At midnight tonight, most of the agencies and services in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will run out of funding, as popular fury over the violence and lawlessness of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S.
If only American would read just one post today it should be this letter.
I try to keep up with the daily news and follow many reliable sources but so much of what’s in today’s letter isn’t in the news. Thank you for your impeccable research and relentless efforts to keep
Americans informed and updated. We must win the midterm elections…..
We watch MS-NOW (the old MS-NBC) and found nothing new in this report by HCR.
Were anyone to watch Chris Hayes on his 1-hour show All IN With Chris Hayes, or The Briefing with Jen Psaki, or The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell they’d get in depth reporting of all that HCR just released tonight.
Of course, I also always read Letters From An American for the times when she delivers highly appropriate historical background reports. They are unique, accurate and exceptionally educational.
HCR Combined with Chris Hayes, Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell we consider ourselves well informed on most all that’s happening within the Trump dumpster fire.
What you don't get watching MSNOW are all the links to the original reporting in Heather's Letters.
Being well-informed isn't enough anymore.
Using the information to protest effectively is what we have to do every day. Whether it's showing up at town meetings or townhalls with members of Congress or your state legislature, or writing to them.
We are at the tipping point. If you aren't speaking truth to the people who have the power to stop this, your silence is complicity.
"...protest effectively is what we have to do every day."
Agreed. Since there is not an organized march or protest every day, we need to keep protest visible and constant. Wear an orange whistle (available less than $5 at sports stores, Amazon, LL Bean, etc.) when out and about, whether ICE is present or not. Our politicians will see the visible protest.
I'm in. Anywhere but Amazon. Don't feed the beast. Buy some for your friends, church, temple, mosque, running club.... Order "red cards" that explain our rights when confronted by law enforcement (including ICE) in both English and Spanish. In some areas they are also produced in other languages as well.
Add the number for the Congressional Switchboard to you phone:
202-224-3121. Better yet, look up each of your elected officials from Senators to State legislatures, the Gov, the AG, and the Secretary of State. Put them All in our contacts (phone numbers and links to their websites so you can email them right from contacts) And Give Them support, or give'em hell.
Ditto for editors of local papers...pick one a day. One bill a day.
And Go to the Local Council meetings and ask "are there any detention centers OR data centers being built within 10 miles of this town, or city, or school, or sensitive habitat, or water source, or airport.....
There is a LOT we can do, while we are busy vetting all the politicians we Hope to be able to vote for in 8 months. With Primaries coming even earlier!
I like Jess Craven's substack for finding ways to take action. And Hopium (but I'm not as keen on establishment Dems if there is someone more progressive who looks like they good win the general election.
Look at New Jersey! Malinowski lost to a Working Family Party Union Activist Analilia Mejia won in the primaries to go up against a Republican - in a blue district. YES!! I contributed to her campaign and it feels sooo good.
Many great wins to come if we All volunteer or give to candidates all over the country. I tend to do this because I live in a solid blue area of California, but with the LA Mayor's primary on March 3, and election in JUNE and the Broligarchy, Oiligarchy and Military Industrial Complex doing every nasty thing to retake the 4th largest economy from LA to the Governor's house I am spread kinda thin.
Daniel Solomon, re the Epstein file, I believe Epstein himself said… a very loose quote…that it would be the $$$ flow not the list of people that would be the destruction of this mal-administration.
I am urging people to get training for being around ICE. Minneapolis is a year-long effort at dealing with an invasion in their City. They are very well trained. Your City has training. Start with Indivisible.
Yes, as an Angeleno I concur. ICE is still here, but trying to stay under the radar while they continue to abduct people based on skin color, place of work and language, still while masked and armed (CA No Secret Police law passed but RW fought & a judge "paused" it for review, & LAPD Chief said he didn't it was workable...PD union working against Dem Mayor in elections, too... as usual)
School car pools, home schooling, home food deliveries, scouts, pro bono legal hot lines (thank you USC Law), volunteers trying to keep businesses open while owners are fighting detainment...struggling on.
About Half of LA's population is Hispanic. LA's economy is hit almost as hard as it was during COVID.and that's being used (intentionally) to Bash Dems from Council & Mayor all the way to the Governor, all up for election in the coming months, all the way through Nov 4. Suffering of the 16 Thousand families who lost homes also being blamed on Dems, when TRUMP has rejected ALL FEMA FUNDS for
devastating fires a year ago.
I think Newsom (who has had to use State Funds instead) and ALL the Dems are NOT being clear enough about that.
But, we all know Dems don't get the coverage the Billionaires Party does...
Get with Indivisible - Ezra Levin & Leah on your list of who to follow - pay attention to primaries! Protest at banks (eg Citizens), Bank of America) that are supporting detention centers
Thanks for sharing this wonderful "to do" list. We need to voice our opinions, NOT WALK ABOUT LIKE SLEEPING ZOMBIES as our wonderful country and our former and current heroes can see that they are not shouldering responsibilities alone!!!! We are in this together!!!!
Yes, how to understand why anyone with an IQ of 80 and above would vote for Donald Trump following his attempted insurrection, 34 felonies, etc., etc., etc. Sleeping Zombies? I think that the ancient Greeks experienced such a phenomenon. They called it amathia, loosely translated as "intentional stupidity," and "willful ignorance." I think that there is more to it. One can be so committed a belief that they lose the ability to assess facts rationally. Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Chair of the Humane Genome Project understands biology and DNA as well as anyone. Collins knows that all life on earth (plants, animals, insects) all share the same DNA, meaning that we ALL are descended from a common ancestor who had that DNA - LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) that lived 3.5 billion years ago. Yes, Collins in a fundamentalist Christian. Collins cannot accept the fact that this life is all we have. For some the racism is so ingrained that their hate is visceral, clouding, obstructing their ability to realize that Trump is a Fascist who will use them and then grind them into hamburger meat. Is it stupid of them? Could be that it is the amathia that causes the "stupidity."
Adopt a Corner... I saw an one of these this past week. It was outside a local high school and the protesters/ralliers were all high school students with a few parent & teacher chaperones (for lack of a better word). It gave me a ray of hope in a week of crappy news. BTW ... every poll is still roughly 60-40 disapprove-approve of ICE/DHS.
My sister has 'adopted' a corner in her very red city. Calm, quiet & always smiling while carrying her sign. Gets waves & smiles back. I have seen a few small groups at corners in my town doing the same thing. Proud of them. Quiet resistance is noticed by all.
As long as local ordinances are followed; including noise in certain areas. The stakes have gotten a lot higher since the Tesla protests. Remember they are disappearing Americans too. We have concentration camps in America now. Be careful and smart.
Thanks for writing, but perhaps I was unclear. I encourage people to wear an orange whistle when out and about, running errands, etc., even when ICE is not present, as a show of protest visible to our politicians. I never mentioned a vest. For those who join protest assemblies, I agree-get the training, which is important. And read MLK's works on non-violent protest.
But walking about while wearing an orange whistle is our right.
Ponder: in the late 1760s, English lawyer William Blackstone published his four-volume “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” This became the basic reference for lawyers in the American colonies, as well as in England.
Blackstone writes, in Book 1: “The law of England regards, asserts, and preserves the personal liberty of individuals. This personal liberty consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.”
Blackstone’s definition of personal liberty is what the Founders had in mind when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Long after independence, lawyers referenced Blackstone, as our Constitution deliberately brought English common law into American civil law. Abraham Lincoln studied Blackstone’s Commentaries in preparation for his law license.
Lately, I encounter American citizens who express feelings of unease, distress, nervousness as a chronic condition they attribute to the current Administration’s policies and practices—not just ICE, but threats to elections, pressures on journalists and media outlets, investigations and lawsuits against political opponents and civil servants, etc.
We have lost that Liberty that Blackstone and Jefferson held as a basic right. How do we get it back?
Exercising your rights could cause an awful lot of trouble. Things escalate very quickly as we have seen in Minneapolis. We are not dealing with ICE agents who have a good head on their shoulders. Do you know the legal boundaries where you can protest? The traffic laws surrounding where you are protesting? The assault an officer laws?
Do you know how to protect those around you? We are in a war. We must be organized and safe.
What is the problem with receiving training from people who know about these things?
trump has been wanting to invoke the Insurrection Act for 10 years. It is only through informed, disciplined protests run by experienced people that we still in the streets.
Again. I am asking everyone to work within a credible organization when protesting.
I have taken to wearing my orange whistle whenever I'm out & about- as a signal to others of my solidarity with those facing discrimination from ICE or HSA. It is just on me for the above stated reasons. I have not seen any ICE agents when out but, I keep watching.
Exercising 'good judgement' in the face of such ignorance is "wicked smaht" if we can just keep our emotions in check. On an aside here, did anyone of you notice the expression on the young woman's (a victim) face who was standing on the left a row or two behind where Atty Gen Bondi was sitting at the Hearing? Huh? Looked to me like she was two breath's away from jumping over the others and grabbing Pammy by her blonde-hair and pummeling the living shit out of her. Anybody get that impression? I sure did.
Not everyone has access to MSNOW or the time to watch/listen to 3+ hours of commentary. HCR consistently recaps the prior day’s important stories and, as noted elsewhere, often gives the historical perspective not given by other commentators. That’s why she’s number 1 on Substack and must read daily!
Sadly, the #1 Substack is the ironically named "Free Press," which was created by neocon Bari Weiss, the new CBS News Diretor. I must say though, I've been watching CBS News lately, especially since the CECOT debacle, and their coverage seems pretty balanced and critical of the administration.
Brian, I think Bari Weiss' days are numbered @ CBS. She is just another minion in the MAGA parade. Many pissed off people have given their views to CBS. I hope the pressure for her to leave works.
Yeah Cindy, but just like every other business, CBS has advertisers who rely on viewer-numbers to sell their product. If CBS didn't pay (pay!!) attention to them CBS would go off the air. So, like you, I've seen some attention to viewership in what they are blabbing about.
Thank you Georgia. The other point of Prof. Heather’s posts are to compile annotated historic records for posterity, who said what and why during these tumultuous times. Yes, she is an historian and she is collecting and annotating historical records for future historians so we can understand, and perhaps prevent, these kind of events from happening again. We can learn from history if we try, hence her careful references from similar events from our past and how these events are being repeated today, and what happens when they do. Who better than HCR to do this for us? I very much appreciate all her efforts.
That truth-social post about reforming elections “by himself” means his Brown Shirts (Dirty 🧊) will be surrounding Blue State/City polls, particularly in swing states. Although advocates are asking for prohibitions (and penalties?) for any 🧊 agent within 100 feet of polls (should be 200 minimum), apparently orange man would veto that. This is the scariest election subversion yet.
WTF can we do to prevent this? People with whistles shouldn’t be the only protection for the Midterms.
Maybe the best advice to be sure your vote is counted without interference is to vote early at an early machine voting location, not just a drop box for a mail in ballot. I think it would be the hardest place to question a valid and you would avoid interference on election day. It is definitely a lot less convenient.
In New Jersey, you can vote early in person at designated county early voting locations, not at every regular neighborhood polling place.
NJ Statewide rule
Every county in NJ must offer in‑person machine early voting for primary and general elections.
Each county designates a limited set of early‑voting centers (typically 3–10, depending on population) where any registered voter of that county can go during the early‑voting period.
Hours are at least Monday–Saturday 10 a.m.–8 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m.–6 p.m. during the official early‑voting window for that election.
You have to check what the rules are for your state.
Otherwise, the States have control over elections. Governors generally can activate their state National Guard to support protection of elections and polling places, but they must do it within federal and state legal limits, especially around voter intimidation and “troops at the polls” restrictions. The first article for 2020 is how the national guard was used during the pandemic, showing a precedent for having them act as poll workers—which seems worrisome to me in red states.
The Brennan Center covers a wide range of intervention scenarios.
If the president “federalizes” a state’s Guard (Title 10 status) for some reason, those forces become federal troops and are then subject to Posse Comitatus and the federal “troops at the polls” prohibition.
This report from July 2024 is long but discusses best practices for policing elections, not that Trump would necessarily allow them to be followed.follow them. Trump is already telling us that we can’t maintain the “preseumption of regularity.”
When we return to living smart people instead of ‘influencers’ who just give us the flu…HCR is the antidote, the antibiotic to the drugstore of the media…no click-bate here! …just the facts and her analysis.
The links are often legacy media which many have abandoned. When people say that I read their reasons that to me seem they have "thrown out the baby with the bathwater". Disappointing. Saving money? Well yes. The WSJ,NYTand WAPO (which may go south) are important sources.
As well Heather reads widely. But as valuable as HCR is, it puts a heavy burden on her. And you can hear/see it at times. She cannot cover it all. We are wearing her out and leaning on her too much. And you cannot get away from this being a filter, no matter how great it is.
That said- she *focuses* in these letters using her knowledge of history and a sense of the vision of this country that is sorely needed at this time. That is what makes them so strong. But she cannot cover it all and think for us all, hold us up.
She repeatedly includes information for further reference, and she includes other organizations that have plans for actions we can all take part in. Join Indivisible to get information for other actions you can take. The online meetings are very good with many actions we can take. When you take part you feel committed to sanity!
who is providing wide ranging pertinent highlights and a couple sentence descriptors of why the news is important. It doesn’t have the connections in Heather’s letters but is a faster and broader read with the links.
I would add, much of what MS-NOW reports, and Heather too, comes from good old-fashioned on-the-ground, working-their-sources, shoe-leather journalists, at the NYT, WSJ, Texas Tribune, other surviving local newspapers and TV stations, Pro Publica, even WaPo, who put in the effort to get accurate, first-hand information. Not to mention publicly available court documents. And thank God for videos. Haven't we all watched Rachel and Chris and Lawrence read us excerpts from various newspapers and court documents night after night? That's where they get their news too. Heather is writing the "first draft of history" and whether it's repetitious or not to what we're seeing at other outlets, I'm very appreciative of her documenting it all and putting it in some sort of order. It's impossible to keep up with the Trump Administration even if that's all we do.
MS Now (MSNBC) - Left Bias - Liberal - Progressive - Democrat - Not CredibleFactual Reporting: Mixed - Not always Credible or Reliable
LEFT BIAS
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information reporting that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Left Bias sources.
Overall, we rate MS Now Left Biased based on story selection that consistently favors the establishment left. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to news hosts and the website producing numerous failed fact checks.
Did you know you can check out every single organization in the media>
I use a group called Media Bias Fact Check:
Here is their Propublica report.
Propublica – Bias and Credibility
Propublica - Left Center Bias - Liberal - Democrat - Progressive - CredibleFactual Reporting: High - Credible - Reliable
LEFT-CENTER BIAS
These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation. See all Left-Center sources.
Overall, we rate ProPublica Left-Center biased based on story selection that favors the left and factually High due to proper sourcing and evidence-based reporting.
"Leah Feiger of Wired reported today that ICE has been quietly and aggressively expanding across the United States in the past months. It has bought or leased new facilities in nearly every state, many of them outside of the country’s largest cities, although they are concentrated in Texas."
I am acutely alarmed. This is how ICE will "quietly and aggressively" command polling places to intimidate people of color from showing up to vote....
Of course Heather's LFAA tonight is yet another one of the Professor's 'best ever'.
But, much more is required of us locally, that Rachel's TRMS often covers.
The Online Privacy Act of 2023 (H.R.2701) regulates your personal SSA data. Any, data data sharing requires a WRITTEN, public facing, computer controls monitored by the "SSA Data Integrity Board".
There's a good Holiday Weekend project, submit Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests (plural) to the Data Integrity Board (DIB).
We need investigations of the DIB, what they have been doing or not doing, during trump 2.0 & specific answers.
Speaking of SSA data,Jess Craven had an action item/script yesterday for calling legislators.This should concern EVERY American!
“I understand that Rep. Larson has introduced a Resolution of Inquiry (H.Res.1059) requesting that the Trump administration furnish information to Congress relating to DOGE’s access to NUMIDENT and other personally identifiable information at the Social Security Administration. We know DOGE violated security protocols and we know our data got leaked.”
Kathy, where did all Musk's minions go after DOGE was disbanded? I hope most of them cannot find further employment after being part of the big swindle! Unless, they have had a Come to Jesus moment & plead guilty for the laws they broke with DOGE.
I am a dual citizen of U.S. and Canada. After 15 years living in U.S. I returned to Canada with my U.S. disabled vet husband, also a dual citizen. I retired in 2015 but did not obtain SS until 2016, with help of my Dem Senator from Florida. I ask Repub Senator too but no help. In 2021 after returning to Canada, I got a letter from SS to report to a SS office to verify my citizenship. At closest U.S. office to me I asked why since SS had verified this when I appled, showing U.S. passport and marriage certificate. Was told it could be due to DHS screening. So in 2021, DHS was getting data from SS. And Musk got SS data illegally and shared it with who knows? Now we vote by mail like millions of other U.S. citizens abroad for a multitude of reasons. Citizenship is not dependent on where one resides, or at least, never was in U.S. Will we deny our U.S. citizens abroad from voting? We're not all in military, etc. Some of us are just retired.
Ayesha, last night we heard from a friend who has a friend from Germany visiting soon. The German friend apparently is now required to submit DNA. And she just barely missed having to supply the names, addresses, etc., of everyone she has known in the US for the last ten years. Personally, i would not come. Our friend is planning to move to Portugal within a year or so. This is insidious.
Hoy S. Anytime I travel outside the US, I sometimes think they could refuse me reentry. I’m an activist. I blog and write a book. I’m concerned but my concerns will not shut me up no way.
A lot of people are not coming and I do not blame them.
What I described is the State Department and Rubio's doing. The first time her friend came, she just got a visa, not this other stuff. I had read about searching social media history before, but submitting DNA is so intrusive and it is for building a data base as is the request for the info on people you know here. We are in our 80s and so are not going anywhere and do not have many years to have to watch our country being destroyed. I hope that the time comes that you feel safe visiting here.
