Fascist States of America 2

Brandon Friedman ‪@brandonfriedman.bsky.social‬ | March 22, 2025 at 11:10 AM:
Founder, Rakkasan Tea Company • MSNBC columnist • Dallas Police Oversight Board • Former Obama guy • BJJ • Once a soldier

Americans are in denial about the implications here because they wish it wasn't happening. But this is the behavior of a dictator. It's the sort of thing that warrants secession or revolution. The Republic is over the second federal funding is withheld pending a governor's personal apology.
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Ron Filipkowski‬ ‪@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social‬ | March 22, 2025 at 9:25 AM:
Editor in Chief, MeidasNews. Former Fed & State Prosecutor, Marine, Attorney. Switched parties from R to D in 2020.

Trump says he will withhold federal tax dollars to Maine colleges unless the Gov of Maine personally apologizes to him.
Truth Social post (https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lkxtadpkc22f)
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margd: Sounds like the "perfect" phone call that got Trump impeached in his first term. (Cue Adam Schiff: "... you know he'll do it again ...")

Party loyalty and the FFOTUS's party majority in the house and senate have made him unimpeachable, and the Supremes have made him un-indictable.

IANAL (heaven knows!) but it sure seems to my naive sense of "how things should be" that with-holding money until some official kisses your tush is illegal. Isn't there a type of court order "Writ of Mandamus" or something like that by which a court basically tells an official "Hey Turkey! Do your job!" ? clearly terms of art in the legal business

Of course, the whole trick in court orders is whether or not they are obeyed, and so far, I have yet to hear a convincing case that the court could enforce its orders of (when?) the FFOTUS should just tell the courts to take a long walk off a short pier.

Maybe we should open an office pool on how many days till FFOTUS really does tell the courts to get stuffed.

UofT hires three prominent Yale professors worried about Trump

No peace even for hairdressers.

Arkansas Bill Targets 'Gender Nonconforming' Haircuts for Kids

>5 LolaWalser: So my 3/4” haircut won’t be appropriate in some states. Good! I’ve never wanted to visit Arkansas.

Hm, they also mentioned clothing. Are the girls baseball teams going to have to dress in skirts like the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) had to wear?

Tufts grad student and Fulbright Scholar Rumeysa Ozturk's abduction from the streets of Somerville, MA was recorded. The video needs to be seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtTLu7CDOJA

Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/yale-professor-fascism-canada

Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
…
“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted – that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said.

Stanley added: “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight.

“Columbia was just such a warning,” he said. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”

>8 davidgn: Wow. She might have expected such treatment in Turkey, but dared to hope in the promise of this country. Wow.

>10 margd: Again, chickens coming home to roost. (Or perhaps condors. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America)
cf. https://nacla.org/article/counterterror-wars-and-human-rights-operation-condor-p... (McSherry 2009)
https://plancondor.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/mcsherry-capitulo-2019.pdf (McSherry 2019)
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/operation-condor/ (Zaldua 2016)

Becky Burke, the Welsh tourist held by ICE for 19 days will be documenting her story and those of the women she met.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DHq4fRUIbdP/?igsh=dDlwZ210cnpuZXJ3

https://www.instagram.com/r.e.burke?igsh=Mzh5OGJ3ZHlkbmxi

Congressman Self from Texas quotes Goebbels openly in Congress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Ho6xZKuMI

Argument & Reportage in our series Democracy in Danger & The Return of Trump: A New Order
How Nazi Race Science Conquered the White House, and is Coming for Your Democracy
One of the major ‘Dark Enlightenment’ influencers has stepped into the light, talking of the ‘negro problem’. Nafeez Ahmed explains how the Silicon Valley broligarchy has resurrected Nazi-inspired eugenics ideology and is already putting it into action
Nafeez Ahmed (Recently author of Alt Reich : https://subscribe.bylinetimes.com/product/alt-reich/ -dgn)
4 April 2025
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/04/04/how-nazi-race-science-conquered-the-white-hou...

Donald Trump issued an Executive Order, ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’. Among its main concerns was the Smithsonian American Art Museum which, the order complained, featured an exhibit that claimed that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism”.

The White House was especially upset that the exhibit “promoted the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating ‘Race is a human invention.’”

On 15 February, a memo from the US General Services Administration removed an explicit ‘Prohibition of Segregated Facilities’ (like waiting rooms, restaurants and drinking fountains) for federal contractors. Though the memo cannot overturn the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race, colour or other traits in public facilities, legal experts describe it as a powerful symbolic act exemplifying Trump’s embrace of a segregationist agenda.

The White House’s open support for racist and eugenicist ideas does not come out of the blue. It is the culmination of decades of subversion by scientific racists seeking to move their fringe beliefs into the mainstream....

..duplicate post..

Letter from the principal of Sackets Harbor, NY school where three children have been taken by ICE

https://www.instagram.com/p/DIHu2s4TGM3/?igsh=ZzZ0MGp5dzdqZXFn

US visa revocations hit Stanford; students lose legal status to stay in America (Financial Express)

International students from at least three major colleges in the United States face deportation after their study visas were revoked this week. The Stanford University, the University of California and the University of Massachusetts Amherst have witnessed several student visas getting revoked... In the past, students’ legal statuses in the United States were not immediately canceled due to a revoked visa. Under the new administration, in some cases, student statuses are being revoked within hours of the visa’s revocation. The immigration authorities do not inform the universities, and, therefore, they have to proactively check the SEVIS system to find out the latest on student visa revocation...

>17 John5918: Other less well known universities, too, e.g., Central Michigan U, Minnesota State U. In CMU's case neither student nor U were informed.

"...In the past, even when international students lost their entry visas, they were typically permitted to keep their legal residency, allowing them to stay and continue their studies but requiring them to reapply for a visa should they leave the country and wish to return. In many instances the Trump administration has revoked both, opening students up to the possibility of arrest if they don’t depart..."

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2025/04/trump-administration-strips-legal-...

Four at U of Michigan, one of whom left the country, the U pledging to assist him to finish his degree...

So essentially: "Note to flight attendants. In case of emergency, please leave shackled migrants to die."
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ice-air-deportation-flights

Fired DOJ Attorney Testifies In Wake Of Trump Intimidation: I Won’t Be ‘Bullied’ To Hide ‘Corruption

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fired-doj-attorney-testifies-in-wake-of-trump...

In its warning to (Liz) Oyer, the Justice Department argued that Oyer was prohibited from testifying about the details of her termination on the basis of executive privilege.
…
“This highly unusual step of directing armed law enforcement officers to the home of a former Department of Justice employee who has engaged in no misconduct, let alone criminal conduct, simply to deliver a letter, is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate,” Oyer’s lawyer Michael Bromwich, who served as the DOJ inspector general during the Clinton administration, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department.

Bromwich further argued that the Trump administration’s attempt to bar Oyer from sharing her testimony on the legal basis of executive privilege, was, in his words, “completely without merit.”

“The president has not asserted executive privilege over any matter at issue here,” he wrote.

1632wonderYFeb 27, 10:22 am
>161 John5918: davidgn: And those arrested and deported… don’t their assets then belong to the State? Or am I confusing this with a different story?
164davidgnFeb 27, 12:51 pm
>163 2wonderY: 2wonderY: Don't give them ideas. https://www.leelawusa.com/blog/2024/10/what-happens-to-my-assets-if-i-get-deport....

I don't doubt that that's coming.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/367863#8774877

Yeah, here we go. (First prong, anyhow.)
Trump plans to fine migrants $998 a day for failing to leave after deportation order
By Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke
April 8, 202512:16 PM GMT-3Updated 2 days ago
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plans-fine-migrants-998-day-failing-leave...
$998 a day fines retroactive to date of any final deportation order.

🚨RED ALERT: TRUMP COMING AFTER ME
David Pakman Show
3.09M subscribers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtEymx55dnU

Apparently, Amazon AWS being threatened with loss of (presumably large amounts of gov't) business if they don't remove a long list of Trump-critical books from their bookselling side, including Pakman's.

Transcript of leaked email: https://techissuestoday.com/trump-admin-amazon-contract-pressure/

List of books supposedly slated for censorship includes:
Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump
Shameless: Republicans Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy by Brian Tyler Cohen
Forbidden Loveseat: A JD Vance & Usha Novel by J.D. Boehninger
How the People Trumped Ronald Plump by Brian Krassenstein and Ed Krassenstein, ill. by Benny Rahdiana
Melania: Devourer of Men by J.D. Boehninger
The Echo Machine: How Right-wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America by David Pakman

Think I fixed all the touchstones. Paging Barbra Streisand.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/breaking-supreme-court-orders-trump-administration...

BREAKING: Supreme Court Orders Trump Administration to Retrieve Man Who Was Mistakenly Deported

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador where he has been imprisoned.

The ruling requires the administration to comply with an earlier lower court order. There were no noted dissents.

SAVE Act passes the House with 4 Dem votes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnVbmoKBDgU
Heading to the Senate.

Hope everyone's (married/non-dead) name matches your birth certificate, and that you have a copy of it. (Whoops -- that disenfranchises millions of people, doesn't it?)
A passport will also do to let you vote if you ever changed your name. Just a three-figure investment and an interminable wait. (Though I hear those have other uses besides voting...)

>23 Molly3028: As I read the news report, they changed the order from "effectuate" to "facilitate".

Makes me wonder if that gives the government license to say "Gee judge, we're trying just as hard as we can, can't imagine why it's taking so long for El Salvador to deliver the guy up to us. But we're definitely cooperating with the court and doing our darndest to "facilitate" the action, so we are obeying the order, yes siree Bob!"

Let's see how long it takes to get the guy actually before the court.

My bet is "not real soon, if ever".

If he shows up alive before year's end, I'll be very surprised.

Then again, they could fool me and produce him tomorrow morning; but if they do, I for one will be totally gobsmacked.

The Texas legislature is criminalizing native species of plants. Texas Mountain Laurel is discussed here:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIUBlL5I04S/?igsh=azluZ2xyajJ2MjBz

Times like these make me ache for the ability to turn to the back of the book to see how it all turns out.
The lower court says: You must effectuate the return of Garcia; the Supremes say, well, how about "facilitate" and anyway let's go back to the lower court to clarify the meaning of "effectuate".
So the lower court says "OK, to be clear: I ORDER ...." and furthermore, I want to know by 1:00pm what your plans are to bring him back alive!
Next picture bottom row, gov't says "NAH! Don't wanna, ain't goon, can't make me".

I think there's spozed to be a hearing later today on that very issue.

Nobody knows the future, but really boys and girls, wanna bet on how long Garcia is going to be in that hell hole, or how scott free Agent Orange and all his enablers will be from accountablilty for their performative cruelty?

Oh yeah, and how long will it be before full citizens are "disappeared" just like in some other Banana republics that could be named.

Removal for “past, current, or expected beliefs”

It’s in ICE policy

https://www.instagram.com/p/DIUoPOpuiFE/?igsh=eHcwc256NXUxbjVq

>28 2wonderY: Aww hell no.

According to Chenoweth, an organized non violent movement that engages 3.5% or more of the population has an extremely good chance of succeeding.

So all we need are about 12 Million people and (oopsie!) some organization.

Of course, scads of "Big Law" firms and major universities capitulationg in advance isn't the greatest premonitory sign of success, but you never know about these things

Texas bill would make identifying as transgender a felony punishable by jail

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texas-bill-identify-tran...

The bill, while unlikely to pass, highlights the increasing extremism of legislation targeting trans people, especially in Texas, in recent years.

Man arrested after suspected arson attack at Pennsylvania governor's home
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgp6zeymevo

A 38-year-old man has been arrested and is due to be charged following an alleged arson attack on the official residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, authorities have said.

Cody Balmer faces charges of attempted murder, terrorism and attempted arson.

The arrest came hours after Shapiro, often touted as a future White House contender, woke up in the middle of the night to authorities banging on the door of his home as a fire spread.

At a news conference on Sunday, Shapiro said he was "obviously emotional" as he recalled what had happened. The Democrat and his family were able to evacuate unscathed, but their home in the sate capital of Harrisburg was severely damaged.

"I refuse to be trapped by the bondage that someone attempted to put on me by attacking us as they did last night," he told reporters.

Hours before the fire, Shapiro and his family had celebrated the first night of Passover, a Jewish holiday, at home.

"When we were in the state dining room last night, we told the story of Passover," he said - adding that Balmer's motives were not known.

Police Deputy Commissioner George Bivens said the suspect had a homemade incendiary device in his possession and was arrested in the Harrisburg area....

>32 davidgn: I wonder how many Trump fans had to read through to the fourth paragraph before they were able to work out whether they think Balmer is a criminal or a patriot...

The rise of end times fascism
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them
Sun 13 Apr 2025 12.00 BST

The startup country contingent is clearly foreseeing a future marked by shocks, scarcity and collapse. Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.

That is not so far away from the more mass-market vision of fortressed nations that has gripped the hard right globally, from Italy to Israel, Australia to the United States: in a time of ceaseless peril, openly supremacist movements in these countries are positioning their relatively wealthy states as armed bunkers. These bunkers are brutal in their determination to expel and imprison unwanted humans (even if that requires indefinite confinement in extra-national penal colonies from Manus Island to Guantánamo Bay) and equally ruthless in their willingness to violently claim the land and resources (water, energy, critical minerals) they deem necessary to weather the coming shocks.

