That story sounds almost identical to the sort of things written by prisoners of Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps. The low calorie food and tiny portions, the filthy conditions, overcrowding. The only thing missing is some sort of cruel pointless forced labor.
In fact, down south here, the H-2A program has greatly expanded, giving farm owners a "legal" pathway to a pool of immigrant indentured servants. I was expecting the camps would be used for this, as you do. It seems they found a less newsworthy, but just as immoral, way. I bet they'll start processing detainees through H-2As soon enough.
Can you share more about that? It’s crazy to me that farm owners are paying double the federal minimum wage (H2-A must get the AWER wage if it’s higher than the fed minimum, which it is), when for years all we heard was how it would put them out of business. How are they recruiting workers? Has DHS basically told the farmers, “we won’t touch your workers?” They seem disposed to snatch up everyone else, whether legally here or not.
I had not heard this but it's not surprising. If they use detainees in the same way, they will have farmers pay their detainee workers and then dock their paychecks for room and board and the salaries of their uniformed supervisors. (Stephen Miller approves of this comment.)
Thinking more about this we should be keeping an eye out for disease. (I know there is already a measles outbreak but that’s a different failure) These conditions are a recipe for dysentery and other sanitation related diseases. Low calorie intake will only make people more susceptible to disease. I assume these people are not given access to good medical care.
I read yesterday that a child deported from a Texas gulag to Jalisco has started a growing outbreak there. These MFers can’t be persecuted/prosecuted enough. We are the amoral third world shithole country we used to strive to protect.
FDT and all of the malevolent, psychotic regime.
You absolutely should Ian. 50 year RN here. Pertussis, chicken pox, even polio may emerge. Flu/covid/RSV infected one baby in detention. Hospitalized with respiratory failure. Sent back and lifesaving meds withheld. What kind of evil monsters could do this to an indefensible child. A baby nonetheless. That’s a special kind of cruelty.
Don’t even get me started on the intentional neglect and suffering imposed on all.
May they all go down and spend the rest of their hateful lives in Cecot or Guantanamo.
We are not resisting hard enough.
The rest of the democratic world wonders why we are not in the streets daily. Serbians are doing better.
The Texas ICE facility where Seamus Cullerton is detained is near El Paso. Indivisible (No Kings organizers) El Paso should be organizing protests at the facility and bring the Irish Ambassador to the US with them. Any Southwest TX subscribers here??
The camps have already suspended medical care and Tommy Tuberville made sure the VA couldn't assist, as they had been doing, by shouting that immigrants were stealing VA funds when the VA was being reimbursed fully by the camps.
Give them time. Neither the Nazis not the Soviets came up with their systems overnight; they evolved over time particularly the Nazis who built their from scratch. The Soviets had the benefit of the old Tsarist system to build on.
Oh I’m sure they will. The purpose of forced labor is mostly to keep the inmates busy and move expenses around between departments. They will figure it out eventually.
I keep reading all these stories about the hideous conditions under which people are being detained, but I don’t hear about the court filings that must be underway to fight against the cruel and unusual nature of these detentions. These ICE camps are surely in violation of the 8th Amendment, right?
These camps seem to be substantially worse than regular prisons in the United States. I don’t know if there are any individual lawsuits winding their way through the federal courts on this particular issue, but I would hope there are.
I had exactly the same thought, thank you for writing it and helping me feel less insane. These ARE concentration camps in our country. In the 1940s, we had prisoner of war camps here...and we treated German enemy combatants better than we are immigrant businessmen with green cards married to US citizens. WTF. And why is this story not on SeeBS, NBC, ABC and every other non-Fox media channel? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.
We also had concentration camps where we imprisoned Americans of Japanese descent. If Americans of German descent didn't blend into the white population, we probably would've sent them to camps too.
Yes, of course, another example of the kind racism that we are duplicating today....immigrant families of Vets are being captured and detained just as Japanese men who fought in WW II had parents in Japanese concentration camps. And I know of at least one case of Germans being whisked away....My mother who was in her late teens/early twenties in the 40s recounted the German shoemaker and his family in her small NJ town vanishing overnight...no one knew why and the door of the store was left open and customers went back and picked up their unrepaired shoes. Were they spies? Or just citizens?
Overall, It's just shocking how much we've gone backwards toward hate ...no sense of humanity here at all and there's so much of it. And there are large swaths of the country where ICE is not happening and many people aren't tracking because it doesn't directly affect them.
Maddow did a piece Monday on the admin trying (and often failing, thanks to local, largely very red communities) to buy up vacant warehouses to build more of them.
So much for the "vicious criminal rapist, worst of the worst narrative ". Responsible dude, married to a US citizen, in the green card pipeline, and he still gets treated like sh*t.
It seems this administration is unlikely to be aware that one of the results of this horrific period that they have sieged upon our society and the globe, will be the generations of witness bearing, and hopefully, accountability tribunals
I keep calling my Senator and saying "concentration camps on your watch." I hope it helps. I'm also thanking people for standing up for the Epstein victims. I don't know, I feel like thanking people and acknowledging the good they do is important to get them to listen to "concentration camps on your watch." Like, I'm not calling just to yell like a Simpsons character, I really want to help and I don't mind working.
I saw the article about Seamus yesterday on The Guardian and was appalled — these stories are all disturbing. But let me get this straight. The wife paid a $4,000 bail and then the government denied the bail? In this case what happens to the $4,000 paid? If they didn’t hear anything back then it sounds like she didn’t get her money back after the denial — what a racket.
The conditions described should make all Americans embarrassed for their country. There is no need to treat people like animals. But of course the good senator from Florida Rick Scott saved his outrage for the US athletes who have the temerity to speak out against the Orange Julius. As Gary Kasparov said yesterday, the current administration wants our athletes to have minders as he did in the Soviet era.
True, I think we’ve all reached the sarcasm phase of TDS; I’m done begging and pleading, and as far as anger is concerned; let’s just leave it at that🤪
We should all be ashamed. What is happening in these camps is so outrageous i can't find the words to express the depth of my own feelings. This MUST stop! Yet here we are.
I have mentioned the KGB style minding of our athletes before. Something else to be outraged about. All of us need to keep xallung this out as loudly as possible. Eventually enough people will hear.
Given the statistics noted in the original piece, things seem to be breaking through. The question at this point is what happens in November. I am pretty sure we will have elections, and some will be free and fair, but I wouldn’t count on all of them.
You are a bit more optimistic on ghe elections. I hope you are right. I pray every day that both chambers of congress flip and Dems show backbone expeditiously and stop this horror. In the meantime, it needs to stay in forefront. There is so much horrible every day.
Maybe I am more optimistic than you, but that seems a fairly low bar. I think depending on where you live there will be free and fair elections, but not all — it probably depends on what state you live in.
So, we couldn't elect Hillary because of her private email server (which unlike government servers never got hacked). Information security is that important!
Yet, we can now give some of our nation's most sensitive intelligence to a hack lawyer.
I agree, and when you consider those clowns have gained access to voter machines in several states that are used nationwide, we have reason to fear the midterms.
That said, as bad as Hack lawyers are; he’s only part of my worry. There was a reason Trump took over 300 of our most sensitive secrets out of the Whitehouse and into an unsecured bathroom at Mar a Largo, and then refused to give them back.