If the DIB is not staffed with MAGA shits, why would they even care or if they did, to just spit out a form letter stating everything is fine and working well. We are now experiencing significant government systems breakdown. I’m surprised I still get my social security check deposited. Something maddening every week even every day as it was in the first 4 years which is why I felt compelled to write a book on said topic.
The coverage was pretty thorough when doge was invading our agencies. I am not naive enough to believe the story that they were looking for “waste” and fraud. Given the $$$ they were wasting. So, we can extrapolate what they were really up to. Proof also exists tgst data was uploaded. So yeah. We DO need to scare people into waking up
Cannot be so naive to really believe DOGE didn't access and steal SS info! Musk wants all the info he can get to be able to control this country's money/ power. His is a heartless, evil man who only understands power. May he NOT live long & prosper.
Numerous articles from trusted news sources like NPR, Politico. Trump admitted Doge misused SS info. Internet is great source of info but stick to trusted sources (not Fox Not News!!!)
We can't make global statements saying they are true without a citation from a trusted. Using the "I heard it somewhere" argument will not work. And frankly Politico is not a trusted source. NPR waffles.
Yes it is. Those big protests make a statement and recruit people to the resistance but it is the small, daily stuff that is so important. Minneapolis is the benchmark for resistance. I have read a bunch about their highly organized efforts from street protesting to taking care of their community. A lot of their channels of communication were secret. There was much training.
And. We must, must change things from the school boards, library boards, dog catcher, whoever runs our local communities. We also need to take care of each other. Pushing away from the keyboard, supporting food banks, showing up at local events of community support for a food garden to school lunch-it all matters.
I wish I had 3 extra hours a day to watch those programs. I especially liked Psaki when she was at the White House. So I just read Heather, with eternal gratitude for the information she provides. You see, I am old enough to retire but can’t afford to, so I work full time!
I'm sorry you have to work past retirement age. But if it's any consolation at all, I am retired & there still are not enough hours in the day to watch everything I'd like to watch. Just keep doing what you can with the knowledge that you are most likely doing MORE than many if not most people! I hope you have this 3 day weekend off. Do take time to watch the Olympics, you get to see people who lose actually do so gracefully & with dignity. That in & of itself is worth the time!!!!
Belle of the Ranch puts out three short (less than 4 inutes) videos daily. She is never the first reporting, but she is rarely wrong on a subject.
In the time since I found her (actually, prior, it was her husband "Beau" who ran the channel) the subscribers have gone from roughly 300K to nearly 875K. The MAGA watch her as well, as they will comment and she will reply and skewer them.
She also does a longer version "The Roads with Belle" once weekly, where she answers questions and goes into deeper dives.
The channel also has two companion channels which used to be on YouTube, but due to some programming issues is now available on Patreon. "Interstate News" and "Research Road" are well worth paying for. You can subscribe to both for $1 a month.
My husband and I listen to these at lunchtime, either while we eat or while we take a walk afterwards.
I already posted a comment with a plea that we all support these independent journalists. Paid if you can afford it, free if you can't.
As with Heather, please folks ALWAYS HIT THE LIKE BUTTON. We want to push our independent liberal journalists up in the computer algorithms!
For those who have a hard time devoting 4 hours daily to watching, check into listening to those shows via their podcasts (vacuuming gets done while listening to the information, exercise gets done, yardwork gets done and you still get the information you need. You can usually find them on YouTube as well, if you aren't a podcast person.
HCR also has her interviews/snippets, etc. on YouTube, which I choose to listen to rather than watch.
I agree about this, yet those of us who follow Heather (HCR) and MS NOW are a somewhat small minority of those who can make the difference. We MUST reach out to those who aren’t getting this information. There are people who are avoiding this news out of “conflict aversion” habits/desires. We MUST show them how their avoidance will bring harm to themselves from the government. Otherwise they’ll continue to blissfully avoid this crucial information.
Yup Cynthia, some have blinders on & earplugs in and are the 1st ones to complain about local, state & federal actions. I do not want to hear any complaints from the likes of them!
Yes, the podcasts are so handy. I listen to them while doing household chores, exercising, or any ordinary activity. It's a two-for. I get stuff done and also get the info.
Ally, I sent you a Substack message with a cut and paste from Paul Krugman's substack today. You may have already seen it. It pertains to health care in Oregon.
HCR s a news consolidator and as such, summarizes issues in a neat package that doesn’t require hours of attention to cable tv, including MS NOW
The flood of chaotic information is exhausting but with HCR, Hubbell and Vance, I can forego cable in terms of issues, references, and links to the ODonnells, Psakis and Hayes
Most people don’t have the TIME to watch two hours of MS-NOW every day I’m retired, and even I miss more than half of them. Heather’s purpose is to package it all up for us in an easy to access format
I agree that these sources are accurate. HCR speaks for me better than anyone. Maybe because I’m so old I can remember some history that others only read about.
Not everyone can afford cable TV and is able to watch the programs you reference. Some of us on limited incomes rely on radio and print resources for which Heather is beyond invaluable as is Democracy Now!
MSNOW aside, it seems like much of national media is intimidated or threatened by trump and the federal government to try not to report anything that might make trump and his GOP Congressional collaborators look bad. Many of the legacy media should also be considered collaborators. The right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court are definitely collaborators and do all they can to make this fascist coup successful. When GOP Congressional people defend the indefensible tactics of federal law enforcement agents who disregard Constitutional rights and hide their identity so they won't be held accountable for their lawless behavior, it is proof that the GOP is wholly supportive of the fascist takeover and is indeed the fascist party. They have been rigging elections for decades and have constantly tried to restrict voting rights because when everyone is eligible to vote, they will always lose.
Dirk, I read over watching, although I have been watching the Munich Security Conference all weekend, but will have to find transcripts of what was said to go over it better. I also consider the station you are talking about to be Legacy media, and not reliably trustworthy.
What today's letter highlights is not a procedural quarrel. It is a constitutional stress test.
When funding for the Department of Homeland Security becomes contingent on reform, the issue is no longer bookkeeping. It is whether Congress will tolerate the normalization of unchecked federal force. A government that can deploy armed agents into communities without clear identification, meaningful oversight, or consistent adherence to warrant requirements is a government drifting away from constitutional balance.
The urgency lies in precedent. If lawmakers fund agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without demanding transparency and due process, they effectively ratify whatever practices are currently in place. Silence becomes consent. Appropriations become endorsements.
This moment is larger than immigration policy. It concerns the architecture of power. The Constitution divides authority precisely to prevent consolidation and abuse. Congress holds the purse strings not as a formality, but as leverage. If that leverage is abandoned out of political fatigue or fear of shutdown headlines, then one of the last structural checks weakens.
Public outrage is not incidental in this equation. It is a signal that citizens recognize a boundary being crossed. When people see masked agents, unclear chains of command, or detainees denied access to counsel, they are not reacting to partisanship. They are reacting to a perceived erosion of rights that were supposed to be universal.
A republic does not collapse all at once. It erodes through tolerated exceptions. Emergency justifications become routine. Oversight becomes symbolic. Each funding cycle that ignores these warnings hardens the new normal.
The choice before lawmakers is stark. Either they assert constitutional authority and condition funding on enforceable safeguards, or they allow executive enforcement power to expand by default. Budget deadlines come and go. The standards set in moments like this endure.
This is why the conflict matters. It is not about dollars. It is about whether constitutional democracy remains operational in practice, not just in rhetoric.
Well articulated, Michael. This is larger than the "policy" issues, it is about the very foundation of this country's government that are being shredded.
Indeed, it gets slowly boiled to death, like the proverbial frog. One look at the red face of Lindsey Graham after a Southern Comfort bender tells you what we’re up against.
Yes, I completely agree. And this is about the rule of law, the idea that the only king we need is written law. Adherence to our established boundaries in written, stable, publicly known law for behavior, and comportment is what we demand. Here, insisting that Congress holds the power to decide to fund or not to fund the ICE agents, follows a legal process that has been written for centuries, and has been stable should be unchanging. Our concern is that many of these Administration are acting outside of legal boundaries.
I wish we had a "thousand likes" button. This is a perfect distillation of what is going on. Of course it ALSO matters in terms of damage and pain being done by ICE goons and these concentration camps. Two vital reasons to resist.
The GOOD news is that Trump/MAGA is down 14% in its average approval ratings since Trump's innaguration. That equals 12,000,000 votes out of the 77,000,000 who mistakenly voted for the lying fascist rich boy and are now expressing remorse. And in case you haven't heard, Trump's drop in popularity is of course Biden's fault..Why? Biden let 11 million illegal, criminals into the US which has forced Trump to use harsh methods to get them deported. I would just point out that the $110 Billion Trump/GOP has devoted to his ICE Gestapo secret police and prison camps is the amount of $s Americans need to refund our ACA healthcare subsidies. The people will choose in Nov.
yes. and let's be sure to make the "invisible quotation marks" Visible around words like "illegal, criminals" or the whole statement from "Biden..." to "...deported"
because language is also very weaponized and charged in times like this.
Thanks for defining our involvement in government! We cannot act as though we don’t know what to do or are too busy to do it! The exhaustion is being bread by the constant torrent of crap published by this administration. Resist! Never think I don’t know what to do! Act as if your actions matter because they do!
I often take for granted Dr. Richardson's research abilities. At the end of each LFAA she lists the sources of today's newsletter as you know. Today's newsletter lists over 20 sources. Truly amazing.
Many of the sources are buried behind a paywall or not readily accessible. She must pay a pretty penny to access all of these sources.
This is exactly why I urge people to support HCR and other good sources with a paid subscription. Sure, lots of us doing that exceeds the cost to vet with other news services. Imagine the effort to have the equipment to be on You Tube, do a podcast, et. and make them worth watching or listening to. It takes supporting staff who are as committed to good work as the person we see and hear.
Dt. Richardson has said repeatedly not to worry about subscriptions. She is not hurting for money.
"Heather Cox Richardson is one of the most popular historians in the U.S., boasting more than 3.2 million Facebook followers and 2.5 million Substack subscribers, making her the most-subscribed individual creator on that platform. In “Letters from an American,” the newsletter she began writing in 2019, the 62-year-old analyzes current events by connecting them to broader historical trends and patterns in American history. She also regularly hosts evening live chats on Facebook, taking reader questions in a new version of the nightly news.
In the realm of traditional media, Richardson is the author of seven books, including To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America, and Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America—she’s well-positioned to cover a divided United States. When she’s not writing, she’s a professor at Boston College, teaching 19th-century American history to undergraduate and graduate students. At the core of Richardson’s work is ensuring people have an understanding of past mistakes, in hopes the nation can avoid repeating them.:
I'm more than happy to have a paid subscription with the professor. If nothing else, a portion of my fee goes to Maine state coffers so others benefit from it as well.
Not my point. I was citing Dr. Richardson. We are in the process of building a non-legacy media. Many excellent contributors are struggling to pay bills while they get a following. I have been supporting the start-ups and then when they get well established I move my subscription dollars to another "truth-teller". We here in this forum) put together a list of non-legacy media:
Raw Story
Katie Phang
Allison Gilal (Muellershewrote)
UnJustified
The Daily Beans
Trilogy Barbara Mullen
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Anne Applebaum
Robert Reich
Dr. Heather Cox Richardson
Joyce White Vance
Timothy Snell
Timothy Snyder
Meidas Touch
Brian Tyler Cohen
The Contrarian
Ryan Goodman
Simon Rosenberg
The Guardian
Jay Kuo
Lucian Truscott
Olga Lautman's "Unmasking Russia"
Judd Legum's "Public Notice"
Marc Elias's "Democracy Docket"
"Musk Watch" (also Judd Legum)
Dean Blundell
D. Earl Stephens, "Enough Already”
“What Did Trump Do Today”
Elizabeth Graham's "From Democracy to Democracy"
Bill McKibben
Rachael Maddow
The Bulwark
Geddry's Newsletter
This list was put together by readers on Dr. Richardson’s Letters forum. I do not have personal knowledge of all of these entities.
I suggest giving family and friends subscriptions to HCR’s letters. You can’t make them read the letters, but you can hope they open even a few! We have to give them factual information.
Yes, this is why we must be willing to pay to get HCR podcasts! If it is vital do it, cut something else! I also support NPR; since they were the first independent news organization; in existence since 1970!
Some of these sources may be available through academic libraries and databases, and may be available to faculty and students. You’re correct, they do cost money to access.
Yes, you feel like you are nickeled and dimed everytime you get gas, or go to the grocery store or whatever store where you have to obtain necessities.
Trump and the MAGA folks have made the claim that illegals are brought into the U.S. to vote. That is a huge lie. I have served a number decades as an election officer/worker. It's more difficult for an illegal here to vote in a U.S. election than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. This is a Trump ruse to gain access to the voting instruments so that he can "fix" them.
Hey richard you dumb fuck you dumb IGNORANT, CLOSED-MINDED fuck. That’s how much you know you dumb fuck and now you’re spreading lies. Look up the Supreme Court of New York when New York City tried to get 800,000 undocumented people to vote in a local election EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND.
TAKE YOUR PAIL AND SHOVEL AND GET BACK INTO YOUR SANDBOX.. YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A GULLIBLE CHILD.
Rick, I love your response. True, NYC tried to get 800,000 undocumented people to vote in the city election. A number of jurisdictions across the nation permit non-citizens who are residents to vote in local election, but not in national elections. In the NYC case, the New York Supreme Court struck down the effort to allow undocumented residents to vote in the city elections.
Now go tell everybody here who thought I was full of shit when I told people that they try to get undocumented voters to vote here in this country and they called me a liar because of their ignorance nobody ever told him Heather never mentioned anything here did you know and you think it’s OK that they try to get them documented voters to vote to control the citizens of the country of the area they voted in? Do you know what the penalty is for illegal aliens in Mexico?
Rick, in the U.S. elections between 2016 and 2020, there were 306 convictions of voter fraud across 37 states; 39.4% for Democrats and 41.1% for Republicans. Donald Trump lost the 2016 popular vote by 2.8 million votes and the 2020 election by 7 million votes. What happened to all those illegal votes? There were statistically insignificant. Divide 307 by 37. That's 8,3 votes per state. The claim that illegal immigrants are imported to vote is B.S. Trump's claim should be made of sterner stuff. Why don't you research this stuff?
And by the way, Richard, if nobody protested the Supreme Court never gets the case and 800,000 people vote and if you don’t think that spreads like measles or Covid in your brain does not function and you’re not being real what is the price for a liberal.
You won’t need election workers if you have show government issued identification from the federal government.
Are used to live in a very upscale community with the likes of the Jenners and Marla Maples and we had 300 homes in our community and you go to the garage of somebody’s home within the community and you can’t vote unless you show them their picture ID Let’s stop the nonsense on the politicking, and let’s be real. There’s no reason in the world
Reason in the world that everybody shouldn’t have every citizen shouldn’t have ID. Any attempt to avoid that is an attempt to allow people to vote who are not allowed to vote. It’s that simple. Can’t go to the movies without a ticket
You can’t drive without a license I would print line by line, everything you need Picture ID, but nobody would read it
I’ve even put up links here. Nobody gives a shit, especially the liberal Democrats, especially the Democrats. It’s only Republicans that care and people sit here and tell stories about hick Republicans . and yet 100% of true Republicans think you need the right to vote. I happen to be an independent voter registered independent for the last 45 years
Anyone thinks you don’t need ID to be able to vote in this country believes in cheating believes in lying believes in gaming the system… i’ll try to use issues in the 40s 50s or maybe even 60s to talk about the poor that could never get to a place to get a license the biggest crock of shit and you know it and so does everybody who wants to game the system.
I didn’t say National but that’s where it starts Richard that’s exactly where it starts.
And It didn’t happen in any republican settings, did it? If you don’t see, this is a problem that we have a problem with this country. Because there’s a chance you’re going to allow a foreigner who has no roots here nor ALLEGIANCE to this country to decide how we live. That’s exactly why Biden brought in all those folks.
But I think we should do is go down to Mexico City with a couple hundred thousand a bus start to determine how the Mexican government is run…
Kelli - here is my theory about why “blanketgate” became such a story: while we were hearing all about that and getting outraged, behind the scenes, and well below the fold of MSM “news” publications, DHS quietly awarded a sole source, 5-year, $1B non-competed blanket purchase order contract to Palantir. That’s a “billion with a B” that they can give to Palantir for any task order within contract scope, with zero competition, scrutiny, or accountability.
Why isn’t the MSM asking hard questions about this? I think we all know why.
I won't watch CBS so who knows. PBS covered it pretty well, but even NBC opened with Nancy Guthrie and then men's figure skating. It's true that much is left uncovered or is later in the newscast.
Not to mention television's obnoxiously repetitious Prosperity-Gospel, see-what-you-could-afford-if-you-weren't-so-offensive-to-the-One-True-God-of-Capitalism commercials. Indeed in my old age I occasionally wonder if somewhere in the cosmos, there exists a demonic focus group that gave birth to the noun "capitalism," convulsing with sadistic laughter at having sold our species, as part of the malignancy of patriarchy, an economic label that is actually the secret acronym for an apocalyptic curse: Conning All Peoples Into Terminally Accepting Lethally Irresistible Sociopathic Madness.
Many liberal people have turned away from legacy media, and even the cable channels seem to be leaning a bit more to the right than before. I used to always watch Morning Joe; no more. But Rachel Maddow, yes, always.
Actually Joe and most of his guests have drifted back to the middle-left since becoming Trump apologists right after they met with Trump and lost thousands of listeners/viewers.
And of course, Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow are devout never trumpers.
If Morning Joe were the best, most informative news show around, I couldn’t watch. His constant bloviating is so off putting. He just talks on and on over people.