Interestingly, at a time when previously secular Silicon Valley elites are suddenly finding Jesus, it is noteworthy that both of these visions – the priority-pass corporate state and the mass-market bunker nation – share a great deal in common with the Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical Rapture, when the faithful will supposedly be lifted up to a golden city in heaven, while the damned are left to endure an apocalyptic final battle down here on earth.

If we are to meet our critical moment in history, we need to reckon with the reality that we are not up against adversaries we have seen before. We are up against end times fascism.

Reflecting on his childhood under Mussolini, the novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco observed in a celebrated essay that fascism typically has an “Armageddon complex” – a fixation on vanquishing enemies in a grand final battle. But European fascism of the 1930s and 1940s also had a horizon: a vision for a future golden age after the bloodbath that, for its in-group, would be peaceful, pastoral and purified. Not today.

Alive to our era of genuine existential danger – from climate breakdown to nuclear war to sky-rocketing inequality and unregulated AI – but financially and ideologically committed to deepening those threats, contemporary far-right movements lack any credible vision for a hopeful future. The average voter is offered only remixes of a bygone past, alongside the sadistic pleasures of dominance over an ever-expanding assemblage of dehumanized others.

And so we have the Trump administration’s dedication to releasing its steady stream of real and AI-generated propaganda designed solely for these pornographic purposes. Footage of shackled immigrants being loaded on to deportation flights, set to the sounds of clanking chains and locking cuffs, which the official White House X account labeled “ASMR”, a reference to audio designed to calm the nervous system. Or the same account sharing news of the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident who was active in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, with the gloating words: “SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” Or any number of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s sadism-chic photo ops (atop a horse at the US-Mexican border, in front of a crowded prison cell in El Salvador, slinging a machine gun while arresting immigrants in Arizona …).

The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.

It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.

Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.
...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism...

Read the whole thing. It's a show-stopper.

I you go to the hands off website https://www.mobilize.us/handsoff/ and poke around a bit, it turns out that they've clearly read ther Chenoweth, 'cause they're mentioning the 3.5% number, which they say amounts to 11million.

Now maybe it's just my naivite, but should they be aiming for 100% and then count it a stroke of good luck if the numbers come up anywere close the the 3.5% ?

“Obviously a Lie”: El Salvador’s Bukele Claims He Can’t Return Abrego García
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, sitting next to Donald Trump, said he is powerless to return the Maryland man.

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout
PublishedApril 14, 2025
https://truthout.org/articles/obviously-a-lie-el-salvadors-bukele-claims-he-cant...

Ahead of the press conference, Trump expressed a desire to expand his countrywide raids to American citizens, as he has been threatening to do.“Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places,” Trump said, to Bukele. “It’s not big enough.”

Saw an interview of Krugman by somebody from the Bulwark....Jason Linkins maybe? I think it was he, w ho made the remark that the Financial Times, not exactly The Ramparts or Mother Jones, recently opined that we're "half way to a police state".

That seems a very optimistic view of it.

I continue to be amazed at how most of the "main stream" pundits and media seem to be in the River of Egypt about that.

The Trump Administration’s “Wars on Terror” – Old and New (International Crisis Group)

The Trump White House is repurposing the potent framing of “terrorism” to go after a new set of enemies – drug cartels, migrants and domestic political opponents. Its words and deeds pose serious risks to the U.S. constitutional order, civil liberties and maybe peace as well...

America, land of the free! Unless you say the wrong thing or don't look like them. At what point will they have to forfeit their Statue of Liberty?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/travel-warning-united-states-1.7510877

The association says academics who are from countries that have tense diplomatic relations with the United States, or who have themselves expressed negative views about the Trump administration, should be particularly cautious about attempting to cross the border.

It says the warning also particularly applies to people "whose research could be seen as being at odds with the position of the current U.S. administration," or who identify as transgender.

In addition, the association says academics should carefully consider what information they have, or need to have, on their electronic devices when crossing the border, and take actions to protect sensitive information.

Reports of foreigners being sent to detention or processing centres for more than seven days, including Canadian Jasmine Mooney as well as a pair of German tourists and a backpacker from Wales, have been making headlines since Trump took power.

DHS Threatens To Revoke Harvard’s Eligibility To Host International Students Unless It Turns Over Disciplinary Records
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/17/dhs-harvard/

>40 davidgn: Someone quipped that Trump has achieved something remarkable: people actually sympathizing with Harvard. Another was happy that Trump chose overreach with a university with billions of dollars, one of the nation's top law schools, and an army of powerful, rich, influential alumni. Yet another suggested that in response to threats against its tax-free status, Harvard should reincorporate into an evangelical mega church, "something-something of the Baby Jesus"? (Harvard does have religious roots? Cotton Mather?) Stocking up on popcorn to watch White House lawyers and Pam Bondi attack THIS edifice!

Opinion
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
April 17, 2025, 5:05 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-asha-rangappa.html
( https://pastebin.com/t9EYVKYi )
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/326-the-ezra-klein-show-31142409/

I just saw in the NYTimes that the Supremes will hear arguments by the gov't as to why they should be allowed to cancel birthright citizenship.

If I were a betting person, I would put my money on the Supremes rendering an ambiguous ruling that the gov't can sspin as a "big win" but that the usual talking heads will spin as the rule of law upheld.

I expect that at least some people will lose, or never gain, the birthright citizenship that is their due under the constitution.

Now I'm usually called Mr Cock-eyed optimist, but I'm not delusional. I'm not so much a cock-eyed optimist as cock-eyed cheerful. Somehow, I have no idea how, I can't help thinking that we'll come out the other end of this not mortally wounded, but not till we go through an exceedingly rough patch,

Who knows, maybe there will be a US version of the various "color" revolutions that have erupted here and there.

I'm putting this "in writing" here so that I can't wiggle out having made a total blooper if things turn out otherwize.

The abiolity to say "I told you so" is sort of cold comfort.

ICE, powered by Palantir.
https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-deport-people/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLhHuOPAXZQ

Guess who's not breaking the story.

>44 davidgn:

Probably lotsa folks not breaking the story this month, considering it was reported in January by the Times...

>45 kiparsky: Okay, but they didn't get the leaks.

Breaking: The Wilkinson Decision: Summoning “The Best That Is Within Us While There Is Still Time."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjO9muuOLg

The Wilkinson Decision for the Fourth Circuit is required reading. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25900495-2025-04-17-court-order-dckt/
Either the tide begins to turn here, or it will be remembered as American jurisprudence's last dying gasp. In any case, it should be read.

I'm reminded of a late blogger by the name of Arthur Silber, who used to be republished by Chris Floyd.

https://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/06/murder-with-malice-aforethought-or...

Item: Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone in the world (cf. https://www.chris-floyd.com/the-accomodationists-memo-to-liberals-on-the-white-h... --dgn), wherever he or she may be, for whatever reason they choose -- or for no reason at all. Obama and his administration recognize no upper limit to the number of people they can murder in this manner: they can murder as many people as they wish. And they claim there is nothing at all that may impede their exercise of this "right."

This is the game entire. Understand this: once Obama and his administration have claimed this, there is nothing left to argue about. They can murder you -- and they can murder anyone else at all. What in the name of anything you hold holy remains to be "debated" once a vile, damnable "right" of this kind has been claimed?

This is a war crime: "murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory..."

It is also a crime against humanity: "Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population..."

Under Principle VII (of the Nuremberg Principles --dgn), all those who are complicit in these crimes are also guilty.

If we were there then (2010), is it any surprise that we are here now?

Van Hollen was able to meet with Garcia. So far so good, and at least we can be reassured that he's at least still alive as of this date. I was a bit worried that the reason they wouldn't produce him would turn out to be because he was rather badly dead.

But I smell a bit of a rat here.

Van Hollen met Garcia is an upscale hotel room, with Garcia dressed in "civies", standing upright, and wearing a cap (presumably to distract the audience from noticing that he had been shaved bald). Somehow, I don't think they got to talk freely about how well (!) he and his fellow inmantes are being treated.

Those are quite different optics from meeting him in prison, wearing the "uniform", shaved head, no shirt, marched in and out by guards forcing him to walk doubled over, or meeting him squashed into the company of several thousand of his closest friends in cages that could comfortably hold half that number.

Was Van Hollen, and the viewing public in the US being "played" a bit?

>49 modalursine: Garcia appeared to look frequently at the smiling third person. Presumably his keeper for the field trip.

Anxiety at US colleges as foreign students are detained and visas revoked (BBC)

For the last few weeks, many foreign students living in the US have watched as a sequence of events has repeated itself on their social media feeds: plain-clothes agents appearing unannounced and hauling students off in unmarked cars to detention centres. Those taken into custody in a string of high-profile student detentions captured on video have not faced any criminal charges and instead appear to have been targeted for involvement in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. The Trump administration has said repeatedly that visas are a "privilege" and can be revoked at any time for a wide variety of reasons. But the crackdown appears to be far wider than initially thought, with more than 1,000 international students or recent graduates at colleges across the US now having had their visas revoked or legal statuses changed, according to a tracker from Inside Higher Ed, an online news site covering the sector. For many, the precise reasons are unknown, and universities have often only learned of the changes when checking a government-run database that logs the visa status of international students...

>49 modalursine: Van Hollen said two "margaritas" slipped in front of them with a little less in Garcia's glass as though he drank some. VH points out that the sugar/salt on rim was not disturbed: Garcia did not drink from the glass. Also, authorities had wanted to film in front of hotel pool. Baseball hat concealed Garcia's shaven head.

makena kelly ‪@makenakelly.bsky.social‬ | April 18, 2025
reporter @ WIRED covering the politics and power influencing the internet

🚨SCOOP🚨: DOGE is building a master database at DHS that could track and surveil immigrants.
They are already cross-referencing immigration data with data from SSA, IRS, and voting records from at least Pennsylvania and Florida, sources tell me.

DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants
DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.
Makena Kelly, Vittoria Elliott | 18 April 2025
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-collecting-immigrant-data-surveil-track/

Chris Hayes ‪@chrislhayes.bsky.social‬ | April 18, 2025 at 7:08 PM:
podcaster and cable news host

This is an obvious point, but cannot overstated. There is an enormous difference between deporting someone - where they get off a plane as a free citizen in their home country AND FUNNELING THEM INTO A BRUTAL PRISON FROM WHICH THEY HAVE NO CHANCE OF EVER EMERGING!!!

Medical Journals Get Letters From DOJ
At least three journals received letters from a U.S. Attorney asking about 'competing viewpoints'

"When a US Attorney wields the power of his office to target medical journals bc of their content & editorial processes, he isn't doing his job. He's abusing his authority to try to chill protected speech."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/115180
via https://bsky.app/profile/thanhneville.medsky.social/post/3ln4esquuvk22

>54 margd: contd

Katie Phang ‪@katiephang.bsky.social‬ | April 19, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Host of @katiephangshow, MSNBC | Legal Contributor & Legal Correspondent, NBC and MSNBC

Some excellent news this morning:
With just Alito and Thomas dissenting, you’ve got an interesting group now telling Trump he can’t use the Alien Enemies Act to deport foreign nationals without some further judicial review.
------------------------------------------------

‪Kyle Cheney ‪@kyledcheney.bsky.social‬ | April 19, 2025 at 1:10 AM:
Senior legal affairs reporter at POLITICO with a focus on democracy, the balance of power and Jan. 6

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has blocked the Trump administration from deporting foreign nationals under the Alien Enemies Act. Thomas, Alito dissent.
Supreme Court: https://bsky.app/profile/kyledcheney.bsky.social/post/3ln5eof4t3223

MORE: The high court’s ruling came just as a conservative panel of the 5th circuit court of appeals dismissed an emergence effort to broadly block the administration from conducting summary deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
5th Circuit Court Appeals: https://bsky.app/profile/kyledcheney.bsky.social/post/3ln5eof4t3223

>56 margd:
“Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s order. They did not provide any explanation for their votes on Saturday morning, but the order indicated a statement from Alito would follow – a relatively rare move, but not unprecedented in light of the hour at which the order was issued and the speed with which the court acted.“

https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/justices-temporarily-bar-government-from-remo...

>57 2wonderY: Wanted to avoid more gloating Twitter messages from Bukele -- this time at their expense.
And Alito will need some time to come up with an excuse.

>55 margd: Ah yes, the ghost of T.D. Lysenko is alive and well and on the warpath again The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko. As someone who does peer reviewing for one of the medical journals, I can tell you politics doesn't enter the review process.

Papers ARE checked for correctness with respect to the methodology, appropriate data analysis, and the validity of the conclusions based on what has been presented. My reviewer comments/suggestions/requests for clarification and changes in various aspects of the paper (such as incorrect statistical methods) are sent to the authors. The editor asks for my view of the paper – accept, accept with revision, revise and reconsider, reject – and then looks over reviews from the other paper reviewers (typically the paper is check by a minimum of 3 reviewers with expertise in the areas of research which are the focus of the paper) and makes a final decision.

