“They don’t have a right to see a judge. They came here illegally! . . . When the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, did we give them due process to actually see a judge?”
Doesn't get much more authoritarian than this folks.
It's almost comical that he asserts: 1) They're getting due process, 2) he already knows the facts that process will find, and 3) they don't deserve due process. It's like someone took a normal politician brain and put it in a blender.
Ben, it is not surprising that article 1 has been scrubbed from the Congressional website.(Habeas Corpus). Is this a temporary mistake or are they going to defend this position? I say the latter.
Gotta admit when it comes to political INSTINCTS, Trump is at least the match for Bill Clinton or LBJ if not surpassing them. What Trump lacks is analytical facilities to complement those instincts.
Anyway, in an evolutionary metaphor, pre-Trump US politics were pre-trilobite, no creature had eyes. Trump introduced eyes, the eyes to see not only the advantages of authoritarianism but the means to get US voters to demand it.
Republican politicians are in the adapt or die phase. Perhaps Democrats should consider the utility of adapting too.
IOW, what WERE normal political brains are becoming abnormal due to a political extinction-level event, Trump's presidency. The, er, adaptability of the Lindsay Graham brain is being naturally selected over the partially morality-encrusted Thom Tillis brain.
According to my husband, who does coding for a living, the code is there so information can be retrieved for display. It does nothing to the file in question’s content. If content was removed, we call that editing.
To those who revere Article 2, there was a mistake by whoever was writing down what was said ant the convention. Article 2 really should have been first!
That's because LA was a test run. If DoD is now being tasked with protecting ICE ops, and ICE is going to put 10,000+ new agents on the street next year, then what do you think happens to the military protective footprint? It expands alongside the ICE ops. I have enough to worry about now, but I truly worry about what next summer is going to look like.
Travis, to take your mind off next summer, let's think about the poetic justice of RJK, Jr. contracting the avian flu this Fall and has no mRNA vaccine or anything else to protect him. He could not be as lucky as the Felon was when he contracted COVID. I know that does not take next Summer out of the equation, but it would be a just turn of events, don't you think?
Oh, I understand your pessimism, but it did take your mind off next summer, even for a short period of time, right😏?
And what is the "very different health care system" for a guy with a brain worm, anyway? Sure, the President has the best that can be provided, but a mere cabinet secretary?
He's right! We went after anyone with Japanese heritage, stripped them of their personal property and sent them straight to internment camps for years on end! No judges needed, really. (Oh, eventually we came to our sense, I suppose...but damage done.)
Yep, an authoritarian, nativist impulse! Right up their with the treatment of African Americans. We then struggled to remedy it for the next 60 years, slowly making progress, we were inching to the top...and like Sisyphus, the rock is now rolling back down the hill.
The treatment of the Japanese in the internment camps was nowhere near the hundreds of years of African American slavery. My first job out of high school, I worked a short while for a Japanese couple who were interned as children in one of the camps. They were very successful business owners and tough but good people. I think they mentioned the camps once. They had 4 of us Caucasian Americans working for them and one guy from the Caribean Islands.
I look at the change from my childhood in the 60s and how much has changed that can't even be explained to people these days, and then back to when they were kids during WWII. I have a lot of respect for all the Japanese people I have known, and for the country they have built today out of the ashes.
Our system is too hierarchical and based on bullying and ecnomic pecking order that it can turned on and off by those at the top on order.
The hidden oligarchic system in American must be rooted out like the Nazis in Germany were, but without the faith and cohesion of what used to be the American middle class dominance we would fall apart.
This is why Trump/MAGA/ultraConservatives want to destroy historic understanding and social solidarity.
Yes, you are correct. Black Americans, and their enslaved ancestors, had it/have it much worse overall and to this day.
I was referencing a few years time when the historically very much looked down upon Asians were treated similarly African Americans, stripped of property and rights. But, yeah...not 400 years of such.
Meanwhile, all American's have benefitted from the entire mix. We'd not be the cultural dominating force in the world, BUT for the participation of all peoples that have come to participate in this way of life. It's literally the thing that makes us great.
Just want to point out one major difference between the way Japanese Americans were treated during WWII with the way enslaved Africans were treated. The Japanese were not considered property and their families remained intact while they were confined. That is why they continued to prosper after they were released.
The enslaved Africans, on the other hand, being property, were sold and separated from their families. That is the difference between all immigrant groups and African Americans. The enslaved were not immigrants.
In many ways the same thing is true of German and Italian legal resident aliens at the time. Their plight too should be recognized. I've interviewed former internees and researched the issue extensively. It is a fascinating story, albeit not one that reflects well on the United States overall.
My Great Great and Great Grandparents were Italian immigrants who came to the USA in the very late 1800s and early 1900s. They were not well received. My Great Grandfather, in an odd twist, boxed as an Irishman ("Kid Dugan') which, I suppose, was considered a step up from being Italian.
That response was not "insipid," it was obscene! Internment of Japanese-American citizens was one of the filthiest blots on this nation's history. And now Beckwith dares to cite it as a precedent?
As a Hoosier, I’m embarrassed by our Lt Gov every day. Maybe embarrassed isn’t the right word. Incensed. Furious. Outraged. Those might be better words.
Sorry for the misstep! K P is so prominent in Texas it seems like he is either Governor or Lt Gov. He may be the next Texas Senator. Paxton and Cruz, what an embarrassment!
Has your Lt Guv ever heard of the 5th Amendment and due process for citizens and non-citzens? It's a well-established principle.
The assumption is, of course, he knows but suffers like so many conservatives today from a deep-seated form of Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) which has become ascendant in the GOP under the ultimate RWA, Donald J Trump.
The Republican Party is now a dangerous movement of fascism & near-fascism, w fewer & fewer exceptions thanks to the most ethically challenged man to ever hold the presidency.
It is a sad state of affairs when a sitting Lt. Gov uses one of our most shameful moments as a country (the internment of the Japanese-American citizens) as a positive example to support their actions.
The questioner in the video brings up the internment of Japanese Americans, but I'm not even sure that's what the lt. gov. was referring to—I think he meant the Japanese sailor and pilots who actually bombed Pearl Harbor! Idk if that's more or less wacky, honestly.
I doubt he knows about internment of Japanese Americans. I'm older than him but also educated in a Midwestern state. I didn't learn about the internment until I was in graduate school. I was shocked first that it happened and second that no one mentioned it in high school history class.
Regardless of that a military invasion by another country is simply not the same thing as undocumented immigration even if somehow one believes that some South American country is sending drug gang members here. Drugs are here because Americans buy them, not because someone sends them. Americans are more than capable of manufacturing these illicit drugs right here in the US.
As I noted elsewhere, German and Italian legal resident aliens were interned here as well, and until as late as 1948 in some cases. Our collective lack of knowledge of it is appalling. Very few ever have heard about it, and what it was like for them to be whisked away with no notice, have little to no legal representation, lose their homes and most of their personal property, and suffer other hardships that the rest of us never have had to endure. The one good thing, based on what former internees told me personally, was that they were treated humanely, the facilities (such as at Crystal City, TX) were adequate and clean, and they had a certain sense of normalcy inside the camps, though of course they were not free to leave and their contact with others on the outside was monitored.
My impression was that Japanese internment camps were barely habitable, broken down old barracks in high desert, plains, or swamps mostly. Manzanar was in the Owens Valley...some barracks and a general mess hall. Nothing adequate and clean there or in other camps. But the Japanese were not white.
I can't speak for what all of the camps were like, only the ones that I encountered in my research and those in which the internees I interviewed had lived in. Quite possibly there were discrepancies. Those I spoke with all said that the government tried to maintain aspects of regular life as they could, such as cottages for families that were detained, schooling in the camps, dances and other social activities, sports and other competitive games, and so on. They said the food was good and adequate, if not luxurious in any way -- basic fare. None of them accused the government or military of mistreating them, just detaining them under orders when they had not done anything wrong. Again, that's what I was told by German-Americans. The Japanese experience may well have been different in some ways of which I am not aware.
I'm a retired history teacher and I never heard about German or Italian internment during WWII, unlike Japanese internment which is required content in 11th grade US History in my state.
Yes, I've seen that way too often. I'm not saying that the Japanese Americans do not deserve the recognition, just that it has not been fair to others who were detained and interned, for many of the same reasons, but have not been afforded the same level of awareness and understanding. Most have gone to their graves without receiving any sort of official acknowledgment and apology, as the Japanese Americans received formally in 1988.