I want to know what happened to those documents while unsecured. And when you consider his tariffs, threats against our allies and his building of a massive army of stormtroopers answerable to only Trump and Miller, then you know sh*t is about to hit the fan.
My fear is we will not have a midterms (manufactured crisis) or it will be rigged, found out and Trump will then invoke The National Emergency Act and declare Martial Law. These people will never give up power willingly; they would all be going to jail! IMHO..:)
I think that the most plausible result of the midterms is for the president to declare them fraudulent. Heck, the chaos might be bad enough to prevent Congress from starting. Such a shame and we're lucky that the president can fill the gap.
That's my biggest fear.
Elections will be held and the logistics and optics of stormtroops at polling places doesn't make sense. Baseless accusations and chaos make perfect sense.
Well, the the logistics and optics of stormtroops in South Minneapolis in January don't make sense either. Making sense isn't a feature for Trumpism, it's a bug.
No! We can't have any congressmen visiting those ICE detention facilities. Definitely a threat to their health! AND Dear Leader informed us that Spanish is a language that no one understands.
According to a Harvard study, roughly 600 million people speak Spanish. And our own census data shows that about 42 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home. But other than that...
And he and a whole host of others neither understand nor care that Puerto Rico's a sovereign U.S. territory, making its soil sovereign American soil and its residents U.S. effin' CITIZENS!
According to the most recent Pew survey, 69% of Evangelicals "approve of Trump's job performance" and 58% "support most/all Trump's plans and policies".
The problem in this nation appears to be most prevalent among a very large cohort who can't see how dedicating religious levels of devotion to a corrupt, dishonest, amoral man probably isn't the way to go.......
Exactly my point Jeff. They lack the ability to see through their “blind” faith. I do not mean to disparage people of faith, I mean to point out that when your cognitive scaffolding is based on “belief”, you are often unwilling to look past what you don’t want to see. (Think Catholics defending pedophile priests)
You and I are in lock-step. I am a faith believing Christian myself, but I also believe that God provided me a brain, discernment and wisdom to distinguish between faith and stupidity.
There's a parable about the wolf dressed up in sheep's clothing and that the flock keeps safe by knowing the voice of their real shepherd. It is my belief, that they have been totally fooled by listening to the fake one. In some cases, I think they are following the wrong one willingly and gleefully as they like what he's saying more than the other more boring one...
It's probably a coincidence that the Catholic gospel readings are all about the Pharisees this month, right? Yeah, probably coincidence.
"How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!" from Jesus today probably doesn't mean anything. Probably just more compliments for Paula White. Nothing she needs to worry about.
Spot-on! They have no idea that they are the Pharisees of the current age.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside may become clean as well."
My like, main concern, at least this week, is that Shumer and the Senate Dems are about to betray us due to their insufferable weakness. from politico:
"Democrats want to require federal law enforcement officials to obtain a judicial warrant before entering private property, but that’s dead on arrival, according to three people close to the administration and a GOP strategist, all of whom were granted anonymity to speak about private conversations... Other Democratic asks, including prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks, requiring officers to display identification and an expansive limit on places where agents can operate, would need major concessions from Democrats to make them palatable for the Trump administration, the people said... But while conversations are ongoing between the White House and congressional leaders, Democrats are in the dark about how their proposals will ultimately be received. 'We have no idea which of our proposals they will accept and which they will reject,' Schumer said Monday, before reviewing the administration’s counter. 'And I will say Democrats offered exceedingly reasonable proposals and have the support of the American people. I’m not exaggerating.'"
Look, Chuck, the Trump admin is using administrative warrants to violate the first, second, fourth, sixth, and tenth amendments. Saying the Trump admin needs a real warrant to invade someone's home is a basic insistence on the rule of law. The other stuff like, "Hey, let's not have militarized secret police with no accountability," is also basic and should be achieved with no concessions, or if you like, the 'concession' is reopening a government that has otherwise been abusing and murdering us.
My thoughts exactly when I read the piece. This isn’t about *concessions* but about basic accountability and rights. Shut it down and keep it shit down. That these are non-starters for the administration and Stephen Miller in particular tells you all you need to know and gives the Dems plenty of room to maneuver.
"Politico does not like Dems."? You sound as though you believe that anything to the right of Rolling Stone or The New Republic is a mouthpiece for MAGA. We need to be the grown-ups in the room.
Politico is owned by Axel Springer and is financed through private equity. Being the grownups means researching who owns what and weighing whether they are honest actors.
“Good for the voters. But the elites are slower. You might think congressional Democrats would be doing more to highlight the issue of election interference in the current discussions of ICE funding.”
Bill, I don’t think the elites are slower than the voters; they’re COMPLICIT!
Look who owns CBS and TikTok: Ellison! Who owns the Post: Bezos. The largest shareholders in the NYT’s are BlackRock and Vanguard. META: Zuckerberg!
The elites are the problem; they’ve changed the entire playing field and rules; not only carrying water for this depraved ignoramus, but also promoting his worst self.
Moreover, you won’t even hear about Pretti or Good on social media because it doesn’t conform to their community standards. However, plastering manufacturered ICE raids, promoting false propaganda, while allowing foreign disinformation campaigns to run rampant; all part of the charade!
If this isn’t the definition of collusion and conspiracy then what is! It’s a rhetorical question, no need to answer. IMHO…:)
The sad truth is our elites are no different than any other elites, be it the Russian kind or those in Nazi Germany who were all too complicit and happy to get in on the cheap labor.
100% agree! It’s all business to these people and the rest of us; mere pawns!
There is a great piece from Dorothy Thompson in Harper’s Bizarre from 1941 that is a great read! Many of these people would fit right in to a fascist regime with ease.
Gee, what if the pawns woke up, and decided they deserved to be treated like human beings instead of disposable sources of commodified labor power for businessfolk? And they organized themselves to do something about that? Somebody should write a book about that, eh? Kind of a, you know, manifesto or something..
RE: "The elites are the problem; they’ve changed the entire playing field and rules; not only carrying water for this depraved ignoramus, but also promoting his worst self."
Ding! Ding!! DING!!! DING!!!!
The elites... The more they have to lose, the more they'll fight to keep it. Which often involves *not fighting* at all but rather investing in a good set of knee pads for the win.
Janis got it right in more ways than one when she sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
The campaign of Kamala Harris took a lot of heat after Trump won, for her failure to focus on the price of eggs, as she yammered on and on about saving democracy. LOL?
She should have told the party to keep their stupid, over-analyzed, focus-grouped mitts off her campaign. She had a ton of momentum coming out of the DNC, then the party stepped in.
Those damn chickens and their bird flu. But come on Dems, you should be hammering him on the price of beef. Why were eggs so salient in 2024, but skyrocketing beef prices aren’t. It is time to bring back the old add. Beef: it’s not what’s for dinner. Start tying that to Trump.
Why isn't the media hammering this? They sure did in 2024.
Because they take their cues from the GOP, from migrant caravans (remember that hysteria) and nope, Trump knows nothing about Project 2025 to the Mueller report exonerates him and critical race theory. Anything that the GOP tosses out the media runs with it. Dems can walk and talk in unison for weeks and crickets. Then people yammer Dems aren't speaking up etc. It's a two-fold win for the GOP.