I don't place 100% trust in any media company that traces its ownership back to a few billionaires. MSNOW is one of those, though it does seem to be relatively trustworthy. The skin they have in the game is not the same as my skin. I always supplement with alternative sources, and try to collate the info and filter out the bias if I can. It's not easy. HCR is one go-to source that I feel I can trust almost 100%.
You have to diversify your sources, unlike those who get everything they need to know from FOX.
My biggest problem is that most of the other sources, being independent, need funding, and seem to restrict access to subscribers only. I can't afford to take a yearly, or monthly subscription to every alternative news source. That would eventually end up as a small mortgage payment. Someone needs to figure out a way to allow single-item subscriptions, maybe a one-stop, a lá carte site where you can pick and choose what you want to pay for. A buck an item would work.
Respectful suggestion from a (very) old newsman: supplement Dr. Richardson's vital reports with free subscriptions to other relevant Substack contributors. Also get free subscriptions from The Guardian, the BBC and Associated Press. But if you're cursed with Gmail, be aware that Google will Naziwrench your subscriptions by burying beneath the garbage in the Promotions Dumpster nearly everything these sources send.
Another superb free source, always truthful albeit a bit preachy, is the World Socialist Web Site, which often scoops the world on events the more mainstream media is reluctant to cover.
For breaking news, the AP website is almost as good as having an A-Wire teletype (national and international news) beside your desk.
(Occasionally, in desperate need of a shot of nostalgia, I'll click on this while reading it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWa6u5_Itvs The constant sound of these machines -- a dozen or more on the larger newspapers -- was part of the ambience of every daily's newsroom in my day. The first time I heard it was in Michigan on an East Grand Rapids Elementary School fourth-grade tour of The Grand Rapids Herald, spring of 1950, and it thrilled me in a way I had never before experienced, almost like a very gentle electric shock. Unbeknownst to me then, six years later The Herald would give me the part-time job -- half sports stringer/half copyboy -- that began my lifelong journalism career. And it would be dishonest for me to claim that, during my working-press years, that first teletype-evoked thrill ever completely faded.)
Signe, I may be alone among this community, but when Mr. & Mrs. Scarborough rushed down to Maga-Lardo to kiss Donald's whatever, I stopped watching MSNBC (MS-NOW). Unless and until that network jettisons those two hypocrites, the channel is on my do-not-watch list. I can catch Maddow through other platforms.
I have not wasted my time watching legacy media or cable 'news' for at least a dozen years. It is fluff. I do tune in to PBS Newshour most days - although I am tiring of this too.
I eliminated TV and cable years ago, even though it takes a huge amount of my time to read and listen to conversations on Substacks for information -- I get in-depth conversations among thought leaders. NYTimes and The Guardian are good supplements. Why assume everyone watches TV? Reading comments here has given me pointers to specialized points of view -- some are free, some I pay for.
An added plus of Substack is that it feels like a community is forming, when you see the same names appear regularly with coherent comments. I appreciate that!
I sure miss the news people of my younger years. I would watch with my father. Now, my channel changer gets a workout trying to find news that isn't about entertainment or selling body creams & gadgets. Blah, blah, blah.
And we MUST not let the senate republicans pass the so called SAVE act. Of course it would be optimal if we could win the midterms and stop every single bad move the republicans try to make on behalf of the monster in the White House.
Heather also gives Youtube chats and explanations regularly which I find a must. And I read a lot else as well. In the videos she elaborates, answers questions and makes comments. The letters, as here, are straightforwardly about what has happened this day.
I agree with you Ms. Marrello.Local newspapers are covering fluff and normalizing the assaults to our democracy by Trump and his idiot, mean spirited thugs. When it comes to local crimes by common people, then our local news reports are harsh. It is an assault to our sensibilities to read about local citizens being called out for their crimes when Trump and his band of smug thugs commit crimes to a greater extent and it is ignored or sanitized
It occurred to me this morning that we could take screenshots of our ballots after we fill then out and before we post them. That way, we have visual proof of our votes in case of administrative tomfoolery.
Do you mean the part about the lawlessness about law-enforcement? Do you live in some upside down world or what? I think Heather was actually lost it.
She’s becoming a true capitalist, feeding her fans whatever they wanna hear and all I wanna hear is hate Trump so she feeds them. Her historian moniker has been buried at some funeral home and she only takes it out when Trump does something fantastic. She can’t deny it so she changes the topic and talks about something historical like the Lakota Indians. Lmao. And all the saps here drool over it like its manna from heaven.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the breach of faith with the naturalized citizens. They put a great deal of effort into becoming citizens and are often BETTER citizens than the native born. When they take the oath there is a sacred trust between them and their adopted country. This regime is breaking that trust and destroying the system that depends on it.
I read a piece today describing their intention of making it much easier to denaturalize naturalized citizens, which is historically has been very difficult and only pertained to cases like somebody discovered to have been a Nazi prison guard. naturalized citizens get put in that position only extremely rarely.
This seems like the white Christian nationalist campaign on steroids. They’ve taken a look at who has become naturalized citizens and they’re not liking what they’re seeing… Too Brown, etc. it’s just sickening.
illegals, green card holders, naturalized citizens, then citizens. First they came for...then they came for me.... This is playing out in real time. MAGAs think they are safe....just wait.
Exactly. These warehouses and detainment centers are the MAGA ‘gulag archipelagos’ for dissidents, ‘undesireables’ (which in this case involves the intention of eliminating superfluous people—ie, the disabled, homeless, mentally ill, sick , seniors, and any d ed hi detract from the billionaires’ profit margins. Genocide is one of the dystopia features of the TechBro/Christofascist Taliban oligarchy. Not the cuts to population in P2025 and the subsequent cuts to health care, Soc Sec admin, cancer research, food safety, toxic chemicals and environmental pollutants….
Rickey, Robert Hubbell's column of yesterday/today says: "Homeland Security is asking those same social media companies to turn over information about users and accounts that “criticize ICE.” See NYTimes, Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. (Accessible to all.)" This apparently refers to anyone who uses a social media platform with a fictional name, who criticizes ice. OMG.....
You know it! However, the malignant narcissist is actively destroying our democracy and its institutions. Demolishing just like he took down the East Wing of the White House. May his name forever be associated with evil.
He would fail a standard test for normal person Eb. And he'll be our president for three more years...🤢. What's wrong with you Americans, didn't you know?
Ricardo, I don't agree with Marj entirely. I believe we'd all be astonished by the number of U.S. citizens who avoid exposure to the news. In fact, a prevalent trait among U.S. residents is avoidance of anything that causes discomfort or inconvenience. A significant portion – perhaps even a majority – of the electorate base their voting decisions on the advice of friends, family, fellow church members, work colleagues, etc. without actually getting firsthand information about candidates and issues.
Equally astounding is the number of voters who base their voting decisions on appearance and/or likability!
And let's not forget the drones who will vote for a ham sandwich if it wears the label of their party, and would not vote for Jesus Christ himself if he wore the wrong color cap.
I would estimate that of the 77 million who voted for Donald, less than 15 million actually knew or cared what they were voting for.
Jocelyn, I've written it before, and I'll write it again. It's absurd that that to legally drive in this country, one has to complete driver education, pass a test and be licensed. One must complete years of education and pass the bar examination to be a lawyer. One must finish college, then medical school to be a licensed physician. One must complete ground training, then many hours in a cockpit to be a pilot.
But one can be illiterate, uneducated, ignorant of the Constitution and the law, and a failure at everything s/he's ever attempted. One only needs to have been born on U.S. soil at least 35 years ago to be elected as president of the United States. Example: Donald Trump.
Hi Marj, that's why it turns my stomach upside-down when I read, even nowadays, that "only" about 40% supports the regime.....only?. How many stupid people a nation can hold and fir how long?. In any case, thanks for your reply 👍
I have doubts that I, a US citizen, could pass the citizenship test. Sad but true that most of us have forgotten the bulk of US history, the main questions on that test.
You hit the nail on the head JL. It's hard to maintain trust when the regime is rotten from the top down and the Constitution and laws are being ignored.
Trust is really trust when it is earned, and , of course, expect the eventual if not immanent emergence of the unexpected. I think the scientific method does that. I think it is a key component of wisdom, trusting what, based on evidence and logic, is most likely to be true, and judging, from conscience and experience, what is most worth going after, or avoiding. We often associate that with age, but there are so many exceptions. It primarily involves "seeing", "feeling", and "listening" to what things in themselves are telling us is true, rather than what we just wish or fear is true. Also to pursue what we wish were true in consultation and cooperation with reality, so far as we can detect it. It can change our world.
They are going after immigrants at every stage of the naturalization process. What is scaring me is that they are being so blatant about the flimsiness of the legal justifications. Just write anything with the right title in the memo and start doing it.
The Trump regime is directing more deceit and cruelty at immigrants who are or have been seeking refugee status and lawful permanent resident (LPR) status and were admitted since the beginning of the Biden administration. They are reviewing and re-interviewing everyone in that category, including those who have already been granted LPR status(green card holders).
Apparently, immigrating during the Biden years is a potential disqualifier for refugee status and a green card. Biden derangement syndrome paranoia rears its ugly head.
The deceit lies in citing an order as justification for the program, even though it specifically states it will NOT apply to refugees. The alternate explanation is gross incompetence.
The cruelty comes from upending people’s lives by threatening loss of refugee status, or worse, revocation of LPR status so that people may no longer work legally. You can still apply for other visas, like family-based or work-based, but you need to start the immigration process all over again, according to the US Consulate rules.
A denial of a new visa or status does not automatically mean you will be deported immediately, but if you are in the U.S. without any valid status, you can be placed in removal proceedings and eventually ordered detained and removed if no relief applies.
The next question is: will people whose LPR status is revoked be considered “applicants for admission” and, under their new rules, therefore ineligible for bond hearings before an immigration judge? That policy is currently being litigated.
They are deporting people seeking asylum status, like the family of the little boy Liam, whom ICE detained at his school. This violates our treaty obligations, which are among our highest priority laws. The government may find the family doesn’t qualify for asylum, but it is required to give them due process, and the people being detained are given no due process and are treated as not human beings. Due process as a right is not limited to citizens. It applies as well to noncitizens.
One of the problems is that the courts move at glacial speed. So DHS knows they can get away with ... well, you know ... for months before any action is taken by a judge. By then some persons will have been spirited away to who knows where. There has to be a way to address this in a timely manner.
You are correct about this. Courts move slowly, and this can be due to inadequate staffing or the timing involved in filing motions, hearing depositions and judicial decisions on motions. Judge Boasberg saw this happen when this maladministration deported people in defiance of his explicit order in a specific case he was hearing. It’s consistent with Trump’s view he and his minions don’t have to obey court orders. For ordinary litigants, the litigants defying court orders would be facing contempt penalties.
It all started at the White House Press Corps dinner in 2011 when Obama roasted Trump. He has never forgotten that. Forensic psychiatrist James Gilligan, author of "Violence" and former director of mental health services in Massachusetts prisons writes and lectures that all violent criminals said the same thing to him about why they had to become violent: "They disrespected (dissed) me." Ketchup on the walls, now blood in the streets.
Birtherism was always code for racism. It was preposterous enough that it would never have flown without a racist subtext. At the point at which Democrats realized they had to cut loose of their their Dixiecrat baggage, the former "Party of Lincoln" saw their golden opportunity to dominate.
It has been no secret that Stephen Miller wants to "de-naturalize" and remove citizens he thinks don't belong here--meaning nonwhite citizens, of course.
Amen sister. Naturalized citizens earn what we born citizens take for granted- until now. Remember how Trump started? He questioned Obama’s birth certificate and his citizenship. What makes any of us think Trump and his dutiful band of thugs will not question a passport or birth certificate.
It’s a short step from that to revoking citizenship from those with birthright. And then where do those stateless people go? We’ve read this book before.
Holier-then-thous want people immigrating “the right way” but nab them as they check in, exactly what they are supposed to do, or capture them and throw them into a torture center anyway.
MLM, I've heard that trope of "immigrating 'the right way'" far too often from people I knew to be dyed-in-the-wool racists. Knowing our immigration/naturalization process is nearly endless, it's just a hypocritical stall to keep Black and brown people in that vulnerable, not-quite-legal status, thus affording white folks privilege and power.
Annabel, what is also hard for those becoming naturalized is the choice they make to give up citizenship for the place they were born. Gee, I think I remember my school history lessons telling me of how this ENTIRE country was filled with immigrants from around the world. Of course, displacement of indigenous people is a horrible part of our history,
Everything that Jeffries and Schumer are asking for with DHS are strictly common sense measures to conform to our Constitution and law. But it should be clear by now that with Trump’s ratings at all time lows he knows he can’t win the midterms. He is resourcing and massing ICE troops around the country to be in position to intimidate and tamper with elections. In the past he called on extremist groups like The Proud Boys to stand by. Now he’s assembled his own band of regime thugs.
Not only common sense, but common practice by virtually all police forces in every republic or constitutional monarchy where accountability forms the basis of the social contract. That cannot be emphasized enough. Such countries would never accept as normal, right or proper a situation where security forces operating within a country feel they can (and DO) do whatever they feel to anyone they please, much less target racial, ethnic or linguistic minorities, regardless of legal status.
Years ago, after the Dayton Peace Accords brought both a cease-fire and political stability to the former Yugoslavia, monitoring countries brought new standards of governance to ensure that peace survived. At a conference devoted to law enforcement in particular, a senior Dutch police official secunded to Bosnia told attendees how he refused to permit Bosnia’s police —regardless of ethnicity — to wear sunglasses, much less conceal their identities from the public.
People must see your eyes, he told his Bosnian counterparts — you have no right to conceal them. Eye contact saves lives, yours included, he reminded them. Wearing sunglasses (especially those reflector wrap-a-rounds so favored by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere) sends a powerful message of superiority and unaccountability. It invites the abuse of power utterly inconsistent with the very concept of a constabulary force accountable to law, oversight and public service. Military forces steel in attack and secrecy, police forces are the very representatives of a republic accountable to its own people. (Inscribed on every badge of our own Washington DC police force are the Latin words — Justitia Omnibus — justice for all).
Sunglasses. I can only imagine what he thinks of today’s quasi-Brownshirt force of thugs — in AMERICA of all places — right-wing goons and swaggering, dress-up cowboys chosen specifically for their arrogance, racism, cruelty or fuckupery…
ICCT, you've hit the nail on the head. An anecdotal piece to illustrate: After the 9-11 attack in New York, local law enforcement agencies held a vigil at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza in front of the county courthouse. We stood watch in pairs at the flagpole. It was a bright, sunny day, and the rule was "no sunglasses". Our very insightful sergeant in charge of this detail said "they have to see you, not your image."
We should never forget that Trump, his efforts to legitimize white-supremacist genocide, the resultant ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, To learn of the carefully hidden roots of the crisis, the documentation of which include a PBS film about the enormous support for Hitler here in the '30s and additional, meticulously footnoted documentation of the plutocracy's support for Nazism, go here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-25-2026?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=205274486
I think they would also be checking any voter registration records they manage to extort from the states. Trump tried to get Bondi to demand Minnesota’s voter registration database in order to stop ICE’s hostile takeover of Minneapolis, and Gov. Walz correctly refused to succumb to this blackmail attempt. Homan just declared ICE was pulling out of Minneapolis without getting the voter database Bondi demanded. Bondi also put on an extremely unprofessional and disgraceful performance this week at her House hearing.
Yes, Bondi was a true Mean Girl, immature and incompetent. Since incompetence reigns in this regime, such as how they botched the Epstein files release, do you think they'll be able to pull off eliminating only likely Dem voters with their sweep of registration records? They don't really seem to be smart enough to be that effective.
Just a reminder: Bondi is 60. She was a registered agent/lobbyist for Qatar. She’s no dummy. Her testimony before Congress was a theatrical performance. My view is that while she may not be in the Epstein files, she is well acquainted with those who are, having navigated the Qatar/Kushner/UAE debacle.
Bondi has a sordid legal and political history. This appears in USA Today February 13, 2026:
"Pam Bondi's fiery Epstein hearing raises questions about Trump's defense
The hearing was heated, but nothing about Pam Bondi's performance was new.
Hannah Phillips
Palm Beach Post
Feb. 13, 2026, 5:05 a.m. ET"
Also "Key Points" in the above-mentioned article:
- Attorney General Pam Bondi faced a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files.
-During the hearing, Bondi was accused of protecting President Trump and redacting names of potential co-conspirators from the files.
-Bondi's past actions include declining to investigate Trump University after her political action committee received a donation from a Trump foundation.
-After her tenure as Florida's attorney general, Bondi joined Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial.
They’re going to try their best, but I think you are correct there is a possibility they could prevent Republican women from voting. Not all states have turned over their data, and they have categorically refused to do so.
I suspect (but do not know) that Republican women might be more likely to take their husband’s last name than Democratic women. I did, but I at least have a passport.
I have a passport, and also my birth certificate. I was born female and identify as a straight female, just never married. I suppose I am one of those childless cat ladies (I have one cat) whom Vance deplores. Well, I deplore Vance as Thiel bought him one of our state senate seats, and now he’s an obnoxious wannabe fascist VP without Trump’s demagogic appeal.
Toughen up a bit. As Hitler gained power in the 1930’s, I’m sure his opponents were castigated for name calling. Are you prepared to actually fight if that is needed to prevent a Trump-MAGA-Nazi takeover of America???
JBR - Name calling may not be effective but I totally agree with the statement and it is a true statement. Unlike anything coming out of Trump administration.
My guess is that the Proud Boys are no longer "standing by" -- they are on the ICE payroll, enjoying the manifold opportunities to inflict suffering on whomever they please.
The United States is building concentration camps.
Republicans are trotting out government employees on the devastations of shutdowns. The same Republicans who've empowered and cheered on Elon Musk and Russell Voight to fire tens of thousands of government employees. And are applauding cabinet members decimating their agencies. Personified now by Kristi Noem firing the Coast Guard pilot of her love nest plane because her blankie was left behind. Sheesh.
