economy.
That was the idea, anyway.
Instead, he president did what he always does at these events: In remarks delivered in a casino, he peddled a variety of foolish claims about the subject at hand while veering into ugly nonsense about immigrants, windmills and transgender people. (Given the seriousness of the subject and his own unfortunate record in the casino business, the White House probably could’ve chosen a better venue.)
The Republican did, however, make an unexpected argument to Americans concerned about affordability and the cost of living. [video]
As part of an unscripted riff on his trade agenda, Trump declared, “You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils.” He added, “You always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter — two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.” [repeating some stupid blather he spouted before]
So as the public sours on the state of the economy and families struggle with rising costs, Trumpt’s instinct was to tell Americans to be satisfied with less.
[…] Complicating matters is the fact that while Trump expects Americans to make sacrifices in response to his failing agenda, Trump doesn’t appear personally willing to make comparable sacrifices of his own.
On the contrary, the incumbent president remains focused on his new marble bathroom, his ever-expanding plans for a wildly unnecessary White House ballroom and his frequent trips to Florida, where he hangs out at the glorified country club he owns and profits from, palling around with his extremely wealthy customers at “Great Gatsby”–themed soirees.
It’s something to keep in mind as Trump tells Americans to buy fewer toys for their kids two weeks before Christmas.
[Trump] said he examined Juan Orlando Hernández’s case. Eight days later, he said the opposite. Both can’t be true.
There’s ample room for debate over which of Donald Trump’s many pardons stands as the worst, but the president’s clemency for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández stands out for its cartoonish qualities. The details sound so spectacularly unrealistic that they seem concocted by a ham-fisted novelist to annoy readers.
In this case, Trump, despite all of his “tough on crime” chest-thumping, thought it’d be a good idea to pardon a notorious drug trafficker, who was convicted last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison. […] As The New York Times summarized, Hernández “orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy” that benefited drug cartels, even as Honduras grew poorer, more violent and more corrupt.
Hernández also boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and accepted a $1 million bribe to allow cocaine shipments to pass through his country.
Trump, however, freed him anyway. Politico’s Dasha Burns asked him about it during a lengthy White House interview this week. [video]
“Well, I don’t know him,” the president said, referring to Hernández. “And I know very little about him other than people said it was like an Obama/Biden-type set-up, where he was set up.”
Trump added that “very good people” (whom he did not name) asked him to pardon the convicted drug trafficker, “and I said I’ll do it.”
At this point, one could talk about how utterly ridiculous it is to see a sitting American president argue that he had effectively no idea whom he was letting out of prison. One could emphasize that Hernández’s prosecution was not a “set-up.” In fact, the prosecution was led in part by Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal team who is currently a Trump-appointed federal judge. [!]
[…] there’s another part of this that deserves a closer look.
Last week, when asked about the Hernández pardon during a Q&A on Air Force One, Trump, again referencing unspecified people, declared, “They said it was a Biden administration set-up. And I looked at the facts, and I agreed with them.”
The contradiction is glaring: On Nov. 30, the president said he had examined the case and concluded the notorious drug trafficker deserved clemency. Then, eight days later, asked about the same case, Trump said he was clueless and insisted he knew “very little” about it.
It can be one or the other, but it can’t be both.
As for Hernández’s fate, shortly after the former president walked out of a high-security American prison thanks to Trump’s pardon, Honduras’ attorney general urged Interpol to execute an arrest warrant for Hernández, which was originally issued in late 2023 for fraud and money laundering. […]
I’ve been surprised that the uproar over the killing of the two survivors of the Sept. 2 attack has not yielded a renewed look at a later attack that also left a survivor — under especially dire circumstances.
The official accounts of the Oct. 27 strike were muddled from the beginning, with conflicting initial reports of whether the survivor had been rescued. More than six weeks later, key questions remain unanswered:
Oct. 27: U.S. conducts three strikes against four different vessels, killing 14 people and leaving a sole survivor, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a social media post the next day:
Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.
[…] Oct. 28: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government “was informed about the Monday strike and about the potential survivor” on Tuesday morning, CNN reported.
The Mexican Navy would later say that its forces officially began a search-and-rescue operation for the “alleged castaway” at 6:30 a.m. on Oct 28, in the area U.S. officials reported a survivor.
[…] The reason for the delay between the strikes on the afternoon of Oct. 27 and the launch of the Mexican search-and-rescue operation has not been publicly explained.
Notably, the NYT reported that the survivor had been rescued: “A U.S. military official, discussing operations on the condition of anonymity, said the lone survivor was picked up in waters near the coasts of Mexico and Guatemala.”
However, President Sheinbaum’s public comments cast doubt on whether there was a survivor, CNN reported:
Sheinbaum said she instructed the foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, to meet with the US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, “and we will give them the information with the Navy secretariat about this survivor, if it is the case that there was indeed a survivor.”
The U.S. Coast Guard would later say the Mexican Navy informed it on the afternoon of Oct. 28 that is had found no survivors. [!]
Oct. 29: “Pentagon officials convened another session about boat strike survivors, a video conference involving dozens of American diplomats from across the Western Hemisphere,” the NYT would later report. No word of whether the fate of the lone survivor came up in the conference call two days after the attack in question.
Oct. 31: Mexico publicly announces that it has found no survivors from the Oct. 27 attacks.
After citing an anonymous U.S. military official earlier in the week as saying the survivor was rescued, the NYT reports that the Pentagon is offering a different account:
The Pentagon said that after the strikes on Monday, U.S. military officials “observed one narcoterrorist in the water clinging to some wreckage.” U.S. officials then alerted a Mexican military boat nearby of the survivor, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday, and Mexican officials assumed responsibility for the rescue.
The Pentagon statement also mentioned that it alerted not just the Mexican military boat but a nearby Mexican military aircraft, according to the NYT report […]
Nov. 1: Mexican Navy planned to end its active search for survivors of the Oct. 27 strikes.
“The survivor was spotted swimming in the ocean … was never located and is believed to have drowned,” ABC News would grimly describe it a few weeks later.
As you can see, the inconsistencies in the various reports are glaring: Was there a survivor? Was the survivor rescued? Why the delay between the purported sighting of the survivor by the U.S. military and its hand off of the responsibility for the search-and-rescue operation to Mexico?
In mid-October, the Pentagon had briefly detained two survivors of a different strike before quickly repatriating them to Ecuador and Colombia, respectively. The Pentagon’s obvious squeamishness about taking survivors into custody raises a host of additional questions about the fate of the lone survivor.
Link. The link leads to a roundup of news reports.
As reported by The Washington Post, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
Less than two weeks after launching a bipartisan investigation into the Trump administration’s lawless strikes on the high seas, the GOP chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is shutting down the probe.
As reported by The Associated Press, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
A pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday, with conflicting reports on whether they entered Venezuelan airspace.
Showing that he’s always laser-focused on what really matters, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered all high schools to have a Turning Point USA chapter called “Club America.”
Sure, Texas has basically frozen per-student funding for years, which means that—thanks to inflation—funding is actually decreasing. And, yes, Texas is hiring uncertified teachers and closing schools. It’s also true that 73% of Texas schools are underfunded. But surely turning every school into a shrine to Charlie Kirk will fix it.
“This is about values. This is about constitutional principles. [bullshit, lie] This is about a restoration of who we are as a country,” Abbott said of the new order.
But that rings a little hollow when you realize that the Texas Education Agency is already investigating complaints against teachers who rabid conservatives decided were insufficiently laudatory of Kirk.
So what if your school doesn’t want a Turning Point chapter? Too bad.
“Any school that stands in the way of a Club America program in their school should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” Abbott said, adding that there would be “meaningful disciplinary action.” [Oh, good, a threat.]
It isn’t clear what mechanism the state would have to enforce this demand, but that doesn’t really matter. Even if schools or teachers can’t somehow be officially sanctioned, they can be dragged through an investigation.
Abbott knows that he’s untouchable: He’s got a pliant legislature, a hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Supreme Court stocked with conservatives who believe that free speech only applies to right-wingers and Christians.
That’s likely why he was completely open about saying that he won’t do this for a left-leaning student group, but magnanimously declaring that “it would not be illegal” for a left-leaning group to exist in public schools.
Except Abbott is straight-up lying. Texas has already passed a law banning any student clubs based on gender identity or expression. No LGBTQ+ clubs, no gay-straight alliances—nothing. [!!]
But clubs founded by the guy who spent years attacking LGBTQ+ people and encouraged students and parents to report any professors suspected of not hating trans people enough? Well, that’s mandatory. [!]
Abbott is actually a bit late to the game on this one. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis already did this in October, turning loose Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas to enforce Turning Point chapters in schools. [!]
“If you try to serve as an obstacle, if you are a hurdle, if you get in the way of any student or teacher (who wants to) start a Turning Point USA chapter, you will be met with the full force of the law,” Kamoutsas said. [Another threat.]
And former Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters mandated Turning Point chapters in schools way back in September. But since he quit for a job where he said he will “destroy the teachers unions,” it isn’t clear if that requirement is going to stick. […]
Ban me if you must, Lynna and PZ, but I must speak openly and honestly since few others will.
Ilhan Omar has proven by her words and actions that is a caring decent person. I would gladly have her as a neighbor. I would NOT tolerate anyone from the magat administration as a neighbor.
O.K. If you want to rid this country of undesirable, nonproductive immigrants, as tRUMP has deplorably stated, let’s start with someone who still holds citizenship in a terrible foreign country, who entered this country on false claims on a genius visa, who after many years still has trouble with the english language. Who just has a contractual relationship with an abomination of a hateful, criminal citizen as a spouse.
Send malaria trump back to slovenia! And, her son who has slovenian citizenship should be packed up and sent with her.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @235:
Trump added that “very good people” (whom he did not name) asked him to pardon the convicted drug trafficker, “and I said I’ll do it.”
I would presume that those “very good people” received large sums of money to be passed on the behalf of Hernández to The Orange Turd’s tiny hands.
During an appearance on Fox Business on Wednesday Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner blamed the housing crisis on the few hundred thousand Afghan refugees living in the U.S. But after some of his recent word salad appearances on Fox News, Turner chose to defend his administration’s failure to address housing affordability by reading his talking points off a piece of paper. [Video]
Turner: I know I’m not supposed to do this on TV, but I want to read this so the American people … understand what was going on during the Biden administration. Our HUD, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office, we have taken down guidance that during the Biden administration encouraged landlords and property owners to forgo regularly required credit checks for refugees so they didn’t have to do credit checks. It encouraged landlords and public housing authorities to exempt Afghan refugees from occupancy limits, so they can have as many people as they wanted living in HUD-funded housing.
Also advise landlords and property owners to evade the fair housing laws which we’re supposed to uphold, evade the fair housing laws by publishing marketing materials in languages other than English so that they can market to Afghan refugees. That was going on during the Biden administration, but we have since withdrawn that and torn that guidance down to restore guidance that is for the American people.
Posted by readers of the article:
Wall Street bears a lion’s share of the blame for the housing “crisis.”
———————-
That and the toxic zoning laws, which prevent us from having multi-family and mixed-use housing developments, greatly restricting the supply of homes. This is not a big issue in NYC, where only 15% of residential neighbourhoods have this restriction, but across most large US cities, the share is over 75%, with some California cities exceeding 90%.
————————–
Well, according to a study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition
lowest-income renters in the U.S. face a shortage of 7.1 million affordable and available rental homes with only 35 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households
Given that there are only 200,000 Afghani refugees in the US (probably fewer than 50,000 households), where did the other 7.05 million affordable homes go?
House GOP leaders will bring a vote next week on a package of health care bills that does not include an extension of expiring ObamaCare enhanced subsidies […]
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters the legislation will comprise GOP-backed ideas that “every Republican agrees to,” which have been discussed across various House committees this year.