Well of course, Democracy is way to woke. It insists on treating all people fairly when we all know some people aren't at all equal to white Christians. Sigh
Love that line. I read Animal Farm in high school when the US was firmly opposed to totalitarian governments. What a different US we live in now. It's time to include it in English classes again.
I guess the victims of the Holocaust...you know...voted for it? Which, if this logic holds, then those who voted for DJT should realize they're on notice as they're likely to be rounded up soon.
Much less acting like illegal immigration is in the same category as an intentional, planned and coordinated military sneak attack killing thousands and destroying vital military assets and property...all in a single day.
Yah...that's just like people sneaking into a country to work there in order to make a better living for themselves and their family.
Besides the files, and why Trump is so afraid of releasing them, there are more stories to uncover: The sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2006; the legitimate, unanswered questions about how Epstein died; and the Maxwell deal that allowed a sex offender to be moved to a minimum security facility.
"As a convicted sex offender, Maxwell would not normally be eligible for a minimum-security prison. According to a Bureau of Prisons policy, people with a sex offender determination known as a “public safety factor” are required to be housed in at least low-security prisons unless they receive a waiver from an arm of the bureau that designates inmates. Low-security prisons are more restrictive than minimum-security ones" (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/01/ghislaine-maxwell-prison-doj-meeting-00488424).
I check out the Washington Post, AP, CBS, other main stream outlets. They have that clinical, dry, "just the facts" tone without pointing out just how corrupt this deal is.
I don't think their job is to tell the reader this deal is corrupt. Their job is to investigate and report on the facts on the deal. In their editorials they can, but not in their straight reporting. If they are leaving important facts out, that's bad journalism. Are they?
And it will turn out that 70% of those screwed by the BBB actually like it- not because they are happy to get screwed but because the awful results of the BBB towards the “other” fake Americans makes them happy!
I'm afraid for MAGA that this particular instance is going to be very difficult to separate Trump from Clinton if they start revealing stuff about Clinton and not Trump.
Some MAGAs will be fine with it, but there will be some that won't buy it.
Yep...but Q is, at its core, a conspiracy based ideology. They can be lured by another juicy conspiracy theory...and we all know who has the power, audacity and lack of a moral compass in order to provide one.
ICE’s enthusiasm wasn’t shared by a group of citizens who gathered to pose questions about it to Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. In a video posted to the YouTube page of Vigo County, Indiana, a questioner can be heard asking Beckwith: “Are you going to make sure all the people coming to [the new facility] have due process?” “These people are not seeing a judge,” the questioner added. Beckwith responded: “They don’t have a right to see a judge. They came here illegally! . . . When the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, did we give them due process to actually see a judge?”
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It's somewhat reassuring to know that before 9:00 a.m. I've already encountered the single stupidest thing I will see or hear all day. Even DJT would struggle to come up with a word salad that makes less sense.
But the lieutenant governor's comment is offensive and embarrassing on multiple levels. It is no less arrogant than it is ignorant. What a burden it can be sometimes to be an American, particularly for those on the far right who are so drunk on American Exceptionalism that they feel no empathy for others who come from different circumstances and realities than we do. Having never endured any real societal or political hardships in their own lives, they fail to walk the mile in the shoes of those who feel real hunger, suffer from true political oppression, and otherwise live in forms of misery that are, ahem, utterly foreign to most of us.
Out of sight, out of mind, and out of caring, evidently, as they pretend that there is no part of the world in which things like famine, gulags, genocide, and ethnic cleansing exist -- or, if they do, it is merely someone else's problem, not ours, and no reason to interrupt our destiny of maximizing our personal wealth and living space. They do not know or understand true empathy. They see no world beyond that which impacts the self. And they wonder why so many around the world increasingly hate Americans for our collective selfishness and indifference to others.
I often wonder what my life would be like if I had been born in Africa, the Middle East, or some other area on Earth where prosperity, good health, opportunity, even clean and plentiful drinking water are not taken for granted. Because I think, I feel. And I wonder too almost every day how so many people here can be so unthinking and unfeeling. I see them every day. They look like me, talk like me, and do many of the same things that I do. But I never will understand them, as I remain one of the fortunate ones on this planet, not drunk on the notion that I am entitled and am not exceptional for any reason other than an uncontrollable accident of birth in the right place, at the right time. Lucky me. Lucky you. Lucky us.
One of the reasons I love America and have loved being an American is because of how fortunate I am to have been born here. While I wasn't born to wealth or even the middle class, even from a young age I understood how lucky we were, how privileged we were to live in this country.
As I got older and learned about some of the terrible things we did in the name of national expansion, interest, and security, it made me angry, and sad. But I was also thankful yet again, that being in this country meant that we could find out about such bad stuff and that much was acknowledged and addressed. From passing laws outlawing assassinations by the CIA etc, ending domestic spying a la J Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the Civil Rights Act and apologizing to those innocently interned during WWII and recognizing the wrong (and much more of course)—we have faced our mistakes, even if it took decades—and tried to rectify them. Of course we are still far from that perfect union. But we once believed in it, and in the tenets upon which we were founded, even if, in reality, we came up short. We had leaders who spoke to and inspired our better angels.
The despicable JD Vance is wrong. It is those founding ideals that are at the heart of American exceptionalism and what make America, America.
I rage and weep for how far we have fallen and am ashamed that this great nation is now led by the worst among us.
Agree with this! "being in this country meant that we could find out about such bad stuff and that much was acknowledged and addressed. From passing laws outlawing assassinations by the CIA etc, ending domestic spying a la J Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the Civil Rights Act and apologizing to those innocently interned during WWII and recognizing the wrong (and much more of course)—we have faced our mistakes, even if it took decades—and tried to rectify them."
I just want to add Watergate to this list. We saw a Congress doing their duty, in public, investigating a President. And Congress passed a series of laws that aimed at limited presidential power, increased government transparency, and prevented future abuses of power. Trump is now undermining those laws. See https://wapo.st/40UQhAo (gift link).
More and more I'm seeing this isn't the US I grew up in. We're a different country now.
"Because I think, I feel." MAGA refuses to think, they regurgitate. We know they don't think deeply about anything because to do so might cause them a modicum of discomfort. It might cause them a fleeting moment of examining their priors and how some of their actions might be really messed up. MAGA wants affirmation and only affirmation, anything that is not affirmation, is rejected.
Regurgitate. That sounds about right. I would say my wife (call her MAGgie) parrots what she hears. And then she tells me I am the one who is brainwashed. Because I read the newspaper, I guess.
Maybe these MAGA fools think if they show no empathy to others they will be seen as equals to those rich, entitled elites, and will be asked to join them. There was a comedy in the 60’s “The Beverly Hillbillies,” about a family from The Ozarks who became rich, and moved to California. Maybe these fools thought it was a documentary.
. . . those who feel real hunger, suffer from true political oppression, and otherwise live in forms of misery that are, ahem, utterly foreign to most of us.
MAGATs response:
They think they have it tough! Look at what we're paying for a dozen eggs.
. . . accident of birth in the right place, at the right time.
I like Mamdani, he fits my "we need a new progressive Teddy Roosevelt era," theory of the case for doing big things to win. But also, part of the reason people are rejecting status quo politics is if not Mamdani, you could maybe instead have a proven sex-pest like Cuomo doing a secret backroom convo with Trump? Or would you rather have Turkish-bribe-taking Adams who Trump has enthroned beneath a Sword of Damocles with the possibility they'd bring back the corruption charges?
My FOX loving parents grew up in NYC and they keep asking me why people would vote for Mamdani, and I say he's the only one running who hasn't robbed them. Which they actually understand. Until they watch FOX for another hour.
I would take a piece of rotted meat over Cuomo or Adam’s. My worry about Mamdani is that people will be massively dissatisfied because he isn’t Hercules and the stable does need to be cleaned.
This is why I’m a little afraid that Mamdani, Cuomo, and Adams will split the Dem vote into small enough pieces to allow Curtis Sliwa a surprise opening. (He clearly thinks this is possible…he has even ditched his red beret and donned a suit for public appearances thru the duration of the campaign.)
"Donald Trump announced Thursday morning that he had instructed the Commerce Department to begin a highly unusual new non-decennary census: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” he said, adding, “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” "
Having worked for the census in 2020, one thing I can say for certain is that illegal immigrants do not answer the census - they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. In other words, they weren't counted before, and this isn't meant to right a wrong, it's just another attempt by the Trump administration to rig the numbers.
Interesting! I would imagine state and local govts if anything would want them to answer the census because it matters for things like federal infrastructure money, right? But I guess there's not that much they can do to force people to answer the census if they really don't want to?