Yes those are not just detention sites but more accurately concentration camps when Representative Jamie Raskin visits one and he sees “60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets.”
Extrapolate that to the processing centers that can hold 1,000 to 1,500 detainees at a time before funneling them into eight megacenters that can hold up to 10,000 detainees each. While also spending almost $40 billion to "retrofit" a couple dozen warehouses that are to house the detainees. It's obvious for one to see that these are going to be concentration camps holding way more people than the Trumpian regime ever admits or accounts for, with deplorable conditions and food, and callous or even inhumane treatment of detainees.
Worst of all, the centers are privately run for profit, there is a profit incentive to maximize profits by treating detainees as poorly as possible, keeping members of Congress out, although they have a legal right and duty to inspect these facilities, and ignoring their medical needs. The private operators of these detention centers (concentration camps ) have no direct accountability to the public, and it enables them to get away with these tactics.
We should recognize the sexual victimization of terrorized children by the Trumpstein Cult is the immediate predecessor, perhaps even a test run, of the terror the MAGAstapo is now unleashing on anyone who refuses to kowtow to the ChristoNazi theocracy. Thus the vital, know-our-enemy relevance of the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn by the plaintiff in response to credible death threats: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf
And when this is finally all over and the people vote out these monsters, those people who have been traumatized by being in these centers will never be the same. We will be atoning for this for decades and decades. And yes they are most definitely concentration camps where people are not even afforded basic human dignity.
Agreed, Carol. And this nightmare will yield immeasurable hidden costs. Statistics show that "mild criminals" who are abused during incarceration often become hardened, more violent criminals when released. Why would anyone be surprised that an innocent person who's been incarcerated and mistreated would become bitter and angry, ready to lash out at the society that imprisoned them?
Not to mention those who will suffer lifelong psychological problems as a result of the trauma. Who will pay for their treatment, if they are treated at all? And if not, what becomes of them? Homelessness? Who pays for shelters?
The category of ''enemies'' is elastic. It's a concern I've had since the 2024 election when I worked as a Poll Inspector. In some states, you (can) list your party affiliation when you register to vote in order to vote in the primaries. It has been a concern stewing in the back of my mind ever since.
Every voter needs to chane to "Unaffiliated". I look up my voter registration info at least once a month and in Colorado my registration indicates "Unaffiliated". Maybe a way to stump them besides our blue state Secretary of States refusing to comply.
Agreed. I have friends who have switched to Independent or Unaffiliated, but I have chosen to keep mine as ''D''. If they come after me, so be it. I refuse to be cowed by them.
Hence my argument that Trump, the ChristoNazis and the MAGAT rabble -- most notably because of their utter absence of empathy (and their fanatical belief empathy is a sin) -- may actually mark the emergence of a new subspecies of (sub)human, Homo sapiens inhumanus, its sociopathy -- including the replacement of the love-instinct with a far-more-powerful hate instinct -- the (deliberate) product of five decades of relentless neoliberal conditioning. (See https://news.yale.edu/2025/03/06/violent-experiences-alter-genome-ways-persist-generations )
Guys and gals, waiting around for a politician to solve the problems they created is a fools errand. You cannot fix something broken with the same level of thinking that broke it. We are going to have to fix it ourselves because DC is so dysfunctional they cannot and it is only going to get worse unless we act and there is no one else to come to our rescue. Here is how:
We first need to build a platform of local strength, self-reliance, and resiliency. Once done, and we have a solid foundation from which to stand, from there we begin working on taking back the higher levels: country, state, federal.
The following solutions were crowdsouced from various forums across the web. I have distilled them into this:
The solution is to get local, get self-reliant, get the common unity back in community by building webs of resilience with your neighbors, get control of your school boards, mayors and sherrif's office, and town councils (the last places we still hold all of the cards), get a garden in your lawn no matter how small, a single tomato plant is better than nothing, get a well (water is your most important resource hands down), get ready, get moving, get doing, and, if so inclined, get God.
Don't build a bigger fence to keep our your neighbor, build a bigger table, and let's get together and take our country back. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
Still gibberish. An Einstein quote doesn't change that.
Although Einstein had some interesting things to say about politics, they were not a formula for taking power. The Civil Rights Movement had the practical solution - voting,
"It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs."
-Albert Einstein
"The vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy.” — John Lewis in a 2019 CommonWealth Interview
Getting local control and gaining self-reliance and becoming the master of your fate is gibberish….. That’s a new one. This directive requires more than voting:
“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual… Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.” —John Hancock
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul. —William Ernest Henley
Actually no. A good basic rule of thumb is to not trust the accuracy of any supposed quote whose textual or spoken source is not cited, and never ever trust any quote attributed to Einstein. He never said this. The earliest documented source for something similar to this particular quote per the quote investigator folks is from an October 1981 piece about an AlAnon meeting that appeared in a Knoxville, TN newspaper. It may be a great deal older than that, and certainly the general sentiment is, which is explained in the QI article https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/
TriTorch, you are exactly right. Our Democrat representatives/senators are not going to save us. It's up to us the people, plain and simple. Protect the 2026 midterm vote. Starting now!
Your democratic representatives are — at this moment — the only legal, active, current levers of power and accountability you have. Right now, they have managed to stop an out-of-control, lawless administration from doing whatever it pleases to whoever it likes with your tax dollars (for the moment at least). You abandon them at the moment you should be doing everything you can to support them.
It isn’t a question of them saving you, but you AND them working together to save a republic. That’s the whole point of voting, isn’t it? Try taking more of an interest in what they’re actually doing, what they’ve managed to do already thus far, in spite of arithmetic not being on their side.
They don't care about the arithmetic being on their side It's Come To This. They'll use brute force or outright cheating in the next election. What could be wrong with that plot?
Lots of things. But rather than start soiling our pants in anticipation, try adopting Churchillian resolve in the face of coming attacks — “keep calm and carry on.”
My question about what can go wrong with that plot was rhetorical . And the answer it's not " lots of things " but all the things, as in everything will go wrong. I appreciate yours and Churchill's advise about keeping the calm and carry on even if it's getting almost impossible to keep the calm. So, just carry on. 😅
In the end, the buck stops with us; but we have representatives for good reasons. We need better reasons than some of the reasons some of them get elected. I think we need more engagement than letting party bosses pick the candidates, and better reasons for hiring than a candidates celebrity. We ought to insure that those we hire honor a fiduciary duty to the public's interests; not just because they entertain us.
"... what do you think of Nancy Pelosi backing Caroline Kennedy's boy Jack Schlossberg for rep?"
Not much.
But better than CarpetBagger George - I Was Part Of the Problem - Conway suddenly moving to NYC. He'd be braver and do better by running to reform his Republican party.
There is plenty of local Democratic talent in the race. Across the Democratic range.
That and younger Democrats demanding change at the party leadership level. I am a registered Democrat, but I am aware of the need to address rural and urban issues, to focus on working people of all backgrounds and ethnic groups, and to stop chasing billionaire dollars. We also need to expose white Christian nationalism as a hoax on the public. We have a First Amendment for a reason, not everyone is a Christian or a believer, and there are plenty of Christians, including evangelicals, who thoroughly reject Christian Nationalism.
WEF Head Yuval Harari, NYTimes Interview: thinking about all this, puts it this way: “Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.” … The useless class he describes is uniquely vulnerable. “If a century ago you mounted a revolution against exploitation, you knew that when bad comes to worse, they can’t shoot all of us because they need us,” he said, citing army service and factory work.
Now it is becoming less clear why the ruling elite would not just kill the new useless class. “You’re totally expendable,” he told the audience. … “We don’t need you. But we are nice, so we’ll take care of you.” —Archived Uneditable Source (worth reading in full): https://archive.is/rWLoO
———
Voting got us into this, and it’s going to take more than that to get us out. We must get local control…
You hit the nail on the head! We have become expendable. With the coming of robotic manufacturing there will be no jobs for us. They think themselves superior and us as ants under their feet. They don’t care if we die and may prefer it. We must lose our naivety and think like they do or all is lost.
I have seen this orchestrated dividing of Americans for over 15 years now. I stood back from emotionality and looked at things logically, and that was the only conclusion that I could come to: it is intentional.
They have successfully weaponized the Red vs Blue, East vs West, Vaxxed vs Unvaxxed, Boy vs Girl, Gay vs Straight, Brown vs White, and Pro-Life vs Choice dichotomies to exploit (and dramatically magnify) our innate tribal nature, and in doing so are dividing and conquering us. This us-vs-them separation makes us easy to control and direct with simple angry thoughts about the enemy who isn’t really our enemy - while blinding us to the actual enemy behind the curtain pulling the puppet strings. If we could collectively recognize this for what it is we could unite and become whole again.
Politicization is so effective at manipulating the populace because most people emotionally connect their personal belief system to the belief system of their political party, and so then any attack on their party - legitimate or otherwise - is interpreted by their brain as an attack on themselves. Reason and logic then jump out the nearest window as raw emotion takes the helm, thus making them even more susceptible to the predatory controlling influences.
Dr. King knew well the art of this war against us and warned:
“We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools.” —MLK Jr.
It looks like RFK, Jr.’s strategy for public health, which is to destroy any concern for it by discouraging vaccination, encouraging eating unhealthy foods, to say nothing of defunding medical research and the ACA.
Yes, Kathy, that is certainly part of it, as well as the decades-long destruction of our public education system (and Citizens United, and voter suppression and ...).
Yes. One thing Trump and his various cheerleaders can’t afford is a population which thinks critically. This is why disinformation and out right lying has been so spectacularly successful in traditional and social media.
There is a professional organizer, community college educator on this platform; Your Weirdo Friend, who pushes exactly this - she calls it The Daisy Chain. She belongs to a marginalized group & she feels the impending & immediate danger in her core. All of her livestreams that are recorded & there for anyone, are excellent.
Just imagine going back in time- say 10 or 20 years - and reading what you wrote tonight. One could/ would only pass it off as fiction, perhaps as a permutation of Orwell’s 1984.
It’s all happening right now and it is unthinkable but it is all real. trump and his enablers - every single one of them AND every single person who was rotten and/or stupid enough to vote for him - are a nightmare that historians will still be analyzing and writing about centuries from now.
We, The People, shall only perish from this earth if we let the sewer rats and their billionaire overlords continue their now naked, blatant and transparent bid for absolute power.
Every single one of us must, repeat MUST, make a personal oath, a full on commitment to doing every single thing in our individual power to turn this shitshow around…..NOW.
If not now, when? It is getting perilously close to too late. I have faith….I really do. But there is not a minute to lose. Not one minute……..
Thank you, Heather - thank ALL those - who are carrying the torches of Truth and Light that will ultimately send the true vermin slithering back to the hell that created them.
Happy Valentine’s Day Heather ❤️….and thank you. You too Buddy…..
I am cautiously optimistic that a growing number of Americans will tire of careening down the Highway to Hell. That said, I am shocked at (with some salient exceptions), the vast cohort of non-partisan government workers seems to treat their new and anti-constitutional assignments as par for the course. Even in the midst the heavy corruption of $COTUS, the majority of courts seem most strongly resistant to excesses of the coup.
Here you touch on something that seriously concerns me. The role of government workers. I heard yesterday that Trump was going to set his own election rules. This is, of course, completely bonkers and unconstitutional. Most state governments will either sue or simply ignore this illegal imposition of rules. So the question is who Trump will get to enforce his illegal rules. The MAGAstapo (ICE)? Will he try to federalize the National Guard of non-cooperative states? Will he try to get regular US forces involved under the Insurrection Act? Then again, it might just be more Trumpian BS.
Not that any of this should be overlooked or dismissed, but we must never forget we’re dealing with the ultimate carnival-barker and phony. A truly pissant phony in so many ways. A fake to his core, who thrives on bluster, intimidation, the misuse of the courts, and of course, BIG money. It’s all a facade designed to deter YOU.
The other side of all of this is what Heather’s report hinted at in her coverage of the shutdown — the increasingly large number of times Trump and his clowns keep failing in court, not getting what they want, facing real pushback and deep, advancing cracks throughout MAGAland. They’re bellowing bullshit about elections now. But TACO is the emerging reality — chickens and bullies folding under scrutiny and increasing pressure. Those institutions who gave their lunch money to the bully are re-thinking their idiot strategy. Multiple forces are fighting back.
These people are running scared. That hysterical, shrieking performance by Pam Bondi the other day was filled with fear and terror, not self-confidence. They’re beginning to lose. They know it, and they know we know it, too.
Take heart. It’s going to get really messy but do not give them the sadistic pleasure of thinking they’re winning. They’re not.
ICTT, as I listen to ICE sirens and write 12 GOTV postcards a day, seven days a week, this voter and marcher from Kent State to Dobbs rally feels as reassured by HCR tonight as troubled by the “Christian” tone of Little Marco in Munich. Thank you, dear Professor, for being a grownup American. Minnesotans care for their international neighbors is the example all of US need(s).
Thank you, It’s Come To This. Thank you for this “like” as I thank all who follow me who I haven’t time to follow back. The “War Effort” that I learned as a child during WWII, and the inspiration of public school teachers and later the internationalism of many college profs (look at “our” HCR) and the luck to be in Europe for three weeks as the Berlin Wall was coming down (tried to go from Amsterdam to Berlin, but the Grateful Dead had filled the trains from Amsterdam there). Instead we had three unforgettable days in Prague in transition. I wish international travel for every American for the perspective it brings and the passports that would allow all of US to thumb our noses at DT at this moment.
Minnesota showed us that ordinary Americans won’t take police state tactics very well, and ultimately Homan had to announce they were pulling out of Minneapolis, only after ICE killed at least 2 citizens and detained many more citizens and noncitizens alike.
Well said, sir! A pissant phony indeed. I haven’t heard that term in a while and I cannot think of a more appropriate person to whom it could be applied 😁
At a certain point -- if it has not already been reached -- I fear they will just declare the courts as illegitimate arms of the "deranged radical left" and ignore or actually disband them.
Yes, I too was stupefied to read he's announced that regardless of what Congress does, he will impose picture-ID rules for the midterms and will limit if not eliminate mail-in voting. He will rule by fiat, even though the Constitution gives law-making power to Congress and not the president.
Thanks indeed. Though I don't normally post the same comment twice on the same thread, the statistically confirmed behavioral data revealed by Chris Armitage would seem to demand it: I suspect Trump, the ChristoNazis and the MAGAT rabble -- most notably because of their utter absence of empathy (and their fanatical belief empathy is a sin) -- may actually mark the emergence of a new subspecies of (sub)human, Homo sapiens inhumanus, its sociopathy -- including the replacement of the love-instinct with a far-more-powerful hate instinct -- the (deliberate) product of five decades of relentless neoliberal conditioning. (See https://news.yale.edu/2025/03/06/violent-experiences-alter-genome-ways-persist-generations )
In her broadcast today she returned to the themes in her letter here yesterday -- and hers here today amplifies the danger we're in.
Yesterday she quoted "Talking Points Memo" editor Josh Marshall on “a host of authoritarian governments around the world, the princelings of the Gulf monarchies, the sprinkling of European right-ravanchist governments, the rightward portion of Silicon Valley . . . the Israeli private intel sector, various post-Soviet oligarchs and, increasingly, the world’s billionaire class.”
Today she continues on how Donald and his criminal cronies (U.S. and fellow authoritarians abroad) not only gobble up more and more of the world's money and resources, but rely more and more, too, on disinformation. Goodbye U.S. voting rights as determined by the states (as deemed by the Constitution). Hello much more vast, cruel, and illegal concentration camps. Not just for today's input of brown and black tinted people -- but any and all who do not cotton to his alliance with other dictators working in secret as Josh Marshall cited.
This secretive, international cabal Donald is engineering also, by the way, coincides exactly with the personnel he's also covering for in the Epstein class
" 'President Trump has delivered a very clear message: that the U.N. and many nations of the world have gone wildly off track, exaggerating climate change into the world’s greatest threat,' according to the cable sent Tuesday and obtained by The Associated Press."
(...)
"It asserted that other Group of 7 economic powers as well as China, Saudi Arabia and Russia have all indicated to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. that they share Americans’ concerns with 'aspects” of the draft.' "
If anyone has gone off the rails, it is the United States voters who by staying home or voting for Donald Trump, managed to put this fool back into office for a second time. He definitely has no intention of leaving office, and he thinks if he loses an election, it’s because someone cheated him. Look at his chronic lying about the 2020 election, when even Bill Barr told Donald to face reality and admit he lost fair and square. Donald doesn’t have the ability to do this, and he will try his utmost to have his minions violate the 22nd Amendment on his behalf.
Who are the hundreds of employees at the detention camps? Do they know what they’re implicated in? Are they just “following orders“? Will they be the guilty victims after this debacle is all behind us? Do they understand the culpability they will assume? Do they have respect for their fellow human beings?
I want to know, secondly, who the architects are, the corporate American architects, that are designing these facilities. Facilities like this do not simply appear, they do not happen as if they were magic rocks grown in water. Permits have to be issued, which means building departments have to approve them. Humans have to design them. Buildings don’t happen by accident. Who is getting contracts for this work? Who are the legion of architects and interior designers and engineers that are allowing this to happen. Are they also “following orders“?
I want to know. I imagine other Americans also want to know.
Another great act of protesting from Minneapolis ✊
Be LOUD. These are unprecedented times 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
I thought for a brief few hours that Trump’s pulling back the National Guard in the sanctuary cities and moving most of ICE out of Minneapolis was a win for democracy.
Showing up the Trump regime’s weakness stimulated even more dangerous actions designed to attack voting rights and free speech and to create a surveillance state. It's a sign of Trump's desperation and of further escalation. Remember that Trump said the only constraint on him was his morality. We know he has none.