Re: Trump and charity. Trump's charity history includes the Trump Charity, which was found to be so thoroughly uncharitable and self-serving that it was ordered to suffer corporate capital punishment by a court.
If I recall correctly, there never was even a single charitable expenditure. It was a personal checking account. One of the ways Trump had diverted contributions was to commission a full-length, life-size oil painting of himself.
RE: Rümeysa Öztürk and the State Department's attempt "to revoke her student visa over an op-ed she’d co-written in a Tufts University student paper."
It's not just foreign college students the Trump administration seeks to punish for having the temerity to have an opinion they don't like and the courage to express it openly. They don't even like citizens who have an opinion that rubs them the wrong way and who choose to express it to them *privately*.
You want a taste of Orwellian fascism, DHS will accommodate you. All you have to do is drop them a line disagreeing with something they're set on doing and asking them politely not to do it...
Slightly dinged for a couple of minor failed fact checks in the past, but more than credible enough that, even if taken with a boulder of salt, this little gem of a story should raise the hair on the back of your neck if not in actual fear and concern, then at least in anger, or more appropriately... both.
Sometimes, the more things change, the more they need to be *changed*.
And "sometimes" are now indisputably "these times". And we'll fail to change them at our own peril.
Defund ICE?
To Hell with just that.
Deconstruct DHS. Its corruption is bone deep and its future as currently constituted is irredeemable.
Note to DHS agents: If you'll just call ahead and let me know when you'll be here, I'll make sure to have the coffee pot on for you. And if there are any tea drinkers among you or if anyone has any food allergies, please let me know that as well, because I know not everyone likes coffee and I might decide to serve snacks, since I take my responsibility to be a good host when company comes a'callin' very seriously.
Almost as seriously as you all take yourselves as some kind of cosplaying defenders of truth, justice and he American Way.
I know we don’t like The Washington Post right now (with good reason), but still, don’t take it out on their reporters — the Futurism article is just a (credited) restatement of John Woodrow Cox’s great reporting for WaPo. (Every paragraph has ‘according to the article’, ‘per WaPo’, etc.)
I appreciate your taking the time to look up the credibility of your source — that’s 10x more than most people have the sensibility to do — but it hardly matters in an article that has no new reporting. This is Cox’s scoop.
(Gift link because I bought a 3-year subscription to the Post before I had any idea Bezos would let them go down the tubes, let alone so quickly.) 🎁🔗 https://wapo.st/4rBOIlK
Don't have a subscription to the Post and hadn't seen Cox's story in any of my news feeds, which is where I did see this Futurism piece - the fact of which is, to be very honest with you, immaterial to me, since the facts reported in the source that I linked to are what matter to me the most, not who reported them first.
That said, I have no problem with The Washington Post itself but am more than disgusted by what's happening *to* that storied publication.
I do, however, have a VERY BIG PROBLEM with Jeff Bezos. As well as all of his ilk.
Thanks for the link, Trey. Now that I'm aware of it, I'll see what this all sounds like "straight from the horse's mouth."
As to checking the credibility of sources, that's s.o.p. for me whenever I run across one that I'm unfamiliar with and want to gage the veracity and accuracy of whatever it is that they're presenting as being "fact".
But just FYI, if an article like that was written about a Fox News (or even crazier outlet’s) story that ended up being false, it wouldn’t change the reputation for sites like Grounded that try to track credibility. As written, the article is telling you what WaPo said, not doing its own fact checking, so it’s “credible” regardless (unless they misreport what WaPo published). They’d be expected to publish a followup if it turned out the WaPo article was false, and probably add a note with a link to the earlier article. But they aren’t “taking ownership” of the facts themselves.
For original reporting, the words you’re looking for in these cases are things like: “as originally reported by the Washington Post”, “as confirmed by Futurism”, or “in an article in the Washington Post, ‘Jon’ added…”
I took J-school classes and was a working opinion journalist back in my college days, so this stuff is seeped into my veins. But I think most of our legitimate reporters grossly overestimate the general population’s understanding of the norms of journalism. (For instance, most Americans think many journalists regularly make stuff up from whole cloth, for instance — when, in fact, that would be career-ending at any respectable outlet, and even crank publications need to have purported “sources”, even of no repute, if they don’t want to be sued into oblivion.)
Thank you Trey. For the gift link, for citing the source, and noting the complexity of voice(s) in old-school media. If nothing else, this will help us realize how much we're losing as WaPo continues to go down the tubes.
Sure. There was a story in the Post recently about a retired guy from Philly who wrote a mildly critical email and had the feds knocking on his door and riffing through his email and search engine traffic.
They want to stifle dissent, shut us up, and lock us up for disagreeing.
Trump's past spending of charity funds included portraits of himself. With $10B, we will have sculptures in every American city - Think Michelangelo's David with a comb over and a mushroom penis.
Even if a modern day Michelangelo existed to produce a young nubile Donald in a flattering prime, Trump wouldn’t recognize the talent as it isn’t gaudy enough for him.
Off topic...but did anyone see that T The Great wants to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge between Detroit and Windsor Canada? More than 20 years in the making, paid for by Canada after lengthy negotiations, the crazed, daddy-issue fool who is currently president has issued an edict stating that until Canada "treats the US with the Fairness and Respect we deserve" he will not allow the opening of the recently completed bridge. I don't know if there exists any legal basis that would allow him to act on his threat, but with this man, legality is beside the point. (After the grace period of Bad Bunny's show and the start of Olympics I'm having a rough time re-entering TWorld this morning.)
I happened to catch some local Detroit news coverage on YouTube. WTF! Seems like Duffy’s Dept spends their time identifying all the projects they can use to either grift or bully the blue. Lord knows they aren’t doing anything actually useful with our taxpayer $$$.
Obviously the Canucks can show the Fairness and Respect due to America the Great Again by renaming the bridge after the man who single-handedly brought back North America from the abyss, and otherwise just isn't getting the credit he so richly deserves.
I mean, who the hell is this Gordie Howe guy anyway?
I was wondering what Files in the Face Witmer had to say. Statement from her office yesterday:
“This is the busiest trade crossing in North America. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is all about jobs. It’s good for Michigan workers and it’s good for Michigan’s auto industry. As a reminder, Canada financed the construction of the bridge – which was built by union construction workers from both sides of the border – and it will be operated under a joint ownership agreement between Michigan and Canada. This project has been a tremendous example of bipartisan and international cooperation. It’s going to open one way or another, and the governor looks forward to attending the ribbon cutting.”
The “good news” about Rümeysa Öztürk is definitely not bad news, don’t get me wrong, but the fact is that this was almost the very first “this is absolutely not how America works” story in Trump’s second term, and yet — even with intense press coverage, political pressure from all quarters, and high-powered pro bono work — **it’s taken nearly a full year to be resolved.**
We all heard about the Minnesota ICE attorney temporarily assigned to DoJ who had a viral moment last week,¹ when she told the judge the system was broken, and that she would welcome being held in contempt just for the rest. (She’s embarrassed the administration by speaking truth so of course she’s since been fired.)