That’s correct, the state and local govts have an interest in an increased headcount regardless of immigration status, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The census rules require the staff to make repeated attempts at the same address, and after three attempts to then to ask the neighbors for assistance on getting the information. Sometimes the neighbors would state that they had no info to give, and that there was would no way anyone would get it directly from the people living at that address – and then implying that they were almost certainly here illegally. (Of course they couldn’t have known this for certain, but I don’t think they hinted at this to get their neighbors in trouble, just to be helpful for the census worker.)
Sometimes a young person was sent to answer the door, who said essentially that his parents didn’t speak English and so couldn’t answer any questions, and also that they hadn’t done anything wrong. Then one was in the uncomfortable position of letting the young person know that the survey could be conducted in Spanish, at which point they wandered off and didn’t return.
It's hard to imagine illegal immigrants taking the risk on answering census questions (much less voting) since there was no reward for doing so.
It’s always been difficult to get accurate numbers on non-citizens in any city- even those who heretofore would be considered ‘legal’ immigrants. In the current environment I bet it’s hard to even get anyone to answer the door.
That is exactly what I was thinking. What would compel them to fill out forms that might get them deported? Also, good luck getting citizens to fill it out. Last time I filled mine out, it was long and tedious, but I decided it was necessary for my communities' representation. Im not sure most folks really give it much thought, and I'll bet a good many throw it in the round file.
I got one of those community census thingies about 3 months ago and ignored it because I don't want to tell the Trump Administration more than they've already stolen from my private info about me. Sure enough, I got a knock on my door. I HAD to fill it out.
While legally required, the Census Bureau has not actively prosecuted individuals for non-response in recent history. You did not need to open the door.
Per the linked page: "If your address was selected for the American Community Survey, you are legally obligated to answer all the questions, as accurately as you can. The relevant laws are Title 18 U.S.C Section 3571 and Section 3559, which amends Title 13 U.S.C. Section 221."
The "...as accurately as you can" standard is interesting if unsurprising. Depending upon the new questions that make it into Trump's out-of-phase census, some mental reservation and ends-means justification may bloom to poison the waters.
Yeah, it seemed easier to fill it out and just be snarky in the replies. What's my ethnicity? What kind of neighborhood question is that? I'm an American, thank you.
Oh, it's not like the nice woman who knocked on my door was going to twist my arm. She was doing her job politely - making sure people responded to the Census. I suppose I could've said no, but why, really. Not the hill I want to die on.
It is going to be super simple, barely an inconvenience. They'll make responding mandatory and noncompliance will result in jail time, forfeiture of citizenship, or some other similar tactic from a fascist's wet dream.
I feel like red state Democrats almost should be whipping their voters and allies to *not* respond to an unnecessary mid-decade census. If that effort was successful, it would mean that red states report fewer people and lose seats in Congress.
Your comment makes me think that redoing the census is really just a way to go door to door and see who is and is not a citizen. This is nothing more than a pretext to invade our homes. Just wait, responding will be mandatory otherwise you'll face jail time. They know that this is the easiest route to get the public to sign up for millions of door knockers to find the people they want to disappear.
This is just more Trump bullshit like his EO to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting. It's bullshit because it's already the law: The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections.
This is like Republicans' claims of voter fraud, which by all accounts is nonexistent, at least not to the extent that any fraudulent votes affected the outcome.
The undocumented participating in the census is just another made-up problem.
How much does it cost to conduct a Census? Does the Commerce Department even have the money for this? How can MAGA possibly complain about waste/fraud/abuse in government when they keep throwing money away like this? Not that reality actually matters to them.
The 2010 census cost an estimated $12.9 billion. The best cost estimate for the 2020 census that I could find was $14.2 billion. How much money is the Trump Administration wasting?
The Constitution says: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”
If it’s a “Term of ten Years,” then shouldn’t that be both a maximum, as well as a minimum time frame? Can they really conduct a Census multiple times within the ten Year Term?
It has to be unconstitutional to conduct a Census except in the ten year Term. The thing is, the Trump administration doesn't care about the Constitution, and they will push forward unless the courts push back.
The lower courts would push back. Unfortunately, this Supreme Court seems to be giving Trump whatever he wants. They’re also undermining the lower courts at every opportunity.
Let's get the facts straight. Trump sends Todd Blanche to interview Maxwell with just her attorney David Markus. Again let's review: Blanche and Markus are good friends. That's nice. Trump tells Blanche if you get Maxwell to just read the following so it is recorded by Blanche I will make sure she gets transferred to the Club for non violent females. Real nice place. And if what she tells Congress helps me and I still control the HOUSE in 2026 then within 2 years she'll get a full pardon. Has to be at least two years so it won't seem like a 'quid pro quo" (yes I learned my lesson with Zelinsky when I blackmailed him). Ok now Blanche get it done. Bingo. Blanche said he asked Maxwell did Trump have anything nefarious to do with Epstein. Her reply as read from the note. "President Trump was a very good friend of Jeffrey's. They liked to be seen together at various parties. But I have never seen Donal Trump in any untoward action towards any girl or woman. He was always a gentleman" Next day she was moved to the Club for non violent felons. It has never happened before. Someone with 20 years for violent crimes against girls etc being transferred to this country club prison for woman. Oh well when you do what the orange man says you do it. Now to win the HOUSE again and lie before Congress.
you forgot, Trump was also pimping from Mar A Lago and his Trump Modelling Agency. Not many people talk about his Model Agency which he started in 1999 and closed in 2017. the 4 musketeers: Epstein was fed women and girls from : Jean Luc Brunel from his French agency then when shit hit fan he "commited suicide". Casablancas who had Elite Models and Trump was always a judge at his teen models judging. Casablacas died after the investigation started. and Trump Models. So three musketeers fed women and girls to Epstein. that's sex trafficking. Oh NOTE that only one man is still Alive. funny huh. "what secrets we have Jeffrey"
My genuinely communist/anarchist/socialist/Marxist friends all thought this might be a 25th Amendment secret coup planning attempt, foiled only by the leak.
I can't decide if Vance is cunning or ruthless enough for that, but I suspect it is leftist cope (otherwise, we have to consider we have 3.5 more **years** of Trump... at minimum). I think a lot of the cabinet is too loyal to Trump to join a 25th amendment attempt on Trump.
But the leak of this coincided with Trump walking around in circles on the roof of the Whitehouse, shouting at the press. In another day and age, he'd be sent to the asylums he keeps claiming immigrants come from.
All the other cabinet members can immediately gain favor with Trump by tipping him off to the plot. Trump would fire the plotters, blast them on Truth Social, and their careers in Republican politics would be over.
"Until, alas, the dinner was cancelled. Their planned high-level strategy session was called off after word of it leaked out."
Was the dinner cancelled because word leaked out, or because they realized --one more time-- that there is an insider (or insiders) leaking information to the public? Who are these insiders? How do "we" identify and punish them? Or is it just 4D Trump-Vance-Cheung chess making us confused about the words "hoax", "leak", "pardon", "commutation", and "witch-hunt"?
One thing missing from any of these interactions? Emphasis on the actual victims of heinous crimes perpetrated by Epstein and convicted criminal Maxwell.
It would be absurd except exploited sexual assault victims have waited 20 years for some form of justice, or even meaningful empathy-conversation over what should have been a comprehensive investigation and after Alex Acosta's 2008 non-prosecution "sweetheart deal" in the Florida Epstein case. Still. Crickets.
Permit me, Mr. Kristol, to repeat an earlier comment about l'affair Epstein.
The duration and details of Epstein's unspeakable 'activities' make it inconceivable that he and Maxwell did not design and implement a system of 'execution,' almost certainly manipulated in a computer program. That included lists of 'who' (by name) liked 'what' (by proclivity), who wanted what, the availability of 'fresh meat' to provide 'service,' the timing of visits--when, where--transportation (a/c manifests). The breadth and complexity of these 'operations' could not possibly have been kept as mental notes by the ghastly predators.
The way this Administration runs, the proposed Naval Observatory meeting made me think of the mobsters’ Appalachian meeting. Remember how upset Republicans were when Bill Clinton went inside Janet Yellin’s plane for a few moments on the tarmac?
This lot is apparently fond of alliteration, and who doesn’t like a catchy name for their prisons? I especially like “Camp Bryan” for convicted pedophile ring mistress Ghislaine Maxwell’s new home. It sounds like they must sit around a campfire at night making s’mores. Trump certainly meant it when he said he wished her well.