“We have some low-hanging fruit that every Republican agrees to,” Johnson said at a press conference. “You’re going to see a package come together that will be on the floor next week that will actually reduce premiums for 100 percent of Americans who are on health insurance.” [Sounds like Republican gaslighting to me.]
But that package is not set to include any measure to extend the subsidies that expire at the end of the year. If those enhanced subsidies expire, out-of-pocket costs for health insurance will spike drastically for millions of Americans. [!]
[…] proposals included expansion of health savings accounts, association health care plans, reforms to the pharmacy benefit manager industry and price transparency.
Some of those ideas had bipartisan support in the past, but a bill that doesn’t address the expiring subsidies is unlikely to get 60 votes to pass the Senate. [!]
The Senate, meanwhile, is set to vote Thursday on competing Republican and Democratic health care plans — one to extend the subsidies, the other to turn the subsidies into federally funded health savings accounts for people on high-deductible plans. Neither proposal is expected to pass. [sheesh]
Donald Trump’s deportation machine continues its abuse of every value that’s supposedly sacred to Americans — unless of course you acknowledge that White Supremacy is the most important value for the people running things now. The Border Patrol has been unleashed on New Orleans, where, as usual, the order of the day has been chaos, with little effort by the feds to let local officials know what the hell is going on. The DHS swarm into Louisiana has a target of deporting at least 5,000 people, and the thugs don’t seem too particular about who they grab.
[…] By Sunday, the AP notes, the agency had publicly detailed only six arrests, “including a man they vaguely said was convicted of ‘homicide’ and another convicted of sexual assault.” We haven’t dug into those particular cases, but we’ll note that DHS press releases often highlight offenses that happened years or even decades ago, for which detainees have already finished their sentences, or arrests where charges were dismissed.
Yes, under federal law, those are still grounds for deportation, and polling consistently shows that most Americans support deporting those who have serious criminal records, while we’re substantially more divided about mass deportation of folks who lack papers but have no criminal record — and as the crackdowns continue, support for extreme deportation policies and maximum cruelty keeps declining.
But keep in mind that the administration reads the polls, too, so DHS goes out of its way to portray all immigrants as immediate threats to the community, bloodthirsty thugs who have been taken off the streets just as they were about to do something unspeakable. For instance, they insist that Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House Lie Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, must be deported because she’s a “criminal” — based, apparently, on a summons (no arrest, no charges) to juvenile court when she got into a fight with another girl when she was 16. [Telling details]
[…] the AP also reports that federal and state law enforcement are tracking social media posts about New Orleans, to “monitor” public opinion on the occupation, noting posts from “a combination of groups urging the public to record ICE and Border Patrol” as well as helpful snitches who provide “additional locations where agents can find immigrants.” […]
During our lunch break I had a fervent request from our tech support specialist to add one more despicable, destructive, arrogant immigrant to the list to deport. He has destroyed the environment and ruined the lives to thousands with massive pollution from his rockets and his dozens of illegal gas turbines, not to mention his championing fascists and nazis on his massive xhitter social media swamp. So, we want to see the muskrat sent back to south africa so he can destroy that country, too.
I’m sure people have many other viable candidates for deportation, too. While he isn’t an immigrant, can we deport (shadow president) S.S. Miller to Sudan?
“This Is Actually The Most Insane Thing He’s Ever Posted”
“No, really.”
Update on that whole […] advancing dementia thing: Well, it’s still happening.
And it might sound nuts to, as our headline suggests, try to pick one tweet or “Truth” from Donald Trump […] and say it’s “the most insane thing” he’s ever posted. But you haven’t seen what he posted last night.
And yes, we know December 1 was a big contender for that title, when he posted 160 times in just a few hours. […] It’s also possible we’re forgetting something really insane from Trump 1.0, like the night he hallucinated Obama’s WIRE TAPPS […]
Meet 487 words in one entirely bugfuck post.
Philip Bump sets up the flow of what happens over the course over those 487 words: [social media post]
[…] For the sake of our sanity and yours, to hold on to reality and affirm that it still exists and matters, we’re going to quote and correct this lunatic fucking thing. It won’t take us long.
There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me!
No.
My hours are the longest,
Nope.
and my results are among the best.
LOL no.
I’ve stopped Eight Wars, saving many millions of lives in the process,
Stopped zero wars, and his administration has murdered millions of people in the process.
[Embedded links to sources for this and other debunking of Trump’s lies are available at the main link.]
created the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country,
Not according to the American people, who would like to talk about those old-fashioned, elegant hoax words “affordability” and “groceries.”
brought Business back into the United States at levels never seen before,
Hallucinations.
rebuilt our Military, created the Largest Tax Cuts and Regulation Cuts, EVER, […] closed our open and very dangerous Southern Border, when previous Administrations were unable to do so,
Sure, [Trump.]
and created an “aura” around the United States of America that has led every Country in the World to respect us more than ever before.
Oh, the things Stephen Miller tells the president […]
In addition to all of that, I go out of my way to do long, thorough, and very boring Medical Examinations at the Great Walter Reed National Military Medical Center,
Boooooooring.
Also it’s just the Walter Reed, not the Great Walter Reed.
seen and supervised by top doctors, all of whom have given me PERFECT Marks — Some have even said they have never seen such Strong Results.
Doctors do not give “marks” for medical exams, nor do they compliment a patient’s “Strong Results,” […]
I do these Tests because I owe it to our Country. In addition to the Medical, I have done something that no other President has done, on three separate occasions, the last one being recently, by taking what is known as a Cognitive Examination,
It’s known as a dementia test.
something which few people would be able to do very well,
Literally designed to be easy for any person who doesn’t have dementia. You draw a clock. You say which one is the camel. The doctor looks at the results to see if it’s all gone awry.
including those working at The New York Times,
Do they have dementia that’s actively encroaching on their ability to function? And who told Trump he was taking an IQ test? Was that Stephen Miller also? […]
and I ACED all three of them
It’s like bragging that you didn’t shit your pants even once.
in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know.
Oh, now we’re supposed to be impressed that he didn’t get shy during the dementia test, not even in front of people he doesn’t know?
And what kinds or experts, please? Experts on the drawing of clocks and picking out which one is “camel”?
I have been told that few people have been able to “ace” this Examination and, in fact, most do very poorly,
He has been lied to. [Why is Trump gullible enough to believe those lies?]
which is why many other Presidents have decided not to take it at all.
Many other presidents actually have never had it recommended to them at the Great Walter Reed that they take a dementia test. Reagan probably, yeah. […]
Despite all of this, the time and work involved, The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am “slowing up,” am maybe not as sharp as I once was, or am in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true, and knowing that I work very hard, probably harder than I have ever worked before.
Yes, despite all of this.
I will know when I am “slowing up,” but it’s not now! After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
[Well, at least he does remember his title.]
It’s sedition or maybe treason to check in on whether [Trump’s] obvious senility is affecting his ability to carry out the duties of his job. […]
They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.
Sure thing, Trump […]
They have inaccurately reported on all of my Election Results and,
He lost the 2020 election by a fucking landslide, to Joe Biden. Is that the election result he’s upset about? Is it? IS IT?
in fact, were forced to apologize on much of what they wrote. The best thing that could happen to this Country would be if The New York Times would cease publication because they are a horrible, biased, and untruthful “source” of information. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
LMAO […]
You did it! And we did it! We made it to the end of the literal most insane thing he has ever posted! […]
After Donald Trump lost his reelection bid five years ago, he immediately launched an effort not only to overturn the results, but also to convince the public that he secretly won, reality be damned. There was, however, one key element missing from the president’s pitch: evidence. [True]
Trump asked his 2020 campaign team to produce evidence to bolster his conspiracy theories, but they didn’t because they couldn’t. He asked his lawyers to do the same thing, but to no avail. [!]
Unsatisfied, the Republican hired the Berkeley Research Group to uncover widespread voter fraud and election irregularities, which did not go well, and then he hired Simpatico Software Systems, which also failed to tell Trump what he wanted to hear. [!]
In the months and years that followed, the then-former president would occasionally promise to share “irrefutable” and “conclusive” evidence, but those vows inevitably turned into embarrassing flops. (Shortly before Election Day 2024, Trump said he had “many different papers” to substantiate his nonsensical claims, but for reasons he never explained, those “papers” never reached the public.) [!]
But as the first year of the incumbent president’s second term nears its end, he’s still confident that he’ll produce the evidence that’s eluded him. [Bonkers!] [Social media post with bonkers video]
When Politico’s Dasha Burns sat down with Trump this week for a lengthy interview, she tried to get a better sense of his views on Russia’s war in Ukraine. This, sadly, led the president to say what he always says when asked about the devastating conflict: Vladimir Putin wouldn’t have launched the invasion if he had been in office, and Trump wasn’t in office because there was, as he once again falsely described it, “a rigged election.” [head/desk]
In this interview, however, Trump added, as part of his stale and predictable harangue, “It’s gonna come out over the next couple months too, loud and clear. Because we have all the information.” [aiyiyiyi]
For reality-based observers, the proposition that Trump and his team suddenly have “all the information” they need to rewrite the story of his defeat is obviously foolish, but let’s pause on the president’s use of the word “we.”
In October, Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who has touted election conspiracy theories, joined the administration as a “special government employee” with one specific focus: Olsen was hired to investigate the 2020 election. A month later, The Washington Post reported that the president “is dialing up pressure on the Justice Department to freshly scrutinize ballots from the 2020 election,” […] [FFS!]
Between the number of officials working on this and the realization that those who tell the truth about Trump’s 2020 defeat will be fired, it stands to reason that the White House actually will produce some kind of package “over the next couple months.”
But that won’t make the manufactured evidence credible.
Last fall, with time running out in the 2024 presidential election and early voting underway across much of the country, then-Sen. JD Vance refused to answer questions about who was the rightful winner of the 2020 race. The Ohio Republican complained at the time that political journalists were “obsessed” with the election from four years earlier.
A year later — and roughly five years since Trump lost his reelection bid — someone is obsessed with the 2020 race, but it’s not political journalists.
South African immigrant Elon Musk is still criticizing immigrants from Black majority countries […]
Musk made his racist commentary during a Wednesday interview with Katie Miller, wife of bigoted Trump administration official Stephen Miller. The multibillionaire Republican donor reiterated a false conspiracy theory he’s previously touted, alleging that immigrants were paid to move to the United States to vote for Democrats.
“We’re paying people to come here from somewhere else in vast numbers, including flying them in—it’s not like you need a border wall if you’re flying them in—then fast-tracking them to citizenship,” Musk said. [JFC] [video]
He also argued that this elaborate scheme leads to immigrant communities voting “hard left,” and described the idea as “voter importation.”
The concept is a long-standing white supremacist conspiracy known as “great replacement,” touted as a way to replace white voters with foreign-born, nonwhite voters.
Musk said this creates a “money magnet” and cited Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, an immigrant from Somalia. According to Musk, Omar was “voted into power by a large group of people from Somalia who are in Minnesota, which is really far from Somalia.”
He also called into question the recent election of New York City’s Zohran Mamdani “by a majority of people who are not born in America.”
Musk’s bigoted remarks echo President Donald Trump, who has spent the last two weeks denigrating Omar and Minnesota’s Somali communities
But Musk’s comments prove even more racist because he himself is an immigrant from South Africa—the only difference being that he is white. Musk moved to the United States and received millions in government support to help launch his companies, with millions in government contracts continuing to come in. [True!]
[…] Musk has earned billions thanks to U.S. taxpayers. Those funds have been used to back racist U.S. candidates—most notably Trump—as well as racist political parties in Europe.