But she was so overworked just trying to track down *why* ICE was ignoring court orders, let alone getting them to start following them. Court records show that before she had even filed her first motion after her temporary reassignment with DoJ she already had 90 cases assigned to her.
Rümeysa Öztürk was almost the best-case scenario in terms of resolving the civil rights violations — clearly illegal from the jump, caught on camera, numerous procedural irregularities, lies to courts, and as mentioned lots of attention and attendant assistance. There are literally THOUSANDS of cases logjammed behind hers.
The case of the Boston business owner of Irish extraction with an American wife mentioned later in the newsletter — who’s languished in a concentration camp *months* after his wife paid $4,000 bond to get him out — is a lot more like the average case than Rümeysa Öztürk‘s. (And even he has a big leg up by being white and having consular support from a European country.)
I won’t scoff at the good news — it is good news. But let’s not kid ourselves that it’s the first glimmer of clear skies ahead. It’s more like the first raindrop to finally hit the ground; the storm’s still just building.
—
¹ Correction, 11:15 ET: This originally read “a couple of weeks ago.” The hearing was actually on Tuesday, February 3. I apologize for the error.
In my defense, I did remember the story being reported last week, but I thought the hearing must have been from the prior week, since it usually takes a couple days for court transcripts to be available. But I just looked into it, and you’re absolutely right — that hearing was a week ago today. It turns out in this case, an activist lawyer sitting in the courtroom paid the fee to get a rush transcript expedited.
Bah! I specifically switched to “ET” for this years ago because I constantly made this error (since we’re in daylight time 65% of the time), but I slipped again.
Having worked on the Internet since the 90’s flipping coasts with companies that had global datacenters, I think natively in 24-hour UTC, but I try to make an accommodation for readers.
DJT now thinks he can get economic growth up to 15 %. Right! And this from the business genius who wants to lower drug prices 400, 500 even 600%. But then logic and just plain thought are something he has always lacked. (the Joe Isuzu of presidents and all politicians for that matter)
American voter's Illiteracy and innumeracy are Trump's best friends. The weakening dollar helps an exporting country; OTOH imports are relatively more expensive. With Trump basically quitting the race to develop and adopt green technologies we're going to pay through the nose for those Chinese solar panels that we don't manufacture at home because reasons. But winning!
The not so funny thing is, (as you point out) we will be paying for DJT's trying to get rid of this country's progress on future of green energy (solar and wind). No matter what he does regarding coal, it is not coming back, period. He is living in the past. It is akin to wanting to go back to land lines in the era of smart phones. It won't happen.
Exactly. Trump et al could have framed green technology and moving to renewables as a moon shot. Something big and audacious. Something befitting the economic powerhouse that Trump inherited from his predecessors. Instead, we get a police state modeled after Russia. Russia.
Last week I was listening to a Charlie Sykes podcast with Justin Wolfers.( I'm not sure of his first name) He made a good point; DJT mindset is stuck in the 50s and 60s nostalgia when manufacturing was big, coal for energy was big. I hadn't thought of that before but it makes perfects sense. Of course there is no sense and logic to Trump's personality, morality and ethics.
His claims of lowering drug prices by more than 100% are like little strips of litmus paper floating around turning colors proving through scientific method that most of the Trump voters are proven IDIOTS!
Better yet, iirc Trump made a large "charitable contribution" to the Giuliani crony ex-FBI NYC official who was likely the key figure in the whole Comey letter October surprise thing in 2016.
I think it’s pretty obvious what needs to happen to prevent future corruption on the scale we now see. It starts with a forced rebuilding of the Supreme Court; best achieved with a combination of impeachment and expansion. The pardon power needs to be reined in - strictly limited to cases of clear injustice as the Framers intended. Bribery of government officials needs to be effectively recriminalized (this goes back to SCOTUS reform). Simple enforcement of the Emoluments Clause, by the courts, would go a long way to address the overall stench of corruption. Recent SCOTUS rulings on executive immunity, government bribes, and political “donations” fly in the face of common sense and must be addressed, through constitutional amendment if necessary.
For my entire life, I used to be such a defender of the Supreme Court and always gave them the benefit of the doubt. OMG...NOT any more!
I'm with you...big changes needed and, I'm going to say it strongly, accountability. I'm thinking that both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito should be investigated for treason. Honestly...bribery and abuse of office are too nice of terms for how they've sold out our country and the rule of law.
I read that Irish Times story yesterday. The US government is running concentration camps, and everyone in this country needs to wake up to that.
That story sounds almost identical to the sort of things written by prisoners of Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps. The low calorie food and tiny portions, the filthy conditions, overcrowding. The only thing missing is some sort of cruel pointless forced labor.
I have been surprised they haven't used the detainees in the fields to replace the people they've detained. Give them time.
In fact, down south here, the H-2A program has greatly expanded, giving farm owners a "legal" pathway to a pool of immigrant indentured servants. I was expecting the camps would be used for this, as you do. It seems they found a less newsworthy, but just as immoral, way. I bet they'll start processing detainees through H-2As soon enough.
Can you share more about that? It’s crazy to me that farm owners are paying double the federal minimum wage (H2-A must get the AWER wage if it’s higher than the fed minimum, which it is), when for years all we heard was how it would put them out of business. How are they recruiting workers? Has DHS basically told the farmers, “we won’t touch your workers?” They seem disposed to snatch up everyone else, whether legally here or not.
I had not heard this but it's not surprising. If they use detainees in the same way, they will have farmers pay their detainee workers and then dock their paychecks for room and board and the salaries of their uniformed supervisors. (Stephen Miller approves of this comment.)
Indentured servitude is the eventual path.
Thinking more about this we should be keeping an eye out for disease. (I know there is already a measles outbreak but that’s a different failure) These conditions are a recipe for dysentery and other sanitation related diseases. Low calorie intake will only make people more susceptible to disease. I assume these people are not given access to good medical care.
I read yesterday that a child deported from a Texas gulag to Jalisco has started a growing outbreak there. These MFers can’t be persecuted/prosecuted enough. We are the amoral third world shithole country we used to strive to protect.
FDT and all of the malevolent, psychotic regime.
You absolutely should Ian. 50 year RN here. Pertussis, chicken pox, even polio may emerge. Flu/covid/RSV infected one baby in detention. Hospitalized with respiratory failure. Sent back and lifesaving meds withheld. What kind of evil monsters could do this to an indefensible child. A baby nonetheless. That’s a special kind of cruelty.
Don’t even get me started on the intentional neglect and suffering imposed on all.
May they all go down and spend the rest of their hateful lives in Cecot or Guantanamo.
We are not resisting hard enough.
The rest of the democratic world wonders why we are not in the streets daily. Serbians are doing better.
The French would have already shut their country down with general strikes.
The Texas ICE facility where Seamus Cullerton is detained is near El Paso. Indivisible (No Kings organizers) El Paso should be organizing protests at the facility and bring the Irish Ambassador to the US with them. Any Southwest TX subscribers here??
They’ve found TB at one of these concentration camps.
Then they should keep an eye out for mass graves. Something like that could rip through a place like that.
And measles.
I’m pretty sure there’s been TB at the detention centers for years.