I know how to end the war in Ukraine: Putin can withdraw his troops and stop shooting.
And Trump can stop being pestered about releasing the Epstein Files by releasing the Epstein Files. He did it with the MLK Files, he has total authority over everything that happens in this country apparently, so, as Nike says, Just Do It.
We are so far past normalcy that invoking it feels obscene. Those still clutching procedural illusions, who believe this will course-correct, that law will reassert itself, that integrity will rise like steam from this wreckage, are reciting bedtime stories to a house already swallowed in flame. They are whispering civics into a national crematorium.
You do not convene a clandestine dinner between the Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, and the personal defense attorneys of a convicted felon president unless the state itself is no longer adversarial to corruption but is now in communion with it. You do not blackout the President’s name from the Epstein files unless what you are safeguarding isn’t privacy, but myth, unless you are curating a false reality with the precision of a propagandist. You do not fire a labor official for releasing accurate numbers on the eve of bad ones unless the very concept of data has been reclassified as sedition.
There is no middle. No return. No respectable Republican waiting in the wings, polishing his civic virtue like a family heirloom. There is only the regime, and the thrumming roar of its enablers. This is not about partisanship. This is about power. This is about the final evolution of American justice into a protection racket, where the badge, the bench, and the bureau serve not the people, but the throne.
If you’re still nursing hope, if you believe that one more scandal, one more outrage, one more name on the Epstein list will finally be the breaking point, you haven’t been paying attention. Like you, they've had 10 years of this.
This thing doesn’t break. It consolidates. It constricts. It tightens, like a noose.
Dark JVL is a hell of a drug, but the supply chain’s backlogged because reality keeps outpacing satire. At some point, you need to stop waiting for the cavalry and realize the only thing left is to carve warnings into the wreckage. Not for hope. For the record. For those still capable of feeling the weight.
Patrick, your apocalypse is profoundly discouraging. I cannot argue with it. Meantime, anyone who could actually DO something about it seem to have caved.
John, discouraging doesn’t even feel like it begins to touch it. But I’d argue this isn’t an apocalypse, it’s exposure. The scaffolding’s been rotting for decades. We’re just finally seeing it without the theater lighting. Yes, the ones who could do something, the insiders, the so-called adults in the room, they consented. They found comfort in irrelevance, in tenure, in the flattering lie that history would sort it out.
But history doesn’t sort. It records. This is 2025 America, and this is our reality. I always find comfort in naming reality, because you cannot truly understand what needs to be done, until you can understand the ground you are standing upon.
Patrick, history is--we all know it--written and currently manipulated by the winners, even if their outcome has become, for the nation and the world, the eventual losers. One of the central issues has seemed to me to be that the two 'sides,' however you define them, and in whatever arena you choose, are operating from two entirely different playbooks with radically opposing 'rules.' You know it, and have implicitly articulated this weird dichotomy.
Sandy, I’m right there with you in spirit, but the Dems winning the House in '26 isn’t hope. It should be the bare minimum expectation. A floor, not a light. I do think the problem might be that our system no longer rests on floors. It floats, barely, above the abyss.
The deeper problem is structural. Once the doors to autocracy open, they don’t close with an election. They stay open. In 2025 America those doors have been kicked wide open by arguably the least capable human ever to hold executive powe. A man with no intellect, no discipline, no vision. That, horrifyingly, is the best-case scenario, because the precedent has now been set. The playbook published. The machinery tested.
All it takes now is someone smarter, hungrier, more strategic, and they can come from anywhere. Right or left. Doesn’t matter. Power craves a vessel, not a party.
If those doors remain open, and they will, for decades, then hope requires a level of national perfection we’ve never demonstrated. Forty uninterrupted years of civic competence. Of ethical clarity. Of refusing demagogues and choosing truth over tribalism. That’s not hope. That’s a demand for a miracle. I don’t think we’re that kind of country anymore.
So yes, root for '26. Fight for it. But don’t mistake it for deliverance. We are not sealing the gates. We’re patching a dam with duct tape and wishfully thinking it might hold long enough to matter.
Serious question that I’m struggling to get an answer to: What can democrats even do if they take back the house? They can’t pass any legislation and they can investigate and hold all the hearings they want but they know Trump’s lapdogs won’t cooperate or comply, and I don’t think they have any real means of enforcement.
I think it’s critical for them to make it clear and set expectations for what they can and can’t do because my sense is that people are getting their hopes way up and will be disappointed.
Yes, hearings is the one thing I know they can do, and subpoena DOJ files. You’re right, tho, that Trumpworld will not cooperate and they can’t refer them to the DOJ for contempt of Congress - they would need Senate approval by majority vote - because the DOJ will not do anything with the referral.
But, if the Dems get their shit together, they use Trumpworld’s noncooperation as a cudgel during the next election. Perhaps by then some of the Trump voters will have seen enough to bail on him. Already one poll showed 4% of Trump voters regret their vote.
“They don’t have a right to see a judge. They came here illegally! . . . When the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, did we give them due process to actually see a judge?”
Doesn't get much more authoritarian than this folks.
It's almost comical that he asserts: 1) They're getting due process, 2) he already knows the facts that process will find, and 3) they don't deserve due process. It's like someone took a normal politician brain and put it in a blender.
Ben, it is not surprising that article 1 has been scrubbed from the Congressional website.(Habeas Corpus). Is this a temporary mistake or are they going to defend this position? I say the latter.
| a normal politician brain
Which is something Donald J Trump DOES NOT HAVE.
Gotta admit when it comes to political INSTINCTS, Trump is at least the match for Bill Clinton or LBJ if not surpassing them. What Trump lacks is analytical facilities to complement those instincts.
Anyway, in an evolutionary metaphor, pre-Trump US politics were pre-trilobite, no creature had eyes. Trump introduced eyes, the eyes to see not only the advantages of authoritarianism but the means to get US voters to demand it.
Republican politicians are in the adapt or die phase. Perhaps Democrats should consider the utility of adapting too.
IOW, what WERE normal political brains are becoming abnormal due to a political extinction-level event, Trump's presidency. The, er, adaptability of the Lindsay Graham brain is being naturally selected over the partially morality-encrusted Thom Tillis brain.
Speaking of authoritarian, Parts of Article 1 of the constitution has been scrubbed from the Congressional website. (including Habeas Corpus)
Supposedly a "coding mistake". 😉😉😉😉🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Amazing a little old coding mistake just pops up at this time! 🤫
What the hell is coded? Isn't it just text basically?
According to my husband, who does coding for a living, the code is there so information can be retrieved for display. It does nothing to the file in question’s content. If content was removed, we call that editing.
And I gather it somehow did not affect Article 2.
To those who revere Article 2, there was a mistake by whoever was writing down what was said ant the convention. Article 2 really should have been first!
That's because LA was a test run. If DoD is now being tasked with protecting ICE ops, and ICE is going to put 10,000+ new agents on the street next year, then what do you think happens to the military protective footprint? It expands alongside the ICE ops. I have enough to worry about now, but I truly worry about what next summer is going to look like.
Travis, to take your mind off next summer, let's think about the poetic justice of RJK, Jr. contracting the avian flu this Fall and has no mRNA vaccine or anything else to protect him. He could not be as lucky as the Felon was when he contracted COVID. I know that does not take next Summer out of the equation, but it would be a just turn of events, don't you think?
The rich/famous have access to a very different health care system than people like me do. I'm 99% positive he will be just fine.
Oh, I understand your pessimism, but it did take your mind off next summer, even for a short period of time, right😏?
And what is the "very different health care system" for a guy with a brain worm, anyway? Sure, the President has the best that can be provided, but a mere cabinet secretary?
He's right! We went after anyone with Japanese heritage, stripped them of their personal property and sent them straight to internment camps for years on end! No judges needed, really. (Oh, eventually we came to our sense, I suppose...but damage done.)
That was authoritarian too and was one of the many low points of our nation's history.
Yep, an authoritarian, nativist impulse! Right up their with the treatment of African Americans. We then struggled to remedy it for the next 60 years, slowly making progress, we were inching to the top...and like Sisyphus, the rock is now rolling back down the hill.
The treatment of the Japanese in the internment camps was nowhere near the hundreds of years of African American slavery. My first job out of high school, I worked a short while for a Japanese couple who were interned as children in one of the camps. They were very successful business owners and tough but good people. I think they mentioned the camps once. They had 4 of us Caucasian Americans working for them and one guy from the Caribean Islands.