The depth of the cabinet’s corruption, cupidity, and stupidity is being revealed daily. It feels overwhelming.
Right now, the Senate is the fragile shield protecting us from full-on authoritarianism. The House is at a delicate tipping point, with just two Representatives able to swing the majority if Democrats stand firm.
If you are committed to living in a democracy, you need to be contacting your senators and representative DAILY on these issues.
It is a win, and it is also a recalibration. I think we can hold both thoughts in our heads without straining reality. I never expected them not to pushback. That takes not one whit away from the reality that they lost Minneapolis (in spite of claiming victory).
Democracy could actually be winning the long game here precisely because so many ARE pushing back.
"That the Defense Department is loaning a military weapon to CBP is itself concerning, but that a weapon powerful enough to cause the closure of El Paso’s airspace was in the hands of someone who mistook balloons for cartel drones is also a problem. So, too, of course, is that the administration’s initial impulse was to lie about what happened. "
Every statement that comes out of this administration's representatives is a lie. I think that's one reason grand juries are rejecting government requests for prosecution.
Bondi’s performance was shamefully unprofessional for a lawyer and officer of the courts. It is not her job to serve as Trump’s personal shield against criminal charges, but here we are, and Bondi is doing exactly that. She brought a book of insults to lob at Democratic House members, ignored the group of women who were Epstein victims attending the hearings, and tried to deflect to other issues every time Rep. Raskin or other Democratic members tried to ask her questions. Raskin gave a very clear explanation of what he would not tolerate Bondi dojng, but she proceeded to do exactly what he didn’t want.
"It is not her job to serve as Trump’s personal shield against criminal charges, but here we are, and Bondi is doing exactly that."
It is certainly not her job from a constitutional, public service preservative. It is the job that a plutocratic coup d'etat hired her to do, which is to serve a criminal enterprise. A single Bondi episode would self-evidently end her career in any responsible administration. We as a society are now way too inured to corruption, and we come to be in septic emergency.
It's time we stop, hey what's that sound? EVERYBODY look what's going down.
I was looking for a lot more full throated drama from the Dems: why don't they shout out that she is being beyond disrespectful.
She deserved serious anger. Something akin to a hard slap in her face.
How about those now grown up victims stand up and start dis-robbing. Show how helplessly naked they were then and now still are. Get disruptive!
Showing proper decorum, sitting quietly, being respectful in that arena in front of disdainful "attorney general" Bondi is frankly pointless, inappropriate and weak!
Our side needs a good Hollywood or International Director to guide the Congresspeople, the demonstrators and those Epstein victims to make front page news.
Well there is all kinds of appropriate but appropriate is appropriate, and some situations merit intense anger. But anger is different from rage, which is defensive and comes from a much weaker place. Sometimes adult, focused anger will silence a room, and not just a room of kids. But it is anger presenting conviction and grace. The anger of Lincoln when he spoke of slavery. The anger of FDR or Churchill in response to fascist outrages. Joseph Welch prosecuting Joe McCarthy. Indictments that penetrate the banter, because they so lucidly, passionately, and memorably focused and true.
I can understand the need for being irate and getting onto her level. Rep. Raskin warned here but she took her marching orders from Trump. Naturally, he was pleased with her performance, even if most people were not.
It would be impossible to get on her level. She's a sewer rat.
The Dem.s and the demonstrators should do better than a NO KINGS message. This USA is being taken over by criminal bullies. We have to fight back. And, not w/ wimpy messages.
The whole world is watching. As La FLOTUS would say: BE BEST!
They were having a discussion , right? When she speaks/responds doesn't the Congressperson look at her? But, she does not pay any attention when spoken to by a Dem.
What would you do if you were addressing your teenager and he/she was arrogantly not paying attention?
Stop speaking until they pay attention? Deny them something?
It felt to me like Raskin had an agenda he wanted on the record so he just kept speaking to her disrespectful turned away face. I wish he had addressed what she was showing not just to him but to the American public, that she obviously has no respect for either. Isn't there something he could have denied her? Her disinterest? He should have found a way to cleverly insult her. Maybe her appearance.
"You ....look....very .....good ...for...(she will look up) your age....60 year old women rarely look this good. To what to you credit that?"
Raskin is super smart. He should turn it around.
These people are living in a bubble like the cabal of Epstein "higher ups" who believed they had complete impunity...like Israel.
The current US regime is copying Israel. Look what they are getting away with. Look how easy it is. Just plow ahead, break rules, commit war crimes, murder bystanders, investigate nothing.
Yes, doesn’t THAT little episode inspire confidence!
Clearly, they were far more concerned with Kristi Noem losing her BLANKIE. No, I didn’t make that up. Those damn libruhl domestic terrorists stole her BLANKIE! waaaaaaaaa…. 😭😢😭😝😜🤪
It's not for nothing that Feckless Leader is so often depicted as an infant; but leadership of a whole damned country is a big kid job; it really is; and you don't hand a petulant two year old a pocket knife, let alone an army and nuclear codes.
Might be time for about 10 million Americans to surround the White House - very peacefully, of course - and for a National Strike to begin at the same time... all to continue without break until Trump resigns
“Today, ICE protesters carried a giant U.S. Constitution through the streets of Minneapolis, demanding that federal agents honor the rights the Framers established with that foundational document.” Oh, I like that.
First, I do not understand how DHS can "run out of funding" and still have funding through the One Big Blatantly Biased Bill. Can someone please explain that?
Second, it is growing increasingly obvious that the crisis on voting is not going to happen next fall, but is happening now. I'd love to hear thoughts on what ordinary citizens can do now. To write a Congress critter and saw we won't vote for you again is not much of a threat when there might not be a chance to vote fairly. Anyone got ideas? Thanks!
A small thing, but one that is requiring more courage with each election, is to work for your local Democratic precinct for the primaries and election. I've had a few people cuss me and give me the finger but I've also seen people happy and relieved to see a friendly face at the polls. It's not a very heavy lift but it does make a statement that we won't be intimidated. If you get in contact with the precinct now you can do canvassing and such too. It looks like this time it will be more important than ever to encourage people to vote.
One of my friends and former coworkers manages her polling place as her way of serving the local community. I have worked as a poll observer to make sure people were given chances to cast their ballots and there were no problems with insufficient ballots.
Not really, just an ordinary, average concerned citizen who wants to make sure all people can fully participate in their civic rights and duties. I know a lot about some of the shadier aspects our history, but Heather Cox Richardson fills in what we should know about our history and ties it to the present.
Volunteer indeed. And plan for their chickenshit in advance. Make sure your signature exactly matches the one your county registrar has. And though you shouldn’t have to, consider getting a passport (waiting times can be in tte months). Vote ahead of Election Day at your county’s facilities, especially if you’re unsure about voting by mail. Anticipate Election Day shenanigans by not waiting til then if you can avoid it.
Monitor and resist, but do duck when the chickenshit starts flying. In places like Atlanta, you can set your watch to it.
This is an entirely understandable concern. If people are this angry with Trump in the second year of his second term, can you imagine how angrier they’ll be in November as Trump continues to ignore economic hardship and favoring the rich? Historically, a mixed economy works best, as markets are a human creation, they do not exist in a state of nature.
Work for the Democratic party. They have plans in action already in your area. Talk to your friends and family about what's going on and encourage them to vote. That's a lot of the "lots" and you may have to step out of your comfort zone to do it so it's extra good for you.
As I understand it, TSA and FEMA are among the departments within DHS that will be unfunded in two weeks. ICE and CBP have received enough money through the “Big Beautiful Bill” to keep going for the next seven years.
Recheck your voter registration. Become familiar with what your Chief Election Official (state and local) does. The Campaign Legal Center gives more detail, which then might give you specific ideas. And Marc Elias's Democracy Docket has an article, "Seven Voting Laws Every Blue State Should Enact Right Now." Some of this is time-consuming, tedious, and not a one-stop-shop type of thing. Perhaps you can find a buddy, someone who is part of voter registration; together you can figure this out locally, and urge each other on. Good luck. Let's be human doings, and not just human beings.
The short answer to your first question is that if you have a budget of $35 billion (or whatever it is) to start with, there’s an awful lot of tucked-away mattresses you can stuff for a rainy day in the future. Most federal agencies do something like this, but on a much smaller scale — and with greater accuracy.
We can't win this fight without younger adult political participation in the U.S. We need to engage younger people through nonprofits like Indivisible which was founded in December of 2016 and has more than 2,000 local, volunteer-led groups in urban, suburban, and rural communities across every state providing in-person connections with people in their neighborhoods fighting against the violation of our rights. We need Millennials and Gen Zers to protect themselves from the harm being done to their economic and political futures by becoming more politically active, and by exercising their right to vote as well as helping others register to vote. We need them to participate in protests against the violations of our constitutional rights in our communities, and generally engage with other community members about issues of importance to them [see our monthly post for February 2026: Younger People in the U.S. and Community at OneClick2BetterWorld.substack.com].
''Warehouses of Fear: Why America’s Expanding ICE Detention Network Is a Democratic Alarm Bell''
When a government builds vast detention complexes for people who are largely not violent criminals, it is not responding to danger. It is manufacturing a permanent state of emergency, and history teaches that emergency powers rarely confine themselves to their original target...
“What we have witnessed over the past 60 days in Minneapolis was never about immigration enforcement for the safety of Americans.
🧨 This was a deliberate, calculated assault on communities of color masquerading as public safety. And as I write this from the headquarters of our Indigenous non profit NATIFS (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems) I can tell you that every person in our organization and thousands across the Twin Cities understands this the same way. This was a racial purge brought on by our own federal government.”
🔥 By The Numbers: The Reality Behind The Propaganda
Let me be clear about what actually happened in Minneapolis. DHS claimed they arrested over 4,000 “dangerous criminal illegal aliens.” Here’s what the data actually shows:
🔥 The Arrests:
- 4,000 total arrests claimed by DHS
- Only 335 names publicly documented (11% transparency)
- 74.2% of ICE detainees nationwide have no criminal record or have already served their sentences
- Many arrested were U.S. citizens, legal residents, asylum seekers, Native Americans, and children.
🔥 The Federal Occupation Costs:
- Cost to taxpayers a minimum $2.6 million per day ($360,000 for hotels alone, plus $1.3 million in agent salaries, $643,000 in meals and lodging, $228,000 in detention costs, and $500,000 daily in Minneapolis police overtime) totaling $18 million per week at the low end
-3000 ICE Agents at the peak (Late Dec - Jan), Normal ICE presence in Minnesota: 150 agents, That’s 20 times the normal footprint
- Minneapolis Police Department overtime: $2 million in just 4 days (January 8-11)
🔥 The Economic Devastation:
- Minneapolis businesses losing $10-20 million per week
- Lake Street corridor alone: $46 million lost (December-January)
Yep. It’s an example of poor use of our tax money, and definitely an assault on Black and Brown people. For example, ICE was interrogating Black American police officers in Minneapolis, and these were not members of the Somali American community.
Governors should mobilize the national but not deploy them yet. The mobilization would be on a stand-by basis to preempt their use by Trump. They then deploy on voting days to establish safety perimeters to protect voters from I.C.E.
I have been reflecting upon your thought, Ricardo. I can not tell whether it is legally do-able. But there is one way to find out. If the twenty-four Democratic governors jointly announce a contingent mobilization of their states' militias to protect the right to vote from I.C.E. agents and Border Control boors, the Trump gang will have to respond, hopefully making their intentions clear.
There is wayyyy too much here to respond to, but that’s the point. What we are seeing is that these people don’t even understand that there are laws. Their job is to please Trump , and he has always only pleased himself. They have no bottom, and no limits. They have demonstrated that killing is ok. They seem confused that people are upset by that.
Job #1 is get everyone out of those inhumane detention centers. Tens of thousands of people held indefinitely with no specific charges. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING HERE!!!
If only American would read just one post today it should be this letter.
I try to keep up with the daily news and follow many reliable sources but so much of what’s in today’s letter isn’t in the news. Thank you for your impeccable research and relentless efforts to keep
Americans informed and updated. We must win the midterm elections…..
We watch MS-NOW (the old MS-NBC) and found nothing new in this report by HCR.
Were anyone to watch Chris Hayes on his 1-hour show All IN With Chris Hayes, or The Briefing with Jen Psaki, or The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell they’d get in depth reporting of all that HCR just released tonight.
Of course, I also always read Letters From An American for the times when she delivers highly appropriate historical background reports. They are unique, accurate and exceptionally educational.
HCR Combined with Chris Hayes, Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell we consider ourselves well informed on most all that’s happening within the Trump dumpster fire.
What you don't get watching MSNOW are all the links to the original reporting in Heather's Letters.
Being well-informed isn't enough anymore.
Using the information to protest effectively is what we have to do every day. Whether it's showing up at town meetings or townhalls with members of Congress or your state legislature, or writing to them.
We are at the tipping point. If you aren't speaking truth to the people who have the power to stop this, your silence is complicity.
"...protest effectively is what we have to do every day."
Agreed. Since there is not an organized march or protest every day, we need to keep protest visible and constant. Wear an orange whistle (available less than $5 at sports stores, Amazon, LL Bean, etc.) when out and about, whether ICE is present or not. Our politicians will see the visible protest.
I'm in. Anywhere but Amazon. Don't feed the beast. Buy some for your friends, church, temple, mosque, running club.... Order "red cards" that explain our rights when confronted by law enforcement (including ICE) in both English and Spanish. In some areas they are also produced in other languages as well.
Add the number for the Congressional Switchboard to you phone:
202-224-3121. Better yet, look up each of your elected officials from Senators to State legislatures, the Gov, the AG, and the Secretary of State. Put them All in our contacts (phone numbers and links to their websites so you can email them right from contacts) And Give Them support, or give'em hell.
Ditto for editors of local papers...pick one a day. One bill a day.
And Go to the Local Council meetings and ask "are there any detention centers OR data centers being built within 10 miles of this town, or city, or school, or sensitive habitat, or water source, or airport.....
There is a LOT we can do, while we are busy vetting all the politicians we Hope to be able to vote for in 8 months. With Primaries coming even earlier!
I like Jess Craven's substack for finding ways to take action. And Hopium (but I'm not as keen on establishment Dems if there is someone more progressive who looks like they good win the general election.
Look at New Jersey! Malinowski lost to a Working Family Party Union Activist Analilia Mejia won in the primaries to go up against a Republican - in a blue district. YES!! I contributed to her campaign and it feels sooo good.
Many great wins to come if we All volunteer or give to candidates all over the country. I tend to do this because I live in a solid blue area of California, but with the LA Mayor's primary on March 3, and election in JUNE and the Broligarchy, Oiligarchy and Military Industrial Complex doing every nasty thing to retake the 4th largest economy from LA to the Governor's house I am spread kinda thin.
Less social media, more organizing.
As a public service, here's the Contrarian calls to action from Thursday. https://contrarian.substack.com/p/contrarian-calls-to-action-b6e?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
It's heartening to see that some Congressional Republicans have been taking Trump on....Canadian tatiffs, Epstein, etc. We need to encourage more.
I still think Epstein is where Trump's vulnerable underbelly is located.
Daniel Solomon, re the Epstein file, I believe Epstein himself said… a very loose quote…that it would be the $$$ flow not the list of people that would be the destruction of this mal-administration.
If you look up a bill
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2746/text
written by Senator Wyden
that appears to be languishing in committee, you can see what he meant.
Christopher Armitage wrote about this yesterday on his sub stack Resistance Media.
I called my Senators asap to stand up stand out take the spotlight on this bill.
I urge all of us to get this in front of media. Why is it languishing?!? We are running out of time …. And this Bill is …in my opinion.. HUGE.
Yes, Epstein. But also the videos of the children living in the "detention" camps. How can we NOT react when we see young children held prisoner??
I am urging people to get training for being around ICE. Minneapolis is a year-long effort at dealing with an invasion in their City. They are very well trained. Your City has training. Start with Indivisible.
Yes, as an Angeleno I concur. ICE is still here, but trying to stay under the radar while they continue to abduct people based on skin color, place of work and language, still while masked and armed (CA No Secret Police law passed but RW fought & a judge "paused" it for review, & LAPD Chief said he didn't it was workable...PD union working against Dem Mayor in elections, too... as usual)
School car pools, home schooling, home food deliveries, scouts, pro bono legal hot lines (thank you USC Law), volunteers trying to keep businesses open while owners are fighting detainment...struggling on.
About Half of LA's population is Hispanic. LA's economy is hit almost as hard as it was during COVID.and that's being used (intentionally) to Bash Dems from Council & Mayor all the way to the Governor, all up for election in the coming months, all the way through Nov 4. Suffering of the 16 Thousand families who lost homes also being blamed on Dems, when TRUMP has rejected ALL FEMA FUNDS for
devastating fires a year ago.
I think Newsom (who has had to use State Funds instead) and ALL the Dems are NOT being clear enough about that.
But, we all know Dems don't get the coverage the Billionaires Party does...
Get with Indivisible - Ezra Levin & Leah on your list of who to follow - pay attention to primaries! Protest at banks (eg Citizens), Bank of America) that are supporting detention centers
The "Citizens" entity is Citizens Financial Group. I bank with Citizens Band & Trust in Florida - does not support the detention center activity.
Patrice Curedale,
Thanks for sharing this wonderful "to do" list. We need to voice our opinions, NOT WALK ABOUT LIKE SLEEPING ZOMBIES as our wonderful country and our former and current heroes can see that they are not shouldering responsibilities alone!!!! We are in this together!!!!