The camps have already suspended medical care and Tommy Tuberville made sure the VA couldn't assist, as they had been doing, by shouting that immigrants were stealing VA funds when the VA was being reimbursed fully by the camps.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tpmmorningmemo/p/trump-doj-threatens-aea-detainees?r=9qjn9&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
😩
I was thinking the same thing, but the forced labor will probably come next.
They're waiting for harvest season.
Give them time. Neither the Nazis not the Soviets came up with their systems overnight; they evolved over time particularly the Nazis who built their from scratch. The Soviets had the benefit of the old Tsarist system to build on.
Oh I’m sure they will. The purpose of forced labor is mostly to keep the inmates busy and move expenses around between departments. They will figure it out eventually.
I keep reading all these stories about the hideous conditions under which people are being detained, but I don’t hear about the court filings that must be underway to fight against the cruel and unusual nature of these detentions. These ICE camps are surely in violation of the 8th Amendment, right?
These camps seem to be substantially worse than regular prisons in the United States. I don’t know if there are any individual lawsuits winding their way through the federal courts on this particular issue, but I would hope there are.
I had exactly the same thought, thank you for writing it and helping me feel less insane. These ARE concentration camps in our country. In the 1940s, we had prisoner of war camps here...and we treated German enemy combatants better than we are immigrant businessmen with green cards married to US citizens. WTF. And why is this story not on SeeBS, NBC, ABC and every other non-Fox media channel? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.
We also had concentration camps where we imprisoned Americans of Japanese descent. If Americans of German descent didn't blend into the white population, we probably would've sent them to camps too.
Yes, of course, another example of the kind racism that we are duplicating today....immigrant families of Vets are being captured and detained just as Japanese men who fought in WW II had parents in Japanese concentration camps. And I know of at least one case of Germans being whisked away....My mother who was in her late teens/early twenties in the 40s recounted the German shoemaker and his family in her small NJ town vanishing overnight...no one knew why and the door of the store was left open and customers went back and picked up their unrepaired shoes. Were they spies? Or just citizens?
Overall, It's just shocking how much we've gone backwards toward hate ...no sense of humanity here at all and there's so much of it. And there are large swaths of the country where ICE is not happening and many people aren't tracking because it doesn't directly affect them.
In El Paso and the Whipple building in MPLS
Maddow did a piece Monday on the admin trying (and often failing, thanks to local, largely very red communities) to buy up vacant warehouses to build more of them.
So much for the "vicious criminal rapist, worst of the worst narrative ". Responsible dude, married to a US citizen, in the green card pipeline, and he still gets treated like sh*t.
A lot of us know that. But - now what?
It seems this administration is unlikely to be aware that one of the results of this horrific period that they have sieged upon our society and the globe, will be the generations of witness bearing, and hopefully, accountability tribunals
I keep calling my Senator and saying "concentration camps on your watch." I hope it helps. I'm also thanking people for standing up for the Epstein victims. I don't know, I feel like thanking people and acknowledging the good they do is important to get them to listen to "concentration camps on your watch." Like, I'm not calling just to yell like a Simpsons character, I really want to help and I don't mind working.
I agree, I think thanking people is important too. And I think it’s important to keep calling
I saw the article about Seamus yesterday on The Guardian and was appalled — these stories are all disturbing. But let me get this straight. The wife paid a $4,000 bail and then the government denied the bail? In this case what happens to the $4,000 paid? If they didn’t hear anything back then it sounds like she didn’t get her money back after the denial — what a racket.
The conditions described should make all Americans embarrassed for their country. There is no need to treat people like animals. But of course the good senator from Florida Rick Scott saved his outrage for the US athletes who have the temerity to speak out against the Orange Julius. As Gary Kasparov said yesterday, the current administration wants our athletes to have minders as he did in the Soviet era.
If the President gives that $4k to charity it's all good, right?
[Making BS sarcastic comments is my coping mechanism.]
You seem to be coping pretty well. :-)
I'm literally agitated all tbe time. I really wish eggs were less expensive in 2024.
Well, at least you can thank the Trump administration for upping your game in the art of repartee :)
True, I think we’ve all reached the sarcasm phase of TDS; I’m done begging and pleading, and as far as anger is concerned; let’s just leave it at that🤪
These days I am kind of like Dr Banner. My secret is that I am always angry. Writing on Substack is my coping mechanism.
Trump and racket; who would have thought it!
We should all be ashamed. What is happening in these camps is so outrageous i can't find the words to express the depth of my own feelings. This MUST stop! Yet here we are.
I have mentioned the KGB style minding of our athletes before. Something else to be outraged about. All of us need to keep xallung this out as loudly as possible. Eventually enough people will hear.
Given the statistics noted in the original piece, things seem to be breaking through. The question at this point is what happens in November. I am pretty sure we will have elections, and some will be free and fair, but I wouldn’t count on all of them.
You are a bit more optimistic on ghe elections. I hope you are right. I pray every day that both chambers of congress flip and Dems show backbone expeditiously and stop this horror. In the meantime, it needs to stay in forefront. There is so much horrible every day.
Maybe I am more optimistic than you, but that seems a fairly low bar. I think depending on where you live there will be free and fair elections, but not all — it probably depends on what state you live in.
Tom Holman's rec room, behind the wet bar.
So, we couldn't elect Hillary because of her private email server (which unlike government servers never got hacked). Information security is that important!
Yet, we can now give some of our nation's most sensitive intelligence to a hack lawyer.
Makes sense to me!
Also: During that time period, the server Clinton should have been using was hacked twice.
I agree, and when you consider those clowns have gained access to voter machines in several states that are used nationwide, we have reason to fear the midterms.
That said, as bad as Hack lawyers are; he’s only part of my worry. There was a reason Trump took over 300 of our most sensitive secrets out of the Whitehouse and into an unsecured bathroom at Mar a Largo, and then refused to give them back.
I want to know what happened to those documents while unsecured. And when you consider his tariffs, threats against our allies and his building of a massive army of stormtroopers answerable to only Trump and Miller, then you know sh*t is about to hit the fan.
My fear is we will not have a midterms (manufactured crisis) or it will be rigged, found out and Trump will then invoke The National Emergency Act and declare Martial Law. These people will never give up power willingly; they would all be going to jail! IMHO..:)
I think that the most plausible result of the midterms is for the president to declare them fraudulent. Heck, the chaos might be bad enough to prevent Congress from starting. Such a shame and we're lucky that the president can fill the gap.
That's my biggest fear.
Elections will be held and the logistics and optics of stormtroops at polling places doesn't make sense. Baseless accusations and chaos make perfect sense.
Exactly; flood the zone (chaos)…:)
Well, the the logistics and optics of stormtroops in South Minneapolis in January don't make sense either. Making sense isn't a feature for Trumpism, it's a bug.
There's over 110,000 polling locations. Where's the manpower to cover that coming from?
The videos from east coast polling places will go viral instantly. Midwest and west coast folks won't be caught flat-footed.
I give my favorite scenario for election shenanigans above. ICE at polling places doesn't scare me the way spurious claims of fraud do.
I would guess the useful docs were copied. Some probably were sold.
I believe the reasoning is Big Balls has it all now anyway.
and to DJT
Today’s government go-to forms of communication are X and Signal!