I look at the change from my childhood in the 60s and how much has changed that can't even be explained to people these days, and then back to when they were kids during WWII. I have a lot of respect for all the Japanese people I have known, and for the country they have built today out of the ashes.
Our system is too hierarchical and based on bullying and ecnomic pecking order that it can turned on and off by those at the top on order.
The hidden oligarchic system in American must be rooted out like the Nazis in Germany were, but without the faith and cohesion of what used to be the American middle class dominance we would fall apart.
This is why Trump/MAGA/ultraConservatives want to destroy historic understanding and social solidarity.
Yes, you are correct. Black Americans, and their enslaved ancestors, had it/have it much worse overall and to this day.
I was referencing a few years time when the historically very much looked down upon Asians were treated similarly African Americans, stripped of property and rights. But, yeah...not 400 years of such.
Meanwhile, all American's have benefitted from the entire mix. We'd not be the cultural dominating force in the world, BUT for the participation of all peoples that have come to participate in this way of life. It's literally the thing that makes us great.
Just want to point out one major difference between the way Japanese Americans were treated during WWII with the way enslaved Africans were treated. The Japanese were not considered property and their families remained intact while they were confined. That is why they continued to prosper after they were released.
The enslaved Africans, on the other hand, being property, were sold and separated from their families. That is the difference between all immigrant groups and African Americans. The enslaved were not immigrants.
We finally admitted this atrocity. Will the current administration ever admit to what they are doing?
When was the last time you heard Trump (or any of them really) admit they did something wrong?
How about, “The twelfth of never?”
When he claims the action was "perfect".
In many ways the same thing is true of German and Italian legal resident aliens at the time. Their plight too should be recognized. I've interviewed former internees and researched the issue extensively. It is a fascinating story, albeit not one that reflects well on the United States overall.
My Great Great and Great Grandparents were Italian immigrants who came to the USA in the very late 1800s and early 1900s. They were not well received. My Great Grandfather, in an odd twist, boxed as an Irishman ("Kid Dugan') which, I suppose, was considered a step up from being Italian.
The irony of that is even then there was some sort of a fig leaf judicial process. They aren't even bothering with that now.
Well, the current threat is so much greater. /s
That response was not "insipid," it was obscene! Internment of Japanese-American citizens was one of the filthiest blots on this nation's history. And now Beckwith dares to cite it as a precedent?
It is like saying that Putin deserves due process for invading Ukraine. The most nonsensical thing I’ve read this year, and that’s saying a lot.
Did Putin flee to Ukraine with nothing but the clothes on his back? Was he trying to escape political persecution or violent gangs? I think not.
..or can you say mentally challenged?
It's also an illiterate non sequetor; complete nonsense.
And wrong, and stupid.
I've watched the movie Animal House like a dozen times. I'm pretty sure John Belushi says the line that Germans bombed Pearl Harbor
As a Hoosier, I’m embarrassed by our Lt Gov every day. Maybe embarrassed isn’t the right word. Incensed. Furious. Outraged. Those might be better words.
Micah Beckwith sounds like a real piece of work. Who are his backers ?
Indiana voters.
Thank god Pete Buttigieg moved out of Indiana to Michigan.. Your Lt Gov. is giving Lt Gov. Ken Paxton a run for his money as biggest dumbass.
Ken Paxton is AG not Lt Governor. Dan Patrick (ne Goeb) is the Lt Governor of Texas. Not that it matters, they are both corrupt morons.
Sorry for the misstep! K P is so prominent in Texas it seems like he is either Governor or Lt Gov. He may be the next Texas Senator. Paxton and Cruz, what an embarrassment!
And if it is possible, Patrick is probably a bigger evil moron than Paxton.
I believe he's the fine fellow who urged those most at risk of dying from Covid to risk their lives for the economy back in 2020.
Beckwith sounds like a genuine wing-ding! I'm glad he's Indiana's problem. They can keep him!
Except a former Governor became Vice President. Maybe this fool has aspirations to greatness! /s
I wouldn't be surprised! God help us! It seems we're just dumb enough to elect him.
Has your Lt Guv ever heard of the 5th Amendment and due process for citizens and non-citzens? It's a well-established principle.
The assumption is, of course, he knows but suffers like so many conservatives today from a deep-seated form of Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) which has become ascendant in the GOP under the ultimate RWA, Donald J Trump.
The Republican Party is now a dangerous movement of fascism & near-fascism, w fewer & fewer exceptions thanks to the most ethically challenged man to ever hold the presidency.
The ignorance of the Constitution among Republican electeds is profound.
Came here to say this as well, but as a fellow Hoosier, I'm embarrassed by almost all of our elected officials every day.
Same. Somehow they are all deplorable but fly under the media radar a lot so people outside of Indiana don’t know how bad it is here.
They are certainly better but still, they don't do complete justice.
It is a sad state of affairs when a sitting Lt. Gov uses one of our most shameful moments as a country (the internment of the Japanese-American citizens) as a positive example to support their actions.
The questioner in the video brings up the internment of Japanese Americans, but I'm not even sure that's what the lt. gov. was referring to—I think he meant the Japanese sailor and pilots who actually bombed Pearl Harbor! Idk if that's more or less wacky, honestly.
I doubt he knows about internment of Japanese Americans. I'm older than him but also educated in a Midwestern state. I didn't learn about the internment until I was in graduate school. I was shocked first that it happened and second that no one mentioned it in high school history class.
Regardless of that a military invasion by another country is simply not the same thing as undocumented immigration even if somehow one believes that some South American country is sending drug gang members here. Drugs are here because Americans buy them, not because someone sends them. Americans are more than capable of manufacturing these illicit drugs right here in the US.
As I noted elsewhere, German and Italian legal resident aliens were interned here as well, and until as late as 1948 in some cases. Our collective lack of knowledge of it is appalling. Very few ever have heard about it, and what it was like for them to be whisked away with no notice, have little to no legal representation, lose their homes and most of their personal property, and suffer other hardships that the rest of us never have had to endure. The one good thing, based on what former internees told me personally, was that they were treated humanely, the facilities (such as at Crystal City, TX) were adequate and clean, and they had a certain sense of normalcy inside the camps, though of course they were not free to leave and their contact with others on the outside was monitored.
My impression was that Japanese internment camps were barely habitable, broken down old barracks in high desert, plains, or swamps mostly. Manzanar was in the Owens Valley...some barracks and a general mess hall. Nothing adequate and clean there or in other camps. But the Japanese were not white.
I can't speak for what all of the camps were like, only the ones that I encountered in my research and those in which the internees I interviewed had lived in. Quite possibly there were discrepancies. Those I spoke with all said that the government tried to maintain aspects of regular life as they could, such as cottages for families that were detained, schooling in the camps, dances and other social activities, sports and other competitive games, and so on. They said the food was good and adequate, if not luxurious in any way -- basic fare. None of them accused the government or military of mistreating them, just detaining them under orders when they had not done anything wrong. Again, that's what I was told by German-Americans. The Japanese experience may well have been different in some ways of which I am not aware.
I'm a retired history teacher and I never heard about German or Italian internment during WWII, unlike Japanese internment which is required content in 11th grade US History in my state.
Yes, I've seen that way too often. I'm not saying that the Japanese Americans do not deserve the recognition, just that it has not been fair to others who were detained and interned, for many of the same reasons, but have not been afforded the same level of awareness and understanding. Most have gone to their graves without receiving any sort of official acknowledgment and apology, as the Japanese Americans received formally in 1988.
But like IPhone manufacturing, costs to consumers would likely quadruple. Red Hats don’t wanna pay quadruple for a night on the town
Either way, it speaks volumes as to the knowledge and understanding of history currently inhabiting the MAGA movement!…:)
They take after Trump.
Exactly!..:)
Too much democracy caused the Holocaust, doncha know.
Well of course, Democracy is way to woke. It insists on treating all people fairly when we all know some people aren't at all equal to white Christians. Sigh
Some animals are more equal than others.
Like cats to dogs. :)
I was more making a reference to "Animal Farm." 😀
Love that line. I read Animal Farm in high school when the US was firmly opposed to totalitarian governments. What a different US we live in now. It's time to include it in English classes again.
I blame that socialist Hitler.
I guess the victims of the Holocaust...you know...voted for it? Which, if this logic holds, then those who voted for DJT should realize they're on notice as they're likely to be rounded up soon.
Much less acting like illegal immigration is in the same category as an intentional, planned and coordinated military sneak attack killing thousands and destroying vital military assets and property...all in a single day.
Yah...that's just like people sneaking into a country to work there in order to make a better living for themselves and their family.