Yes, how to understand why anyone with an IQ of 80 and above would vote for Donald Trump following his attempted insurrection, 34 felonies, etc., etc., etc. Sleeping Zombies? I think that the ancient Greeks experienced such a phenomenon. They called it amathia, loosely translated as "intentional stupidity," and "willful ignorance." I think that there is more to it. One can be so committed a belief that they lose the ability to assess facts rationally. Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Chair of the Humane Genome Project understands biology and DNA as well as anyone. Collins knows that all life on earth (plants, animals, insects) all share the same DNA, meaning that we ALL are descended from a common ancestor who had that DNA - LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) that lived 3.5 billion years ago. Yes, Collins in a fundamentalist Christian. Collins cannot accept the fact that this life is all we have. For some the racism is so ingrained that their hate is visceral, clouding, obstructing their ability to realize that Trump is a Fascist who will use them and then grind them into hamburger meat. Is it stupid of them? Could be that it is the amathia that causes the "stupidity."
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Patrice: 💓💓💓💓
As you well express, every little bit, every small action we take, adds up.
Here is a sample of an organization I am involved with. Click on the link below to get involved.
Organizations active near you
Indivisible
2 upcoming events ›
Washington County (IN) Democratic Party
1 upcoming event ›
Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
4 upcoming events ›
☀️
Actions you can take right now
Letter Writing · Money Out of Politics Movement
Demand Your Representative Support the We the People Amendment (H.J.Res.54) ›
Training · North Carolina Democrats
How to volunteer as an Inside poll observer — self-guided training ›
Text Bank · Joseph Kopser for Texas House 47
Use REACH to Contact Voters and Help Decide the HD 47 Primary ›
Phone Bank · Aaron for GA
Call Voters with Aaron Baker for House District 51 ›
Petition Signing · Rural Arizona Engagement
Protect RAZE Leaders in Casa Grande! ›
Interest Form Signup · Indivisible Lancaster Together
No Kings 3 Volunteer Signup ›
See more ›
📍
Events happening soon near 40222
Tue, Feb 17 · Louisville Democratic Party
Floyds Fork Democratic Club Candidate Meet and Greet ›
Sat, Feb 14 · Showing Up for Racial Justice
Tell Target to Break-Up with ICE: Louisville, KY Action ›
Tue, Feb 24 · Feed Louisville
Kitchen Prep ›
See more ›
All times Eastern
🎊
More phone banks
Tue, May 12 · Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
Voter Mobilization Textbank (Huge) ›
Wed, Apr 22 · Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
Voter Mobilization Calls to KFTC Members Statewide ›
See more ›
All times Eastern
🏢
More events with No Kings
Sat, Mar 28 · No Kings
NO KINGS Shelbyville KY ›
Sat, Mar 28 · No Kings
NO KINGS Hudson, Ohio] ›
Sat, Mar 28 · No Kings
NO KINGS Queen Anne’s County ›
See more ›
All times Eastern
🇺🇸
Popular upcoming events nationwide
Tue, Feb 17 · Showing Up for Racial Justice
Talk to Our Neighbors, Crack ICE: Phone Bank with SURJ! ›
Wed, Feb 18 · National Day Laborer Organizing Network
Adopt a Corner: What’s Next? Webinar ›
Tue, Feb 17 · Jon Ossoff for Senate
Ossoff Outreach Network Reach Training! ›
See more ›
All times Eastern
🔍
Find even more events & actions on mobilize.us
Local Politics ›
Voter Registration ›
Housing Justice ›
LGBTQIA+ Events ›
Healthcare ›
Letters & Postcards ›
Phone Bank ›
AAPI Events ›
Petitions ›
Do It Right Now ›
➕
Part of another organization or grassroots group? Make an account to have your events promoted ›
https://track-newsletter.mobilize.us/CL0/https:%2F%2Fjoin.mobilize.us%2Fget-started%3Futm_source=mobilize%26utm_medium=email%26utm_campaign=nonexclusive/1/0100019c57f0dd93-25722d65-0c2b-4ff7-9fc2-5f2e04a3dcb3-000000/ttYEVXJf1lfX_gRAzQ_EOVTyvaJg5JlRWXyWmQbKL8Q=444
Adopt a Corner... I saw an one of these this past week. It was outside a local high school and the protesters/ralliers were all high school students with a few parent & teacher chaperones (for lack of a better word). It gave me a ray of hope in a week of crappy news. BTW ... every poll is still roughly 60-40 disapprove-approve of ICE/DHS.
My sister has 'adopted' a corner in her very red city. Calm, quiet & always smiling while carrying her sign. Gets waves & smiles back. I have seen a few small groups at corners in my town doing the same thing. Proud of them. Quiet resistance is noticed by all.
As long as local ordinances are followed; including noise in certain areas. The stakes have gotten a lot higher since the Tesla protests. Remember they are disappearing Americans too. We have concentration camps in America now. Be careful and smart.
I am begging people not to do this. Grabbing a whistle and a vest is a pure danger. This could cause profound hurt. Get training.
Thanks for writing, but perhaps I was unclear. I encourage people to wear an orange whistle when out and about, running errands, etc., even when ICE is not present, as a show of protest visible to our politicians. I never mentioned a vest. For those who join protest assemblies, I agree-get the training, which is important. And read MLK's works on non-violent protest.
But walking about while wearing an orange whistle is our right.
Ponder: in the late 1760s, English lawyer William Blackstone published his four-volume “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” This became the basic reference for lawyers in the American colonies, as well as in England.
Blackstone writes, in Book 1: “The law of England regards, asserts, and preserves the personal liberty of individuals. This personal liberty consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.”
Blackstone’s definition of personal liberty is what the Founders had in mind when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Long after independence, lawyers referenced Blackstone, as our Constitution deliberately brought English common law into American civil law. Abraham Lincoln studied Blackstone’s Commentaries in preparation for his law license.
Lately, I encounter American citizens who express feelings of unease, distress, nervousness as a chronic condition they attribute to the current Administration’s policies and practices—not just ICE, but threats to elections, pressures on journalists and media outlets, investigations and lawsuits against political opponents and civil servants, etc.
We have lost that Liberty that Blackstone and Jefferson held as a basic right. How do we get it back?
Exercising your rights could cause an awful lot of trouble. Things escalate very quickly as we have seen in Minneapolis. We are not dealing with ICE agents who have a good head on their shoulders. Do you know the legal boundaries where you can protest? The traffic laws surrounding where you are protesting? The assault an officer laws?
Do you know how to protect those around you? We are in a war. We must be organized and safe.
What is the problem with receiving training from people who know about these things?
trump has been wanting to invoke the Insurrection Act for 10 years. It is only through informed, disciplined protests run by experienced people that we still in the streets.
Again. I am asking everyone to work within a credible organization when protesting.
I have taken to wearing my orange whistle whenever I'm out & about- as a signal to others of my solidarity with those facing discrimination from ICE or HSA. It is just on me for the above stated reasons. I have not seen any ICE agents when out but, I keep watching.
Exercising 'good judgement' in the face of such ignorance is "wicked smaht" if we can just keep our emotions in check. On an aside here, did anyone of you notice the expression on the young woman's (a victim) face who was standing on the left a row or two behind where Atty Gen Bondi was sitting at the Hearing? Huh? Looked to me like she was two breath's away from jumping over the others and grabbing Pammy by her blonde-hair and pummeling the living shit out of her. Anybody get that impression? I sure did.
100%. Exactly. Well said.
Not everyone has access to MSNOW or the time to watch/listen to 3+ hours of commentary. HCR consistently recaps the prior day’s important stories and, as noted elsewhere, often gives the historical perspective not given by other commentators. That’s why she’s number 1 on Substack and must read daily!
Sadly, the #1 Substack is the ironically named "Free Press," which was created by neocon Bari Weiss, the new CBS News Diretor. I must say though, I've been watching CBS News lately, especially since the CECOT debacle, and their coverage seems pretty balanced and critical of the administration.
Brian, I think Bari Weiss' days are numbered @ CBS. She is just another minion in the MAGA parade. Many pissed off people have given their views to CBS. I hope the pressure for her to leave works.
Yeah Cindy, but just like every other business, CBS has advertisers who rely on viewer-numbers to sell their product. If CBS didn't pay (pay!!) attention to them CBS would go off the air. So, like you, I've seen some attention to viewership in what they are blabbing about.
Thank you Georgia. The other point of Prof. Heather’s posts are to compile annotated historic records for posterity, who said what and why during these tumultuous times. Yes, she is an historian and she is collecting and annotating historical records for future historians so we can understand, and perhaps prevent, these kind of events from happening again. We can learn from history if we try, hence her careful references from similar events from our past and how these events are being repeated today, and what happens when they do. Who better than HCR to do this for us? I very much appreciate all her efforts.
Exactly.
That truth-social post about reforming elections “by himself” means his Brown Shirts (Dirty 🧊) will be surrounding Blue State/City polls, particularly in swing states. Although advocates are asking for prohibitions (and penalties?) for any 🧊 agent within 100 feet of polls (should be 200 minimum), apparently orange man would veto that. This is the scariest election subversion yet.
WTF can we do to prevent this? People with whistles shouldn’t be the only protection for the Midterms.
Maybe the best advice to be sure your vote is counted without interference is to vote early at an early machine voting location, not just a drop box for a mail in ballot. I think it would be the hardest place to question a valid and you would avoid interference on election day. It is definitely a lot less convenient.
In New Jersey, you can vote early in person at designated county early voting locations, not at every regular neighborhood polling place.
NJ Statewide rule
Every county in NJ must offer in‑person machine early voting for primary and general elections.
Each county designates a limited set of early‑voting centers (typically 3–10, depending on population) where any registered voter of that county can go during the early‑voting period.
Hours are at least Monday–Saturday 10 a.m.–8 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m.–6 p.m. during the official early‑voting window for that election.
You have to check what the rules are for your state.
Otherwise, the States have control over elections. Governors generally can activate their state National Guard to support protection of elections and polling places, but they must do it within federal and state legal limits, especially around voter intimidation and “troops at the polls” restrictions. The first article for 2020 is how the national guard was used during the pandemic, showing a precedent for having them act as poll workers—which seems worrisome to me in red states.
The Brennan Center covers a wide range of intervention scenarios.
https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article/2402007/national-guard-will-support-election-in-multiple-states/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voters-should-not-be-intimidated
If the president “federalizes” a state’s Guard (Title 10 status) for some reason, those forces become federal troops and are then subject to Posse Comitatus and the federal “troops at the polls” prohibition.
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/understanding-national-guard/
This report from July 2024 is long but discusses best practices for policing elections, not that Trump would necessarily allow them to be followed.follow them. Trump is already telling us that we can’t maintain the “preseumption of regularity.”
https://www.policinginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SUDC_NPIReport-FULL.pdf
When we return to living smart people instead of ‘influencers’ who just give us the flu…HCR is the antidote, the antibiotic to the drugstore of the media…no click-bate here! …just the facts and her analysis.
Georgia, what I love about HCR’s postings is that she always “brings the receipts” & we can all do a deeper dive into source material if we wish.
The links are often legacy media which many have abandoned. When people say that I read their reasons that to me seem they have "thrown out the baby with the bathwater". Disappointing. Saving money? Well yes. The WSJ,NYTand WAPO (which may go south) are important sources.
As well Heather reads widely. But as valuable as HCR is, it puts a heavy burden on her. And you can hear/see it at times. She cannot cover it all. We are wearing her out and leaning on her too much. And you cannot get away from this being a filter, no matter how great it is.
That said- she *focuses* in these letters using her knowledge of history and a sense of the vision of this country that is sorely needed at this time. That is what makes them so strong. But she cannot cover it all and think for us all, hold us up.
She repeatedly includes information for further reference, and she includes other organizations that have plans for actions we can all take part in. Join Indivisible to get information for other actions you can take. The online meetings are very good with many actions we can take. When you take part you feel committed to sanity!
Olga Lautman is a new voice with https://trumptyrannytracker.substack.com/
who is providing wide ranging pertinent highlights and a couple sentence descriptors of why the news is important. It doesn’t have the connections in Heather’s letters but is a faster and broader read with the links.
Great point Georgia.
I would add, much of what MS-NOW reports, and Heather too, comes from good old-fashioned on-the-ground, working-their-sources, shoe-leather journalists, at the NYT, WSJ, Texas Tribune, other surviving local newspapers and TV stations, Pro Publica, even WaPo, who put in the effort to get accurate, first-hand information. Not to mention publicly available court documents. And thank God for videos. Haven't we all watched Rachel and Chris and Lawrence read us excerpts from various newspapers and court documents night after night? That's where they get their news too. Heather is writing the "first draft of history" and whether it's repetitious or not to what we're seeing at other outlets, I'm very appreciative of her documenting it all and putting it in some sort of order. It's impossible to keep up with the Trump Administration even if that's all we do.
MS Now (MSNBC) – Bias and Credibility
MS Now (MSNBC) - Left Bias - Liberal - Progressive - Democrat - Not CredibleFactual Reporting: Mixed - Not always Credible or Reliable
LEFT BIAS
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information reporting that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Left Bias sources.
Overall, we rate MS Now Left Biased based on story selection that consistently favors the establishment left. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to news hosts and the website producing numerous failed fact checks.
Detailed Report
Bias Rating: LEFT (-6.4)
Factual Reporting: MIXED (5.8)
Country: USA
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: TV Station
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY
Did you know you can check out every single organization in the media>
I use a group called Media Bias Fact Check:
Here is their Propublica report.
Propublica – Bias and Credibility
Propublica - Left Center Bias - Liberal - Democrat - Progressive - CredibleFactual Reporting: High - Credible - Reliable
LEFT-CENTER BIAS
These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation. See all Left-Center sources.
Overall, we rate ProPublica Left-Center biased based on story selection that favors the left and factually High due to proper sourcing and evidence-based reporting.
Detailed Report
Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER (-3.1)
Factual Reporting: HIGH (0.8)
Country: USA
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Organization/Foundation
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY
"Leah Feiger of Wired reported today that ICE has been quietly and aggressively expanding across the United States in the past months. It has bought or leased new facilities in nearly every state, many of them outside of the country’s largest cities, although they are concentrated in Texas."
I am acutely alarmed. This is how ICE will "quietly and aggressively" command polling places to intimidate people of color from showing up to vote....
It’s an important article but paywalled. Do you have a gift link you can post?
Of course Heather's LFAA tonight is yet another one of the Professor's 'best ever'.
But, much more is required of us locally, that Rachel's TRMS often covers.
The Online Privacy Act of 2023 (H.R.2701) regulates your personal SSA data. Any, data data sharing requires a WRITTEN, public facing, computer controls monitored by the "SSA Data Integrity Board".
There's a good Holiday Weekend project, submit Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests (plural) to the Data Integrity Board (DIB).
We need investigations of the DIB, what they have been doing or not doing, during trump 2.0 & specific answers.
Speaking of SSA data,Jess Craven had an action item/script yesterday for calling legislators.This should concern EVERY American!
“I understand that Rep. Larson has introduced a Resolution of Inquiry (H.Res.1059) requesting that the Trump administration furnish information to Congress relating to DOGE’s access to NUMIDENT and other personally identifiable information at the Social Security Administration. We know DOGE violated security protocols and we know our data got leaked.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions/p/chop-wood-carry-water-213-d52?
📲📣
Thanks!!
Spot On!
Kathy, where did all Musk's minions go after DOGE was disbanded? I hope most of them cannot find further employment after being part of the big swindle! Unless, they have had a Come to Jesus moment & plead guilty for the laws they broke with DOGE.
I am a dual citizen of U.S. and Canada. After 15 years living in U.S. I returned to Canada with my U.S. disabled vet husband, also a dual citizen. I retired in 2015 but did not obtain SS until 2016, with help of my Dem Senator from Florida. I ask Repub Senator too but no help. In 2021 after returning to Canada, I got a letter from SS to report to a SS office to verify my citizenship. At closest U.S. office to me I asked why since SS had verified this when I appled, showing U.S. passport and marriage certificate. Was told it could be due to DHS screening. So in 2021, DHS was getting data from SS. And Musk got SS data illegally and shared it with who knows? Now we vote by mail like millions of other U.S. citizens abroad for a multitude of reasons. Citizenship is not dependent on where one resides, or at least, never was in U.S. Will we deny our U.S. citizens abroad from voting? We're not all in military, etc. Some of us are just retired.
Oh you’re not being singles out—Trump doesn’t want ANYONE to vote, even those of us in the US.
Ayesha, last night we heard from a friend who has a friend from Germany visiting soon. The German friend apparently is now required to submit DNA. And she just barely missed having to supply the names, addresses, etc., of everyone she has known in the US for the last ten years. Personally, i would not come. Our friend is planning to move to Portugal within a year or so. This is insidious.
Hoy S. Anytime I travel outside the US, I sometimes think they could refuse me reentry. I’m an activist. I blog and write a book. I’m concerned but my concerns will not shut me up no way.
Bill K., you would be a great news story if they try to shut you up. Keep being your true self.
Bill, well, you are not a German citizen and I consider this very invasive and intrusive. And frankly, you may well on their radar already as may I.
Thanks. We have no intention of going to U.S. to visit friends and family until ICE changes or dismantled.
A lot of people are not coming and I do not blame them.
What I described is the State Department and Rubio's doing. The first time her friend came, she just got a visa, not this other stuff. I had read about searching social media history before, but submitting DNA is so intrusive and it is for building a data base as is the request for the info on people you know here. We are in our 80s and so are not going anywhere and do not have many years to have to watch our country being destroyed. I hope that the time comes that you feel safe visiting here.
Linda Weide is an expert in on Expatriate issues. Major force in "DAG" .... Dems in Germany.
Sadly, we're not in Germany. Lots of Dems in Canada but don't know if they have a DAC???
Ayesha Mohair may be creating one. (:--- ).
Expatriate issues are common no matter the country. But, some countries have unique status & costs like Portugal.
It doesn’t matter contact her anyway.
Contact Public Citizen. https://www.citizen.org/
any suggestions on which way to submit FOIA requests? There seem to be quite a few different agencies (or .gov domains) to choose from.