No! We can't have any congressmen visiting those ICE detention facilities. Definitely a threat to their health! AND Dear Leader informed us that Spanish is a language that no one understands.
According to a Harvard study, roughly 600 million people speak Spanish. And our own census data shows that about 42 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home. But other than that...
https://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu/en/about/spanish-in-united-states
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/languages-we-speak-in-united-states.html
But as we all know so well some people just don't count. There are several true meanings for that sentence.
And tens of millions more don't speak it at home but did learn it in school and have a reasonable level of fluency!
PLENTY of Americans understand Spanish!
The Spanish do.
And he and a whole host of others neither understand nor care that Puerto Rico's a sovereign U.S. territory, making its soil sovereign American soil and its residents U.S. effin' CITIZENS!
According to the most recent Pew survey, 69% of Evangelicals "approve of Trump's job performance" and 58% "support most/all Trump's plans and policies".
The problem in this nation appears to be most prevalent among a very large cohort who can't see how dedicating religious levels of devotion to a corrupt, dishonest, amoral man probably isn't the way to go.......
But God works in Strange Ways and chooses peculiar Instruments.
Time for God to stop being so coy and state his true intentions.
And to check His answering machine, which must be completely clogged with prayers.
Stopping the horrors of this admin didn't get enough Facebook likes, so his hands are tied. 🙅♂️
Any All [ Good, Knowing, Powerful] God that still has a appetite for giving little kids cancer is not a God for whom I can find a place in my heart.
There's a word for leaders opposed to the teachings of Christ. 😀
You mean heretic like the ones we used to burn at the stake?
Nope, I had something different in mind. Starts with the letter "A." 😀
Asshole? 😏
Ah, that one!
Unfortunately...I believe they are supporting him on faith not facts.
Exactly my point Jeff. They lack the ability to see through their “blind” faith. I do not mean to disparage people of faith, I mean to point out that when your cognitive scaffolding is based on “belief”, you are often unwilling to look past what you don’t want to see. (Think Catholics defending pedophile priests)
You and I are in lock-step. I am a faith believing Christian myself, but I also believe that God provided me a brain, discernment and wisdom to distinguish between faith and stupidity.
There's a parable about the wolf dressed up in sheep's clothing and that the flock keeps safe by knowing the voice of their real shepherd. It is my belief, that they have been totally fooled by listening to the fake one. In some cases, I think they are following the wrong one willingly and gleefully as they like what he's saying more than the other more boring one...
It's probably a coincidence that the Catholic gospel readings are all about the Pharisees this month, right? Yeah, probably coincidence.
"How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!" from Jesus today probably doesn't mean anything. Probably just more compliments for Paula White. Nothing she needs to worry about.
Spot-on! They have no idea that they are the Pharisees of the current age.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside may become clean as well."
May they rot in hell!
My like, main concern, at least this week, is that Shumer and the Senate Dems are about to betray us due to their insufferable weakness. from politico:
"Democrats want to require federal law enforcement officials to obtain a judicial warrant before entering private property, but that’s dead on arrival, according to three people close to the administration and a GOP strategist, all of whom were granted anonymity to speak about private conversations... Other Democratic asks, including prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks, requiring officers to display identification and an expansive limit on places where agents can operate, would need major concessions from Democrats to make them palatable for the Trump administration, the people said... But while conversations are ongoing between the White House and congressional leaders, Democrats are in the dark about how their proposals will ultimately be received. 'We have no idea which of our proposals they will accept and which they will reject,' Schumer said Monday, before reviewing the administration’s counter. 'And I will say Democrats offered exceedingly reasonable proposals and have the support of the American people. I’m not exaggerating.'"
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/09/a-complete-non-starter-white-house-draws-red-lines-in-dhs-funding-talks-as-shutdown-looms-00772302
Then shut it down!
Look, Chuck, the Trump admin is using administrative warrants to violate the first, second, fourth, sixth, and tenth amendments. Saying the Trump admin needs a real warrant to invade someone's home is a basic insistence on the rule of law. The other stuff like, "Hey, let's not have militarized secret police with no accountability," is also basic and should be achieved with no concessions, or if you like, the 'concession' is reopening a government that has otherwise been abusing and murdering us.
My thoughts exactly when I read the piece. This isn’t about *concessions* but about basic accountability and rights. Shut it down and keep it shit down. That these are non-starters for the administration and Stephen Miller in particular tells you all you need to know and gives the Dems plenty of room to maneuver.
Add the Fourth Amendment to the First and Second.
Remember the source as well. Politico does not like Dems, like the rest of the mainstream media, and always spins them in the worse way.
To be fair, expecting the Dems to come thru and do the right thing is a roll of the dice, at best. Hopefully they'll come thru this time round.
Politico is owned by right-wing nuts and should never be trusted IMO.
"Politico does not like Dems."? You sound as though you believe that anything to the right of Rolling Stone or The New Republic is a mouthpiece for MAGA. We need to be the grown-ups in the room.
Politico is owned by Axel Springer and is financed through private equity. Being the grownups means researching who owns what and weighing whether they are honest actors.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-media-scandal-germany-bild/
I don't know about their journalists or any particular article, but their owners are not known as honest actors, and I have to keep that in mind.
Politico does have a bias - I've noticed it before, too.
“Good for the voters. But the elites are slower. You might think congressional Democrats would be doing more to highlight the issue of election interference in the current discussions of ICE funding.”
Bill, I don’t think the elites are slower than the voters; they’re COMPLICIT!
Look who owns CBS and TikTok: Ellison! Who owns the Post: Bezos. The largest shareholders in the NYT’s are BlackRock and Vanguard. META: Zuckerberg!
The elites are the problem; they’ve changed the entire playing field and rules; not only carrying water for this depraved ignoramus, but also promoting his worst self.
Moreover, you won’t even hear about Pretti or Good on social media because it doesn’t conform to their community standards. However, plastering manufacturered ICE raids, promoting false propaganda, while allowing foreign disinformation campaigns to run rampant; all part of the charade!
If this isn’t the definition of collusion and conspiracy then what is! It’s a rhetorical question, no need to answer. IMHO…:)
The sad truth is our elites are no different than any other elites, be it the Russian kind or those in Nazi Germany who were all too complicit and happy to get in on the cheap labor.
100% agree! It’s all business to these people and the rest of us; mere pawns!
There is a great piece from Dorothy Thompson in Harper’s Bizarre from 1941 that is a great read! Many of these people would fit right in to a fascist regime with ease.
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
I read Thompson’s 1941 piece some months back. With a few substitutions, it could have been published this month.
Agreed…:)
Gee, what if the pawns woke up, and decided they deserved to be treated like human beings instead of disposable sources of commodified labor power for businessfolk? And they organized themselves to do something about that? Somebody should write a book about that, eh? Kind of a, you know, manifesto or something..
I read this a while ago and it was fantastic and frighteningly current
Exactly my sentiments…:)
RE: "The elites are the problem; they’ve changed the entire playing field and rules; not only carrying water for this depraved ignoramus, but also promoting his worst self."
Ding! Ding!! DING!!! DING!!!!