Musk also effectively admitted in his interview with Miller that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was a failure, saying that, if he could go back in time, he would not do it again. He also complained that his actions at DOGE led to people “burning the cars”—a reference to extensive protests at various Tesla facilities across the country. [video]
DOGE continues to be under fire for ending life-saving programs across the world, violating Americans’ privacy, and costing taxpayers millions—all after promising that the shoddy organization would save the government billions.
Former President Barack Obama surprised elementary school students at a Chicago Public Library branch on Tuesday, reading to them while donning a Santa hat.
After reading “Flying Free: How Bessie Coleman’s Dreams Took Flight,” Obama joked with the children and asked them their dreams.
“What do you want to be?” the former president asked.
“I want to be like you,” one child replied.
“Well, you know what? Right now, all I am is old,” he joked. [Nice, uplifting video at the link.]
The appearance offered yet another reminder of the contrast between Obama and President Donald Trump. [video of Melania Trump in a stilted setting, with a stilted reading of “How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?” Flanked by two children who looked like hostages.] […]
And while Obama was reading to children at a library, Trump was telling crowds that his bang-’em-up economy would mean less pencils and toys for their school-aged children.
“It’s imperative that CNN be sold,” the president told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “I think CNN should be sold, because I think the people running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent.” [Trump weighing in where he should not.]
Warner Bros. Discovery announced last week it had struck an agreement with entertainment giant Netflix for the streaming giant to acquire its sprawling movie and television studios, a deal that does not include its struggling linear cable assets including Turner Sports and CNN.
Paramount on Monday mounted a hostile bid for the company, offering more money per share for Warner Bros. Discovery and pitching a deal that would include all the company’s assets.
The bidding war comes as both companies have lobbied the White House and Trump directly to support the merger. Either deal would create one of the largest media conglomerates on earth and face intense questions of antitrust from lawmakers and Trump’s government regulators.
Trump has voiced displeasure with CNN over its news coverage for years, and Paramount executive David Ellison has reportedly told the president he would be sure to implement major editorial changes at the cable news network should he win control of the company. [!]
Trump has praised Ellison’s efforts at Paramount publicly, including his retooling of CBS News since his family purchased the company earlier this year. […]
Thanks to Militant Agnostic @253, and to birger @226, for adding additional information about Eileen Higgins.
In other news:
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates Wednesday in an unusually narrow vote, underscoring the divides among bank officials over the effect rate cuts will have on inflation and employment.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the panel of Fed officials responsible for setting monetary policy, dropped its baseline interest rate down to a range of 3.5 to 3.75, a reduction of 0.25 percentage points.
The FOMC approved the rate cut by a vote of 9 to 3, a smaller margin than the typical Fed rate decision. […]
The unusual number and nature of Wednesday’s dissents revealed how hard it could be for Fed Chair Jerome Powell — and his eventual successor — to keep the FOMC united with the economy at a foggy crossroads.
President Trump could name a successor to Powell in the coming days or weeks.
Fed officials are attempting to figure out how quickly they can cut interest rates back to neutral levels without losing more ground in its fight against inflation. After falling rapidly during the final year of the Biden administration, price growth picked up soon after Trump took office and imposed billions of dollars in tariffs.
At the same time, U.S. hiring has slowed significantly, pushing the unemployment rate up and derailing American consumer confidence. […]
“The seizure was a significant escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.”
U.S. forces seized an oil tanker near the Venezuelan coastline Wednesday, President Donald Trump said, a significant escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against President Nicolás Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela,” Trump told a roundtable meeting of business leaders at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. He described the vessel as “very large” and the “largest one ever seized, actually.” [FFS]
“And, other things are happening,” Trump added. “So you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”
[…] Venezuela’s oil exports rose this year to a daily average of about 900,000 barrels, Reuters has reported. Its largest importers are China and the United States, particularly after the Trump administration in July reissued a license to the U.S. energy giant Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela.
The seizure of the oil tanker was announced hours after opposition leader María Corina Machado missed the Oslo ceremony to collect her Nobel Peace Prize. Machado has been in hiding in Venezuela since January and barred by the government from leaving the country. Her daughter, accepting the honor in her place, said she would appear in Oslo soon. […]
“Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi says Russia’s frontline gains are tiny as U.S. pressure grows on Ukraine to accept a peace deal.”
Ukraine’s soldiers are doing much better in the pitched battles in the east of the country than Russia is letting on, Kyiv’s top commander said, denouncing what he called Kremlin “disinformation” aimed at influencing a foreign audience.
This week’s briefing by Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi was aimed at changing the narrative as Ukraine comes under fierce pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to throw in the towel and agree to a peace deal his people initially sketched out with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It might seem as if Ukraine “is only withdrawing” due to Russia’s incessant attacks, but in reality Kyiv is holding the line and has even been able to retake some ground in key contested towns in recent days, Syrskyi said.
[…] Earlier this month, the Russian defense ministry claimed its troops had succeeded in occupying the crucial frontline city of Pokrovsk, as well as in surrounding Ukrainian troops in nearby Myrnohrad and taking over Vovchyansk and Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region.
The Ukrainian army insists that its forces are back in parts of Pokrovsk. It says small groups of Russian soldiers are infiltrating to pose for pictures with flags for propaganda purposes, but don’t fully control the shattered ruins of the city.
While Russia’s frontline gains are small, the Kremlin hopes to persuade Ukraine’s backers that continued support for Kyiv is futile. That’s the message that is being received in Washington.
In an interview with POLITICO this week, Trump underlined that he wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to a peace deal, fast.
“He’s gonna have to get on the ball and start accepting things, you know, when you’re losing — because you’re losing,” Trump said. [Trump being an ignorant doofus.]
The first iteration of the plan called for Ukraine to hand over key defensive areas in the Donetsk region, including Pokrovsk, but it has since been modified following strong protests from Kyiv and European countries. Zelenskyy is insisting that he will not hand over any Ukrainian territory to Russia.
[…] “The scale of Russian lies exceeds the real pace of troop advance by many times,” Syrskyi said. “The enemy uses disinformation and fake maps in a hybrid war against Ukraine, influencing both a foreign audience and our society and our army.”
[…] The Russian campaign to militarily seize the rest of Donetsk, including a belt of heavily fortified cities, would likely take at least two to three years, pose a significant challenge, and result in difficult and costly battles that Russia may not be able to sustain, ISW [Institute of the Study of War] said.
“Russia’s cognitive warfare effort aims to push Ukraine and the West to cede this heavily defended territory to Russia without a fight, allowing Russia to avoid spending significant amounts of time and resources to try to seize it on the battlefield,” the think tank added.
Syrskyi said that in some areas, Russian forces are only moving forward less than 5 kilometers per month.
“At such pace, the advance of the Russians with daily losses of more than 1,000 people is a negligible result,” the general added.
However, Syrskyi admitted that the situation is harsh for Ukrainian troops defending Pokrovsk, where Russia has poured 156,000 men into the fight. “It is currently the main theater of military operations,” Syrskyi said.
He admitted that this fall Ukrainian troops had fully withdrawn from Pokrovsk, but said on Nov. 15 they launched a counteroffensive and retook almost half the city.
“We continue to hold the northern part of the city, approximately along the railway line. In addition, west of Pokrovsk, we have cleared and controlled about 54 square kilometers,” Syrskyi said. […]
Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal law enforcement agent while they’re conducting their duties. Tincher, a white woman in her mid-50s who stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall, insists she was at speaking distance from the agent and said that she did nothing to “impede” their actions.
[…]
“Pretty soon they were throwing me on the ground and handcuffing me and putting me in their unmarked truck,” Tincher said, estimating that the whole interaction just took a few seconds. […] agents told her in the truck that if she didn’t watch herself “they were going to pull me over to the side of the road and give me this [pepper spray],”
[…]
released […] Tincher has marks on her neck and wrist from where agents restrained her. Agents cut off her wedding ring and held her in leg shackles at Whipple Federal Building for about five hours […] Tincher said she’s even more motivated after her arrest to volunteer to support immigrants in her community. […] “I just don’t want this to be happening in our country.”
They would arrest people “attempting to self-remove” after being in the U.S. without legal authorization. […] Agents would target commercial buses passing through ports of entry into Mexico
[…]
The administration has been urging undocumented people to return home of their own volition, even using a government app to allow them to report their “intent to part,” and offering $1,000 so-called “exit bonuses.” A mission aimed at scooping up migrants headed out the door voluntarily might seem inconsistent with those efforts.
[…]
Formal removal proceedings can bar people from reentry for a certain number of years or permanently, and make reentering a crime. […] However, steering those migrants into deportation proceedings—as opposed to letting them leave quietly on a southbound bus—would enable them to seek legal remedies, including applying for asylum.
[…]
could also be about boosting numbers to hype the effectiveness of Trump’s deportation campaign. […] “But you can’t get to scale by removing people who are already offering themselves to be removed, because that number has not been high.”
Trump’s troops must get out of Los Angeles, a federal judge rules. […]
“The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one.”
Judge Charles Breyer: “Defendants take the position that, after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts. Defendants’ position is contrary to law.”
Dan Kaszeta (Historian, Chemical weapons expert):
I don’t think there is [anything comparable in 1930s Germany to all the amazing US court rulings this year], but I’m not an expert in that aspect. But I’m left with the impression that the US courts are in a stronger position than the courts of 1930s Germany.
The new state law takes effect immediately, prohibiting immigration arrests inside or within 1,000 feet of state courthouses, which have been the sites of deportation operations over the past few months […] Illinois’ new law also requires hospitals, day care facilities and public universities to institute plans for how to deal with immigration agents who might show up at their facilities, and it bars them from sharing most residents’ information with federal agents.
It also opens the door to litigation against federal officials who “knowingly violated Constitutional rights during civil immigration enforcement operations.” Higher punitive damages can be sought against officers who fail to identify themselves, deploy tear gas or use some of the other inflammatory tactics
Rando 1: “Connecticut has a similar law [the Trust Act]. If I remember correctly, they will need a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant is not enough. And even if they have the right paperwork, they can’t wear masks.”
Rando 2: “As does Colorado.”
“Even the worst authoritarian states in the world do not have such an official policy,” Irish centrist MEP Barry Andrews said.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to require tourists to hand over their social media data ahead of next year’s World Cup generated outrage on Wednesday.
An elected European official, human rights groups and fan organizations condemned the move and urged the world football governing body, FIFA, to pressure the Trump administration to reverse course.
Visitors to the U.S. — including those from visa-free countries such as France, Germany and Britain — would have to submit five years of social media activity before being allowed through the border, according to a proposal by the Trump administration […]
The new rules, which would also require travelers to provide emails, phone numbers and addresses used in the last five years, would come into effect early next year — shortly before hundreds of thousands of football fans are expected to travel to the U.S. to watch their teams compete in the World Cup, which begins in June. The U.S. is co-hosting the tournament with Mexico and Canada.
“President Trump’s plan to screen visitors to the U.S. based on their past five-year social media history is outrageous,” Irish Member of the European Parliament Barry Andrews of the centrist Renew group said in a statement. […] “The plans would of course seriously damage the U.S. tourist industry as millions of Europeans would no longer feel safe … including football fans due to attend next year’s World Cup.”
The Trump administration has stepped up social media surveillance at the border, vetting profiles and denying tourists entry or revoking visas over political posts […]
Speaking on Wednesday evening, Trump said: “We want safety, we want security. We want to make sure we’re not letting the wrong people come into our country.”
Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch — which has repeatedly warned FIFA about its interactions with the Trump administration — called the new entry requirements “an outrageous demand that violates fundamental free speech and free expression rights.”
“This policy expressly violates [football governing body] FIFA’s human rights policies, and FIFA needs to pressure the Trump administration to reverse it immediately,” she added. “The World Cup is not an opportunity for the U.S. to exclude and harass fans and journalists whose opinions Trump officials don’t like.”
[…] Customs and Border Protection, the agency that authored the proposal, said: “This is not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe.”