Jeff,
You weren’t supposed to think about the comparison for more than 2 seconds.
Beckwith demonstrates the super power of MAGA. If they don’t like reality, they simply make up alternate facts. Works ever time.
I just love how Bill has become like a dog with a bone when it comes to the Epstein cover-up. Keep gnawing away, Bill!
Besides the files, and why Trump is so afraid of releasing them, there are more stories to uncover: The sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2006; the legitimate, unanswered questions about how Epstein died; and the Maxwell deal that allowed a sex offender to be moved to a minimum security facility.
"As a convicted sex offender, Maxwell would not normally be eligible for a minimum-security prison. According to a Bureau of Prisons policy, people with a sex offender determination known as a “public safety factor” are required to be housed in at least low-security prisons unless they receive a waiver from an arm of the bureau that designates inmates. Low-security prisons are more restrictive than minimum-security ones" (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/01/ghislaine-maxwell-prison-doj-meeting-00488424).
It's crazy that more isn't being made of this prison transfer by the media, it's such a blatant quid pro quo.
When you say the media, you mean cable news? I don't rely on them for news.
I check out the Washington Post, AP, CBS, other main stream outlets. They have that clinical, dry, "just the facts" tone without pointing out just how corrupt this deal is.
I don't think their job is to tell the reader this deal is corrupt. Their job is to investigate and report on the facts on the deal. In their editorials they can, but not in their straight reporting. If they are leaving important facts out, that's bad journalism. Are they?
The president of the US is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and was best friends with a sex trafficker. These are facts.
And it is abundantly clear that the thing Epstein and Trump had in common and bonded over is lecherousness.
But gas is down to a dollar a gallon, according to the same trustworthy source as, “They’re eating the dawgs!”
…and Trump’s approval rating is over 70%…among Republicans.
Trump is the president only for those who voted for him so they are the only citizens that matter
That 70% number is close to the percentage of Americans who are going to be screwed by the BBB (Great name for a drag queen)!
And it will turn out that 70% of those screwed by the BBB actually like it- not because they are happy to get screwed but because the awful results of the BBB towards the “other” fake Americans makes them happy!
But nothing to see here. Keep moving along. MAGA motto.
Why’s Trump, Vance and all the dinner guests working so hard to protect Bill Clinton? 😉
We Democrats were ok with Mendoza and Eric Adams going down for corruption.
I'm afraid for MAGA that this particular instance is going to be very difficult to separate Trump from Clinton if they start revealing stuff about Clinton and not Trump.
Some MAGAs will be fine with it, but there will be some that won't buy it.
Here's the thing, Q is actually serious about rooting out the pedos. They're not interested in half-measures.
Yep...but Q is, at its core, a conspiracy based ideology. They can be lured by another juicy conspiracy theory...and we all know who has the power, audacity and lack of a moral compass in order to provide one.
All I know is Q won't be happy until there's a show trial.
Trump will be more than happy to preside over that....
Are there any cases of the masses turning on the leader for not living up to their expectations? Robespierre kinda went through that, didn’t he?
Not too many chuckles these days, thanks! 😄
Great question!
ICE’s enthusiasm wasn’t shared by a group of citizens who gathered to pose questions about it to Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. In a video posted to the YouTube page of Vigo County, Indiana, a questioner can be heard asking Beckwith: “Are you going to make sure all the people coming to [the new facility] have due process?” “These people are not seeing a judge,” the questioner added. Beckwith responded: “They don’t have a right to see a judge. They came here illegally! . . . When the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, did we give them due process to actually see a judge?”
----------
It's somewhat reassuring to know that before 9:00 a.m. I've already encountered the single stupidest thing I will see or hear all day. Even DJT would struggle to come up with a word salad that makes less sense.
But the lieutenant governor's comment is offensive and embarrassing on multiple levels. It is no less arrogant than it is ignorant. What a burden it can be sometimes to be an American, particularly for those on the far right who are so drunk on American Exceptionalism that they feel no empathy for others who come from different circumstances and realities than we do. Having never endured any real societal or political hardships in their own lives, they fail to walk the mile in the shoes of those who feel real hunger, suffer from true political oppression, and otherwise live in forms of misery that are, ahem, utterly foreign to most of us.
Out of sight, out of mind, and out of caring, evidently, as they pretend that there is no part of the world in which things like famine, gulags, genocide, and ethnic cleansing exist -- or, if they do, it is merely someone else's problem, not ours, and no reason to interrupt our destiny of maximizing our personal wealth and living space. They do not know or understand true empathy. They see no world beyond that which impacts the self. And they wonder why so many around the world increasingly hate Americans for our collective selfishness and indifference to others.
I often wonder what my life would be like if I had been born in Africa, the Middle East, or some other area on Earth where prosperity, good health, opportunity, even clean and plentiful drinking water are not taken for granted. Because I think, I feel. And I wonder too almost every day how so many people here can be so unthinking and unfeeling. I see them every day. They look like me, talk like me, and do many of the same things that I do. But I never will understand them, as I remain one of the fortunate ones on this planet, not drunk on the notion that I am entitled and am not exceptional for any reason other than an uncontrollable accident of birth in the right place, at the right time. Lucky me. Lucky you. Lucky us.
Yes. Absolutely.
One of the reasons I love America and have loved being an American is because of how fortunate I am to have been born here. While I wasn't born to wealth or even the middle class, even from a young age I understood how lucky we were, how privileged we were to live in this country.
As I got older and learned about some of the terrible things we did in the name of national expansion, interest, and security, it made me angry, and sad. But I was also thankful yet again, that being in this country meant that we could find out about such bad stuff and that much was acknowledged and addressed. From passing laws outlawing assassinations by the CIA etc, ending domestic spying a la J Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the Civil Rights Act and apologizing to those innocently interned during WWII and recognizing the wrong (and much more of course)—we have faced our mistakes, even if it took decades—and tried to rectify them. Of course we are still far from that perfect union. But we once believed in it, and in the tenets upon which we were founded, even if, in reality, we came up short. We had leaders who spoke to and inspired our better angels.
The despicable JD Vance is wrong. It is those founding ideals that are at the heart of American exceptionalism and what make America, America.
I rage and weep for how far we have fallen and am ashamed that this great nation is now led by the worst among us.
Is the American experiment over? I don't know.
Agree with this! "being in this country meant that we could find out about such bad stuff and that much was acknowledged and addressed. From passing laws outlawing assassinations by the CIA etc, ending domestic spying a la J Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the Civil Rights Act and apologizing to those innocently interned during WWII and recognizing the wrong (and much more of course)—we have faced our mistakes, even if it took decades—and tried to rectify them."
I just want to add Watergate to this list. We saw a Congress doing their duty, in public, investigating a President. And Congress passed a series of laws that aimed at limited presidential power, increased government transparency, and prevented future abuses of power. Trump is now undermining those laws. See https://wapo.st/40UQhAo (gift link).
More and more I'm seeing this isn't the US I grew up in. We're a different country now.
"Because I think, I feel." MAGA refuses to think, they regurgitate. We know they don't think deeply about anything because to do so might cause them a modicum of discomfort. It might cause them a fleeting moment of examining their priors and how some of their actions might be really messed up. MAGA wants affirmation and only affirmation, anything that is not affirmation, is rejected.
Yes. As we've seen many times, the "F Your Feelings" crowd is remarkably thin-skinned themselves.
To be fair, it's F "your" feelings. My feelings are extremely important. 😀
Regurgitate. That sounds about right. I would say my wife (call her MAGgie) parrots what she hears. And then she tells me I am the one who is brainwashed. Because I read the newspaper, I guess.
And they call themselves christian...
They SHOUT IT! And that makes them right…
Maybe these MAGA fools think if they show no empathy to others they will be seen as equals to those rich, entitled elites, and will be asked to join them. There was a comedy in the 60’s “The Beverly Hillbillies,” about a family from The Ozarks who became rich, and moved to California. Maybe these fools thought it was a documentary.
Great writing. Keep it up.
. . . those who feel real hunger, suffer from true political oppression, and otherwise live in forms of misery that are, ahem, utterly foreign to most of us.
MAGATs response:
They think they have it tough! Look at what we're paying for a dozen eggs.
. . . accident of birth in the right place, at the right time.