The elites... The more they have to lose, the more they'll fight to keep it. Which often involves *not fighting* at all but rather investing in a good set of knee pads for the win.
Janis got it right in more ways than one when she sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
I love Janis (and her version of the song is second to none), but credit for the lyrics goes to Kris Kristofferson.
Well said!…:)
Our elites are busy publishing pro-Epstein articles about moral panics in the Atlantic.
The campaign of Kamala Harris took a lot of heat after Trump won, for her failure to focus on the price of eggs, as she yammered on and on about saving democracy. LOL?
Kamala told the world what Trump was gonna do should he get re-elected.
She was right.
Yeah, but that laugh of hers! /s
Gee, was that sarcasm?
I see what you did there. 😀
So did Biden and remember the media mocked him for it and the NYT said saving democracy wasn't their jam.
Harris deserves very little heat, in my opinion. She had 100 days.
She should have told the party to keep their stupid, over-analyzed, focus-grouped mitts off her campaign. She had a ton of momentum coming out of the DNC, then the party stepped in.
Harris lost because the GOP out-smeared the DNC.
And they always will. So unless we want to lose every single Presidential election, we'd better find a way to deal with their lies.
Those damn chickens and their bird flu. But come on Dems, you should be hammering him on the price of beef. Why were eggs so salient in 2024, but skyrocketing beef prices aren’t. It is time to bring back the old add. Beef: it’s not what’s for dinner. Start tying that to Trump.
Why isn't the media hammering this? They sure did in 2024.
Because they take their cues from the GOP, from migrant caravans (remember that hysteria) and nope, Trump knows nothing about Project 2025 to the Mueller report exonerates him and critical race theory. Anything that the GOP tosses out the media runs with it. Dems can walk and talk in unison for weeks and crickets. Then people yammer Dems aren't speaking up etc. It's a two-fold win for the GOP.
Re: Trump and charity. Trump's charity history includes the Trump Charity, which was found to be so thoroughly uncharitable and self-serving that it was ordered to suffer corporate capital punishment by a court.
If I recall correctly, there never was even a single charitable expenditure. It was a personal checking account. One of the ways Trump had diverted contributions was to commission a full-length, life-size oil painting of himself.
RE: Rümeysa Öztürk and the State Department's attempt "to revoke her student visa over an op-ed she’d co-written in a Tufts University student paper."
It's not just foreign college students the Trump administration seeks to punish for having the temerity to have an opinion they don't like and the courage to express it openly. They don't even like citizens who have an opinion that rubs them the wrong way and who choose to express it to them *privately*.
You want a taste of Orwellian fascism, DHS will accommodate you. All you have to do is drop them a line disagreeing with something they're set on doing and asking them politely not to do it...
https://futurism.com/future-society/homeland-security-google
I'd never heard of this particular news source, so I checked them out...
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/futurism/
Slightly dinged for a couple of minor failed fact checks in the past, but more than credible enough that, even if taken with a boulder of salt, this little gem of a story should raise the hair on the back of your neck if not in actual fear and concern, then at least in anger, or more appropriately... both.
Sometimes, the more things change, the more they need to be *changed*.
And "sometimes" are now indisputably "these times". And we'll fail to change them at our own peril.
Defund ICE?
To Hell with just that.
Deconstruct DHS. Its corruption is bone deep and its future as currently constituted is irredeemable.
Note to DHS agents: If you'll just call ahead and let me know when you'll be here, I'll make sure to have the coffee pot on for you. And if there are any tea drinkers among you or if anyone has any food allergies, please let me know that as well, because I know not everyone likes coffee and I might decide to serve snacks, since I take my responsibility to be a good host when company comes a'callin' very seriously.
Almost as seriously as you all take yourselves as some kind of cosplaying defenders of truth, justice and he American Way.
I know we don’t like The Washington Post right now (with good reason), but still, don’t take it out on their reporters — the Futurism article is just a (credited) restatement of John Woodrow Cox’s great reporting for WaPo. (Every paragraph has ‘according to the article’, ‘per WaPo’, etc.)
I appreciate your taking the time to look up the credibility of your source — that’s 10x more than most people have the sensibility to do — but it hardly matters in an article that has no new reporting. This is Cox’s scoop.
(Gift link because I bought a 3-year subscription to the Post before I had any idea Bezos would let them go down the tubes, let alone so quickly.) 🎁🔗 https://wapo.st/4rBOIlK
Don't have a subscription to the Post and hadn't seen Cox's story in any of my news feeds, which is where I did see this Futurism piece - the fact of which is, to be very honest with you, immaterial to me, since the facts reported in the source that I linked to are what matter to me the most, not who reported them first.
That said, I have no problem with The Washington Post itself but am more than disgusted by what's happening *to* that storied publication.
I do, however, have a VERY BIG PROBLEM with Jeff Bezos. As well as all of his ilk.
Thanks for the link, Trey. Now that I'm aware of it, I'll see what this all sounds like "straight from the horse's mouth."
As to checking the credibility of sources, that's s.o.p. for me whenever I run across one that I'm unfamiliar with and want to gage the veracity and accuracy of whatever it is that they're presenting as being "fact".
Gotcha, that makes perfect sense.
But just FYI, if an article like that was written about a Fox News (or even crazier outlet’s) story that ended up being false, it wouldn’t change the reputation for sites like Grounded that try to track credibility. As written, the article is telling you what WaPo said, not doing its own fact checking, so it’s “credible” regardless (unless they misreport what WaPo published). They’d be expected to publish a followup if it turned out the WaPo article was false, and probably add a note with a link to the earlier article. But they aren’t “taking ownership” of the facts themselves.
For original reporting, the words you’re looking for in these cases are things like: “as originally reported by the Washington Post”, “as confirmed by Futurism”, or “in an article in the Washington Post, ‘Jon’ added…”
I took J-school classes and was a working opinion journalist back in my college days, so this stuff is seeped into my veins. But I think most of our legitimate reporters grossly overestimate the general population’s understanding of the norms of journalism. (For instance, most Americans think many journalists regularly make stuff up from whole cloth, for instance — when, in fact, that would be career-ending at any respectable outlet, and even crank publications need to have purported “sources”, even of no repute, if they don’t want to be sued into oblivion.)
Thank you Trey. For the gift link, for citing the source, and noting the complexity of voice(s) in old-school media. If nothing else, this will help us realize how much we're losing as WaPo continues to go down the tubes.
I just mentioned this in my comment (I was later to the party). Thanks for sharing.
Sure. There was a story in the Post recently about a retired guy from Philly who wrote a mildly critical email and had the feds knocking on his door and riffing through his email and search engine traffic.
They want to stifle dissent, shut us up, and lock us up for disagreeing.
"good charity"
Trump's past spending of charity funds included portraits of himself. With $10B, we will have sculptures in every American city - Think Michelangelo's David with a comb over and a mushroom penis.
Just the thought made me throw up just a little bit in my mouth…:)
Even if a modern day Michelangelo existed to produce a young nubile Donald in a flattering prime, Trump wouldn’t recognize the talent as it isn’t gaudy enough for him.
Cripes, Lewis. Leave it to you to make me spend the rest of my day trying to un-see something.