[…] The prospect of turning over years of social media data to American authorities also sparked fury from football supporters, who turned their fire on FIFA.
“Freedom of expression and the right to privacy are universal human rights. No football fan surrenders those rights just because they cross a border,” said Ronan Evain, executive director at Football Supporters Europe, a representative group for fans. “This policy introduces a chilling atmosphere of surveillance that directly contradicts the welcoming, open spirit the World Cup is meant to embody, and it must be withdrawn immediately.
“[…] It’s urgent that FIFA clarifies the security doctrine of the tournament, so that supporters can make an informed decision whether to travel or stay home,” he added.
Judge Charles Breyer: “Defendants take the position that, after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts. Defendants’ position is contrary to law.”
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles on Wednesday and ordered control of the troops returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Trump administration has indicated it will appeal the latest decision, part of a slew of litigation over the deployments nationally.
Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump, sold shares worth $50,000 to $100,000 in the mining company MP Materials following a July announcement of a lucrative deal between the Las Vegas company and the Trump administration, government filings show.
birgerjohanssonsays
Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his allies carry a symbol depicting a golden noose on their lapels, indicating their support for summary killings.
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87, 93, 132, 149, and 198.
Some updates and additional details concerning Trump’s National Security Strategy, or NSS:
[…] Late last week Donald Trump’s White House quietly unveiled its new NNS, which generated immediate global attention — and alarm.
The good news is that the unusually brief document, which is available in its entirety online, is quite readable. While some official foreign policy and national security documents are often inaccessible and filled with jargon, Trump’s new NSS is easy to understand.
The bad news is that the vision sketched out in the document is dreadful. The president and his team envision a near future in which the United States will withdraw from its role as the leader of the free world, promote racial purity in Europe, abandon intensifying environmental crises and de-emphasize democracy abroad.
(It’s also needlessly propagandistic at times. As The Bulwark noted, “With 27 instances of Trump’s name in a mere 29 pages of text, it is a strategy document worthy of North Korea.”) [Laughable.]
The same document largely ignores Russia, which helps to explain why the Kremlin was so pleased with it. [Putin’s dream come true.]
The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum characterized the new White House NSS as “a performative suicide,” adding that it’s “hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly.” Applebaum concluded, “It will be worth following the reactions around the world.”
The morning after the document was released, Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, wrote via social media, “Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem. And we have common enemies. At least that’s how it has been in the last 80 years. We need to stick to this, this is the only reasonable strategy of our common security. Unless something has changed.”
He didn’t explicitly mention Trump’s National Security Strategy by name, but given the context, he didn’t have to.
Three days later, The Associated Press reported:
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the Trump administration’s new national security strategy underscored the need for Europe to become ‘much more independent’ from the U.S. in terms of security policy. … Parts of the document were understandable, but ‘some of it is unacceptable for us from the European point of view,’ he told reporters in the western German city of Mainz.
[…] Responding to the NSS’ promotion of Europe’s more nativist, far-right political parties, European Council president Antonio Costa also warned the U.S. this week against interfering in European affairs.
Trump has spent the year offending, outraging and confusing many of our closest traditional allies, going back generations. If the Republican’s goal was to push those allies away and to encourage others to forge new alliances while leaving the U.S. behind, his efforts are right on track.
Trump’s administration wants the International Criminal Court to amend its founding document to ensure it does not investigate the Republican president and his top officials […] If the court does not act on this U.S. demand and two others—dropping investigations of Israeli leaders over the Gaza war and formally ending an earlier probe of U.S. troops over their actions in Afghanistan—Washington may penalize more ICC officials and could sanction the court itself
[…]
ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.
[…]
Any effort to change the Rome Statute to accommodate the U.S. demand would be slow and difficult, requiring approval of two-thirds of countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. […] The ICC is the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal with 125 member states, including the entire EU but excluding major powers China, Russia and the United States, among others. […] Enshrining blanket immunity for specific individuals would be seen as undermining the court’s founding principles [and] would require an even larger majority
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “I believe this is referred to as consciousness of guilt.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Four years since he was released from prison.
Steven Donziger, de facto prosecuted by Chevron after he won the Ecuador pollution case.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/17hRdPt8Cc/
As it turns out, lawmakers and federal workers aren’t a fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services. Not only does the HHS secretary have a line of people calling for him to resign, including his own staffers [embedded links to sources are available at the main link], but he is also now facing impeachment as well.
On Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan filed articles of impeachment against the brain-wormed politician, saying he has undermined public health. And that’s hard to argue against. He has promoted fringe views from falsely saying Tylenol causes autism to ripping a health monitoring program away from coal miners.
That said, it’s very unlikely the impeachment succeeds. Congress has a Republican majority in both chambers, making the likelihood of this coming to a vote on the House floor very slim.
[…] Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, scheduled a vote that would allow lawmakers to signal their concerns over Kennedy’s malfeasance thus far. In theory, this could open the door for both sides of the aisle to openly discuss the havoc Kennedy has wreaked on HHS.
But it’s hard to say whether Republican lawmakers will take that opportunity.
For example, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor who somewhat reluctantly voted for Kennedy’s confirmation, has recently turned down opportunities to criticize the health secretary. That’s the case even after Kennedy reneged on pledges he made to Cassidy about not messing too much with vaccine policy.
Kennedy, who has a long history of pushing anti-vaccine lies, has fired scientists from a top vaccine advisory committee, ousted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, and removed vaccine mandates for young children and pregnant women, among other things. […]
Republican Rep. Randy Fine of Florida appeared on CNN Wednesday to defend President Donald Trump’s racist tirades against Somali immigrants—by launching into a wildly racist tirade of his own. [video]
Fine: Well, I’m not comfortable with a hierarchy of racism. The president isn’t either, but not all cultures are equal and not all countries are equal. There are some people who come to this country to add value, and there are some that come to this country to take value.
And when we’ve seen in Minneapolis that 50% of the people who are naturalized engaged in immigration fraud [WTF!?], and we’re seeing the largest fraud in terms of welfare programs perhaps in the history of our country, we know there’s a problem. And the president speaks in language that Americans understand. He is blunt. He’s not a politician—neither am I. [bullshit] And so I support as he is making people understand the threats that we’re under right now.
There’s a difference between being blunt and being a demagogue.
There are also people who are intelligently blunt and others who are idiotically blunt.
But neither a demagogue nor a corrupt politician is going to give you an honest assessment of any of these distinctions.
———————————————–
I agree with Fine. Not all cultures are equal. Some are truly immoral, subpar, and destructive, notably the GOP MAGA Trump Cult Culture.
I wasn’t planning to go to the USA when Trump was in charge anyhow even if I could afford to do so but still – land of free & brave & right to free speech and criticise govt huh? Any Freezepeachers!!1ty! going to fight against this ya reckon?
Australians travelling to the United States could soon face longer delays and an unprecedented invasion of privacy, an international law expert has warned. It comes as the US plans to require tourists to hand over five years of their social media history to border officials.
Professor Donald Rothwell from the Australian National University said people who criticised the US government were most at risk. “The people most affected are those who are very active on social media, especially politically active individuals or those who’ve expressed criticism of US domestic or international policies,” Professor Rothwell said.
Storm Byron is threatening to heap new miseries on Palestinians in Gaza, with families making distress calls from flooded tents and hundreds of others fleeing their shelters in search of dry ground as the fierce winter storm lashes heavy rains on the besieged territory.
Officials warned Wednesday that the storm was forecast to bring flash floods, strong winds and hail until Friday, conditions expected to wreak havoc in a territory in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in tents, temporary structures, or damaged buildings after two years of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
From back when our Cosmos was 5% its current age :
The light of the oldest supernova ever seen, dating back 13 billion years to just 730 million years after the Big Bang, has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The supernova was accompanied by a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB), signifying the destruction of a massive star and possibly the birth of a stellar-mass black hole.
“There are only a handful of gamma-ray bursts in the last 50 years that have been detected in the first billion years of the universe,” said Andrew Levan, of Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the U.K., in a statement. “This particular event is very rare and very exciting.”
wood banks—like a food bank but for fuel—are important. They’re the clearest sign that basic systems in this country have already failed. […] People in rural and Indigenous areas still heavily rely on wood heat as the primary fuel source for their homes. Volunteers cut and split firewood, stack it somewhere public, and give it away […] No paperwork. No means tests. No government forms. […] Local news crews film volunteers splitting logs while pretending it’s heartwarming […] as if the story is about kindness instead of the failure that created the need in the first place.
[…]
Wood banks now operate in hundreds of towns […] Demand has grown fast enough that the Agriculture Department has issued multiple rounds of grants to help communities process more wood because so many households can’t afford the heat […] Almost one in four households couldn’t pay their energy bills in 2024, according to census data.
[…]
You don’t start a wood bank in a country with functioning institutions. You start one when heating assistance programs can’t keep up, when the grid flickers every time the wind shifts, when propane and heating oil costs swing so hard that families can’t budget more than a week out. You start a wood bank when seniors stop turning on their heat because they’re scared of the bill. You also start one when the country pretends energy insecurity doesn’t exist because acknowledging it would mean admitting that entire regions were left behind on purpose.
[…]
Collapse isn’t a single moment. It’s what happens when the systems people rely on keep existing on paper but stop functioning in practice. Heating programs remain funded but reach only a fraction of eligible households. The grid stays interconnected, but the outages keep stacking up and repairs keep getting delayed. […] people are left to solve problems that institutions were supposed to solve. […] The danger is how invisible it all is. You can drive through a town and never notice that the shed behind the church isn’t storing holiday decorations but several cords of oak that’ll decide whether someone wakes up warm tomorrow. […] Collapse doesn’t announce itself. It piles up. It accumulates in places people don’t look.
StevoRsays
From today’s PBS Newshour :
President Trump was on the road in Pennsylvania last night to address affordability, an issue that’s dragged down his approval ratings. But at the event, the president reverted to campaign mode, delivering a speech that lasted more than an hour-and-a-half, including a rant about immigrants.
To discuss that, we turn now to Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross and Republican Tiffany Smiley, a former U.S. Senate candidate in Washington state.
…(Snip)…
Trump leans on cultural wars because he has nothing else.
We know that the prices of everyday goods have gone up since he’s been in office. We know that his tariff strategy has done nothing but tax the American people. We know that the Big Beautiful Bill Act is the largest wealth transfer that the United States has ever seen. People are having a hard time paying their rent. They can’t afford housing.
They can’t afford to buy things at the grocery store. He’s eliciting a conversation that he knows is not a dog whistle. This is racism writ large. When Trump calls places where Black people live, countries outside the U.S. where Black people live or where they’re the predominant population shithole countries, he knows what he’s doing when he says that.
He knows that it is a rallying cry for those who see America as a land of opportunity for whites only. This is a guy who has used the segregationist platform before. And he’s a guy who continues to use it when asked to really speak to why his policies aren’t working.
People in red states, blue states, purple states, and every color in between have said that affordability is their top-line issue. But he gets up there and does is what he’s done time and time again, castigate populations of color. (- Ameshia Cross:nailing it.Ed.)
Scientists, academics, digital creators and influencers all face a critical challenge: How can science and fact-based information break through rampant misinformation, disinformation, media silos and polarization?
That’s the key question we tried to answer during a special livestreamed Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) event we called “Tipping Point – Turning Science Into Solutions.”
During this mega AMA, science correspondent Miles O’Brien and digital anchor and correspondent Deema Zein interviewed scientists, academics, digital creators, influencers and others about the challenges they face while communicating facts about science, climate, health and technology. They shared what they’ve found that works — and took your questions along the way.
The plaque created to honor the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol and the representatives inside it on Jan. 6 is defective, the Trump administration contends, and the lawsuit filed to force it to be hung should be thrown out.