If the paper is not rejected and not immediately accepted it is returned to the authors along with all of the reviewer comments and the authors are asked to address all of the questions and return the paper for another review. When the paper comes back, all of us who were involved in the initial assessments review the authors responses to our comments and, once again, make a recommendation. If the revision is acceptable it will be published in the journal.

A couple of things are worth noting:
1. Most papers include a brief limitations section where the authors themselves point out some of the shortcomings/limitations of their findings, comment on the need for additional work, and make suggestions concerning the direction this work might take.

2. Lysenko completely destroyed the field of genetic study in Russia and pushed his quackery, which appealed to Stalin and others in power, because it conformed to the political ideology of the time. Thousands of mainstream biologists were banned from the field or imprisoned and many were executed. The impact of his quackery severely damaged work in other fields of biology and many areas of scientific inquiry were banned.

3. Since RFK jr. and the rest of the Trump scum want to follow in Lysenko’s footsteps one has to wonder how many U.S. scientists are going to wind up in El Salvador.

>59 alco261: I've been impressed at how scientists analyze grant and publication process for hints of bias, seeking to correct, e.g., more leniency toward graybeards than to newcomers or women. (Science is a process, but scientists are human.) What RFK Jr, Trump et al are seeking to do, though, is beyond any kind of bias: it's a campaign to suppress information counter to their beliefs?

duplicate

>52 margd: Yes. Despite whatever cognitive and moral deficiencies these momzarim are heir to, they do understand the propaganda value of proper presentation. Everything is a "reality" show for them.

>57 2wonderY: Justice Alito stands on "procedure."

'Literally in the middle of the night': Justice Alito slams SCOTUS for issuing 'unprecedented' relief by stopping Trump deportations carried out under wartime law

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/literally-in-the-middle-of-the-night-justic...

>63 2wonderY: "Judicial Realism" at its finest.

Inside the desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion (BBC)

Swathes of scientific data deletions are sweeping across US government websites – with decades of health, climate change and extreme weather research at risk. Now, scientists are racing to save their work before it's lost. Some of them are in the US. Others are scattered around the world. There are hundreds, many even thousands of people involved across multiple networks. And they keep a damn close eye on their phones. No one knows when the next alert or request to save a chunk of US government-held climate data will come in. Such data, long available online, keeps getting taken down by US President Donald Trump's administration... "You get a message at 11 o'clock at night saying, 'This is going down tomorrow'," she says. "You try to enjoy your day and then everything goes wrong. You just spend the night downloading data"...

Jewish senators accuse Trump of exploiting antisemitism to target universities (Guardian)

Five Jewish Democratic senators have sent a strongly worded letter to Donald Trump condemning his administration’s “assault on universities” and questioning whether actions taken against higher education institutions are truly aimed at combating antisemitism. The letter – signed by Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, and senators Jacky Rosen, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff and Brian Schatz – accuses the administration of using “a real crisis as a pretext to attack people and institutions who do not agree with you”. “We are extremely troubled and disturbed by your broad and extra-legal attacks against universities and higher education institutions as well as members of their communities, which seem to go far beyond combating antisemitism,” write the senators, who devote much of their attention to the freezing of $2bn in federal funding for Harvard University. Some Jewish advocacy leaders welcomed the senators’ intervention... An open letter last updated 20 April from 800 Jewish professors, scholars and students similarly admonished the Trump administration for targeting Columbia University and threatening other schools, saying that “the cuts did nothing to protect Jews, and in fact, could be used to target them”...

Masha Gessen & Jason Stanley: Is it Doomsday for U.S. Democracy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SL4ZDIzCOA

What will it take to reject fascism, before it’s too late? Masha Gessen and Jason Stanley are two leading experts on autocracy, and they’re sounding the alarm. They and their families have escaped totalitarian regimes and oppressive governments; today Gessen and Stanley are pulling back the curtain on the attacks against DEI, trans bodies, civil rights, higher education and more. Is authoritarianism here? Masha Gessen is an acclaimed Russian-American journalist, a Polk Award winning opinion writer for the New York Times and the author of "Surviving Autocracy" and “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.” Forced to leave Russia twice, in 2024, a Moscow court convicted them, in absentia to eight years in prison for their reporting on the war in Ukraine. Jason Stanley is a best-selling author and professor whose books include “Erasing History” and "How Fascism Works". He recently left his teaching position at Yale University to relocate to Canada with his family; noting that he is a child of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany. In this historic conversation — the first interview between Gessen and Stanley — the two explore how to be bold in our movements and envision a multi-ethnic democracy. Plus, a commentary from Laura.

“Trump has proposed a revived empire, a return to an imaginary past. The Democrats have proposed the way things are now, which are deeply unsatisfying and horribly anxiety provoking for a very large number of people. So we need a vision of a future that is more appealing than the imaginary past.” - Masha Gessen

“What I see now is this regime shifting the self understanding of America, from having these democratic ideals . . . God knows they've been imperfect, to a self identity as loving the United States because we've had these great men in our past, and we've conquered the West, and we can punch you in the nose. And that's not a democratic project. That's like what Putin is doing in Russia.” - Jason Stanley

GUESTS:
Masha Gessen: Opinion Columnist, The New York Times; Author, Surviving Autocracy; Distinguished Professor, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY
Jason Stanley: Author, Erasing History & How Fascism Works; Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto

Lawsuit says state troopers questioned UT protester arrests: 'What are they doing that's illegal?"

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/lawsuit-sa...

Shortly before arresting 57 people during a pro-Palestinian protest at UT-Austin last spring, some Texas state troopers wondered aloud if their actions were justified, according to a lawsuit filed by four students against the state and university this week.

“What are they doing that’s illegal?” an unidentified trooper asked his colleagues, according to the lawsuit, adding, “What if this was after a game or something … we do this after Aggie games?”

Another trooper replied “no,” and a third soon asked, “Which one are we going after?” before the arrests began, the lawsuit says.
...
Two days later, the Travis County District Attorney announced that all charges were dropped because of a lack of probable cause. The four plaintiffs still received disciplinary action from the university, and all of them said they complied under pressure so they could graduate or continue their studies.
--------------------------------------
I'm glad to hear there might be troopers who question orders; but let's find a way to empower them to follow through.
And why are there arrest quotas? For anything?

>67 davidgn: Many thanx for that. I"ve been following M Gessen's articles in the NYTimes and elsewhere, and have read some of Jason Stanley's books; but I didn't know about the youtube thing. Thanx again.

>69 modalursine: Also worth a look:
Gov. Pritzker's latest scorched earth speech from a few days back (excerpt +Psaki interview):
‘These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace’: Pritzker calls for mass protests against GOP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U8wwCHTsLg
(full speech: Gov. Pritzker blasts Republicans and ‘do-nothing Democrats' in fiery speech (FULL)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMndfvxVeRo )

And from the Lawfare front.
J. Michael Luttig and Mary McCord on Defending the Rule of Law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TU-Wv2_fcY

Still banging on about annexing Canada, moreover with military intervention being "highly unlikely". Probably developing a fifth column in Alberta, although everybody tells me that even Albertans would refuse to join the US.

Trump Speaks Out on His Desire to Annex Canada, Recession Concerns, and If He Has to Uphold the Constitution (Time, May 4)

The NYTimes editorial board has a piece on "How to Stop Trump"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/opinion/trump-100-days-opposition.html

I think they did a nice bill of indictment, but as for their idea on how to stop the coup,
as I was reading their formula and the only words that came to my mind wa "Fat Chance"

I remember, was back in the pleistocene, the was a group, some like "Women for Peace" or some such opposing the vietnamese war. A red-baiting reporter asked snarkily "would fascists be welcome in your coalition" ? to which the answer was "Hey Jack! If the fascists were to sign on, that would be the end of the problem". highly paraphrased, of course

I'm getting something of that vibe from the NYTimes. A coalition with "conservatives" around the idea of the rule of law. Sounds great, except for one little glitch. The "conservatives" ( euphamism for Fascistic xenophobes, white nationalists and Christian identity thugs) are all about trashing the constiution and the rule of law. If they would oppose Agent Orange...well...as I said before..."Fat Chance" .

>72 modalursine:

I agree. It's useless appealing to those people in the name of integrity, honour, Christ... if they cared about them Trump wouldn't have been elected once, let alone twice.

I mean, here we are, witnessing the official White House posting pictures of Trump as pope.

What sort of reprimand or bribe is left to offer after that? Anyone who follows him is too far gone.

>67 davidgn:

More thanks for that link. You've introduced me to three people whom I will try to follow.

Well, I'be been told, and who knows, maybe it's even true, that there are er..."low information" voters who (hard for us to beliieve as it is) thought that Trump actually cared about them and their problems, would bring down prices, bring back manufacturing , and generally make things better for them and theirs.

Those folks (and I hope they're not the same ones who rode in on unicorns), at least according to the story, are appalled at the reality of Trump2.0 and are now or will soon be experiencing severe buyer's remorse.

PS, Mrs Bear's favorite term of art for those voters is "Morons!" ; but I think that's too harsh a judgment. We're talking about people who can function well enough, hold down jobs, may actually be highly skilled and knowledgable in some sphere or other, able to cope with life's little vexations, but who have zilch knowledge or interest in the world outside of their immediate interests, except occasionally when roused to moral panic by something or other.

>75 modalursine:

Yes. I believe a large number of people are as little concerned with or interested in public affairs as I am with professional sport. We would find each other mutually incomprehensible.

Kristi Noem Wants Migrants to Compete for Citizenship on New Reality Show

Julia Ornedo
Reporter
Updated May 15 2025 10:43PM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristi-noem-wants-migrants-to-compete-for-citizens...

Talk about "truth is stranger than fiction"; who could make up something like that?

What do you even say? (x-post https://www.librarything.com/topic/355614#8861181 )

U.S. put Asian migrants on deportation flight to South Sudan, lawyers allege
Updated on: May 20, 2025 / 9:45 PM EDT / CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-deported-asian-migrants-south-sudan-lawyers-say...

Judge orders US officials to keep custody of migrants flown to South Sudan
Brian Murphy says deportations appear to flout court order and says ‘if they want to turn the plane around, they can’
Tue 20 May 2025 21.51 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/20/judge-migrants-south-sudan

The Patriot Front marched in Kansas City. Arriving and departing in UHaul vans.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKE97g_g0w1/?igsh=Mms5ZTlsZDhtNnR6

‘An autoimmune disorder’: how Trump is turning American democracy against itself (Guardian)

Unlike autocracies such as Russia or China, the US has strong liberal guardrails to prevent a dictatorship. But Trump has a plan for dismantling them... There are two possibilities here. One is that there is no rhyme or reason to Trump’s actions. He is simply a randomizing generator of chaos. The other is that there is a method. I subscribe to the second possibility. I think Trump – and his advisers – know what they are doing. Other tinpot dictators – like Narendra Modi, Recep Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orbán – and their countries are distinct from the US in an important way. These autocrats around the world do not have comparable democratic institutions. They can capture, subvert or sabotage democratic traditions in their own countries, using their own means... But they do not have the special strengths of American democracy: a sturdy commitment to separation of church and state; the distribution of powers between legislature, judiciary and executive; and a deep antipathy towards tyrants, royal or otherwise. Trump thus comes to his dictatorship fantasy – evidenced by his compulsive impatience with advisers, media critics, political opponents or ordinary citizens who question him, and a bottomless appetite for praise and fealty – faced with a globally unmatched set of institutional powers that could theoretically stand in his way. To defeat them, he has hit upon an original formula: to reverse-engineer the liberal institutions designed as guardrails against people like him. The institutions that require repurposing include the world’s most powerful judicial and legislative apparatus, which were designed to keep the executive restrained; a vast body of law and regulation; a massive federal bureaucracy to assure that federal policies are scrupulously enforced; and the world’s largest combination of military and police forces to help the state to assure domestic order and civility. Trump is turning these watchdogs into his personal pets. Trump’s scorched-earth approach to these institutions, their norms and powers, is not designed to improve the originals but to gut them, in part by turning their powers against themselves...

I'd say the actions of corrupt liberal courts
intentionally bringing forward illegitimate lawsuits, is to plant seeds. If they can now take hardline leftist judges to undermine the courts, conservatives will agree that the system is broken. Leftists will finally break the constitution in the minds of all the citizens and begin to dismantle it with the 'living constitution' mindset. It's basically a short trip to the republic's end.

...crackpot lefty, what's your evidence of Trump’s corruption: EVERYTHING!

>82 TheToadRevoltof84: what's your evidence of Trump’s corruption: EVERYTHING!

Whlie there may be some sloganeers who say "EVERYTHING!", in fact the lawsuits and many of the other criticisms are concrete and focused. And what do you actually mean by "corrupt liberal courts", "illegitimate lawsuits" and "hardline leftist judges"? I thought most of your judges were elected by the people? And a lawsuit is not intrinsically "illegitimate"; it goes to court and a judge decides whether the case should be dismissed or tried in court. By undermining the courts you are collaborating in dismantling the sytem of checks and balances on which US democracy is based and admired. Ironically the people who claim to want to "Make America Great Again" are dismantling the very things which made much of the rest of the world believe that America really was great.