Off topic...but did anyone see that T The Great wants to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge between Detroit and Windsor Canada? More than 20 years in the making, paid for by Canada after lengthy negotiations, the crazed, daddy-issue fool who is currently president has issued an edict stating that until Canada "treats the US with the Fairness and Respect we deserve" he will not allow the opening of the recently completed bridge. I don't know if there exists any legal basis that would allow him to act on his threat, but with this man, legality is beside the point. (After the grace period of Bad Bunny's show and the start of Olympics I'm having a rough time re-entering TWorld this morning.)
Any idea when he's scheduled to demand that it's named after him?
And after Canada agrees to restock American liquor on its shelves, among whatever else his broken heart desires.
I happened to catch some local Detroit news coverage on YouTube. WTF! Seems like Duffy’s Dept spends their time identifying all the projects they can use to either grift or bully the blue. Lord knows they aren’t doing anything actually useful with our taxpayer $$$.
Obviously the Canucks can show the Fairness and Respect due to America the Great Again by renaming the bridge after the man who single-handedly brought back North America from the abyss, and otherwise just isn't getting the credit he so richly deserves.
I mean, who the hell is this Gordie Howe guy anyway?
/s
I was wondering what Files in the Face Witmer had to say. Statement from her office yesterday:
“This is the busiest trade crossing in North America. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is all about jobs. It’s good for Michigan workers and it’s good for Michigan’s auto industry. As a reminder, Canada financed the construction of the bridge – which was built by union construction workers from both sides of the border – and it will be operated under a joint ownership agreement between Michigan and Canada. This project has been a tremendous example of bipartisan and international cooperation. It’s going to open one way or another, and the governor looks forward to attending the ribbon cutting.”
The “good news” about Rümeysa Öztürk is definitely not bad news, don’t get me wrong, but the fact is that this was almost the very first “this is absolutely not how America works” story in Trump’s second term, and yet — even with intense press coverage, political pressure from all quarters, and high-powered pro bono work — **it’s taken nearly a full year to be resolved.**
We all heard about the Minnesota ICE attorney temporarily assigned to DoJ who had a viral moment last week,¹ when she told the judge the system was broken, and that she would welcome being held in contempt just for the rest. (She’s embarrassed the administration by speaking truth so of course she’s since been fired.)
But she was so overworked just trying to track down *why* ICE was ignoring court orders, let alone getting them to start following them. Court records show that before she had even filed her first motion after her temporary reassignment with DoJ she already had 90 cases assigned to her.
Rümeysa Öztürk was almost the best-case scenario in terms of resolving the civil rights violations — clearly illegal from the jump, caught on camera, numerous procedural irregularities, lies to courts, and as mentioned lots of attention and attendant assistance. There are literally THOUSANDS of cases logjammed behind hers.
The case of the Boston business owner of Irish extraction with an American wife mentioned later in the newsletter — who’s languished in a concentration camp *months* after his wife paid $4,000 bond to get him out — is a lot more like the average case than Rümeysa Öztürk‘s. (And even he has a big leg up by being white and having consular support from a European country.)
I won’t scoff at the good news — it is good news. But let’s not kid ourselves that it’s the first glimmer of clear skies ahead. It’s more like the first raindrop to finally hit the ground; the storm’s still just building.
—
¹ Correction, 11:15 ET: This originally read “a couple of weeks ago.” The hearing was actually on Tuesday, February 3. I apologize for the error.
What does it say about our times that the story you mentioned from a couple weeks ago was less than one week ago?
Gah!
In my defense, I did remember the story being reported last week, but I thought the hearing must have been from the prior week, since it usually takes a couple days for court transcripts to be available. But I just looked into it, and you’re absolutely right — that hearing was a week ago today. It turns out in this case, an activist lawyer sitting in the courtroom paid the fee to get a rush transcript expedited.
As Tim would say, time is a flat circle. Someday the news will be sane again ...
And thanks — correction appended.
A correction to your correction: EDT doesn't return until March. EDT = UTC-4, EST = UTC-5.
Bah! I specifically switched to “ET” for this years ago because I constantly made this error (since we’re in daylight time 65% of the time), but I slipped again.
It's a wildly popular American error. I wish I had started using UTC (and, for that matter, metric) years earlier. It makes very many things easier.
Having worked on the Internet since the 90’s flipping coasts with companies that had global datacenters, I think natively in 24-hour UTC, but I try to make an accommodation for readers.
DJT now thinks he can get economic growth up to 15 %. Right! And this from the business genius who wants to lower drug prices 400, 500 even 600%. But then logic and just plain thought are something he has always lacked. (the Joe Isuzu of presidents and all politicians for that matter)
American voter's Illiteracy and innumeracy are Trump's best friends. The weakening dollar helps an exporting country; OTOH imports are relatively more expensive. With Trump basically quitting the race to develop and adopt green technologies we're going to pay through the nose for those Chinese solar panels that we don't manufacture at home because reasons. But winning!
The not so funny thing is, (as you point out) we will be paying for DJT's trying to get rid of this country's progress on future of green energy (solar and wind). No matter what he does regarding coal, it is not coming back, period. He is living in the past. It is akin to wanting to go back to land lines in the era of smart phones. It won't happen.
Exactly. Trump et al could have framed green technology and moving to renewables as a moon shot. Something big and audacious. Something befitting the economic powerhouse that Trump inherited from his predecessors. Instead, we get a police state modeled after Russia. Russia.
Last week I was listening to a Charlie Sykes podcast with Justin Wolfers.( I'm not sure of his first name) He made a good point; DJT mindset is stuck in the 50s and 60s nostalgia when manufacturing was big, coal for energy was big. I hadn't thought of that before but it makes perfects sense. Of course there is no sense and logic to Trump's personality, morality and ethics.
Small numbers like 2% or 5% are for losers. Big numbers mean business!
His claims of lowering drug prices by more than 100% are like little strips of litmus paper floating around turning colors proving through scientific method that most of the Trump voters are proven IDIOTS!
Including, amazingly, a $25,000 donation to a PAC for then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Oh, you mean the bribe to get her to drop the lawsuit against Trump University??
Better yet, iirc Trump made a large "charitable contribution" to the Giuliani crony ex-FBI NYC official who was likely the key figure in the whole Comey letter October surprise thing in 2016.
I think it’s pretty obvious what needs to happen to prevent future corruption on the scale we now see. It starts with a forced rebuilding of the Supreme Court; best achieved with a combination of impeachment and expansion. The pardon power needs to be reined in - strictly limited to cases of clear injustice as the Framers intended. Bribery of government officials needs to be effectively recriminalized (this goes back to SCOTUS reform). Simple enforcement of the Emoluments Clause, by the courts, would go a long way to address the overall stench of corruption. Recent SCOTUS rulings on executive immunity, government bribes, and political “donations” fly in the face of common sense and must be addressed, through constitutional amendment if necessary.
For my entire life, I used to be such a defender of the Supreme Court and always gave them the benefit of the doubt. OMG...NOT any more!
I'm with you...big changes needed and, I'm going to say it strongly, accountability. I'm thinking that both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito should be investigated for treason. Honestly...bribery and abuse of office are too nice of terms for how they've sold out our country and the rule of law.
Yup. Their decisions seem to be based on (their) Bible and their bank accounts.