GET A LAWYER. May be able to get attorney's fees paid by the agency.
If the DIB is not staffed with MAGA shits, why would they even care or if they did, to just spit out a form letter stating everything is fine and working well. We are now experiencing significant government systems breakdown. I’m surprised I still get my social security check deposited. Something maddening every week even every day as it was in the first 4 years which is why I felt compelled to write a book on said topic.
Absolutely!!! Like VA!!! Sooo many job cuts too to SS, ad nauseam. So much for functioning govt services...
Musk has already accessed and uploaded 100.% of our social security data Secrecy is now moot
Please provide proof of this. We do not need to be scaring people.
The coverage was pretty thorough when doge was invading our agencies. I am not naive enough to believe the story that they were looking for “waste” and fraud. Given the $$$ they were wasting. So, we can extrapolate what they were really up to. Proof also exists tgst data was uploaded. So yeah. We DO need to scare people into waking up
Cannot be so naive to really believe DOGE didn't access and steal SS info! Musk wants all the info he can get to be able to control this country's money/ power. His is a heartless, evil man who only understands power. May he NOT live long & prosper.
Numerous articles from trusted news sources like NPR, Politico. Trump admitted Doge misused SS info. Internet is great source of info but stick to trusted sources (not Fox Not News!!!)
We can't make global statements saying they are true without a citation from a trusted. Using the "I heard it somewhere" argument will not work. And frankly Politico is not a trusted source. NPR waffles.
"But, much more is required of us locally.."
Yes it is. Those big protests make a statement and recruit people to the resistance but it is the small, daily stuff that is so important. Minneapolis is the benchmark for resistance. I have read a bunch about their highly organized efforts from street protesting to taking care of their community. A lot of their channels of communication were secret. There was much training.
And. We must, must change things from the school boards, library boards, dog catcher, whoever runs our local communities. We also need to take care of each other. Pushing away from the keyboard, supporting food banks, showing up at local events of community support for a food garden to school lunch-it all matters.
Excellent point!
I wish I had 3 extra hours a day to watch those programs. I especially liked Psaki when she was at the White House. So I just read Heather, with eternal gratitude for the information she provides. You see, I am old enough to retire but can’t afford to, so I work full time!
I'm sorry you have to work past retirement age. But if it's any consolation at all, I am retired & there still are not enough hours in the day to watch everything I'd like to watch. Just keep doing what you can with the knowledge that you are most likely doing MORE than many if not most people! I hope you have this 3 day weekend off. Do take time to watch the Olympics, you get to see people who lose actually do so gracefully & with dignity. That in & of itself is worth the time!!!!
AND, compete without our government's support. The Olympics show us what dedication can do.
Nancy, please consider this resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKDWP2hiV8c
Belle of the Ranch puts out three short (less than 4 inutes) videos daily. She is never the first reporting, but she is rarely wrong on a subject.
In the time since I found her (actually, prior, it was her husband "Beau" who ran the channel) the subscribers have gone from roughly 300K to nearly 875K. The MAGA watch her as well, as they will comment and she will reply and skewer them.
She also does a longer version "The Roads with Belle" once weekly, where she answers questions and goes into deeper dives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD094gdNYfw
The channel also has two companion channels which used to be on YouTube, but due to some programming issues is now available on Patreon. "Interstate News" and "Research Road" are well worth paying for. You can subscribe to both for $1 a month.
My husband and I listen to these at lunchtime, either while we eat or while we take a walk afterwards.
I already posted a comment with a plea that we all support these independent journalists. Paid if you can afford it, free if you can't.
As with Heather, please folks ALWAYS HIT THE LIKE BUTTON. We want to push our independent liberal journalists up in the computer algorithms!
Belle of the Ranch is always so good to listen to. She's great!.
Psaki is my favorite. Brilliant, low-drama, high-info.
For those who have a hard time devoting 4 hours daily to watching, check into listening to those shows via their podcasts (vacuuming gets done while listening to the information, exercise gets done, yardwork gets done and you still get the information you need. You can usually find them on YouTube as well, if you aren't a podcast person.
HCR also has her interviews/snippets, etc. on YouTube, which I choose to listen to rather than watch.
I agree about this, yet those of us who follow Heather (HCR) and MS NOW are a somewhat small minority of those who can make the difference. We MUST reach out to those who aren’t getting this information. There are people who are avoiding this news out of “conflict aversion” habits/desires. We MUST show them how their avoidance will bring harm to themselves from the government. Otherwise they’ll continue to blissfully avoid this crucial information.
Poke the bears, we need them out of their hibernation
Yup Cynthia, some have blinders on & earplugs in and are the 1st ones to complain about local, state & federal actions. I do not want to hear any complaints from the likes of them!
Yes, the podcasts are so handy. I listen to them while doing household chores, exercising, or any ordinary activity. It's a two-for. I get stuff done and also get the info.
Also. Look at HCR's citations at the bottom of her LFAA. Lots of really good people out there armed with just the facts.
Ally, I sent you a Substack message with a cut and paste from Paul Krugman's substack today. You may have already seen it. It pertains to health care in Oregon.
Thanks, I will take a look at it.
HCR s a news consolidator and as such, summarizes issues in a neat package that doesn’t require hours of attention to cable tv, including MS NOW
The flood of chaotic information is exhausting but with HCR, Hubbell and Vance, I can forego cable in terms of issues, references, and links to the ODonnells, Psakis and Hayes
Most people don’t have the TIME to watch two hours of MS-NOW every day I’m retired, and even I miss more than half of them. Heather’s purpose is to package it all up for us in an easy to access format
I agree that these sources are accurate. HCR speaks for me better than anyone. Maybe because I’m so old I can remember some history that others only read about.
Not everyone can afford cable TV and is able to watch the programs you reference. Some of us on limited incomes rely on radio and print resources for which Heather is beyond invaluable as is Democracy Now!
MSNOW aside, it seems like much of national media is intimidated or threatened by trump and the federal government to try not to report anything that might make trump and his GOP Congressional collaborators look bad. Many of the legacy media should also be considered collaborators. The right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court are definitely collaborators and do all they can to make this fascist coup successful. When GOP Congressional people defend the indefensible tactics of federal law enforcement agents who disregard Constitutional rights and hide their identity so they won't be held accountable for their lawless behavior, it is proof that the GOP is wholly supportive of the fascist takeover and is indeed the fascist party. They have been rigging elections for decades and have constantly tried to restrict voting rights because when everyone is eligible to vote, they will always lose.
I agree Dirk. Those are my primary sources of news through many years.
Dirk, I read over watching, although I have been watching the Munich Security Conference all weekend, but will have to find transcripts of what was said to go over it better. I also consider the station you are talking about to be Legacy media, and not reliably trustworthy.
What today's letter highlights is not a procedural quarrel. It is a constitutional stress test.
When funding for the Department of Homeland Security becomes contingent on reform, the issue is no longer bookkeeping. It is whether Congress will tolerate the normalization of unchecked federal force. A government that can deploy armed agents into communities without clear identification, meaningful oversight, or consistent adherence to warrant requirements is a government drifting away from constitutional balance.
The urgency lies in precedent. If lawmakers fund agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without demanding transparency and due process, they effectively ratify whatever practices are currently in place. Silence becomes consent. Appropriations become endorsements.
This moment is larger than immigration policy. It concerns the architecture of power. The Constitution divides authority precisely to prevent consolidation and abuse. Congress holds the purse strings not as a formality, but as leverage. If that leverage is abandoned out of political fatigue or fear of shutdown headlines, then one of the last structural checks weakens.
Public outrage is not incidental in this equation. It is a signal that citizens recognize a boundary being crossed. When people see masked agents, unclear chains of command, or detainees denied access to counsel, they are not reacting to partisanship. They are reacting to a perceived erosion of rights that were supposed to be universal.
A republic does not collapse all at once. It erodes through tolerated exceptions. Emergency justifications become routine. Oversight becomes symbolic. Each funding cycle that ignores these warnings hardens the new normal.
The choice before lawmakers is stark. Either they assert constitutional authority and condition funding on enforceable safeguards, or they allow executive enforcement power to expand by default. Budget deadlines come and go. The standards set in moments like this endure.
This is why the conflict matters. It is not about dollars. It is about whether constitutional democracy remains operational in practice, not just in rhetoric.
Well articulated, Michael. This is larger than the "policy" issues, it is about the very foundation of this country's government that are being shredded.
“A Republic does not collapse all at once.”
Indeed, it gets slowly boiled to death, like the proverbial frog. One look at the red face of Lindsey Graham after a Southern Comfort bender tells you what we’re up against.
Yes, I completely agree. And this is about the rule of law, the idea that the only king we need is written law. Adherence to our established boundaries in written, stable, publicly known law for behavior, and comportment is what we demand. Here, insisting that Congress holds the power to decide to fund or not to fund the ICE agents, follows a legal process that has been written for centuries, and has been stable should be unchanging. Our concern is that many of these Administration are acting outside of legal boundaries.
Well put! Thank you!
I wish we had a "thousand likes" button. This is a perfect distillation of what is going on. Of course it ALSO matters in terms of damage and pain being done by ICE goons and these concentration camps. Two vital reasons to resist.
100% Michael Corthell!
The process has been going on for decades. Acceleration has become warp speed, deliberately and with malice
This is such an insightful and well-written comment, Michael. Thank you.
The GOOD news is that Trump/MAGA is down 14% in its average approval ratings since Trump's innaguration. That equals 12,000,000 votes out of the 77,000,000 who mistakenly voted for the lying fascist rich boy and are now expressing remorse. And in case you haven't heard, Trump's drop in popularity is of course Biden's fault..Why? Biden let 11 million illegal, criminals into the US which has forced Trump to use harsh methods to get them deported. I would just point out that the $110 Billion Trump/GOP has devoted to his ICE Gestapo secret police and prison camps is the amount of $s Americans need to refund our ACA healthcare subsidies. The people will choose in Nov.
yes. and let's be sure to make the "invisible quotation marks" Visible around words like "illegal, criminals" or the whole statement from "Biden..." to "...deported"
because language is also very weaponized and charged in times like this.
New readers on here all the time.
Michael, your words are so well written. The silence is deafening!
And this coming from a Party that considers itself as being fir ‘Law And Order’! They are despicable
Thanks for defining our involvement in government! We cannot act as though we don’t know what to do or are too busy to do it! The exhaustion is being bread by the constant torrent of crap published by this administration. Resist! Never think I don’t know what to do! Act as if your actions matter because they do!
I often take for granted Dr. Richardson's research abilities. At the end of each LFAA she lists the sources of today's newsletter as you know. Today's newsletter lists over 20 sources. Truly amazing.
Many of the sources are buried behind a paywall or not readily accessible. She must pay a pretty penny to access all of these sources.
This is exactly why I urge people to support HCR and other good sources with a paid subscription. Sure, lots of us doing that exceeds the cost to vet with other news services. Imagine the effort to have the equipment to be on You Tube, do a podcast, et. and make them worth watching or listening to. It takes supporting staff who are as committed to good work as the person we see and hear.
Dt. Richardson has said repeatedly not to worry about subscriptions. She is not hurting for money.
"Heather Cox Richardson is one of the most popular historians in the U.S., boasting more than 3.2 million Facebook followers and 2.5 million Substack subscribers, making her the most-subscribed individual creator on that platform. In “Letters from an American,” the newsletter she began writing in 2019, the 62-year-old analyzes current events by connecting them to broader historical trends and patterns in American history. She also regularly hosts evening live chats on Facebook, taking reader questions in a new version of the nightly news.
In the realm of traditional media, Richardson is the author of seven books, including To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America, and Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America—she’s well-positioned to cover a divided United States. When she’s not writing, she’s a professor at Boston College, teaching 19th-century American history to undergraduate and graduate students. At the core of Richardson’s work is ensuring people have an understanding of past mistakes, in hopes the nation can avoid repeating them.:
TIME
I'm more than happy to have a paid subscription with the professor. If nothing else, a portion of my fee goes to Maine state coffers so others benefit from it as well.
Not my point. I was citing Dr. Richardson. We are in the process of building a non-legacy media. Many excellent contributors are struggling to pay bills while they get a following. I have been supporting the start-ups and then when they get well established I move my subscription dollars to another "truth-teller". We here in this forum) put together a list of non-legacy media:
Raw Story
Katie Phang
Allison Gilal (Muellershewrote)
UnJustified
The Daily Beans
Trilogy Barbara Mullen
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Anne Applebaum
Robert Reich
Dr. Heather Cox Richardson
Joyce White Vance
Timothy Snell
Timothy Snyder
Meidas Touch
Brian Tyler Cohen
The Contrarian
Ryan Goodman
Simon Rosenberg
The Guardian
Jay Kuo
Lucian Truscott
Olga Lautman's "Unmasking Russia"
Judd Legum's "Public Notice"
Marc Elias's "Democracy Docket"
"Musk Watch" (also Judd Legum)
Dean Blundell
D. Earl Stephens, "Enough Already”
“What Did Trump Do Today”
Elizabeth Graham's "From Democracy to Democracy"
Bill McKibben
Rachael Maddow
The Bulwark
Geddry's Newsletter
This list was put together by readers on Dr. Richardson’s Letters forum. I do not have personal knowledge of all of these entities.
As I posted above, I watch "Belle of the Ranch" on YouTube daily. Three short videos, less than 15 minutes total.
Easy to fit that in while doing other things.
I would add The Bulwark
There are so many good ones. Many are ex-Washington Post or ex-NYTimes.
I have to add
Catherine Rampell - formerly WAPO
Paul Krugman - Formerly NY Times
Margaret Sullivan - Formerly NY Times
Maria Konnikova - Independent psychologist
These stats give me faith in our fellow citizens! Let's keep growing the circle.
I suggest giving family and friends subscriptions to HCR’s letters. You can’t make them read the letters, but you can hope they open even a few! We have to give them factual information.
I share it daily on FB, and title it "Today's Truth".
I gave a gift to a worried friend, good way to pass it on
Yes, this is why we must be willing to pay to get HCR podcasts! If it is vital do it, cut something else! I also support NPR; since they were the first independent news organization; in existence since 1970!
Some of these sources may be available through academic libraries and databases, and may be available to faculty and students. You’re correct, they do cost money to access.
Life has become a PAY to play. Exhausting
Yes, you feel like you are nickeled and dimed everytime you get gas, or go to the grocery store or whatever store where you have to obtain necessities.
Nonstop, different world every day
Money and time
I could not agree more!
Trump and the MAGA folks have made the claim that illegals are brought into the U.S. to vote. That is a huge lie. I have served a number decades as an election officer/worker. It's more difficult for an illegal here to vote in a U.S. election than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. This is a Trump ruse to gain access to the voting instruments so that he can "fix" them.
Hey richard you dumb fuck you dumb IGNORANT, CLOSED-MINDED fuck. That’s how much you know you dumb fuck and now you’re spreading lies. Look up the Supreme Court of New York when New York City tried to get 800,000 undocumented people to vote in a local election EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND.
TAKE YOUR PAIL AND SHOVEL AND GET BACK INTO YOUR SANDBOX.. YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A GULLIBLE CHILD.
Rick, I love your response. True, NYC tried to get 800,000 undocumented people to vote in the city election. A number of jurisdictions across the nation permit non-citizens who are residents to vote in local election, but not in national elections. In the NYC case, the New York Supreme Court struck down the effort to allow undocumented residents to vote in the city elections.
Now go tell everybody here who thought I was full of shit when I told people that they try to get undocumented voters to vote here in this country and they called me a liar because of their ignorance nobody ever told him Heather never mentioned anything here did you know and you think it’s OK that they try to get them documented voters to vote to control the citizens of the country of the area they voted in? Do you know what the penalty is for illegal aliens in Mexico?
That’s correct it took the Supreme Court of the state to stop it. Catch a clue
Rick, in the U.S. elections between 2016 and 2020, there were 306 convictions of voter fraud across 37 states; 39.4% for Democrats and 41.1% for Republicans. Donald Trump lost the 2016 popular vote by 2.8 million votes and the 2020 election by 7 million votes. What happened to all those illegal votes? There were statistically insignificant. Divide 307 by 37. That's 8,3 votes per state. The claim that illegal immigrants are imported to vote is B.S. Trump's claim should be made of sterner stuff. Why don't you research this stuff?
Rick, sign up as an election worker. You'll get some first-hand experience of the process.
And by the way, Richard, if nobody protested the Supreme Court never gets the case and 800,000 people vote and if you don’t think that spreads like measles or Covid in your brain does not function and you’re not being real what is the price for a liberal.
You won’t need election workers if you have show government issued identification from the federal government.
Are used to live in a very upscale community with the likes of the Jenners and Marla Maples and we had 300 homes in our community and you go to the garage of somebody’s home within the community and you can’t vote unless you show them their picture ID Let’s stop the nonsense on the politicking, and let’s be real. There’s no reason in the world
Reason in the world that everybody shouldn’t have every citizen shouldn’t have ID. Any attempt to avoid that is an attempt to allow people to vote who are not allowed to vote. It’s that simple. Can’t go to the movies without a ticket
You can’t drive without a license I would print line by line, everything you need Picture ID, but nobody would read it
I’ve even put up links here. Nobody gives a shit, especially the liberal Democrats, especially the Democrats. It’s only Republicans that care and people sit here and tell stories about hick Republicans . and yet 100% of true Republicans think you need the right to vote. I happen to be an independent voter registered independent for the last 45 years
Anyone thinks you don’t need ID to be able to vote in this country believes in cheating believes in lying believes in gaming the system… i’ll try to use issues in the 40s 50s or maybe even 60s to talk about the poor that could never get to a place to get a license the biggest crock of shit and you know it and so does everybody who wants to game the system.
I didn’t say National but that’s where it starts Richard that’s exactly where it starts.