So true. Yes, lucky me.
re: "ONLY IN NEW YORK:"
I like Mamdani, he fits my "we need a new progressive Teddy Roosevelt era," theory of the case for doing big things to win. But also, part of the reason people are rejecting status quo politics is if not Mamdani, you could maybe instead have a proven sex-pest like Cuomo doing a secret backroom convo with Trump? Or would you rather have Turkish-bribe-taking Adams who Trump has enthroned beneath a Sword of Damocles with the possibility they'd bring back the corruption charges?
My FOX loving parents grew up in NYC and they keep asking me why people would vote for Mamdani, and I say he's the only one running who hasn't robbed them. Which they actually understand. Until they watch FOX for another hour.
If only there were a vaccine to prevent stupidity.
Oh wait. Vaccines are bad. Smacking my head
What a great answer to their question, Kate.
I would take a piece of rotted meat over Cuomo or Adam’s. My worry about Mamdani is that people will be massively dissatisfied because he isn’t Hercules and the stable does need to be cleaned.
This is why I’m a little afraid that Mamdani, Cuomo, and Adams will split the Dem vote into small enough pieces to allow Curtis Sliwa a surprise opening. (He clearly thinks this is possible…he has even ditched his red beret and donned a suit for public appearances thru the duration of the campaign.)
So NYC uses rank choice for primaries and not general?
I just googled and found that ranked choice is used for primary and special elections but not in the general election.
Thx!
NY is not definitely not sending their finest.
Meanwhile my friends who run for local office here go through Hell.
"Donald Trump announced Thursday morning that he had instructed the Commerce Department to begin a highly unusual new non-decennary census: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” he said, adding, “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” "
Having worked for the census in 2020, one thing I can say for certain is that illegal immigrants do not answer the census - they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. In other words, they weren't counted before, and this isn't meant to right a wrong, it's just another attempt by the Trump administration to rig the numbers.
Interesting! I would imagine state and local govts if anything would want them to answer the census because it matters for things like federal infrastructure money, right? But I guess there's not that much they can do to force people to answer the census if they really don't want to?
That’s correct, the state and local govts have an interest in an increased headcount regardless of immigration status, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The census rules require the staff to make repeated attempts at the same address, and after three attempts to then to ask the neighbors for assistance on getting the information. Sometimes the neighbors would state that they had no info to give, and that there was would no way anyone would get it directly from the people living at that address – and then implying that they were almost certainly here illegally. (Of course they couldn’t have known this for certain, but I don’t think they hinted at this to get their neighbors in trouble, just to be helpful for the census worker.)
Sometimes a young person was sent to answer the door, who said essentially that his parents didn’t speak English and so couldn’t answer any questions, and also that they hadn’t done anything wrong. Then one was in the uncomfortable position of letting the young person know that the survey could be conducted in Spanish, at which point they wandered off and didn’t return.
It's hard to imagine illegal immigrants taking the risk on answering census questions (much less voting) since there was no reward for doing so.
It’s always been difficult to get accurate numbers on non-citizens in any city- even those who heretofore would be considered ‘legal’ immigrants. In the current environment I bet it’s hard to even get anyone to answer the door.
That is exactly what I was thinking. What would compel them to fill out forms that might get them deported? Also, good luck getting citizens to fill it out. Last time I filled mine out, it was long and tedious, but I decided it was necessary for my communities' representation. Im not sure most folks really give it much thought, and I'll bet a good many throw it in the round file.
I got one of those community census thingies about 3 months ago and ignored it because I don't want to tell the Trump Administration more than they've already stolen from my private info about me. Sure enough, I got a knock on my door. I HAD to fill it out.
No Active Prosecution for Non-Response:
While legally required, the Census Bureau has not actively prosecuted individuals for non-response in recent history. You did not need to open the door.
This is what I got. It's mandatory.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/top-questions-about-the-survey.html
Per the linked page: "If your address was selected for the American Community Survey, you are legally obligated to answer all the questions, as accurately as you can. The relevant laws are Title 18 U.S.C Section 3571 and Section 3559, which amends Title 13 U.S.C. Section 221."
The "...as accurately as you can" standard is interesting if unsurprising. Depending upon the new questions that make it into Trump's out-of-phase census, some mental reservation and ends-means justification may bloom to poison the waters.
I wonder what would actually happen if you refuse. Do they fine? Arrest? Deport? That would have been funny just six months ago.
Yeah, it seemed easier to fill it out and just be snarky in the replies. What's my ethnicity? What kind of neighborhood question is that? I'm an American, thank you.
Yes. Yes to all and more.
Really? They can force you? Can’t you deny them entry to your house and call the cops and report a trespasser?
Oh, it's not like the nice woman who knocked on my door was going to twist my arm. She was doing her job politely - making sure people responded to the Census. I suppose I could've said no, but why, really. Not the hill I want to die on.
It is going to be super simple, barely an inconvenience. They'll make responding mandatory and noncompliance will result in jail time, forfeiture of citizenship, or some other similar tactic from a fascist's wet dream.
I feel like red state Democrats almost should be whipping their voters and allies to *not* respond to an unnecessary mid-decade census. If that effort was successful, it would mean that red states report fewer people and lose seats in Congress.
Your comment makes me think that redoing the census is really just a way to go door to door and see who is and is not a citizen. This is nothing more than a pretext to invade our homes. Just wait, responding will be mandatory otherwise you'll face jail time. They know that this is the easiest route to get the public to sign up for millions of door knockers to find the people they want to disappear.
Like the ICE recruitments, the door knockers will get signing bonuses, relief from student loans and no age restriction.
This is just more Trump bullshit like his EO to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting. It's bullshit because it's already the law: The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections.
This is like Republicans' claims of voter fraud, which by all accounts is nonexistent, at least not to the extent that any fraudulent votes affected the outcome.
The undocumented participating in the census is just another made-up problem.
How much does it cost to conduct a Census? Does the Commerce Department even have the money for this? How can MAGA possibly complain about waste/fraud/abuse in government when they keep throwing money away like this? Not that reality actually matters to them.
The 2010 census cost an estimated $12.9 billion. The best cost estimate for the 2020 census that I could find was $14.2 billion. How much money is the Trump Administration wasting?
The Constitution says: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”
If it’s a “Term of ten Years,” then shouldn’t that be both a maximum, as well as a minimum time frame? Can they really conduct a Census multiple times within the ten Year Term?
It has to be unconstitutional to conduct a Census except in the ten year Term. The thing is, the Trump administration doesn't care about the Constitution, and they will push forward unless the courts push back.
Yeah 😞
The lower courts would push back. Unfortunately, this Supreme Court seems to be giving Trump whatever he wants. They’re also undermining the lower courts at every opportunity.
And another distraction.
Let's get the facts straight. Trump sends Todd Blanche to interview Maxwell with just her attorney David Markus. Again let's review: Blanche and Markus are good friends. That's nice. Trump tells Blanche if you get Maxwell to just read the following so it is recorded by Blanche I will make sure she gets transferred to the Club for non violent females. Real nice place. And if what she tells Congress helps me and I still control the HOUSE in 2026 then within 2 years she'll get a full pardon. Has to be at least two years so it won't seem like a 'quid pro quo" (yes I learned my lesson with Zelinsky when I blackmailed him). Ok now Blanche get it done. Bingo. Blanche said he asked Maxwell did Trump have anything nefarious to do with Epstein. Her reply as read from the note. "President Trump was a very good friend of Jeffrey's. They liked to be seen together at various parties. But I have never seen Donal Trump in any untoward action towards any girl or woman. He was always a gentleman" Next day she was moved to the Club for non violent felons. It has never happened before. Someone with 20 years for violent crimes against girls etc being transferred to this country club prison for woman. Oh well when you do what the orange man says you do it. Now to win the HOUSE again and lie before Congress.
Because who cares about those womtn who were pimped by Ghislaine when they were underage girls? Their abuse doesn't matter, doesn't it?
Sarcasm intended
you forgot, Trump was also pimping from Mar A Lago and his Trump Modelling Agency. Not many people talk about his Model Agency which he started in 1999 and closed in 2017. the 4 musketeers: Epstein was fed women and girls from : Jean Luc Brunel from his French agency then when shit hit fan he "commited suicide". Casablancas who had Elite Models and Trump was always a judge at his teen models judging. Casablacas died after the investigation started. and Trump Models. So three musketeers fed women and girls to Epstein. that's sex trafficking. Oh NOTE that only one man is still Alive. funny huh. "what secrets we have Jeffrey"
Trump doesn't care about appearances, which is why they are all in this mess. I'm betting on a pardon this year. They think they are invincible.
My genuinely communist/anarchist/socialist/Marxist friends all thought this might be a 25th Amendment secret coup planning attempt, foiled only by the leak.