Contemptible but the DOJ is likely to win this one. The police officers that brought the case can’t show any injury to themselves for not getting the plaque raised.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell pointed on Wednesday to a job-market risk that economists have been worried about for months: Official statistics could be drastically overstating recent hiring.
Powell said that Fed staffers believe that federal data could be overestimating job creation by up to 60,000 jobs a month. Given that figures published so far show that the economy has added about 40,000 jobs a month since April, the real number could be something more like a loss of 20,000 jobs a month, Powell said.
Before any conspiracy theories get raised, Powell is talking about a technical issue in how the estimation is done and why it is almost always revised downwards later. There is a plan to use a better estimation method starting next year but until then we should expect some sharp downward revisions.
Powell is talking about this publicly because some of the latest figures seem too good. He likely has inside information on what the revisions look like and wants to prepare markets. He could also be trying to say something to the White House but this is far to subtle a method for this administration. If that is his goal he should try a Truth Social post insulting the people who do the estimates.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/hayes-who-is-calling-the-shots-for-a-napping-president-trump-2472605763703
Video is 8:34 minutes
The video also covers Trump’s egregiously racist comments about Somalia.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/trump-doj-set-to-seek-to-re-indict-letitia-james-on-thursday-2472604227695
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285908
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors.”
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285903
Trump Intervenes Again in Honduras Vote, Alleging Fraud Without Evidence
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285900
Trump’s name was added to the exterior of the US Institute of Peace building
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285891
Putin refuses compromise in Moscow talks
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-5/#comment-2285882
The European Commission is adamant it has done what’s needed to address Belgium’s concerns about a financial package worth up to €210 billion to fund Ukraine’s defense against Moscow.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/he-wanted-me-killed-kelly-rips-trump-hegseth-threats-as-boat-strike-scandal-widens-2472360515582
Satire.
Hegseth responds to inspector general’s findings, flubs the meaning of ‘exonerated’
“Trump has a habit of using the word “exonerated” in ways that suggest he doesn’t know what it means. He is not alone.”
Related video at the link.
Suspect arrested in Jan. 6 pipe bomb case
“The arrest is the first known break in a five-year manhunt that has fueled intense speculation and conspiracy theories.”
Washington Post:
Wall Street Journal: “For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year”
“Almost a quarter of a million more children are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024”
Commentary from Talking Points Memo:
Link
Snippet from Wonkette news coverage:
Village People lead ‘world-class line-up’ for Trump-tinged World Cup 2026 draw
“Trump expected to receive Fifa’s new peace award”
Green Berets defend their Afghan counterparts after D.C. shooting
“The shooting of two National Guard members has prompted the Trump administration to crack down on Afghans who entered the U.S. after assisting American forces during the war.”
Rebecca Watson hits the nail on the head again:
https://skepchick.org/2025/12/blocking-out-the-sun-wont-save-us/
Good news, as reported by 11 alive:
More campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug—When they came, did you speak up? Not me.
Reuters: Putin questions US punishing India for buying Russian oil
Putin is playing to the Indian crowd by talking about oil. India, like China, has little native oil so they have to buy it someplace.
India wants to buy raw resources from the resource rich Russia. They have basic goods and electronics that would sell well in Russia. They are not as willing as China to anger the entire west and/or lie about their trade. They don’t care much about what is happening in Ukraine though, their concern is the complex relations between India/Russia/China.
Russia’s major goal is convincing India to buy more oil and other resources just to get money. Putin would love to buy what they can from India. Mostly electronics because India isn’t willing to sell Russia arms and ammunition directly. As a secondary point, getting Putin out of Russia and back on the international stage works in Russia’s favor also.
It’s a complex situation but they are pretty sure to come to some sort of deals. Putin wouldn’t have gone to India if they didn’t have something lined up.
Meidas Touch:
“Trump Crashes Out at Disastrous Presser on FAKE Peace Deal!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ytXBQy0Aqrk
Lynna, OM @ 2
Thank you.
BTW I have forgotten which state has a literal flat-Earther as major Republican politician among all the political turbulence. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Republicans in that state do in the 2026 elections.
WIRED link
“Cloudflare Has Blocked 416 Billion AI Bot Requests Since July 1”
“Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince claims the internet infrastructure company’s efforts to block AI crawlers are already seeing big results.”
WIRED link
“FBI Says DC Pipe Bomb Suspect Brian Cole Kept Buying Bomb Parts After January 6”
“The 30-year-old Virginia resident evaded capture for years after authorities discovered pipe bombs planted near buildings in Washington, DC, the day before the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.”
Anton Petrov:
“Wow! Asteroid Bennu Discoveries Spark New Questions About Life’s Origins”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSwGcF5R3KM
It is nice to view science news that require us to look up from this squalid political and economic mess to issues like the origin of life.
WIRED link
“The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Is Detaining People for ICE”
“Louisiana’s hunting and wildlife authority is one of more than 1,000 state and local agencies that have partnered with US immigration authorities this year alone.”
CNN: Trump hires new architect for White House ballroom amid clashes over project
Trump wants to make the ballroom even bigger, and McCrery apparently objected. The new size isn’t clear yet but I’m guessing it will be bigger then the rest of the White House at this point.
NBC News:
New York Times:
Washington Post link
“Video shows second strike hit before survivors could flip boat, lawmakers say”
“The footage was shown on Capitol Hill, where Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who oversaw a deadly attack on alleged drug smugglers, faced a day of difficult questions about the operation.”
Supreme Court allows Texas to use new congressional district map drawn to favor Republicans
“Texas officials drew the new congressional map to help Republicans gain up to five additional seats in the House in next year’s midterm elections.”
Re: birgerjohansson @18:
Minnesota Republicans elect a flat-earther to a party leadership post (2025)
A a district’s GOP chair. Minnesota has had a solid Dem majority, and the Rs there are so bonkers, it should stay that way.
Georgia GOP Chair: I’m Not a Flat-Earther … But Globes Are a Conspiracy (2023)
Kandiss Taylor (known for “Jesus, Guns, Babies”) failed a governor run with 3.4% of the primary in 2022, and is gonna try for congress in 2026.
Aspiring lieutenant governor penned 479 page flat Earth screed (2025)
Dean Olde got 1.8% of the Lt. Gov primary in 2022. He’ll try again in 2026.
Grand jury declines to indict N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James, less than two weeks after the first case was dismissed
“Federal officials failed to secure the new indictment against James, whom Trump has targeted, after a judge said the previous one was secured by an unlawfully appointed prosecutor.”
Re JM @23:
Ooh, Witkoff could get Russian blueprints for the Chernobyl sarcophagus.
Under PZ’s post about the US Institute of Peace, I compiled an index of Infinite Thread links chronicling the takeover.
Adding to Lynna @26.
Rando 1: “So they didn’t rule on the merits, just lifted the stay? So the suit continues, but too late for 2026?”
Joshua Friedman (Atlantic): “Right!”
Rando 2:
Lawrence Hurley (NBC):
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
NPR – Congo and Rwanda to sign symbolic peace deal in Washington as fighting rages
Gregg Gonsalves (Epidemiologist):
/Articles at the link.
Nature – Experimental vaccine prevents deadly allergic reactions in mice
Four unidentified military-style drones breached no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy’s arrival in Dublin
Commentary
The origin of the word “woman”.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1A1RFa2FoV/
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/scientists-discover-one-of-our-universes-largest-spinning-structures-a-50-million-light-year-long-cosmic-thread
Archaic humans were strategic and picky hunters, new study suggests.
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-archaic-humans-strategic-picky-hunters.html
Felis Catus only arrived in China 600 AD, during the Tang dynasty. Before that, the Chinese had a commensal relationship with the small leopard cats.
“Human-cat friendship started much later than you think”
. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-human-cat-friendship.html
Kneel before your new masters, human worms!
CERN’s ATLAS detects evidence for decay of Higgs boson into muon–antimuon pair
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-cern-atlas-evidence-decay-higgs.html
https://www.ms.now/all
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/500-tons-of-cocaine-trump-pardons-trafficker-who-helped-flood-u-s-with-drugs-2472950339615
Video is 8:29 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/maga-backlash-builds-as-gop-women-turn-on-mike-johnson-2472941635872
Video is 2:16 minutes
Sky Captain @35, quoting a commentator:
Yes, agreed. I’ve been thinking about the risks Zelensky takes. He is both dedicated and brave.
Sky Captain @33, yep. Sometimes it seems like a slow slide downhill toward catastrophe, but really this decline that will lead to institutional collapse has been quite rapid.
Sky Captain @32, so it is all just theater. Trump gets to pose as a peace maker while Congo and Rwanda continue to fight. Eventually, Trump will blame someone else for his failures in this instance. As an aside, I find it hard to characterize how much I despise Trump spouting flapdoodle and bunkum like ““a glorious triumph.”
Sky Captain @31, this is a good summary of Justice Kagan’s dissent:
Followup to comments 5 and 20.
Suspected pipe bomber told FBI he backed Trump, believed 2020 election conspiracies
“There’s no shortage of questions about Brian Cole Jr. and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore.”
Related video at the link.
Bongino was saying, in effect: “I am an asshole, a mind boggling doofus, and you can’t trust me.”
Link. The link leads to a presentation of various, current news reports.
Reuters Exclusive: Trump administration orders enhanced vetting for applicants of H-1B visa
Trump wants to be free to spread disinformation. And he wants to admit to the USA only H-1B visa applicants who also are on his disinformation bandwagon.
Followup to comment 35.
God Awful Movies!
GAM 534 And God Made Man
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pSga-ahzkb0
Scathing Atheist 665 Serious Vulgarities Only Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWouazqd4FU
Cartoon: Under the rug
Rando:
Commentary
Patrick Shea (Former attorney): “Pardons don’t apply to international law. In fact, it is a violation of international law for state actors to use pardons or amnesty in an attempt to shield war criminals from justice. When the rule of law is restored, these thugs, all of them, need to be on the first flight to the Hague.”
Wikipedia – US and the International Criminal Court
Trump releases racist blueprint for the world
Dangerous. More or less Nazi-like obsession with racial purity, plus lots of Trump’s authoritarianism, plus Stephen Miller’s basic evil. Very bad indeed.
Watch ‘wartime’ House speaker drop some baffling bullsh-t
https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-isnt-some-self-aggrandizing
“Donald Trump Isn’t Some Self-Aggrandizing Tinpot Dictator! He Appoints People For That.”
“Say hello to the Donald J. Trump Institute Of Getting His Piece.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jd-vance-welcomes-all-jews-to-participate
“JD Vance Welcomes All Jews To Participate In Christmas”
Trump’s closure of Voice of America is coming back to bite him
“As the president threatens Venezuela, Russia and China are filling the information vacuum.”
Brad Moss (Natsec attorney): “The FBI now consists of ‘Uber for drunks’.”
MS NOW – Kash Patel ordered FBI detail to give girlfriend’s pal a lift home
Rando: “The National Security strategy could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just published the 14 words instead because that’s what it amounts to.”
Cheryl Rofer (Retired nuclear scientist):
Anne Applebaum (Atlantic):
Link
The Senator from North Carolina should not have to resort such tactics in order to get approved disaster recovery funds sent to his state.
Washington Post link
“The CDC’s change to hepatitis B vaccination is even worse than it seems”
“The new recommendations portend even more harmful shifts ahead.”
NBC News:
ms.now:
Politico:
CNBC:
PBS:
MS.NOW:
Wall Street Journal:
The World Cup sucks up to Trump, and it sucks
Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):
Sky Captain @69, the banality of evil. And the surprising tendency of people to be nice to each other when face to face … no matter what the circumstances.
Lie: “We are your friends.”
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/letitia-james-undefeated-champ-of
Re: Lynna @70:
I’m sure the alternative was not far from their minds.
Here is a fun little distraction from the ongoing apocalypse.