>83 John5918:

No, many of these courts are assigned by individual administrations and approved by the house as they become vacant. Most of the cases you're referring to are intentionally brought to specific judges that will block the Trump Administration but have no real standing and are dismissed. They know what they're doing isn't permanent, it's actually what you describe as unconstitutional, and judges are the ones power grabbing.

Fun links!

https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/opinion/trump-the-anti-oligarch-uks-anti-prayer-ty...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/19/europe-embrace-lawfare-threatens-its-alli...

https://www.dailysignal.com/

Search lawfare in that link.

>84 TheToadRevoltof84:

Is it not the role of judges to uphold legal principles such as habeas corpus, for example, or in a free market capitalist economy the right of a private university to seek and retain fee-paying students?

And yes, I've read the opinion pieces that you link to, and they are that: partisan opinoin pieces, not facts. Anything that begins with a reference to "deep state" is already stating its political bias. Much of what they state is dubious to say the least.

As for freedom of speech and information, are government websites not being instructed to remove a great deal of material which the government wishes to censor, and also to remove a great deal of archive material, both scientific and historical, which is of value to researchers whether one agrees with it or not? Are prople not being denied entry to the USA because they have expressed disagreement with its president? The list goes on.

It's a positive thing to have an opposing voice here to battle the echo chamber effect and bring more diversity of perspective, so long as it leads to discussion in good faith.

At this point, with Trump in office, it's the blind faith in him that worries me most. Trusting that everything he's doing will work out for the best, even if it's a rough ride in the meantime, without questioning any of it or excusing it all away, is the forfeiting of one's own intelligence. What are the guardrails for an individual who supports Trump to assure themselves they aren't blindly doing that? I think it must be the drawing of some kind of line in one's own mind: "if he takes it as far as this, or exceeds that, then I will become concerned." Without that line, supporting him becomes merely an exercise in continuing to craft justifications and the dodging of all personal responsibility for who he's harming.

If nothing he's done so far looks dangerous or challenges one's values and morals, I really do question what it would (and perhaps will) take to shake up his base? If those limits are placed so far out that there is no coming back from them once crossed, what was the use in extending them so far unless it was to forfeit all of one's own mind and will, and to shrug away the devastating result for American democracy? The more familiar and derogatory term for making that choice is "becoming the sheep" of an authoritarian. I'll respect any response from a Trump supporter to this genuine question, because I really would like to know. Where is the line that Trump should not cross (nor anyone else in the POTUS role), and how will we know when we get there? My own opinion has become irrelevant, since to my mind it's well behind us already.

>86 Cecrow: so long as it leads to discussion in good faith

Yep. There's the rub. Someone who looks at evidence which clearly shows their position to be wrong and insists on repeating their bogus claims and indeed on insisting that the facts are not facts is not going to be helping us with any sort of "good faith" discussion.

While I admire John's patience, I think it's misplaced in this case. We're not dealing with someone who is capable of changing their own mind. The only way that mind gets changed is when the official story from the elitists in their preferred mainstream media outlets relay the new line from the Ministry of Truth.

For example, I saw this weekend that MiniTrue has declared that the murder of George Floyd is now to be considered a hoax. I'm not exactly sure what story they're going to end up deciding on - apparently Floyd is supposed to have died because of a drug overdose or else maybe it was a tumor, and not because a murderer knelt on his throat and choked him for nine minutes while he pleaded as best he could for his life, until he died. But I can guarantee that we're going to get the official story from our "opposing voice" pretty soon.

>87 kiparsky:, when we lose the ability to agree on facts, due to lack of trust in each other and our opposing sources, we have to fall back to looking for other ways we can still have dialogue that isn't simply hurling insults. I'm trying to ask a basic, essential question that doesn't appeal to any fact or source.

>86 Cecrow: Is it even possible to defend Trump in good faith at this point? There's very few laws he has not trampled on, and I don't mean the ones he's been violating his entire adult life, I mean far more basic ones like the Constitution and basic human rights. You can only defend those in pure bad faith as they are plain to see and prove since he's not even attempting to hide it. Small wonder since he has immunity for any crimes. As long as he can prevent impeachment and removal from office, he is untouchable and above the law.

>88 Cecrow: And if the person is actually a Trump supporter, the answer to that question will be a lie, because in order to truly support Trump you must be willing to instantly change your views to match whatever nonsense has dribbled out of him most recently. Even his flunkies have been wrong-footed over and over again because they've based their talking points on the most recent thing that he said, rather than guessing correctly what he's going to say next. (Which is impossible, since even he doesn't know what he's going to say next) Any answer that an actual Trump supporter gives will only be valid until a new directive is communicated to them, or in other words, a lie. They're just idiotic machines who do what they're told and never think beyond that. If you have even a glimmer of doubt about that, just review our latest troll's posts and that doubt will be swept away.

It might be worth asking a similar question about the people who voted for Trump despite not supporting him. Recent polling suggests that there's a lot of buyer's remorse there, but these are people who have been gulled once by this machine, so it's not clear which way they'll flop. Obviously, these are the ones who are going to make the difference in the midterms, so it's an important question, but I don't think we have any of these sorts here to ask.

Here's a howdy do:

Just saw a weird little article in the NYTimes about a bunch of focus groups, asked to pick an animal representing the Dems and the Rethuglicans:

Rethugligans: Apex predators
Dems: Tortoise, Sloth, Slug.

>85 John5918:

This was sent to the Supreme Court and weighed on. If also, someone has or is part of an organized terror group they are invading the country and are a threat so they can be treated as an army or immediate threat. Every time your media cries abuse, the individual in question ends up worse than they were initially painted, like our poor dear Maryland man who had his day(s) in court.

below is a link with some interesting snippets.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/19/supreme-court-allows-trump-to-proceed-wit...

..."“Additionally,” Green, R-Tenn., continued, “a number of these individuals who received Temporary Protected Status were initially admitted through the Biden-Harris administration’s unlawful Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) mass-parole program, which was so fraud-ridden even then Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas temporarily paused it.”

“The Trump administration is keeping its promise to restore the rule of law and allow federal law enforcement agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to do their jobs: to remove inadmissible aliens who no longer have a lawful reason to be in the country,” the chairman said.

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing DHS to “Terminate all categorical parole programs,” including the “Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.”

In March, DHS issued a notice announcing the official termination of the program effective on April 24, but a federal judge blocked DHS from revoking legal status for the illegal aliens in the U.S. under the parole program.

The court’s Monday decision is a win for the Trump administration after the justices ruled Friday to extend their block on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal alien gang members from Venezuela.

In an unsigned opinion Friday, the justices sent the case back down to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and asked the lower court to determine the process the illegal aliens are legally entitled to before they are removed."

You seem to think your stats or half presented evidence in your media =facts. Well, to some degree they are facts, but intentionally diverting facts don't build the truth, which is a different thing.

>86 Cecrow:

Since Trump will be out of office in 2029, I think you'll be fine. If the worst effects are ending programs that suffocate business and jobs or only doling out 12% of their massive funding to help people or end racist programs or massive funding for fake climate change goals, it will be a positive. Climate change isn't fake, so don't freakin' cry racism, homophobia, etc... the hysteria and policy being created to enrich those in power through fake initiatives and ridiculous solutions, i.e. cronyism is what I'm referring to.

Trump targeted 0 of his abusers, in return they send him through mindless and endless abuse in court. That's just a fact. The fact that the left has supported actually devious individuals, that are beyond personally disdainful and have compromised the nation, is much worse than having to vote for a perverted, narcissistic baby-boomer who just wants someone to like him.

The ridiculous behavior on the left forces us to defund Trump because much being said is an outright fabrication/fantastical version of the reality. Trump is probably the least Authoritarian President in recent years and has tried to reduce government overreach. I actually didn't like Trump and have over the last year have begun to like him more despite his ridiculousness.

Does it ever make a progressive wonder why the powerful elite all get along and pretend to squabble, while the gap of wealth continues to grow, and yet they all now hate Trump? They were all good buddies up 'til now...but now they hate him. Bush was the devil, but now he's respectable, Romney the same...but Trump, Trump who was Democrat is just vile to the 'nth. I think it's fake, I know it's fake and it irritates me that I have to have a moderate Democrat running an untenable government because he's the most electable.

Progressivism is cancer.

>87 kiparsky:

If you'd like to see what the 'other side' really is saying. You may appreciate being able to defend the arguments against you in the matter of George Floyd.

https://spectator.org/5-years-what-media-need-know-about-george-floyd/

>94 TheToadRevoltof84: Thank you for confirming that you will say literally anything that you're told to say.

Sadly, there are no arguments in the linked piece, it's just a collection of inane assertions, all attempting to comply with the order from on high, that the murder of George Floyd never happened. Tomorrow, you'll be trying to tell us that George Floyd murdered Trayvon Martin, if that's what they tell you to believe - and you'll probably believe it, too, which is the sad part.

>95 kiparsky:

Well, there's links within the article that you may have missed, which were the foundations of the assertions.

https://spectator.org/george-floyd-death-toxicology-report/

https://spectator.org/chauvin-did-not-murder-george-floyd/

https://spectator.org/how-george-floyd-actually-died/

It all really is quite a crazy and tragic case.

But, I suppose you're also going to say that the Duke Lacrosse case still has legs? Isn't that just the same thing on the opposite spectrum?

>96 TheToadRevoltof84: I honestly don't know why you're trying to change the subject. Do you think anyone's going to fail to notice that you've got nothing on this so you're trying to talk about something else?

George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, with three accomplices. That's a fact, and it's not a fact that's going to change. If you're willing to rewire your beliefs based only on orders from some asshole who you've never met and will never get to service in the ways you so clearly wish you could, then that's your fucking problem. You've chosen to make a liar of yourself, and you can't blame that on anyone else.

But now you're going to start rambling about pies for some reason, because that's what you do when you're stuck. You really are a pathetic little creep, aren't you?

>97 kiparsky:

Well, do hold on. You see, the trial decided one thing, but you should read all of the details, it gets pretty dicey. You get back to me if you want to read all those goodies in >96 TheToadRevoltof84:

And, I love that you said the pie bit, ha. If you weren't mean, you wouldn't be funny... but then again, I think you could lean a bit more on the funny than mean and it'd all balance out.

>98 TheToadRevoltof84: Simple question for you: do you believe that George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin with the aid of his accomplices?

Yes or no, please, no dodging.

>99 kiparsky:

No.

>100 TheToadRevoltof84: And there you have it.

Obviously you're lying, and now you're not only lying about the facts, you're lying about what you believe about the facts. I mean, it would be one thing for you to lie and say that Floyd wasn't murdered - obviously, we all know he was murdered, it's on fucking video, but we know you have no problem lying about facts, you do it literally all the time. You're a lying-ass sack of shit, we all know this.

But for you to lie about what you believe, that takes it well beyond just lying, now I really believe that you're utterly fucked in the head. Seriously, you know as well as anyone that you don't believe that, and you know as well as anyone that nobody is going to believe that you believe that. Why in the name almighty fuck would you bother to lie about that? What's fucking wrong with you? Don't bother trying to talk your way out of it, nobody cares. But what the actual fuck is wrong in your head?

A small sampling of one article. Sorry John!

https://spectator.org/how-george-floyd-actually-died/

..."As recently reported in these pages, Hennepin County prosecutors knew from day one how George Floyd did not die. Medical Examiner Andrew Baker reported to the prosecutors the evening following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death, “There were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

For political reasons, the prosecutors buried the truth. To save his career and possibly his life, Baker finessed his findings to include “neck compression” and declared the manner of death a homicide. So doing, he gave the state the wiggle room it needed to slip a noose around Chauvin’s neck.

To learn what did kill George Floyd, I have consulted with two physicians. One, Dr. John Dale Dunn, is a veteran emergency physician and lawyer with expertise in cause of death matters. The other, a pathologist at a major medical center with more than two decades of experience, I will call “Dr. Quincy.” The doctor who testified on Chauvin’s behalf had his entire career as a medical examiner investigated by the Maryland attorney general.

I have been consulting with Dunn for at least two years. He has never shied from venturing his opinion publicly. In fact, he recreated Derek Chauvin’s hold on Floyd, using two men whose weight mirrored that of Chauvin and Floyd with no ill effect on the Floyd stand-in. “Derek Chauvin didn’t kill Mr. Floyd,” Dunn tells me. “His bad heart did.” Baker knew this to be true as well. As he testified at Chauvin’s trial, Floyd had “very severe underlying heart disease.”

I met with Quincy two weeks ago. I asked Dunn if he would review Quincy’s findings and give me an informed second opinion. Like Quincy, Dunn is confident that Chauvin’s “subdual” of Floyd — Baker’s word — had nothing to do with Floyd’s death. He agrees with Quincy as well that the fentanyl in Floyd’s system was a non-factor, but that the meth in his system might have been.

The line in Floyd’s autopsy report that caught Quincy’s attention was this one: “Taken together, the gross and microscopic (H&E-stains) features of the lesion are most suggestive of an extra-adrenal paraganglioma.” This rare tumor was found in Floyd’s pelvis. Baker recognized the tumor, argues Quincy, but he failed — or refused — to understand its potency and significance. These tumors, says Quincy, produce the most potent hormones in our bodies, namely adrenaline and noradrenaline. The class of hormones they belong to is called catecholamines. “When the tumor goes off,” he tells me, “that is what’s called a catecholamine crisis. It might as well be a bomb.”