I can't decide if Vance is cunning or ruthless enough for that, but I suspect it is leftist cope (otherwise, we have to consider we have 3.5 more **years** of Trump... at minimum). I think a lot of the cabinet is too loyal to Trump to join a 25th amendment attempt on Trump.
But the leak of this coincided with Trump walking around in circles on the roof of the Whitehouse, shouting at the press. In another day and age, he'd be sent to the asylums he keeps claiming immigrants come from.
“Diddler on the Roof” (h/t Jeff Tiedrich)
All the other cabinet members can immediately gain favor with Trump by tipping him off to the plot. Trump would fire the plotters, blast them on Truth Social, and their careers in Republican politics would be over.
If there is any coup planning it will come from corporate interests that are seeing the early impacts of tariff-palooza.
Agree with this: "I think a lot of the cabinet is too loyal to Trump to join a 25th amendment attempt on Trump."
"Until, alas, the dinner was cancelled. Their planned high-level strategy session was called off after word of it leaked out."
Was the dinner cancelled because word leaked out, or because they realized --one more time-- that there is an insider (or insiders) leaking information to the public? Who are these insiders? How do "we" identify and punish them? Or is it just 4D Trump-Vance-Cheung chess making us confused about the words "hoax", "leak", "pardon", "commutation", and "witch-hunt"?
One thing missing from any of these interactions? Emphasis on the actual victims of heinous crimes perpetrated by Epstein and convicted criminal Maxwell.
Agreed about the missing empathy for the victims.
Sort of reminds me of the lack of a Trump apology for his supporters beating the crap out of the Capitol police officers on 1/6.
There isn't any 4D chess.
That's for sure. But for Jesse Watters et al?
It would be absurd except exploited sexual assault victims have waited 20 years for some form of justice, or even meaningful empathy-conversation over what should have been a comprehensive investigation and after Alex Acosta's 2008 non-prosecution "sweetheart deal" in the Florida Epstein case. Still. Crickets.
Permit me, Mr. Kristol, to repeat an earlier comment about l'affair Epstein.
The duration and details of Epstein's unspeakable 'activities' make it inconceivable that he and Maxwell did not design and implement a system of 'execution,' almost certainly manipulated in a computer program. That included lists of 'who' (by name) liked 'what' (by proclivity), who wanted what, the availability of 'fresh meat' to provide 'service,' the timing of visits--when, where--transportation (a/c manifests). The breadth and complexity of these 'operations' could not possibly have been kept as mental notes by the ghastly predators.
So this all exists. It must be revealed.
The way this Administration runs, the proposed Naval Observatory meeting made me think of the mobsters’ Appalachian meeting. Remember how upset Republicans were when Bill Clinton went inside Janet Yellin’s plane for a few moments on the tarmac?
This lot is apparently fond of alliteration, and who doesn’t like a catchy name for their prisons? I especially like “Camp Bryan” for convicted pedophile ring mistress Ghislaine Maxwell’s new home. It sounds like they must sit around a campfire at night making s’mores. Trump certainly meant it when he said he wished her well.
I know how to end the war in Ukraine: Putin can withdraw his troops and stop shooting.
And Trump can stop being pestered about releasing the Epstein Files by releasing the Epstein Files. He did it with the MLK Files, he has total authority over everything that happens in this country apparently, so, as Nike says, Just Do It.
Loretta Lynch's plane . . . .
Crap, I got the name wrong!
How many people think there’s evidence that Melania helped Maxwell find more girls….
There's definitely something there...they are really working OT to keep the extent of Melania's connection to Epstein hidden.
Well, she was "in the life" for some tume, and knows how it works.
Definitely possible that she did. As to evidence, maybe.
We are so far past normalcy that invoking it feels obscene. Those still clutching procedural illusions, who believe this will course-correct, that law will reassert itself, that integrity will rise like steam from this wreckage, are reciting bedtime stories to a house already swallowed in flame. They are whispering civics into a national crematorium.
You do not convene a clandestine dinner between the Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, and the personal defense attorneys of a convicted felon president unless the state itself is no longer adversarial to corruption but is now in communion with it. You do not blackout the President’s name from the Epstein files unless what you are safeguarding isn’t privacy, but myth, unless you are curating a false reality with the precision of a propagandist. You do not fire a labor official for releasing accurate numbers on the eve of bad ones unless the very concept of data has been reclassified as sedition.
There is no middle. No return. No respectable Republican waiting in the wings, polishing his civic virtue like a family heirloom. There is only the regime, and the thrumming roar of its enablers. This is not about partisanship. This is about power. This is about the final evolution of American justice into a protection racket, where the badge, the bench, and the bureau serve not the people, but the throne.
If you’re still nursing hope, if you believe that one more scandal, one more outrage, one more name on the Epstein list will finally be the breaking point, you haven’t been paying attention. Like you, they've had 10 years of this.
This thing doesn’t break. It consolidates. It constricts. It tightens, like a noose.
Damn Patrick...you're bringing the Dark JVL vibes. That's great, because a full week without them was causing me some withdrawal symptoms.
Dark JVL is a hell of a drug, but the supply chain’s backlogged because reality keeps outpacing satire. At some point, you need to stop waiting for the cavalry and realize the only thing left is to carve warnings into the wreckage. Not for hope. For the record. For those still capable of feeling the weight.
Patrick, your apocalypse is profoundly discouraging. I cannot argue with it. Meantime, anyone who could actually DO something about it seem to have caved.
John, discouraging doesn’t even feel like it begins to touch it. But I’d argue this isn’t an apocalypse, it’s exposure. The scaffolding’s been rotting for decades. We’re just finally seeing it without the theater lighting. Yes, the ones who could do something, the insiders, the so-called adults in the room, they consented. They found comfort in irrelevance, in tenure, in the flattering lie that history would sort it out.
But history doesn’t sort. It records. This is 2025 America, and this is our reality. I always find comfort in naming reality, because you cannot truly understand what needs to be done, until you can understand the ground you are standing upon.
Patrick, history is--we all know it--written and currently manipulated by the winners, even if their outcome has become, for the nation and the world, the eventual losers. One of the central issues has seemed to me to be that the two 'sides,' however you define them, and in whatever arena you choose, are operating from two entirely different playbooks with radically opposing 'rules.' You know it, and have implicitly articulated this weird dichotomy.
The only hope I'm nursing is the Dems win the House in '26. If they don't, then the gates of the USA will say "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."
Sandy, I’m right there with you in spirit, but the Dems winning the House in '26 isn’t hope. It should be the bare minimum expectation. A floor, not a light. I do think the problem might be that our system no longer rests on floors. It floats, barely, above the abyss.
The deeper problem is structural. Once the doors to autocracy open, they don’t close with an election. They stay open. In 2025 America those doors have been kicked wide open by arguably the least capable human ever to hold executive powe. A man with no intellect, no discipline, no vision. That, horrifyingly, is the best-case scenario, because the precedent has now been set. The playbook published. The machinery tested.
All it takes now is someone smarter, hungrier, more strategic, and they can come from anywhere. Right or left. Doesn’t matter. Power craves a vessel, not a party.
If those doors remain open, and they will, for decades, then hope requires a level of national perfection we’ve never demonstrated. Forty uninterrupted years of civic competence. Of ethical clarity. Of refusing demagogues and choosing truth over tribalism. That’s not hope. That’s a demand for a miracle. I don’t think we’re that kind of country anymore.
So yes, root for '26. Fight for it. But don’t mistake it for deliverance. We are not sealing the gates. We’re patching a dam with duct tape and wishfully thinking it might hold long enough to matter.
When you say “structural”, do you mean the Electoral College and two senators per state?
Serious question that I’m struggling to get an answer to: What can democrats even do if they take back the house? They can’t pass any legislation and they can investigate and hold all the hearings they want but they know Trump’s lapdogs won’t cooperate or comply, and I don’t think they have any real means of enforcement.
I think it’s critical for them to make it clear and set expectations for what they can and can’t do because my sense is that people are getting their hopes way up and will be disappointed.
Yes, hearings is the one thing I know they can do, and subpoena DOJ files. You’re right, tho, that Trumpworld will not cooperate and they can’t refer them to the DOJ for contempt of Congress - they would need Senate approval by majority vote - because the DOJ will not do anything with the referral.
But, if the Dems get their shit together, they use Trumpworld’s noncooperation as a cudgel during the next election. Perhaps by then some of the Trump voters will have seen enough to bail on him. Already one poll showed 4% of Trump voters regret their vote.