Anime: Introvert guy sewing outfits for cosplay (as seen in parody made by Grimmjack)
“My Dress-Up Darling Abridged – Episode 1 (S1) ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bMjiwW5vYwQ
Bolts – Hawaii Supreme Court expands rights of defendants, and once again rebukes SCOTUS
The article describes some of his other spicy rulings.
“Have I Got News for You S70E9 | Hannah Fry” [they have a surprisingly cool bishop]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YBozFhDKvq8
@71 Lynna, OM: Johnson is just repeating the White House line here. Trust us, everything is OK, everything will get better next year, after the election. Don’t question the great leader and vote Republican.
Jeffries is being too generous. If the Republicans were organized they would be fighting against the American people but right now they are too divided to push Trump’s agenda.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/trump-accepts-fifa-peace-prize-despite-fuming-over-media-coverage-of-his-age-2473254467786
Video is 8:35 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/cdc-panel-ends-recommendation-for-newborn-hepatitis-b-shot-2473252419771
Video is 9:00 minutes. This is a really good presentation.
Link. The link leads to a compendium of recent news reports.
Cartoon: A MAGA dilemma
Always angry and pugnacious, LazerPig deals with the exaggerated claims that tanks have become obsolete.
“BuT tAnKs ArE oUtDaTeD bEcAusE dRoNeS!1 (re-upload)”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PN0SdVDj-oc
Britain: A Different Bias
“Nigel Farage throws his deputy Tice under bus as racism scandal deepens”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QE3JrrAzAeo
Vampire Billionaire Attacks Pope
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tyrant-judge-orders-trump-to-restore
Gaza ceasefire talks are at a ‘critical moment’ as questions remain for second phase
Related video at the link.
The video referenced in comment 85 relates personal stories of prisoners that include accounts of sexual assault and rape on both sides of the conflict, Palestinians and Israelis.
Followup to comment 52.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-european-elections/
@ 83
What? Am I supposed to feel sympathy for the leader of the most evil organization in human history just because some capitalist parasite criticizes his performative “altruism?”
This is the point where I’d insert the clip of Ken Watanabe in the Godzilla movie saying “Let them fight.”
NYT – Halligan Continues as U.S. Attorney
Southpaw (Lawyer): “If your appointment is invalid, you never had the job in the first place.”
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “This is the same Office of Legal Counsel which furnished the Murder Memo enabling the killing spree at sea.”
Rando:
Brandon Friedman (Former Obama HUD): “Laws aren’t real. They exist solely on account of buy-in from society’s participants. Once one side disengages, you no longer reside in a society based on laws. You live in a society based on power and armed force. I am begging folks to accept this so we can get moving.”
Randos
Sky Captain @89, this part bears repeating:
Akira @88:
I choose to deplore the history of bad deeds done by (or allowed to continue) by the Catholic church, while simultaneously being appalled by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel’s “anti-Christ” nonsense.
Jury-shopping with Jeanine, and abortion-pill liars get a pass, plus more.
Psaki: Loomer, O’Keefe covering Pentagon ‘not a real press corps’
Followup to comments 52 and 58.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-has-a-new-world-domination
Washington Post link
“Winter is coming. Not all weather offices are ready.”
“As the cold season looms, National Weather Service offices in more than half a dozen states, from Maine to Wyoming, are experiencing vacancies.”
MS NOW – Minneapolis police chief warns officers: Stop unlawful force by ICE or lose your job
Holocene impact
Previously Unknown 1 km Wide Jinlin Impact Crater in South China and Why It’s So Exciting
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aqutR88gwdY
Harem Anime: A History
(It gets weird)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6JtB9kq8Zuo
An Actual Cult Made These Anime | Happy Science Cult Vol. 1
(This was also featured in God Awful Movies)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dobQ9_YS5MA
Vampires in Anime
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=i_49ERlMo28
“Actually, I Am” seens genuinely fun. And “Karin” is a reverse vampire, injecting blood into people and improving their health. Good luck finding US media investing into concepts this odd.
Alucard in “Hellsing Ultimate” is as badass as Deadpool.
“Jelling Stone: 3D scans reveal power of a Viking queen – BBC News”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGhc5LEB_6I
Britain: Churches fight back against racist hate.
“Tommy Robinson’s Christian Hypocrisy Just Got EXPOSED”
Tommy Robinson is not even his true name.
Apologies for fucking up the tread again. Not wearing glasses.
.
This is a Ukrainan blog, but still interesting. Tanks are not obsolete, if used right.
“Ukrainians penetrate Russian flanks by 5 kilometers on tanks!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=H0eNuReq76A
This has gotten so out of hand.
Trump insults CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: ‘stupid and nasty’
The president has disparaged other women in the White House press corps in the past few weeks, calling them “piggy,” “stupid” and “ugly.”
‘No basis in reality’: Steve Rattner fact-checks Trump on inflation, affordability
“Inflation, in fact, has not decreased under Trump, and it’s certainly not stopped in its tracks,” the “Morning Joe” economic analyst said Friday.
Related video at the link. The video is the full presentation by Rattner.
Cartoon: No survivors
Followup to comment 104.
Trump rages as Fox News guest says life under Trump will be “more unaffordable” than with Biden
Cheryl Rofer (Retired nuclear scientist):
Rando 1: “Translation: It’s not going to nuclear explode like it does when it catches fire in Sim City 4.”
Rando 2: “I vote for patching the hole and not panicking. Also, for not having explosive drones hit the thing.”
Cheryl Rofer: “The danger of falls [off the roof] will be the greatest hazard.”
birgerjohansson@76,
Richard Coles isn’t a bishop, just an ex-vicar. His elder brother is the well-known rapist Andy Coles; information in Richard’s autobiography led inadvertently to Andy being outed as one of the UK “spycops”: police officers who infiltrated non-violent protest groups and in many cases including his, had sexual relationships with female members of the group they infiltrated without disclosing their identities, then later vanished from their partner’s lives.
Cheryl Rofer: “The story, over and over again, of metals companies.”
[Utah] US Magnesium’s bankruptcy leaves a looming question: What happens to the Great Salt Lake cleanup?
Mediaite: Trump Rages Against House Democrat He Just Pardoned: ‘Such a Lack of LOYALTY!’
Trump was apparently under the impression that Cuellar would change party. It isn’t clear why Trump expected this. It’s likely he talked to somebody but it’s also possible he just expected that Cuellar would do him a favor after he did a favor for Cuellar. Trump is one of those oblivious people, he fills the ranks around himself with self serving people like himself and yet is constantly surprised when they prove to be as untrustworthy as he is.
Mediaite: Trump Considering Move to Oust Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem: Report
Independent UK: Trump no longer pushing back when White House insiders say Hegseth is not up for the job as he tires of controversies: report
Rumors of this sort have been floating around for most of Trump’s term in office. Most of the people on his cabinet shouldn’t have the job and were selected more for being yes men then anything. These rumors are more serious but I think they say more about infighting at the White House then Trump seriously considering replacing somebody. As long as they are willing to say “Yes sir” when Trump orders them to do things and appear loyal to Trump their jobs are fairly secure.
Still, there could be a major loser in the White House infighting or Trump may decide that somebody has to go. If that does become the case who gets fired is likely to depend on who last had a scandal that made the news more then history of problems or how serious they are.
ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 6, 2025
The Russians claim to have already captured these cities while Ukraine says they are still in heavy fighting. The ISW assessment is that the Russians are slowly winning but it’s a street by street battle situation.
Away from Pokrovsk the Ukrainian’s appear to have made some small advances. The fog of war is getting worse, as the grey zone created by drones where it’s dangerous for either force to be gets wider. Near the more active areas it’s getting harder to even determine where the lines are.
This is ugly but I suspect it won’t go well for India. These migrants are going to look for work but they are going to be treated badly, not paid and some will end up fighting for the Russian army.
At this point both sides are talking about technology sharing but India doesn’t really have technology Russia wants. India has avoided selling arms or ammunition to Russia but with India starting up production of drones based on Russian designs the situation bears close monitoring.
KG @ 108
Than you for the correction.
His brother a rapist? Holy sh*t!
.
At least that is not genetic, so Richard should be OK.
(He is an old pal of the investigating journalist sitting next to him on the panel)
This time the rapist was never invited, unlike wossname that gross ‘comedian’ that got outed for SA a couple of years’ back.
.
And this is a reminder: Men do not notice the creeps, because – unlike Epstein – most creeps do not shed their camouflage in the company of men.
BTW the leaders of the Church of England have little to be proud of but at least the lower ranks occasionally show moral courage in opposing the likes of Farage.
Addendum: If men doing SA pop up this frequently -just in connection with TV- it has awful implications for their frequency in the general population.
Huh – that trophy should have been mine! I’ve ended well over a hundred wars before they started, indeed mostly before the countries concerned had any idea they had some sort of dispute! Most notably, perhaps, the vicious war between Andorra and Lesotho, which would certainly have led to billions of deaths if I hadn’t stepped in to remind them that they are both landlocked countries, and thousands of miles from each other.
KG @ 115
Your achievements pale beside mine. I prevented the time-travel war that killed 80% of the world’s population.
Russia has no ideology left (and neither has China) – Sarah Paine
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pPjsFgXgqs
And this begs the question – does America have any credible national ideology left? Isolationism? Aggressive imperial predatory capitalism does no nonger work on the rest of the world, China has proven that.
Is USA going to spend a half-century like France or Britain, clinging on old memories? I doubt it can afford a bloated military as the economic competition from the rest of the world ramps up, but Dubya showed illusions of strength live on.
How the Amber Trade Transformed Bronze Age Europe
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=k5je7IkR5Wk
Retro Vault:
10 Hidden Gems: Adult Animations You Might Have Missed from Around the World
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eahtDkjq5KA
.
10 Animations That Clearly Weren’t for Kids (But We Watched Anyway)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ozHeKZb3FQA
GEO GIRL
“How The Grand Teton Mountains Formed & Why They’re So Pointy!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pivXm1XJiSk
In Range by Carl Kasarda
“Is Juneteenth a Fake Holiday?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tnHdsTUNVSk
Background on Chernobyl @107.
Lawyers, Guns, & Money – Drone Damage to Chernobyl Confinement Structure
Trump Has Massive Meltdown as Texas Democrat DEFIES Party Switch
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MXxUkngbaOo
Hmm… If you induce more meltdowns, he will probably get more erratic. Short term, this means he will do more damage but he will also stumble over his own feet more often. Keep this up until the midterms and then you can contain his legislative agenda.
“Shocking Number Of Young Republicans Admit They’re Racist” (according to survey by the conservative Manhattan Institute)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=LLXxjfgv2MA
I did not find information about the size of the survey.
@117 birgerjohansson: Putin never had any ideology, this was one of his attractive features to begin with. As long as he was entirely practical and didn’t try to take some great view of history he could get along much better with neighbors. Even after Putin became a dictator he was able to build trade with other countries. As long as he was just trying to build up Russia’s industrial base and wealth other countries didn’t have a problem with him treating the Russians badly.
It wasn’t until he got this idea of recreating the Russian Empire and the unity of the Russian people did he become a military threat. This wasn’t an ideology he could spread any other way as everybody that wanted to hear it was already part of Russia.
Annoyingly people at Youtube have started to recycling news items from a year ago or more with ‘bad news for Trump’ themes. This must be a clickbait thing.
@126 birgerjohansson: I’ve been getting some click bait fake news also. Some channels using stolen art and AI voice overs to mimic Rachel Maddow pretty well. Take or fake some static shots from the Rachel Maddows show and use AI voice over to read a script and it looks like a clip from her show at first glance.
Link
More at the link.
ICE has arrested nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records, data shows
“The figures don’t include arrests made by Border Patrol [!], which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities in recent months.”
More at the link.