Among the symptoms of such a crisis are high blood pressure, confusion, excessive sweating, muscle weakness, anxiety, panic attacks, shaking, delusions, and hyperactivity, all of which Floyd exhibited on that fateful evening in May. More critically, when massive amounts of catecholamines are released into the blood, various organs of the body fail. Quincy compares the effect to the flooding of a lawnmower’s carburetor."

“When a lawnmower engine gets too much gas and floods the carburetor, the engine loses power and chokes and sputters,” says Quincy. “In a similar way, too much adrenaline causes the heart to lose its ability to pump blood.” When an individual’s heart begins to fail and cannot effectively pump blood, the blood backs up from the heart and leaks into the lungs. The increased fluid covering the alveolae of the lungs interferes with the oxygenation of the blood.

“It appears to me, watching the police bodycam videos, and now knowing he has an occult paraganglioma” says Quincy, “that Mr. Floyd exhibits many of the signs and symptoms of a full blown catecholamine crisis.” The crisis was likely triggered when Officer Thomas Lane taps the window of Floyd’s car with his flashlight at 8:09 that evening. Floyd, who had been nodding contentedly in the front seat of a borrowed Mercedes SUV, is startled and flips out.

A minute later, Floyd is crying like a child. “Okay Mr. Officer, please don’t shoot me. Please, man.” Lane had no intention of shooting Floyd. His crime was passing counterfeit money, not murder. At 8:14, Officer Alex Keung, the son of a Nigerian immigrant, tells Floyd that he will be put in the back of a police car.

As Keung leads Floyd across the street, his mouth now foaming, Floyd says, “I’m scared, man.” Even before he gets in the car, Floyd tells Keung, “I got anxiety for real man, and I’m claustrophobic.” He adds, “I can’t choke, I can’t breathe Mr. Officer! Please. Please! Aaaaaah!”

When Keung tries to place Floyd into the car, his legs collapsing underneath him, Floyd says, “I’m claustrophobic man, please man, please.” He moans, “I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. Okay, okay. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground.” A friendly onlooker named Charles shouts at Floyd, “Bro, you about to have a heart attack and shit, man. Get in the car.”

Squirming feverishly, Floyd refuses to remain in the patrol car. “I’ll roll windows down, okay?” says Lane. At about 8:17, Floyd foretells his doom, “Y’all, I’m going to die in here. I’m going to die, man!” A minute later he adds, “I’m scared as fuck man…. When I start breathing, when I start breathing, it’s going to go off on me, man.”

As Quincy argues, it already has gone off. The confusion, paranoia, muscle weakness, anxiety, claustrophobia. and shear terror that Floyd exhibits are all signs of a catecholamine crisis that is causing serious acute bilateral heart failure. Floyd’s complaint that he cannot breathe — even before he gets in the squad car — indicates the resultant pulmonary edema is causing respiratory failure too. He is minutes from dying, and Floyd is the only one who senses this.

Floyd had flirted with disaster before. On May 6, 2019, he was pulled over by the Minneapolis Police in an OxyContin investigation. When Officer Scott Creighton approached Floyd in the passenger seat, says Creighton, he was “moving all around and acting extremely nervous and would not listen” to his commands. Here too, the officers tried to calm Floyd down but finally had to forcibly remove him from the vehicle and handcuff him. “Listen to him,” said Creighton’s partner. “He’s crying like an adult baby.” Floyd was experiencing many of the symptoms of a catecholamine crisis that would kill him a year later. (RELATED: The Reparations Success Story That Isn’t)

Officer Creighton testified for the defense at Chauvin’s trial. “Mr. Floyd didn’t drop dead while you were interacting with him, correct?” asked the cold-hearted prosecutor. He obviously did not, but, observes Quincy, “There is a subtle but important difference between these two confrontations.”

In 2019, Floyd was alert and prepared as Officer Creighton approached his car. When Officer Lane confronted him in 2020, Floyd was caught off guard. He reacted as if Lane had just snuck up on him to spook him. That reaction caused his tumor to release even more adrenaline than the encounter with Creighton, this time enough to overwhelm his heart.

At the Chauvin trial, paramedic Michelle Moseng testified that Floyd’s blood pressure after the 2019 arrest was extremely high. Floyd had told her “he had a history of hypertension and hadn’t been taking his medication.” Worried that he was on the verge of a stroke, she had Floyd transported to the hospital.

In 2020, a struggling Floyd will not let the officers transport him anywhere. “Just take him out,” says an exasperated Lane. “Just lay him on the ground,” adds Tao. At 8:19, Chauvin and Keung oblige Floyd and lay him on the ground.

As Dunn and Quincy agree, lying on the ground is not at all helpful for someone experiencing acute heart failure. Upright as he was in the patrol car, Floyd at least had gravity to help lessen the back pressure on the lungs. On the ground, he loses that advantage, and the accumulating pulmonary edema accelerates.

The officers know none of this. They believe Floyd is either acting or reacting to the drugs he swallowed. The officers had found a “weed pipe” on Floyd and seen him swallow something. Given Floyd’s behavior, Lane questions whether the drug might have been PCP. According to the NIH, “The elicitation of violent or psychotic behavior by phencyclidine (PCP) administration is well documented.” Police understand this.

For the next 9 minutes and 30 seconds, Chauvin restrains the muscular 6’6” Floyd using the same restraint I saw the officer use on a Kansas City woman weeks earlier. At 8:21, the officers upgrade their request for emergency assistance to a Code 3. With the fluid rapidly filling his lungs, Floyd is breathing, but he knows something is terribly wrong. Although he can still inhale, exhale, and talk, he is literally drowning in his own fluid.

For the next several minutes, Floyd complains that he can’t breathe, that his stomach hurts, that everything hurts. “Then stop talking, stop yelling,” says Chauvin. “You can’t win,” onlooker Charles chimes in. “You didn’t listen.” Even after he passes out, Lane worries that Floyd might spring back into action. At about 8:27, the ambulance arrives. By this time, Floyd is already dead."...

https://rumble.com/vhm29f-doctor-shows-theres-no-way-chauvin-murdered-floyd.html

https://spectator.org/george-floyd-death-toxicology-report/

..."Some commentators have attached great importance to the finding of no “facial, oral or conjunctival petechiae,” which are small red or purple hemorrhages that can result from asphyxiation such as would occur if pressure was applied to block the flow of blood to the brain. However, while these petechiae can result when that happens, their absence does not necessarily prove that no such compression occurred.

Instead, the more pertinent question is whether Chauvin’s kneeling on one side of Floyd’s neck cut off the blood flow through both carotid arteries to his brain. The carotids are located on each side of the neck, and people can live with only one functioning carotid artery. This raises the question as to whether Chauvin’s direct application of pressure to only one side of Floyd’s neck cut off the carotid artery on the other side of his neck.

Moreover, in regard to Chauvin’s possible criminal intent or purported desire to harm Floyd, Minnesota police are trained to use a “neck restraint” technique, which is defined in the official training literature as “compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck).” The video of Chauvin kneeling on the side of Floyd’s neck appears in all respects to be a textbook application of this officially approved technique. Put another way, by the training that they had received, the police defendants would have no reason to believe that Chauvin’s kneeling on Floyd’s neck was either causing serious harm or anything other than the approved standard operating procedure.

We know from the video transcripts that Floyd, in addition to complaining about being unable to breathe while he was still upright, repeated that complaint for a matter of minutes while he was on the ground and being restrained by police. But Floyd remained conscious and complaining for several minutes. How can that be if Chauvin’s knee had cut off the flow of blood to Floyd’s brain? If the police had cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to Floyd’s brain, he would have lost consciousness within seconds, not minutes. (See Nichols, Larry, Law Enforcement Patrol Operations: Police Systems and Practices, McCutcheon Publishing Company, 1995.)

So why couldn’t Floyd breathe, and how did he die? The clear answers to those questions are to be found in his toxicology report, which overwhelmingly and unerringly supports the conclusion that Floyd’s breathing difficulties and death were the direct and undeniable result of his ingestion of fentanyl mixed with methamphetamine.

When Floyd arrived at the hospital, his blood was drawn. According to the toxicology report, postmortem testing of that blood established the presence of, among other drugs, “Fentanyl 11 ng/mL” (nanograms per milliter). In that regard, tucked away in the report’s “Reference Comments” is this: “Signs associated with fentanyl toxicity include severe respiratory depression, seizures, hypotension, coma and death. In fatalities from fentanyl, blood concentrations are variable and have been reported as low as 3 ng/mL.”

Got that? According to the toxicology report, which is central to the prosecution’s case, at 11 ng/mL, Floyd had over three times the potentially lethal 3 ng/mL dose of fentanyl in his bloodstream when he arrived unresponsive at the hospital.

Similarly, the toxicology report also disclosed the presence of methamphetamine, which it states is “capable of causing hallucinations, aggressive behavior and irrational reactions” as well as “restlessness, confusion, hallucinations, circulatory collapse and convulsions.”

Defense counsel should blow up those sections of the toxicology report to Mount Rushmore–size proportions, hang them on the courtroom wall, and read them every five minutes to the jury. They more than explain Floyd’s bizarre behavior, inability to stand, difficulty walking, and complaints about being unable to breathe while sitting, standing, and lying on the ground."...

https://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile-Cases/27-CR-20-12949-TT/...

Again, nobody cares about your bullshit or our copy-paste text dumps. What the fuck is actually wrong in your beady little brain that you think anyone would believe that Chauvin, who knelt on the neck of a man until he stopped breathing and died, did not commit a murder?

>103 kiparsky:

Interesting. I do believe we've said enough on the matter. Here's a sad video.

https://rumble.com/v47o449-the-truth-about-george-floyd.html

More video, since reading irritates you in this instance.

https://rumble.com/v3wwlzm-fbi-altered-george-floyd-autopsy-report-claims-docume...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UF5TshzaBo

>104 TheToadRevoltof84: I think you're trying to dodge the question: what is wrong in your fucking brain that you think anyone in their right mind would believe that crap?

The incident was recorded, and you can find the video, and while I'm not going to suggest that you take pleasure in watching the murder of a Black man I'm pretty sure you've seen the video, so you know exactly what happened: a man in uniform knelt on the throat of another man until that man died. And yet you're pretending to believe that no murder occurred, and you seem to believe that if you repeat your lies enough, they'll become true, despite the fact that you know as well as anyone else in the world that they're not true and cannot become true no matter how hard you pretend to believe them.

So what the fuck is going on in there? This is not about George Floyd, the facts were never in doubt, the trial is over, that's all done and dusted. Chauvin is a murderer, end of story. This is about you, and about what's wrong with you. So spill it - what the fuck is your fucking problem? You've established beyond any doubt that there's something seriously wrong with you, so you might as well go the rest of the way and tell us what it is.

It's not just that you're a liar, you've made that perfectly clear many times. This goes well beyond lying into something deeply pathological.

>104 TheToadRevoltof84:

See additional info in >104 TheToadRevoltof84:

The question asked, about my brain:

I think all societies that suffer a collapse go through a sort of trauma. There's no way for me to analyze myself as my brain isn't recognizing anything, but a complete denial of new information, which was previously concealed from my debate partner.

I personally felt as though Chauvin was negligent, previously. I'm just not so sure anymore, and would probably error on the side of the complete exoneration based on the autopsy and findings. What you really can't seem to understand is how wicked the people lying to you are. Nobody, repeat, nobody kneeled on George's throat, at all and all reports on his death prove that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjgMhjUQTmI

>106 TheToadRevoltof84: Oh fuck off. If you can watch the murder of a man and pretend that it never happened, just to try to win an argument on the internet, what the fuck is the point of you?

At least you've proved my point for me:

But I can guarantee that we're going to get the official story from our "opposing voice" pretty soon.

>107 kiparsky:

I suppose you believe the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Covid came from bats, Cops were killed by J6ers and AOC went down to the border for a good cry, all whilst the evidence that suggest Floyd murdered himself with drugs just means that cops are all racist.

George Floyd led a tragic life and deserves to be a lesson to us in a real light, not a concocted version. It actually is hard to watch him struggle and wonder why they don't check him, it's hard, but the reality is the people shouting at the cops and the delay of the ambulance all tied into this.

The fact that you only seek to vindicate your outrage is the real problem you suffer with. You use his death as a platform for outrage...George Floyd was used as justification to destroy cities because of liars. He wasn't choked, he drowned.

A simpler question then, from not having followed the details of the case: none of this was presented as evidence, before these officers were found guilty? Or else it was and ... what happened?

Sorry, read it again. You are suggesting it was manipulated for "political reasons" so the officers could be found guilty. If this has since been uncovered, will there be a retrial? You are also suggesting that there was political manipulation of the judiciary. There is evidence of this as well, who was involved, etc.? Names, dates, motives, patterns? The single Floyd case would pale in comparison next to that revelation. I would expect reputable people to come forward as witnesses now whom even Democrats must respect? Is this happening?

>108 TheToadRevoltof84:
Watch the videos and read the articles.

>102 TheToadRevoltof84:
>104 TheToadRevoltof84:
>106 TheToadRevoltof84:

All this was not presented, some was stifled and some was manipulated. Its quite a tragedy, and it's made worse by the corruption.

Apologies, was editing my post when you replied. You are pointing to a much larger issue than this one case. But surely a retrial should occur if this is now all evident as you say?

>111 Cecrow:

Surely. They're trying to get one. They will likely be trying to get out of State, knowing Minnesota can't possibly provide a fair trial.

>109 Cecrow:

There is evidence of adjusting the autopsy, pulling pages from the training manual, and withholding bodycam footage for starters.

No, Democrats will hang anyone stepping out of line.. so reputable will not be their adjective if they dare.

The anti-woke warriors used to defend free speech. Now they make McCarthyism look progressive

Now, however, the people who used to position themselves as oppressed truth-tellers operating in what Weiss’s article called an “era of That Which Cannot Be Said”, have a state-sanctioned microphone. They’ve won. But in winning they’ve made it difficult to continue the charade that they give a damn about “cancel culture”. Look around: some of these self-styled free speech warriors are doing everything they can to ruin the lives of everyone who doesn’t 100% agree with them. Most conservatives don’t seem to mind that their hypocrisy is now on full display...

Trump is ‘remarkably like’ 1930s far-right regimes, billionaire investor warns

Donald Trump wants to “dictate” policies like those of far-right regimes in the 1930s, a leading billionaire investor has warned. Ray Dalio writes in a new book that the US president is acting like a chief executive without a board as he seeks to expand executive power even more aggressively than predecessors Andrew Jackson and Franklin D Roosevelt. Dalio, 75, is the founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, and a rare critic of the system that generated his wealth...

Both opinion pieces from the Guardian

>108 TheToadRevoltof84: And as usual when you're stuck you spew irrelevant jibberish in every direction.

Whatever, I think the point is made.

>112 TheToadRevoltof84:, I will be waiting to see if this happens.

>114 John5918:, the internal contradiction does seem obvious, and yet even what is 'obvious' is no longer agreed upon. I believe the rationalization is the equivalent of bringing balance to the Force. But the overcorrection, if we can call it that, is liable to land in the opposite ditch.

>114 John5918:

Most of Trump’s Executive actions actually lessen the size of government and reduce regulation and remove silencing of speech by government and Big Tech. Trump believes in a bigger defense, so you don't need it. Other than actions to remove those here illegally and more particularly, dangerous people here particularly, what is authoritarian?

I haven't studied up on American governance, but as I understand there's a set list of controls in place that set guardrails around the power of the president. It appears he has been weakening or subverting each of these guardrails one by one, perhaps with the intent of reducing government spending or believing he is undoing a Democratic wrong, but the extremity of his actions are having this side effect. If you were to imagine a future Democratic president sitting in his place who does something you don't like, through executive order or some other means, you may see how Trump's removal of these various controls will provide that president with the same free rein he is gradually claiming for himself. It does not look like an objectively wise policy.

If there is evidence of "silencing of speech by government and Big Tech", has it been headline news or something unearthed behind the scenes by your sources? Trump's actions in this regard have certainly been explicit. The DEI rollbacks, the Kennedy Centre, defunding of scientific research he personally objects to (e.g. investigations into climate change), crackdown on universities, Trump's open questioning of habeas corpus; all widely reported, and none of these were areas that any prior president waded into or interfered with, all of which undermine free speech. Canadians crossing the American border can find themselves in a lurch if it can be shown they have shared an opinion against Trump on social media. America appears on course to become a nation of "agree with the Republican party or face consequences for your freedoms". I cannot remember a similar notion being imposed by the Democrats, unless you mean their actions taken against racial hatred and discrimination. There appears to be an asterisk attached to the MAGA slogan that reads "for Republicans", as opposed to all its people.

>118 Cecrow: The constitutional and informal "guardrails" consisit of the power of the congress ...only the House has the power of the purse, the House and Senate together have the powere to impeach and to convict, the Senate has the power to deny confirmations, the Courts can declare acts and legistlation invalid, and an independant professional bureacracy combined with honest and principled cabinet members are (or were) guardrails.
The congress has abdicated, the Supreme court is captured, the independent bureaucrcy is all but overthrown,

There are laws constraining the president but they've been broken eggregiosly. Emoluments clause anyone?
The Supreme court has conjured a presidential immunity out of whole cloth in contradiction to the letter and spirit of the constitution itself, and seems to be acting in such a way as to avoid at all costs the moment when a Supreme court ruling so displeases the president that he simpy tells it to go pound sand.

Has that fellow the Supremes ordered returned from the El Salvador Gulag appeared?

When the day comes , as it surely will, that the President openly makes the Mudra of Deficance at the Court, they will find, as they well know, that they can do bugger all, as they have no independent "means of violence".

Oh, and al the cabinet members and department heds are nonentities, chuckleheads, and crackpots willing to be "the obsequeous instruments sof the president's pleasure" as Hamilton put in the Federalist Papers (I forget whicn number)

Ain't we got fun!

>118 Cecrow:

Trump has attempted in various ways to use the Executive power and has been mitigated or stymied in one fashion or another by the Supreme Court sometimes just forcing him to utilize other avenues. The shouting of his abuse is the only abuse that has occurred. I have indeed watched Democratic and Republican Presidents use the executive function to gain government power, Biden forced Federal Mandates for COVID vaccinations trying to use OSHA, there's an entire report on Google and Facebook being used and they say coerced by the government into silencing Conservatives and shutting down reports on the Hunter's laptop, Biden handcuffed those at the border from doing their jobs, he stole rent money in a moratorium, he kept delaying rich kids from paying for college. But, more notably they (previous administrations) have previously been able to pass legislation because it has INCREASED government power. Of course, the Congress and Senate likes that, except the demagoguery crowd of "conservative" senators and house members get to sell their tickets, sometimes the Socialist Demagogues take their turn. Obama directed the FBI to go after Trump's campaign, Bush was able to spy on Americans in the name of safety... The list is ridiculously long and I have to work very hard because Google doesn't just allow you to search the conclusion, only the headline written by favored and paid for news sources.

DEI rollbacks are good. The Kennedy Centre was sinking, and the execs were hiding their deficit.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/kennedy-center-execs-fabricated-financial-records...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/04/06/caterwauling-over-a-kennedy-center-coup/

Trump openly says a lot of very brash (stupid) things.

The research our government funds can be sick, including Fauci's beagles, but Rand Paul puts out a list of ridiculous spending:

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/reps/dr-paul-releases-2024-festivus-report-on...

Other research shows climate change to be something much less than existential.

https://www.desmog.com/steve-koonin/

https://heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/richard-lindzen/

https://www.climatedepot.com/2021/07/13/climatologist-dr-judith-curry-explains-c....

Universities should be able to exist without billions of government handout. And, the fact that the left hates Trump so much should be example 1 on why education should not be federally controlled or funded.

And where are any of these things unconstitutional? Just because the left seems to appreciate government waste and handouts for cronyism, doesn't mean the other side gets to nip it in the bud from time to time.

RFK is threatening boycott of premier journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, AMA -- to publish internally. That means he controls peer review, if any, for the largescale studies he proposes on causes of autism, efficacy of COVID vaccines, etc. Journal publication isn't perfect, but it self-corrects if problems arise. More guard rails disassembled...

>122 margd:

The other sides view in links below. If you're going to publish trash to make money and call it science, you should get called out for it.

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-doj-launches-investigation

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/rfk-jr-threatens-to-stop-nih-scien...

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-england-journal-of-medicine-transgender...

https://participatorymedicine.org/epatients/2012/03/former-nejm-editors-on-the-c...

Make no mistake, those journals can still exist, we just won't be funding their schemes any longer. They can publish whatever Nazi-like science propaganda they'd like to.

>122 margd: I'm beginning to wonder if there's any aspect of public life where executive government in the US has no say. Seriously, how can he legally interfere in any way what science journals do? To the extent that it is regulated by law, it is the domain of the legislative branch, not the executive one. And for the largest part, what regulations and norms exist are established by the scientific community itself. Perhaps it's time that the international scientific community tells him to fuck off, so that it's not just pushback from domestic ones.

You can tell that the Dems are not a serious opposition party by the simple fact that they have not formed, or even talked about forming, a variety of shadow government.
When RFK comes out with some crackbrain idiocy or other, where is the shadow Surgeon General to publicly debunk it?
Jeh Psaki, to her credit (and apparently no thanks to any allegedly organized political party) has taken it upon her self to post youtube videos of her acting as a de-facto shadow press secretary, answering questions put to Trump's "mouth of Sauron" the way they should have been answered

If you loons want proof that the majority of Republicans are little different than the majority of Democrats (i.e. the oligarchy, including that worthless scandal of an opposition, Sanders or AOC) look at the Big Beautiful Bill. Fake, faker and fakest. Democrats don't need to vote in their idiotic policies; the Republicans can do it for them!

https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/gops-big-beautiful-bill-act-lets-big-te...

I'm reminded of the famous (and much paraphrased) quote from Pastor Martin Niemöller.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I kept quiet; I wasn't a communist.
When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet; I wasn't a trade unionist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet; I wasn't a social democrat.
When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet; I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to protest.

Initially Niemöller supported the Hitler's rise to power as he himself was anti-communist, but eventually he became disillusioned and opposed Hitler. He was arrested in 1937 and remained in concentration camps until he was freed by the Allies in 1945.

Toad, my friend, they're already coming for migrants, foreigners, Democrats (capital D), democrats (small d), liberals, progressives, academics, judges, lawyers, gay and trans people, women, black people, Muslims, students, civil rights protesters, people who disagree with the government, etc. You probably don't fall into any of these identity groups, and you remain quiet; indeed you support the regime just as Niemöller did initially. But I hope that by the time they come for you there will be someone left to protest on your behalf.

Science will shake itself out. Scientific fact is unalterable by political opinion, in the same way illness does not respect political boundaries. Journals which are rigorous about the scientific method can be shunted aside, but the actual findings cannot be. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, as we know, was wrong and remained wrong no matter how much he persecuted and ignored the scientific community that disagreed with him. The sad part is the cost that first precedes the vindication.

Beware of any system (or leadership figure) that does not make a regular practice of questioning or challenging itself, only its perceived enemies. The foregone and unshakeable premise of "I am right, you are wrong" has no future.

>127 John5918:

Okay. Thanks for the heads up...the self-awareness is unbelievable on the left.

What you seem to misunderstand is that it doesn't have to be left vs. right, we should be trying to curtail the government overreach, reducing government via executive order is the only way that you can as it is a bloated monster that refuses to legislate it's reduction (see my rant on the "Big Beautiful Bill"). The picture being painted here pretends that all migrants are in danger, no, illegal immigrants are and more specifically those that are generally involved with crime in which many of my numerous links address. As for the rest of your list, it is delusional, hyperbolic nonsense.

>129 TheToadRevoltof84:, and certainly some students are in danger as well, in addition to the illegal immigrants. Specifically (so far) those who have protested on behalf of Palestine.

If someone outside of these categories is caught up in this net by accident and deported, we have seen that even a Supreme Court order will not bring them back. That innocent remains knowingly exiled and imprisoned by his own country's government. There is only one glaring instance of this that we know of so far, but that is sufficient for avoiding delusion or hyperbole when observing that anyone could be a victim of this mistake and have no recourse.

Immigrants who are in the process of applying for citizenship and are following all of the proscribed rules have been waylaid at government appointments and in courthouses by ICE. Following the rules was not sufficient protection; worse, it was made into a trap. That does not encourage law abidance by these individuals.

There is a not-irrational fear among people with green cards, student visas, etc. who are presently in America about what may happen if they cross an American border and then try to return.

>129 TheToadRevoltof84:

Well, I agree with you that it shouldn't be about left or right. It should be about human dignity, human rights, due process, constitutionality, democracy, the rule of law, and things like that.

The rest of your post is, to use your own words, delusional, hyperbolic nonsense.

>130 Cecrow:

For decades the immigration system has been busted and nobody has bothered to fix it.

Student's protesting on behalf of Palestine were also abusing fellow students and trampling their rights. The contention is, if you are a guest in a country, you don't get to tell the country how awful they are and abuse your fellow students.

If you can show me this glaring instance, I will certainly do my best to see if I can find further information and can certainly respect the grievousness. This has happened when our government refuses to bring our citizens home that have been imprisoned. Why is the fact that Biden and Obama did this, regularly, not just as abusive or wrong?

>131 John5918:

Well, the government does not legislate for its reduction and that is factual. It has constantly grown since progressivism was born with TR and expanded, exponentially through Biden. So, it's not just ~not, it's anti-hyperbolic.

>132 TheToadRevoltof84:, if a student protest that abuses fellow students is sufficient grounds for deportation, or if a country is ready to deport a guest who tells that country how awful it is, how highly should we rate that country's freedom of expression? Strictly enforced, a standard such as that would have severe repercussions. I do know for certain that neither would be grounds for deportation from Canada (at worst the university might take disciplinary action, or law enforcement could become involved if a specific law were broken).

The instance I was referring to is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It has been a high profile case in mainstream news.

>134 Cecrow:

I disagree. Random students protesting are not being deported, violent students are. Students in general have nothing to worry about.