Lei’s Real Talk: General Liu and The Hidden Trial Audio the PLA leaked
During the Tiananmen Square events the Chinese general who naturally would have been in command of suppressing the students refused to do it. The general, Xu Qinxain, was in charge of the military forces charged with guarding the capital and the leadership of the CCP. He was ordered to suppress the students but refused. He was arrested, tried and served a couple of years in prison before going into house arrest for the rest of his life. A leaked video of the secret military trial of Xu Qinxain has reached the internet. It ended up in the hands of one of the surviving students who now lives in the US.
The video itself is interesting but Lei is more concerned with why it was leaked now. It obviously plays into the hidden conflict between political figures and military figures for power in China.
Samantha Montano:
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87 and 93.
Russia praises US security strategy shift heralded by ‘strong’ Trump. [JFC]
Moscow regards Washington’s updated National Security Strategy as “consistent with our vision.”
More at the link.
JM @ 127
Thanks.
Motor history
“Volvo TP21 Sugga (“Sow”) — The Offroad Swedish Military Legend”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=fijoVzSz88k
More practical than the Jeep, with space to function as a staff car complete with radios. Annoying AI voice, otherwise OK.
Bannon in trouble with MAGA As Gross Epstein Emails Surface
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=S_M8mayJ5Gs
Naah. They will forget it next week.
Greg Abbott Called Out By His Own Party After Staggering Trump Switch
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xNe8Wl6xQzY
Trump’s Strategy Shocks Europe And The World | News Round-Up
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BJxpkWo8OtA
He is not shocking anyone, he is just not pretending anymore.
Latest episode in a brilliant series by Paleo Analysis here – The Complete History of the Earth: Early Jurassic Period – 45 mins long yt doco.
I chose a video from an American in a non-Scandinavian country for a change.
‘Danielle living in Spain’
EUROPE CULTURE SHOCK AS AN AMERICAN
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9WhF_gDAN5g
Stevo R @ 137
Yes, I really enjoy the series.
The first appearence of hair and fur is poorly understood, but this is when proto-mammals started to turn into something recognisably mammalian.
Btw this started a period when our ancestors were mostly small and short-lived, losing the genes for regeneration and repair other lineages have.
When the dinosaurs were gone, mammals had to re-evolve the genes needed for longer life spans.
A reminder of how the world works.
“At the End of this interview I’ll be released” | Lord of War Full Endining
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=rjTtMcKo0UY
Young Nigel Farage at the school nativity play.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17f8iWCCB1/
Autoblog: All of Russia’s Porsches Were Bricked By a Mysterious Satellite Outage
It’s funny when it happens to Russia but this will eventually happen by accident to some major company in the west and in a more global war this sort of stuff will be shut off intentionally.
Americans should care about Aaron Siri’s work with RFK Jr.
“Siri famously petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. His ongoing work with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. matters.”
‘Blatant lawlessness’: Judge decries another ‘unlawful’ deportation
“Faustino Pablo Pablo was deported to Guatemala despite his urgent warnings to immigration officials that he faced serious danger in his home country.”
Link. The link leads to a collection of disparate news reports.
Josh Marshall: “Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger”
Link
MTG Finally DISCLOSES Trump’s Dark Secrets Before Leaving
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JM_caAKLTsg
Trump’s Own Voters Now Blame HIM For Their Financial Struggles
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=smK2WCTfDdc
Followup to comment 146.
Link
Trump declares Europe an enemy
“Trump’s National Security Strategy Attacks European Democracy and Backs Far-Right Groups”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pwwFGFxhIng
Meidas Touch
TWENTY GOP Congress Members READY TO QUIT on Trump!!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tYMKKPwKqqM
Cartoon: Trump trough
Link
Bezos thinks big donation makes it okay to poison a lagoon
Posted by readers of the article:
Good news, mostly: Dozens of cities, states hiking minimum wages in 2026 amid federal inaction
“The rate will hit $15 per hour in dozens of localities, though the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour.”
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4u3hwe3p7oy3hoy3amlw7rp2/post/3m7dorn465s26
Posted by Robert Reich.
Excerpts from Wonkette’s news roundup:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/regular-animals-tabs-mon-dec-8-2025
Supreme Court poised to expand Trump’s power over independent agencies
“The justices seem likely to allow the president to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a nine-decade old precedent that insulated some agencies from political influence by the executive.”
More at the link.
“Not in the interest of the American people.” True.
Washington Post link
“Trump to announce $12 billion tariff relief for farmers”
Ex-Trump lawyer Alina Habba announces she’s stepping down as U.S. attorney for N.J.
“The decision comes after an appeals court found her appointment to the post was unlawful.”
Trump administration abruptly cancels citizenship ceremonies for some immigrants
Trump’s football troubles take a weird turn as he eyes new name ‘for the NFL stuff’
Link
Inside The Secret New ICE Deportation Plan Called ‘Operation Irish Goodbye’
.
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-plan-undocumented-immigrants-border_n_69371e0ce4b0020dff816622
Farron Cousins:
“Insider Predicts Exact Moment When Republican Lawmakers Will Turn Against Trump”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=B8iFYZmIMDY
Supreme Court Seems Ready To Give Trump More Power
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-trump-slaughter_n_69370d2fe4b013f1f7d26389
birgerjohansson @ 166
Trump will thus get the power to purge anyone who does not do his bidding. There will be no independent agencies anymore
Progressives Take Aim At Incumbent Moderate Senator
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/progressive-launches-primary-challenge-to-colorado-sen-john-hickenlooper_n_6936347ae4b0020dff80b7d8
Trump Is Desperately Fighting To Keep Jack Smith’s Final Report Hidden
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FshX-ZDSGU0
About a word in DailyKos @154:
Bible scholar Dan McClellan – Where does Jesus ever claim to be God? (26:48)
A switch from politics.
Anton Petrov
“Largest Spinning Object in the Universe Found 140 Million Light Years Away”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=au1gpdqmDnI
Hossenfelder alert
“New Fossils Suggest That Life On Earth Started Twice”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SSjiecPF3QE
White House Makeover
.https://youtube.com/shorts/bS0w-y2GnDo
The Onion.
JD Vance reminded to use White House service entrance.
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx-hTXbyKDTBCM0OdA2NODPySxuDpJ70BM
We Didn’t Evolve Color Vision to See Color
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GckqMcaz-3M
Kubrick’s Hidden 2001 Ending (They Never Showed You)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IlAxoH0vcjQ
CNN – Woman with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released from ICE custody
Giant Husky Tries to Ignore Tiny Kitten… But Then This Happens!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Aa0DbmzP6zY
Dragon Ball Z
“Perfect Cell vs Ugandan Knuckled 1-4”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Abe0sd99Hhg
New York City ties its record for lingest stretch without a homicide.
.https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-york-city-ties-record-longest-stretch-without-homicide/story
The city went 12 days without a homicide, which ties a stretch in 2015.
Lynna @ # 154 – I worry about the military personnel who (anonymously) protested against the order of their hyperxian C.O.
Though there may well be multiple commanding officers who “… made it clear that the recognition of any other type of celebration would be unacceptable “wokeness” which would not be tolerated under his command. He often speaks his views that DEI is a cancer. He says it is destroying our country and our military.” and whose base “[t]he next day [had] four nativity scene displays erected in our headquarters complex.”, who had one (or more) Jewish troops ask him about a little menorah (with a wife, also a Jewish active-duty military person, “starting a family”), and who (the C.O.) has a really poor understanding of Middle Eastern history, it would seem likely that would provide enough information for said C.O. to identify MRFF’s complainant.
Or maybe there are lots of personnel who might fit that profile – and their C.O.s will punish all of them. MRFF really should work more discreetly.
Recommended.
“The Most TERRIFYING Depictions of Cosmic Horror In Film”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ASimT1_m3FU
birgerjohansson @179:
Stephanie Zvan’s assessment of the genre stuck with me.
Daniel Swain (Climate scientist):
Curent EPA – Causes of Climate Change
Wayback EPA – Causes of Climate Change
Wayback EPA – Climate Change Indicators in the US
Zack Labe (Climate Scientist):
NBC News:
MS NOW:
Wall Street Journal:
That is on Trump’s list of wars he supposedly ended.
Reuters:
Thank goodness for that. Good news.
Oh FFS.
Salon:
Trump plans to play a role in proposed Netflix, Warner Brothers deal: ‘I’ll be involved’
It’s Time to Govern, and Republicans in Congress Can’t Remember How
Trump says he will allow Nvidia to sell some AI chips in China
“The announcement ended what has effectively been a ban on AI chip sales to the world’s second-largest economy and America’s strategic adversary.”
ACLU:
Back in March, a surveillance camera witnessed six thugs in hoodies and masks abduct her on the sidewalk into an unmarked vehicle. All because a doxxing website flagged her for writing an op-ed in a school newspaper urging the university to heed resolutions passed by the student senate: a call to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and divest from Israel.
SEVIS was previously covered here.
Source : https://www.space.com/technology/nasa-spacecraft-were-vulnerable-to-hacking-for-3-years-and-nobody-knew-ai-found-and-fixed-the-flaw-in-4-days
Re: StevoR @191:
Faint praise for the AI. From the blog post:
Building commandline strings and passing them to a shell process to interpret and execute is bad. And redundant: devs were already coding C, which can execute intended binaries directly. System() is warned about in general for exactly this reason, and though the blog blames the project’s complexity spanning lots of files, that call alone should have been nagged about by humans and static analysis tools.
Devs neglected to sanitize inputs. In this case, a config file could in principle be edited (by someone who already had access) to put commandline stuff where a username was expected. Why anticipate someone might do that? Assume users are malicious or fools, and—in spite of them—try to write code that operates as intended or fails gracefully.
Bobby tables strikes again (different attack, same principle).
Meidas Touch
Job data released
“Trump Gets Terrible News as Info He Tried to HIDE goes Public”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4vcrkx5n4Hs
Stephen Colbert
“Trump Can’t Tell Kimmel From Colbert | FIFA Peace Prize | Is There Anything MAGA Won’t Tolerate?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=S87f56XVHzE
Jimmy Kimmel:
Trump Attacks “Horrible” Jimmy Kimmel, Gets Embarrassing Fake Award & Jimmy Announces Show Renewal ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=608NKYhMuWg
Erratum: the text in the image should be COMPLEX life arose twice.
“This Discovery Might Change What We Know About Life!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SSjiecPF3QE
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-suffers-frequent-failures-as-americans-push-back-at-every-turn-2474012739821
Video is 9:55 minutes
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-trump-risks-shattering-u-s-as-states-seek-alternative-to-decimated-federal-health-expertise-2474004035670
Video is 9:58 minutes.
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87, 93 and 132.
‘Unacceptable’: Germany’s Merz slams Trump’s controversial Europe document
U.S. administration’s foreign policy document roils Berlin.
Trump amps up his racist immigration tirade
Here’s how Trump’s propaganda princess is blaming Joe Biden now
Posted by readers of the article:
Legal AF: Trump DOJ Makes SHOCK ADMISSION in DEVASTATING FILING
It looks like the DOJ will try to revive the Comey indictment. There is an option that lets the prosecution fix an indictment tossed on technical grounds and continue the case past the statue of limitations. This shouldn’t work in this case because the grounds for rejecting it were serious.
Even if it does get reactivated Comey has additional grounds to get the case dismissed again because they didn’t get reviewed the first time. The case was dismissed at step zero and nothing after that considered. So most of the issues raised with the original case never got resolved.
I suspect that winning this case isn’t the point though. The point is that Trump wants to punish Comey. For this dragging Comey through court for years suits their purpose even if the DOJ lawyers know the case can’t be won in the end.
Reese Waters having fun talking about Mike Johnson’s problems.
“Mike Johnson: Y’all Not Leaving Me With Trump”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IY7eAGaDyqM
Somalis? Old-timers like myself may recall the band X Ray Specs (contemporary with Blondie et al) with the singer Poly Styrene.