Sorry Again, John about the wordy pasting.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/04/09/student-visa-privileges-end-where-support...

..."Foreign nationals are guests in our country. When they promote terrorism or justify acts of barbarism, they prove they do not belong in a nation founded on freedom and the rule of law. By remaining here, they endanger its continued existence.

These students weren’t innocents engaged in peaceful protest. They chose to not merely align themselves with, but actually join, the group that committed the atrocities of Oct. 7. That’s not “anti-colonial resistance”—it’s direct support for terrorism. And under President Donald Trump, and now Rubio’s lead, America finally has the courage to treat it as such.

It is astounding how quickly the radical Left pauses from shouting down speakers with different opinions to call for respect for the First Amendment when they’re called out. But the Constitution does not guarantee a foreigner the right to a student visa. Nor does it protect speech that crosses the line into incitement of violence or active support for foreign terrorist groups. Free speech has never meant freedom from consequences—especially when national security is at stake."...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/10/real-reason-universities-want-foreign-stu...

The Maryland man? Don't get me started.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/02/newly-released-video-shows-abrego-garcia-...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/04/17/i-am-afraid-close-him-what-court-petition...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/04/abrego-garcia-the-poster-child-for-the-le...

"During the Joe Biden administration, the Left and its media allies tried to erase the line between legal and illegal aliens, calling all aliens “noncitizens.” Now they’re attempting to confuse the distinction between criminal and civil proceedings and rights regarding deportable aliens to stoke opposition to the Donald Trump administration’s actions.

In so doing, the Left is using Kilmar Abrego Garcia as their poster child to demand “more due process.” It’s time to correct this intended confusion and show just how much due process aliens receive.

When an alien becomes deportable—either because they entered the U.S. illegally, overstayed their temporary visa, committed a crime, committed fraud, participated in terrorist activity, or other reasons—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement charges the alien with ground(s) of deportability, which initiates removal proceedings with the Justice Department’s administrative immigration court system.

These are civil proceedings, not criminal. The administrative immigration judges are Justice Department employees in the executive branch; they are not federal judges under the Article III Judiciary of the U.S. Constitution.

That means deportable aliens in deportation proceedings do not have the same rights as a person in a criminal trial, such as being innocent until proven guilty, the right to a taxpayer funded public defendant, etc. Removing a deportable alien is not a criminal sentence.

Within the civil, immigration context, Congress, on behalf of the American people, has legislated scores of ways to temporarily and permanently come to the U.S. —lawfully. Foreigners abroad can apply for visas to visit, study, work or join family here in the U.S. If they are fleeing persecution, they can apply for refugee protection through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Once in the U.S., aliens can also apply to DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for asylum, work authorization, “green cards” (permanent immigrant visas), naturalization and more immigration benefits.

What will surprise most Americans is that deportable aliens in immigration court proceedings have yet a third opportunity to apply for immigration benefits.

After an immigration judge finds the alien is deportable as charged (most deportable aliens concede their charges), the alien can request “relief from deportation” by applying for asylum or a green card with the judge. If granted, ICE’s request for removal is denied, the alien is given the immigration benefit and remains in the country. That is, unless the alien subsequently commits another deportable offense. Then, ICE can repeat the process.

Now consider Abrego Garcia’s case. He didn’t follow Congress’ “due process” by applying for a visa or refugee protection before coming to the U.S. Instead, he snuck across the border around 2011. He did not go to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to seek asylum within his first year in the U.S., an important and commonsense time-limitation Congress imposed to prevent asylum fraud.

If you were really fleeing for your life, one would reasonably expect you would request protection soon after arriving here. But Garcia didn’t follow that due process either.

Eight years later, he was arrested in a Maryland Home Depot parking lot, after police suspected suspicious activity by a small group of men and found discarded marijuana under a vehicle. The Gang Unit assisting at the scene filled out a Gang Field Interview Sheet and alleged that Abrego Garcia was an active member of the MS-13 gang.

The police turned him over to ICE, which detained him, initiated deportation proceedings, and opposed his release on bond, arguing he was a danger to the community based on the gang report. An immigration judge denied bond in April 2019, citing the gang report as trustworthy evidence.

Then, Garcia sought asylum and withholding of removal with an immigration judge as a defense from removal. He claimed he would be persecuted by another gang in El Salvador, Barrio 18. The immigration judge denied asylum because he violated the one-year time bar, but granted the more limited withholding of removal, released him from ICE custody, and issued a final order of removal to any country except “Guatemala.” This was the clerical error—the order should have read “El Salvador.’

Despite that due process, Garcia continued to violate the law. In May 2021, his wife sought a temporary protective order against him in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Then, in December 2022, the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped him for speeding and failing to maintain his lane.

The officer suspected human trafficking due to eight other individuals in the SUV with no luggage, despite traveling from Houston to Maryland. The owner of the SUV was a confessed human smuggler. Garcia was released with a warning for an expired license after the FBI instructed that he be released.

President Donald Trump has designated MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization. This negated Garcia’s limited protection from being removed to El Salvador under the Immigration and Nationality Act. And so, the Trump administration removed him to El Salvador."

Wow, what a load of crap this piece of shit comes up with.

The picture being painted here pretends that all migrants are in danger, no, illegal immigrants are and more specifically those that are generally involved with crime in which many of my numerous links address. As for the rest of your list, it is delusional, hyperbolic nonsense.

There are plenty of high-profile examples, such as the case of Rumeysa Ozturk who was illegally abducted by masked thugs working for the current regime and sent across the country to a state with courts which were meant to be friendly to the administration. I mention that because you fuckers keep talking about "lawfare", but you have no problem when "lawfare" is practiced against people who you hate because they're not white. (looking forward to the vigorous denials of racism from the vigorous racist, that'll be entertaining and futile)

The contention is, if you are a guest in a country, you don't get to tell the country how awful they are

The contention is wrong. The first amendment applies to all persons, not just to white people.

If you're going to publish trash to make money and call it science, you should get called out for it.

Even if this were actually the issue, you run into the first amendment again. The federal government is not in the business of policing content.
Of course, this has nothing to do with anything, the problem that the Trump regime has with journals is precisely that they're publishing actual science. Remember, we're talking about a guy who suggested that you should inject bleach to fight infections. This is the guy to dictate science policy? (looking forward to the denial there as well - again, it's on film, but facts never stopped the lying-ass sack of shit yet)

we should be trying to curtail the government overreach

Now there's chutzpah. You're cheering for a regime that considers itself bound by no laws, and you're concerned about overreach?

For decades the immigration system has been busted and nobody has bothered to fix it.

This is completely meaningless, of course, just filler to take up space. Bullshit, in other words.

And this is just the stuff that stood out on a quick scan.

I'm a bit bewildered by all of that, regarding Garcia. It seems to amount to "he was a bad person, therefore he deserves what happened to him". More plainly, your Supreme Court determined he was arrested and deported in error and ordered his return be facilitated, though because they didn't say 'effectuated' nothing has yet happened to see him returned. The case is still in litigation.

Many cases are underway for the deportation of students that do not feature any acts of violence or even calls for violence. They were merely present at a pro-Palestinian protest on a campus, sometimes incidentally, or published their opinion in a student publication. That apparently suffices for their arrest and deportation, on the weak grounds of equating protest against Israel's military actions in Palestine with antisemitism. You do not need to be a racist to object to seeing your homeland's civilian population being mercilessly killed by indiscriminate bombing campaigns or starved to the point of famine.

>137 Cecrow:

You mean like grandma during J6?

If they have a case, they have a case, and they have nothing to worry about.

>138 TheToadRevoltof84: arresting someone on no grounds and then letting the courts sort it out doesn't seem like a well considered policy.

>139 Cecrow: Let's call it what it is: a blatant violation of basic human rights.

(No doubt Toad continues to show complete lack of any moral compass, so she'll clutch on that understatement of it being a matter of policy like a life raft to prattle more defending the indefensible.)

>139 Cecrow:

So, when it bothers you, it bothers you?

She openly supports Hamas and possibly tried to invoke violence in an OP-ed.

The Maryland man is an actual criminal and is linked with a terrorist group. So, I think you're stretching.

I actually agree in principle, but it doesn't change that if you're a guest you can't actually be provoking or committing violence. It's not a right.

>136 kiparsky:

Rumeysa Ozturk might have a case, but they certainly haven't opened the book wide enough for me to say.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/trump-admin-revokes-300-student-visas-amid-crackdo...

Well, that's only half of what I said...regarding hating the country, they were blocking Jewish kids from class and getting physical.

No, the science journals are criminal and a ponzi scheme at this point. Which is the point, the government shouldn't be handing over cash they don't have for garbage research.

I think you'll be shocked if you ever found out how many folks were deported by the rapist Clinton and racist Obama.

>140 SandraArdnas:

Like Ole Skipper says, I start rambling on about pie when I have nothing good to respond with.

I think you mean to say; golly you're thoughtful and kind for a Toad that gets treated like garbage all the time! I think I'll go back and read more of your posts to better understand where you're coming from...sorry for my beligerence and mean-spirited debate.

In a recent newsletter, Heatther Cox Richardson quotes politlcal scientist Adam Bonica commenting on societal response (or lack thereof) to autocratic breakthrough:

Referring to attacks on the Judiciary, part of the autocratic script as practiced by Erdogan, Orban, and others

"""
But, Bonica notes, something different happened in Israel in 2023. When Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition tried to destroy judicial independence, people from all parts of society took to the streets. A broad, nonpartisan group came together to defend democracy and resist authoritarianism.

“Every authoritarian who successfully destroyed judicial independence did so because civil society failed to unite in time,” Bonica writes. “The key difference? Whether people mobilized.”
"""

So far, or so it seems to me, the autocrats are ahead on points and civil society is mostly in snooze mode.

Americans have not had to know or watch for the warning signs for so many generations, they've lost sight of how to recognize them. Many seem to regard this as politics as usual, Republicans sticking it to the Democrats. Trump has gone beyond actions that can simply be countered by the next incumbent, into inflicting deep wounds to democracy that may take decades to heal. And he has 3.5 years left to do more. It raises my original question, wondering what it will take before even his own supporters see who he is and what he's done. The most puzzling instance for me are folks like our friend here, who is clearly educated and rational.

At base it is about lost faith and trust in the press, in the political opposition, the Supreme Court and rest of the judiciary, hard science, the international community, public figures with longstanding renown, etc. It's a long list, but they can all be painted with the same conspiracy brush. There comes a point where every counter argument is dismissable merely on the basis of where it comes from, therefore must be wrong and it is only a matter of uncovering the flaw by getting at the real truth that investigative reporting will inevitably find beneath the headlines. There is enough of that going on to support any theory, and it becomes only a question of how much of it sounds believable (virtually all).

There's no coming back from it unless one is willing to challenge one's own views. And that is a choice.

I do believe Trump's tactic of sowing divisiveness is directly tied to maintaining this level of distrust. Keeping the potential opposition at each others throats is a strong approach to winning any deal. Where Americans should be united, he is determined to have them seek the enemy within and to be ever watchful.

>145 Cecrow:

This is very interesting, all should read it:

https://lawliberty.org/the-road-to-one-man-rule/

The division is intentional, and it doesn't just come from Trump. This magnitude of division has swelled since the late 90s. You're looking at this as if only the right has been blind to it. The reason I'm conservative is because the government is and always will be looking to expand its power. It's not just some sort of conspiracy, it's factual. To pretend that one side is so dubious just proves the point in reverse. Even Bernie knows how corrupt the government is... but from some asshole that hasn't worked a real day in his life, of course he gets the solution wrong. Not more government, but less, that's the conservative principle.

The fact that you see this as a one side issue of lying and stumbling over themselves believing falsehoods is exactly how twisted the narrative has gotten. The government creates victims, creates programs, and pays themselves by way of the new programs. USAID was helping/getting money to people at a clip of 12 cents on a dollar... what a freaking joke. That's probably better than most government programs, though. A moderate non-profit is closer to the reverse of that number and people go nuts about, "where has all the money gone!".

Ask yourself why you think anyone should believe the media that has been lying since before the Vietnam War? Why, not just trusting your trusted sources is indeed being fooled. Why all the collusion with our three letter agencies and social media to silence certain stories or groups? You're inherently sensing the truth of the problem, but you're missing that it's both sides and it's on purpose and they actually work together.

New federal employees must praise Trump EOs, submit to continuous vetting
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/new-federal-employees-must-praise-tr...

One more step to full-on fascism ...

California Sen. Alex Padilla handcuffed at Noem presser

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/12/california-sen-alex-padilla-handcuffed-...

The video shows Padilla being forced to the ground and his arms handcuffed behind his back. He has since been released and is in a holding room. The spokesperson said the senator was told he could speak to Noem after the event.

>44 davidgn: Whoa! HHS Secretary Noem will deign to speak w elected CA representative "after the event"!!

US orders 500,000 citizens of four countries to leave (BBC)

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were given special permission to come to the US will be told that they must leave the country immediately. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement Thursday that Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who were previously temporarily shielded from deportation will be emailed notices telling them to go. The DHS said that more than half a million people from the four countries were allowed to remain in the US for two years under orders issued by former President Joe Biden...

How would recent events in the US appear if they happened elsewhere? (Guardian)

I imagine that Thursday’s events in Los Angeles might be spoken of like this: A prominent opposition leader was attacked by regime security forces on Thursday in the presence of the national security tsar, as he voiced opposition to the federal military occupation of the US’s second-largest city following street demonstrations against the regime’s mass deportation efforts...

Erik Ledbetter ‪@bandoblue.bsky.social‬ | June 14, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Park Ranger, former cultural property policy wonk, escaped historian.

Some thoughts about the military parade in my hometown of Washington DC today -- specifically, the route. Military parades in DC are quite rare. But when they happen, they have always begun, symbolically and geographically, at the Capitol and moved outward. 1/ ...

... The parade today by contrast moves west to east, outside to in. It starts at the Pentagon not Arlington National Cemetary. It follows the symbolic route of troops entering to quell or occupy the city, not leaving with love and thanks. 8/
‪
And it ends at the White House not the Capitol. Symbolically it the route is troops called from the Barracks/General Staff to render obeisance to the King, while demonstrating how the King can call in troops to awe the cities. 9/
‪
The symbolism is rich, robust, and deeply un-American.

https://bsky.app/profile/bandoblue.bsky.social/post/3lrkxnpehdk2d

Delaney Hall uprising and protesters outside allowed four hostages to escape

No food or water for 20 hours!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DK5jxL0y7Q9/?igsh=MTZqcDNxenNoODBwag==

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/13/us/newark-migrant-detention-center-escape

Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, told CNN she heard from family members of detainees inside Delaney Hall the commotion began Thursday after the detainees had been fed insufficient lunch after going more than 20 hours without food.

Torres said Friday advocates have learned “chronic food shortages, undrinkable water, crumbling mesh walls, and inadequate staffing led to the chaos” that occurred Thursday.

‘No way to invest in a career here’: US academics flee overseas to avoid Trump crackdown (Guardian)

Budding scholars pursue overseas jobs amid attacks on education and research, prompting fears of an American brain drain... the relentless cuts to scientific research and attacks on higher education by the Trump administration have turned what felt like a promising academic future into unstable ground... Research institutions are feeling the strain from funding cuts from some of the biggest grant-making bodies in the world... But those cuts aren’t the only cause for anxiety. Nerves throughout the scholarly community are also on edge given what is widely perceived as a historic attack on academic freedom through administration assaults against universities... A recent Nature survey revealed that approximately 75% of US-based scientists are contemplating relocation, with early-career researchers and PhD students particularly inclined toward opportunities in Canada, Europe and Australia...

Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for (Guardian)

As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained...

It seems as if the Supremes have given our lad the "enabling act" (well, something darned close), without even having a Reichstag fire first. What a gift!

Quick tour of the inside of one of the tents at Alligator Alcatraz; scheduled to open very soon.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLkdgEKxt9M/?igsh=MXdxNTFleDV4bm9tZQ==

A few of my questions:
Where is the sanitation for each of those units? How will inmates be fed?
Can you imagine how these funds could have been used for something positive?

ICE and Immigration arrests by state since January 20th:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DLkQMknOKhG/?igsh=MTByeWR5aXp2cHJ2

Recommending We Charge Genocide! : American Fascism and the Rule of Law for a detailed exposition of how the legal structure of the US enables (guarantees in fact) fascism. It should also lay down to rest liberals' illusion that their "democracy"/"liberal democracy" is anything other than the mask they put on fascism, but I'm not holding my breath...

>158 LolaWalser:

Thanks. I've put it on hold.

>156 2wonderY: AC not available in regular FL prisons ... Alligators and snakes will be the least of incarcerateds' worries ...

On bsky, call to name "Alligator Alcatraz",

"Alligator Auschwitz" (prisoners in Alcatraz had due process, unlike those in Auschwitz) or
"Everglades Concentration Camp".

Has Trump taken leadership lessons from cold war-era Africa? (Guardian)

Ever since Donald Trump returned to power, pundits have struggled to find apt analogies for his style of governance... While some of these analogies may offer a degree of insight, they are fundamentally limited by their Eurocentrism – as if 21st-century US politics must still be interpreted solely through the lens of old-world history... I’ve found it increasingly difficult not to see striking parallels between recent events in the US and the rise of cold war-era dictatorships in Africa... Mobutu Sese Seko... Idi Amin... Robert Mugabe... Paul Biya... Anti-intellectualism, egomania and delusions of grandeur... Félix Houphouët-Boigny... Jean-Bédel Bokassa... self-aggrandising narcissism... A populist personality cult and masculine pride often go hand in hand with deep paranoia and contempt. Trump’s relentless war on academia and the free press fits squarely within this tradition. In Equatorial Guinea, President Francisco Macías Nguema outlawed the word “intellectual” and prosecuted academics. Amin terrorised universities to the point of brain-drain... But once the comparison between Trump and a cold war dictator is made, it becomes hard to unsee. And it shouldn’t surprise us. The postcolonial dictator was, to a significant degree, an American creation. Sooner or later, it had to come home. The US supported repressive regimes unconditionally during the cold war, viewing them as bulwarks against communism – not just in Africa, but in Asia and Latin America... We’re now witnessing a startling reversal. With the demise of USAID and its retreat from a role promoting global democracy, it’s not only that the US has turned its back on democratising countries in Africa and elsewhere – but that it has begun to imitate some of the worst historical examples of authoritarian rule. Viewing Trump’s regime through the lens of cold war-era autocracies in postcolonial states offers a framework that is both alarming and oddly reassuring. If there is one enduring lesson from the history of autocracy in Africa, it is this: things can turn ugly, fast. Cold war dictatorships were ruthless, bloody and often ended in chaos and state collapse. Yet their histories also show that when courts are neutered and legislatures reduced to rubber stamps, civil society, independent media and the moral force of religious and academic institutions can emerge as the last formidable strongholds against tyranny. After all, sooner or later, dictators die, whereas collective efforts remain.

>160 margd: contd.

Don’t call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a concentration camp.
This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.
Andrea Pitzer* | July 5, 2025

... the budget reconciliation bill would likely make Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in the words of the American Immigration Council, the “the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history.” This expansion risks quickly making ICE the center of gravity for state overreach.

... In the Everglades Tuesday, Trump announced his interest in a multistate network of sites like the one he came to see. Florida proposed the facility as a temporary camp for deportations, but the historical term for this kind of camp is a transit camp, and they’re concentration camps, too. The U.S. also has already sent detainees to El Salvador, Panama, Rwanda and Libya, among other nations, and is in talks with dozens more countries. We’re watching the imposition of a global concentration camp network ...

... The history of this kind of detention underlines that it would be a mistake to think the current cruelties are the endpoint. America is likely just getting started.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/immigration-alligator-alcatraz-conce...

*author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps

Summary of Operation Excalibur
Show of force demonstration at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6d1oLqC/

Fact Check: California Governor Candidate Kyle Langford DID Post Auschwitz Photo as '0% Unemployment Plan'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-california-governor-candidate-191...

>164 davidgn: This is the same guy who's proposed deporting all "illegal" men but giving women a year to marry an "incel" or face deportation

https://www.newsweek.com/republican-kyle-langford-proposes-forcing-migrant-woman...

Trump’s Takeover of D.C. Is Not a {Epstein, polls} Distraction. It’s the Whole Point.
Monica Potts / August 20, 2025

... Trump isn’t actually worried about crime. He’s not trying to make the district safer for its residents, and he’s certainly not weighing the data and evidence when he calls on governors to send guardsmen. Parading troops through an American city is a brazen authoritarian power grab, a test run at martial law in a city with an already heavy federal presence. So we’re well past the point of rebutting Trump’s lies about crime, or trying to gain the upper hand on the issue. What the residents of D.C., and everyone around the country who is alarmed by the rise of MAGA fascism, wants is for Trump’s show of force to be met with an equal show of force. And the Democrats are utterly failing in that regard ...

... Most of the cities Trump has criticized are governed by democratically elected Black mayors, and so the claims that they are crime-ridden are more of a racist bullhorn than a dog whistle.

... videos ... confirm ...white MAGA voter in suburban or rural America ... priors: that our capital, and many other American cities, are crime-ridden hellholes run by feckless Black liberals ... Conversely, if you’re afraid of being targeted by police because of your race or immigration status, you’re going to circumscribe your actions in response to seeing these videos, as well as videos of ICE actions from around the country. Even if you’re not accustomed to being treated with suspicion, you now know that a normal trip through your city might involve encountering federal officers or witnessing someone else being arrested and detained.

... whether the D.C. takeover is a trial run for occupying other cities, or simply an intimidation tactic to try to suppress voters in cities ahead of the 2026 midterm. It’s definitely part of Trump’s only true and unwavering project: consolidating power. Even as he’s posting on Truth Social about crime in D.C., he’s cheering efforts in Texas to redraw district maps to elect more Republicans to the House next year and launching an effort to get rid of mail-in ballots.

... Few {Democrats} have risen to the challenge ... They’re scared of appearing not to care about crime ... “public safety” matters to voters ... They care about it in the same way that they care about the economy or health care. If you ask more specifically about violent crime, Americans will say they’re worried about it because they have been trained—first and foremost by their local news but also, well, the president of the United States—to be worried about it, the facts notwithstanding. They believe crime is a big problem in cities and elsewhere, not where they live, which often tells us much more about racial stereotypes in this country than actual feelings of safety...

https://newrepublic.com/article/199298/trump-federal-takeover-dc-authoritarianis...
_____________________________________

Mehdi Hasan ‪@mehdirhasan.bsky.social‬ | August 21, 2025 at 12:02 PM:
British-American journalist. Editor-in-chief and CEO of new media company @zeteo_news

Do you know how insane and infuriating it is to live in a country where one party claims, with media and public support, the mantle of being the ‘tough on crime’ party while its leader openly calls for convicted criminals to be released from prison ‘or else’?

Trump Truth: "free Tina Peters"
https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3lwwcwdk32k2r
...
Again, in any other presidency, this statement would be a huge scandal. It’d be the top story in the US. The president’s own party would be disowning it. There would even be talk of impeachment.

But right now it’s just another totally normal authoritarian claim.
------------------------------------------------------

Trump threatens ‘harsh measures’ if convicted GOP election denier Tina Peters not freed
Brett Samuels | 08/21/25

... {Tina} Peters, a former Mesa County clerk, was found guilty by a jury in 2024 on seven counts, including four felonies, for helping to facilitate access to the county’s voting equipment in search of voter fraud that she and her allies were unable to prove following the 2020 election.

Peters, who is 69, was eventually sentenced to nine years behind bars {Colorado}. Trump has in the past championed Peters’s cause, and in May he directed the Justice Department to take action to secure her release...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5463191-donald-trump-tina-peters-fre...

A Texas mother was removed from a school board meeting, cuffed, arrested and taken to police headquarters for speaking beyond the time allowed for her comments.
(Charges were later dropped.)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNtm8JQ5JG8/?igsh=MXRmYmUzNHBmemF0Mg==

Footage of a parking lot in the middle of the Mohave desert. Facility owned by CoreCivic. Their vans are equipped with animal cages.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOKv3g1jgMX/?igsh=YnZzbHRyNmNka2h2

Berkeley, of all the places...

UC Berkeley shares 160 names with Trump administration in ‘McCarthy era’ move

Anti-Fascism Scholar Flees U.S. Fearing for His Family’s Safety Amid Trump’s “Antifa” Fearmongering
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/15/mark_bray

Mark Bray, history professor at Rutgers and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (a history of the movement since the 1920s and 30s) has fled for his life to Spain with his wife and two small children. Their first flight reservation out of EWR (Newark) was cancelled inexplicably when they were already at the gate with their boarding passes. (Not the flight. Just their tickets). The following day, he was searched and interrogated for an hour by federal agents before being allowed to depart on a new reservation.

How to stop the courts from functioning

US courts set to run out of money, begin furloughs as shutdown lingers

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-courts-set-run-out-money-begin-furlo...

Chief U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall of the Chicago-based Northern District of Illinois in a statement said she was "concerned that the lack of appropriation will create delays in the court’s ability to ensure timely justice."
Federal public defenders, who represent indigent defendants who have a right to a lawyer, working in offices that are part of the judiciary likewise will not get paid, nor will private lawyers who do the same under the Criminal Justice Act.
Those private lawyers' pay has already been delayed since July after funding for them ran out, a development the courts deem a "crisis."

Friday night massacre: 5 judges fired from S.F. immigration court today

https://missionlocal.org/2025/11/sf-immigration-judges-fired/

Only nine (of 21) immigration judges remain in San Francisco, according to the court’s website.

The Trump administration is seeking to make its mark on the asylum system. Secretary Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday tweeted an ad asking candidates to apply to be a “deportation judge,” promising a salary between $159,901 and $207,500.

Tears flowed in S.F. courtroom as immigration judge was fired mid-hearing

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tears-flowed-in-s-f-courtroom-as-immigration-j...

Someone managed to publish the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT. Here it is in full:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrvj75ad/

>174 2wonderY: That is no longer live. This is, though. https://www.thereset.news/p/breaking-heres-the-60-minutes-segment