She was an Irish-Scottish-Somali artist.
Jesse Watters, Fox News host, discusses watching videos of Pete Hegseth’s strikes on civilian boats in international waters:
Commentary from Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jesse-watters-really-getting-off
11.600 years old:
“NEW Gobekli Tepe Discoveries Confuse Archaeology, Labelled the Largest Megalithic Site On Earth”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/3aZRkztXK5M
Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems as if Comey is out of danger.
Meanwhile congressman wossname (guy fistbumping with insurrectionists 2021) is threatening to break with Trump over Obamacare.
And MTG going on 60 minutes to say out loud what many Republicans think will prod some others to openly critizise Trump.
I recall from other tumultous political events that at first nothing happens. Then all of it happens at once, like a ketchup bottle.
States fight back as Trump’s CDC wages war on health and science, by Rachel Maddow
Trump delegates sweeping powers over 2020 election pardons to Bondi, Martin
“Two White House cronies will get to figure it out who falls under the umbrella of Trump’s 2020 election pardons.”
FFS.
Alina Habba’s new job in Trump’s Justice Dept. isn’t much better than her old one
“After resigning as an interim U.S. attorney, Habba will serve as Pam Bondi’s senior advisor on federal prosecutors nationwide. That’s not a good idea.”
On affordability and consumer costs, Trump goes all-in on an alternate reality
Related video at the link.
The purge:
Link
Fun viewing from the late 90s.
“Blade | Vampire Night Club Scene | ClipZone: Heroes & Villains”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BtpqWSmH5gE
Re: birgerjohansson @206:
John Bull:
Trump team isn’t just confessing its crimes—it’s bragging about them
Posted by readers of the article:
Marjorie Taylor Greene says she forgives Trump
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jasmine-jasmine-crockett-queen-of
“Jasmine, Jasmine Crockett, Queen Of The Wild Senate Frontier?”
The Guardian – Organizers submit enough signatures to block gerrymandered Missouri map
Scientific Frontline – Jellyfish can be used to make mayonnaise and butter
The Handbasket – Conspiracy theorist election denier given FEMA’s second-most important role
About the job
Commentary
NBC News:
NBC News:
Associated Press:
New York Times:
The attorney general said he had asked Interpol to detain Juan Orlando Hernández, who was freed from a U.S. prison last week.
New York Times:
Democrat wins Miami mayor’s race for the first time in almost 30 years
“Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González, NBC News projects.”
Related video at the link.
Lynna, OM @ 225
Eileen Higgins (D) won by 20 points!
Scam I am !
Jimmy Kimmel:
“Trump Calls Affordability a Scam, Everyone Treats Him Like a Child & MAGAland Hawks Christmas Crap”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JRmF0xt9fzs
Good 20 mins long yt video here – You’re Not Crazy. The Bugs Are Disappearing by Joe Scott.
Travel Buff!
Stephen Colbert :
“Why Trump Flip-Flopped On Boat Strike Video | Sweatin’ At The Airport | Paramount’s Dictator Money”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GQLEgDr3ss8
I am getting worried about you!
😟
There is a hiatus of five hours since the last post. Either the dominance of sad political news have scared away people from the thread, or the epidemics JFK Jr is spreading has done a Netanyahu on you.
HuffPost:
“Trump Now Happy To Openly Disparage ‘S**thole Countries'”
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/jasmine-crockett-lights-up-texas-senate-race-texas-wants-a-fighter-2474316867773
Video i s 8:22 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/jd-vance-s-supreme-court-showdown-could-upend-midterm-campaign-finance-rules-2474311235827
“More billionaire money in politics.”
Video is 9:07 minutes.
Why Trump’s unsubtle reversal on his ‘s—hole countries’ comment matters
“In 2018 [Trump] denied using the racist language. In 2025, he seems to take a degree of pride in using the phrase.”
Related video at the link.
‘You can give up certain products’: Trump tells Americans to settle for less
“The president expects Americans to make sacrifices but doesn’t appear willing to make any sacrifices of his own.”
Related video at the link.
Trump stumbles into an important contradiction on pardon for drug trafficker
[Trump] said he examined Juan Orlando Hernández’s case. Eight days later, he said the opposite. Both can’t be true.
Link. The link leads to a roundup of news reports.
This keeps happening. (Farage is the former nazi and current leader of Reform UK who is riding high in the polls)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1Krinf7pmL/
As reported by The Washington Post, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
As reported by The Associated Press, and summarized by Talking Points Memo:
Cartoon: The worst of the worst
Texas GOP turns schools into indoctrination machines
Ban me if you must, Lynna and PZ, but I must speak openly and honestly since few others will.
Ilhan Omar has proven by her words and actions that is a caring decent person. I would gladly have her as a neighbor. I would NOT tolerate anyone from the magat administration as a neighbor.
O.K. If you want to rid this country of undesirable, nonproductive immigrants, as tRUMP has deplorably stated, let’s start with someone who still holds citizenship in a terrible foreign country, who entered this country on false claims on a genius visa, who after many years still has trouble with the english language. Who just has a contractual relationship with an abomination of a hateful, criminal citizen as a spouse.
Send malaria trump back to slovenia! And, her son who has slovenian citizenship should be packed up and sent with her.
re Lynna @235:
I would presume that those “very good people” received large sums of money to be passed on the behalf of Hernández to The Orange Turd’s tiny hands.
Top Trump official stoops to reading bigoted talking points on live TV
Posted by readers of the article:
johnson catman @242, yeah that pardon does smell like bribes were attached.
Unrelated: Cartoon: MurderKorp
Link
Lots of proposals, no agreement on real solutions.
Followup to comment 22.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/brownshirts-in-the-bayou-your-immigration
During our lunch break I had a fervent request from our tech support specialist to add one more despicable, destructive, arrogant immigrant to the list to deport. He has destroyed the environment and ruined the lives to thousands with massive pollution from his rockets and his dozens of illegal gas turbines, not to mention his championing fascists and nazis on his massive xhitter social media swamp. So, we want to see the muskrat sent back to south africa so he can destroy that country, too.
I’m sure people have many other viable candidates for deportation, too. While he isn’t an immigrant, can we deport (shadow president) S.S. Miller to Sudan?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/this-is-actually-the-most-insane
“This Is Actually The Most Insane Thing He’s Ever Posted”
“No, really.”
Years after his defeat, Trump says he’ll soon have proof of a “rigged” election. Don’t hold your breath.
African immigrant Elon Musk spouts racist BS about African immigrants
Link
Cartoon: Even a cuckoo clock …
Lynna @225
New Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins is a Mechanical Engineer and a former Peace Corp director in Belize
Link
Thanks to Militant Agnostic @253, and to birger @226, for adding additional information about Eileen Higgins.
In other news:
Link
Washington Post link
“U.S. seizes ‘very large’ oil tanker off Venezuelan coast, Trump says”
“The seizure was a significant escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.”
In message to Trump, Ukraine’s top general attacks Kremlin battlefield narrative
“Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi says Russia’s frontline gains are tiny as U.S. pressure grows on Ukraine to accept a peace deal.”
Federal agents arrest citizen observer watching ICE detain neighbors on her north Minneapolis block
Lynna, OM @ 225
Meidas Touch:
“GOP Gerrymander BACKFIRES with Shock Loss…IN GEORGIA!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lq21joPCSRE
HuffPo – ICE has a plan to arrest undocumented migrants voluntarily leaving
Yassifying a genocide – 17 mins long yt clip on Israeli pinkwashing and hypocrisy by Spooky Scary Socialist.
Anton Petrov:
“Bizarre Discoveries About Evolution of Dogs in the Last 50,000 Years”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QFXqYRIOEJ4
Adam Klasfeld (All Rise News):
Judge Charles Breyer: “Defendants take the position that, after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts. Defendants’ position is contrary to law.”
Dan Kaszeta (Historian, Chemical weapons expert):
[Illinois] Law barring immigration enforcement in courthouses signed by Pritzker
Rando 1: “Connecticut has a similar law [the Trust Act]. If I remember correctly, they will need a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant is not enough. And even if they have the right paperwork, they can’t wear masks.”
Rando 2: “As does Colorado.”
Trump’s ‘chilling’ social media snooping rule imperils World Cup, critics warn
“Even the worst authoritarian states in the world do not have such an official policy,” Irish centrist MEP Barry Andrews said.
Sky Captain @263:
That’s memorable! Well said by Judge Breyer.
Followup of sorts to comments 263 and 266.
MS NOW:
NY Times:
Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his allies carry a symbol depicting a golden noose on their lapels, indicating their support for summary killings.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1AZAMPaRF1/
Followup to comments 52, 58, 87, 93, 132, 149, and 198.
Some updates and additional details concerning Trump’s National Security Strategy, or NSS:
Link
US threatens new ICC sanctions unless court pledges not to prosecute Trump
Brian Finucane (Just Security): “I believe this is referred to as consciousness of guilt.”
Four years since he was released from prison.
Steven Donziger, de facto prosecuted by Chevron after he won the Ecuador pollution case.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/17hRdPt8Cc/
Link
Link
Doofus made a fool of himself.
Posted by readers of the article:
Interesting weapon idea for fantasy ice demons.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14SHWo7HcrY/
The Guardian
Starmer is lobbying Europe to join him in watering down the ECHR. This illiberalism will harm us all
.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/10/starmer-europe-human-rights-uk-prime-minister-echr
Ancient humans mastered fire-making 400,000 years ago, study shows
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ancient-humans-mastered-years.html
Owen Jones Gaza Hunger Strike BURIED By Media – Situation CRITICAL – 19 mins long.
Let’s Talk Elections
“Republicans Likely to Face Major Loss in Missouri”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6CkGYvFSxfU
.
Farron Cousins: “Analyst Reveals Signs That Trump Knows His End Is Near”. Yes, please!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=oSKc6DEtJ78
I wasn’t planning to go to the USA when Trump was in charge anyhow even if I could afford to do so but still – land of free & brave & right to free speech and criticise govt huh? Any Freezepeachers!!1ty! going to fight against this ya reckon?
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-11/us-travel-social-media-privacy-concerns/106128910
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/10/tents-flood-families-seek-shelter-as-storm-byron-bears-down-on-gaza
From back when our Cosmos was 5% its current age :
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope/the-james-webb-space-telescope-just-found-the-oldest-supernova-ever-seen
The New Republic – Firewood banks aren’t inspiring
From today’s PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-affordability-speech-turns-into-a-rant-against-immigrants
Also via PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/watch-live-ask-us-anything-about-fighting-science-misinformation-during-a-special-reddit-ama
Thought-provoking rather mistitlled I think video here – Katie Halper interviews Ghada Karmi – just under ten minutes length.
Sammy Obeid MINNEAPOLIS SOMALIS V.S. ICE | STAND UP COMEDY – 20 mins long.
Zeteo yt SHORT Some comedians in Israel make ‘genocide jokes’ – interview with comedian and activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi.
Law and Crime: Jan. 6 plaque is faulty and thus should not be hung, DOJ argues in effort to make case go away
Contemptible but the DOJ is likely to win this one. The police officers that brought the case can’t show any injury to themselves for not getting the plaque raised.
MSN: Fed Chair Jerome Powell says US may be drastically overstating jobs numbers
Before any conspiracy theories get raised, Powell is talking about a technical issue in how the estimation is done and why it is almost always revised downwards later. There is a plan to use a better estimation method starting next year but until then we should expect some sharp downward revisions.
Powell is talking about this publicly because some of the latest figures seem too good. He likely has inside information on what the revisions look like and wants to prepare markets. He could also be trying to say something to the White House but this is far to subtle a method for this administration. If that is his goal he should try a Truth Social post insulting the people who do the estimates.