And It didn’t happen in any republican settings, did it? If you don’t see, this is a problem that we have a problem with this country. Because there’s a chance you’re going to allow a foreigner who has no roots here nor ALLEGIANCE to this country to decide how we live. That’s exactly why Biden brought in all those folks.
But I think we should do is go down to Mexico City with a couple hundred thousand a bus start to determine how the Mexican government is run…
Heather's work is excellent. However, why no comment today about "The Blanket"?
Blanketgate! Love. the pic of Noem.😂
"Coast Guard Pilot Fired For Not Carrying Kristi Noem’s Wooby
Rehired when no one could fly the plane. Plus more DHS dirt!"
https://open.substack.com/pub/wonkette/p/coast-guard-pilot-fired-for-not-carrying?
I just read the WSJ article about Noem & Lewandowski. And then, I read some of the replies. I learned a new one which I will share: Noemskull
“Damn libwul domestic tewwowists stole my BLANKIE!!” 😭😢😭😢🙀
What a great read Kathy! Poor doornail- dumb diva! Bet the cabin crew threw the blanket away when they realized what had soiled the blanket. Ewe!
Kelli - here is my theory about why “blanketgate” became such a story: while we were hearing all about that and getting outraged, behind the scenes, and well below the fold of MSM “news” publications, DHS quietly awarded a sole source, 5-year, $1B non-competed blanket purchase order contract to Palantir. That’s a “billion with a B” that they can give to Palantir for any task order within contract scope, with zero competition, scrutiny, or accountability.
Why isn’t the MSM asking hard questions about this? I think we all know why.
It is all over the news! ALL OF IT ‼️ What “news” are you watching?
I won't watch CBS so who knows. PBS covered it pretty well, but even NBC opened with Nancy Guthrie and then men's figure skating. It's true that much is left uncovered or is later in the newscast.
Not to mention television's obnoxiously repetitious Prosperity-Gospel, see-what-you-could-afford-if-you-weren't-so-offensive-to-the-One-True-God-of-Capitalism commercials. Indeed in my old age I occasionally wonder if somewhere in the cosmos, there exists a demonic focus group that gave birth to the noun "capitalism," convulsing with sadistic laughter at having sold our species, as part of the malignancy of patriarchy, an economic label that is actually the secret acronym for an apocalyptic curse: Conning All Peoples Into Terminally Accepting Lethally Irresistible Sociopathic Madness.
The question is how many Americans watch or read news.
Or understand what it means.
Or care
Many liberal people have turned away from legacy media, and even the cable channels seem to be leaning a bit more to the right than before. I used to always watch Morning Joe; no more. But Rachel Maddow, yes, always.
Actually Joe and most of his guests have drifted back to the middle-left since becoming Trump apologists right after they met with Trump and lost thousands of listeners/viewers.
And of course, Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow are devout never trumpers.
You make a good point. I do like Nicolle Wallace's reporting.
If Morning Joe were the best, most informative news show around, I couldn’t watch. His constant bloviating is so off putting. He just talks on and on over people.
You have that right. He just preaches his opinions loudly. The news comes from others like Lenore.
I don't place 100% trust in any media company that traces its ownership back to a few billionaires. MSNOW is one of those, though it does seem to be relatively trustworthy. The skin they have in the game is not the same as my skin. I always supplement with alternative sources, and try to collate the info and filter out the bias if I can. It's not easy. HCR is one go-to source that I feel I can trust almost 100%.
You have to diversify your sources, unlike those who get everything they need to know from FOX.
My biggest problem is that most of the other sources, being independent, need funding, and seem to restrict access to subscribers only. I can't afford to take a yearly, or monthly subscription to every alternative news source. That would eventually end up as a small mortgage payment. Someone needs to figure out a way to allow single-item subscriptions, maybe a one-stop, a lá carte site where you can pick and choose what you want to pay for. A buck an item would work.
Respectful suggestion from a (very) old newsman: supplement Dr. Richardson's vital reports with free subscriptions to other relevant Substack contributors. Also get free subscriptions from The Guardian, the BBC and Associated Press. But if you're cursed with Gmail, be aware that Google will Naziwrench your subscriptions by burying beneath the garbage in the Promotions Dumpster nearly everything these sources send.
Another superb free source, always truthful albeit a bit preachy, is the World Socialist Web Site, which often scoops the world on events the more mainstream media is reluctant to cover.
For breaking news, the AP website is almost as good as having an A-Wire teletype (national and international news) beside your desk.
(Occasionally, in desperate need of a shot of nostalgia, I'll click on this while reading it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWa6u5_Itvs The constant sound of these machines -- a dozen or more on the larger newspapers -- was part of the ambience of every daily's newsroom in my day. The first time I heard it was in Michigan on an East Grand Rapids Elementary School fourth-grade tour of The Grand Rapids Herald, spring of 1950, and it thrilled me in a way I had never before experienced, almost like a very gentle electric shock. Unbeknownst to me then, six years later The Herald would give me the part-time job -- half sports stringer/half copyboy -- that began my lifelong journalism career. And it would be dishonest for me to claim that, during my working-press years, that first teletype-evoked thrill ever completely faded.)
Signe, I may be alone among this community, but when Mr. & Mrs. Scarborough rushed down to Maga-Lardo to kiss Donald's whatever, I stopped watching MSNBC (MS-NOW). Unless and until that network jettisons those two hypocrites, the channel is on my do-not-watch list. I can catch Maddow through other platforms.
I have not wasted my time watching legacy media or cable 'news' for at least a dozen years. It is fluff. I do tune in to PBS Newshour most days - although I am tiring of this too.
HCR reported the average American watches 4 MINUTES of news a WEEK.
Wow that is INSANE. Hopefully that includes toddlers and teens who are news-averse.
Or still have 501 stations on cable?
I eliminated TV and cable years ago, even though it takes a huge amount of my time to read and listen to conversations on Substacks for information -- I get in-depth conversations among thought leaders. NYTimes and The Guardian are good supplements. Why assume everyone watches TV? Reading comments here has given me pointers to specialized points of view -- some are free, some I pay for.
An added plus of Substack is that it feels like a community is forming, when you see the same names appear regularly with coherent comments. I appreciate that!
Spot on!
Walter is gone, news is more often “entertainment” but not in the least entertaining
I sure miss the news people of my younger years. I would watch with my father. Now, my channel changer gets a workout trying to find news that isn't about entertainment or selling body creams & gadgets. Blah, blah, blah.
Yes thus news us everywhere.
And we MUST not let the senate republicans pass the so called SAVE act. Of course it would be optimal if we could win the midterms and stop every single bad move the republicans try to make on behalf of the monster in the White House.
Heather also gives Youtube chats and explanations regularly which I find a must. And I read a lot else as well. In the videos she elaborates, answers questions and makes comments. The letters, as here, are straightforwardly about what has happened this day.
I agree with you Ms. Marrello.Local newspapers are covering fluff and normalizing the assaults to our democracy by Trump and his idiot, mean spirited thugs. When it comes to local crimes by common people, then our local news reports are harsh. It is an assault to our sensibilities to read about local citizens being called out for their crimes when Trump and his band of smug thugs commit crimes to a greater extent and it is ignored or sanitized
I was going to write about how our media has failed us. You did it for me. Thanks
It occurred to me this morning that we could take screenshots of our ballots after we fill then out and before we post them. That way, we have visual proof of our votes in case of administrative tomfoolery.
Oh Janet! What a great idea! Proof is in the picture.
Do you mean the part about the lawlessness about law-enforcement? Do you live in some upside down world or what? I think Heather was actually lost it.
She’s becoming a true capitalist, feeding her fans whatever they wanna hear and all I wanna hear is hate Trump so she feeds them. Her historian moniker has been buried at some funeral home and she only takes it out when Trump does something fantastic. She can’t deny it so she changes the topic and talks about something historical like the Lakota Indians. Lmao. And all the saps here drool over it like its manna from heaven.
She certainly sounds like she’s complicit
This is the Substack letter I started with, but I am glad I get POVs on many things. If it were just one, it would possibly be this one.
A friend shared this today by Christopher Armitage. Trump Won't Cancel Elections. There's a Far More Dangerous Plan in Motion.
https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/trump-wont-cancel-elections-theres?lli=1
Elaine, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it with a smile on my face. So thank you for being an honest soul
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the breach of faith with the naturalized citizens. They put a great deal of effort into becoming citizens and are often BETTER citizens than the native born. When they take the oath there is a sacred trust between them and their adopted country. This regime is breaking that trust and destroying the system that depends on it.
I read a piece today describing their intention of making it much easier to denaturalize naturalized citizens, which is historically has been very difficult and only pertained to cases like somebody discovered to have been a Nazi prison guard. naturalized citizens get put in that position only extremely rarely.
This seems like the white Christian nationalist campaign on steroids. They’ve taken a look at who has become naturalized citizens and they’re not liking what they’re seeing… Too Brown, etc. it’s just sickening.
illegals, green card holders, naturalized citizens, then citizens. First they came for...then they came for me.... This is playing out in real time. MAGAs think they are safe....just wait.
Exactly. These warehouses and detainment centers are the MAGA ‘gulag archipelagos’ for dissidents, ‘undesireables’ (which in this case involves the intention of eliminating superfluous people—ie, the disabled, homeless, mentally ill, sick , seniors, and any d ed hi detract from the billionaires’ profit margins. Genocide is one of the dystopia features of the TechBro/Christofascist Taliban oligarchy. Not the cuts to population in P2025 and the subsequent cuts to health care, Soc Sec admin, cancer research, food safety, toxic chemicals and environmental pollutants….
Call them what they are, concentration camps
Rickey, Robert Hubbell's column of yesterday/today says: "Homeland Security is asking those same social media companies to turn over information about users and accounts that “criticize ICE.” See NYTimes, Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. (Accessible to all.)" This apparently refers to anyone who uses a social media platform with a fictional name, who criticizes ice. OMG.....
Trump would doubtless fail a standard citizenship test. His ignorance of America's history, its laws, and its constitution is appalling!
You know it! However, the malignant narcissist is actively destroying our democracy and its institutions. Demolishing just like he took down the East Wing of the White House. May his name forever be associated with evil.
He would fail a standard test for normal person Eb. And he'll be our president for three more years...🤢. What's wrong with you Americans, didn't you know?
Ricardo, I don't agree with Marj entirely. I believe we'd all be astonished by the number of U.S. citizens who avoid exposure to the news. In fact, a prevalent trait among U.S. residents is avoidance of anything that causes discomfort or inconvenience. A significant portion – perhaps even a majority – of the electorate base their voting decisions on the advice of friends, family, fellow church members, work colleagues, etc. without actually getting firsthand information about candidates and issues.
Equally astounding is the number of voters who base their voting decisions on appearance and/or likability!
And let's not forget the drones who will vote for a ham sandwich if it wears the label of their party, and would not vote for Jesus Christ himself if he wore the wrong color cap.
I would estimate that of the 77 million who voted for Donald, less than 15 million actually knew or cared what they were voting for.
Dale, very well said. You remind me of the movie stars who have become governors, etc. Scary, very scary.
Jocelyn, I've written it before, and I'll write it again. It's absurd that that to legally drive in this country, one has to complete driver education, pass a test and be licensed. One must complete years of education and pass the bar examination to be a lawyer. One must finish college, then medical school to be a licensed physician. One must complete ground training, then many hours in a cockpit to be a pilot.
But one can be illiterate, uneducated, ignorant of the Constitution and the law, and a failure at everything s/he's ever attempted. One only needs to have been born on U.S. soil at least 35 years ago to be elected as president of the United States. Example: Donald Trump.
Right on Dale! At least, Ronnie was better looking than Trump. ;-)
Worse Ricardo, 77 million people knew and voted for him anyway. Just to own the libs.
Hi Marj, that's why it turns my stomach upside-down when I read, even nowadays, that "only" about 40% supports the regime.....only?. How many stupid people a nation can hold and fir how long?. In any case, thanks for your reply 👍
Marj, after all this time I don't even know what they mean by "own the libs." What a stupid phrase.
Proud ignorance
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I have doubts that I, a US citizen, could pass the citizenship test. Sad but true that most of us have forgotten the bulk of US history, the main questions on that test.
Totally agree. Like the sign “I’d rather live next to an immigrant than a Nazi” something like that.
An immigrants would jump to help you Mike, a nazis would jump on you to inflict more damage. Just look at those ICE agents.
That trust and trust in general. Liberty, justice, and civilization, depends on earned trust.
You hit the nail on the head JL. It's hard to maintain trust when the regime is rotten from the top down and the Constitution and laws are being ignored.
What a concept JL, earned trust.
Trust is really trust when it is earned, and , of course, expect the eventual if not immanent emergence of the unexpected. I think the scientific method does that. I think it is a key component of wisdom, trusting what, based on evidence and logic, is most likely to be true, and judging, from conscience and experience, what is most worth going after, or avoiding. We often associate that with age, but there are so many exceptions. It primarily involves "seeing", "feeling", and "listening" to what things in themselves are telling us is true, rather than what we just wish or fear is true. Also to pursue what we wish were true in consultation and cooperation with reality, so far as we can detect it. It can change our world.
Intrepid humility.
They are going after immigrants at every stage of the naturalization process. What is scaring me is that they are being so blatant about the flimsiness of the legal justifications. Just write anything with the right title in the memo and start doing it.
The Trump regime is directing more deceit and cruelty at immigrants who are or have been seeking refugee status and lawful permanent resident (LPR) status and were admitted since the beginning of the Biden administration. They are reviewing and re-interviewing everyone in that category, including those who have already been granted LPR status(green card holders).
Apparently, immigrating during the Biden years is a potential disqualifier for refugee status and a green card. Biden derangement syndrome paranoia rears its ugly head.
The deceit lies in citing an order as justification for the program, even though it specifically states it will NOT apply to refugees. The alternate explanation is gross incompetence.
The cruelty comes from upending people’s lives by threatening loss of refugee status, or worse, revocation of LPR status so that people may no longer work legally. You can still apply for other visas, like family-based or work-based, but you need to start the immigration process all over again, according to the US Consulate rules.
A denial of a new visa or status does not automatically mean you will be deported immediately, but if you are in the U.S. without any valid status, you can be placed in removal proceedings and eventually ordered detained and removed if no relief applies.
The next question is: will people whose LPR status is revoked be considered “applicants for admission” and, under their new rules, therefore ineligible for bond hearings before an immigration judge? That policy is currently being litigated.
https://www.lawdork.com/p/uscis-refugee-detention-rescission-memo
They are deporting people seeking asylum status, like the family of the little boy Liam, whom ICE detained at his school. This violates our treaty obligations, which are among our highest priority laws. The government may find the family doesn’t qualify for asylum, but it is required to give them due process, and the people being detained are given no due process and are treated as not human beings. Due process as a right is not limited to citizens. It applies as well to noncitizens.
trump, dhs, miller, noem & others are using asylum status appointments to attack lawful asylum seekers turning due process into its opposite. Malice.
Yes, and it’s exactly what you would expect them to do.
Misfeasance and malfeasance.
One of the problems is that the courts move at glacial speed. So DHS knows they can get away with ... well, you know ... for months before any action is taken by a judge. By then some persons will have been spirited away to who knows where. There has to be a way to address this in a timely manner.
You are correct about this. Courts move slowly, and this can be due to inadequate staffing or the timing involved in filing motions, hearing depositions and judicial decisions on motions. Judge Boasberg saw this happen when this maladministration deported people in defiance of his explicit order in a specific case he was hearing. It’s consistent with Trump’s view he and his minions don’t have to obey court orders. For ordinary litigants, the litigants defying court orders would be facing contempt penalties.
$COTUS sez "The King Can Do No Wrong".
They would say that.
Oh yes, thanks for this. I'm adding Obama-Biden Derangement Syndrome to my vocabulary. OBDS
Trump suffers from a severe case of this, and it fuels his racist attacks on the Obamas and his insults to Biden.
It all started at the White House Press Corps dinner in 2011 when Obama roasted Trump. He has never forgotten that. Forensic psychiatrist James Gilligan, author of "Violence" and former director of mental health services in Massachusetts prisons writes and lectures that all violent criminals said the same thing to him about why they had to become violent: "They disrespected (dissed) me." Ketchup on the walls, now blood in the streets.
Birtherism was always code for racism. It was preposterous enough that it would never have flown without a racist subtext. At the point at which Democrats realized they had to cut loose of their their Dixiecrat baggage, the former "Party of Lincoln" saw their golden opportunity to dominate.
Souls for power; one hell of a deal.
Of course it was. It was obvious to me. Now the Devil has come around to collect on the deal.
= everything Trump ever said about Obama or Biden.
I wonder if anyone would be glad to know about the Brennan Center https://www.brennancenter.org/ . I listened to its president, Michael Waldman, in conversation with Simon Rosenberg yesterday -- 35 minutes https://substack.com/@simonwdc/note/p-187644846?utm_source=notes-share-action. I appreciated the absence of hysteria.
They are a great resource for legal interpretations. I use them a lot.
It has been no secret that Stephen Miller wants to "de-naturalize" and remove citizens he thinks don't belong here--meaning nonwhite citizens, of course.
And protesters against this admin. Why else would they be building huge mega detaining centers?
The number and the identities of those they round up can only expand if we allow these detention centers to be built.
Amen sister. Naturalized citizens earn what we born citizens take for granted- until now. Remember how Trump started? He questioned Obama’s birth certificate and his citizenship. What makes any of us think Trump and his dutiful band of thugs will not question a passport or birth certificate.
It’s a short step from that to revoking citizenship from those with birthright. And then where do those stateless people go? We’ve read this book before.
Holier-then-thous want people immigrating “the right way” but nab them as they check in, exactly what they are supposed to do, or capture them and throw them into a torture center anyway.
MLM, I've heard that trope of "immigrating 'the right way'" far too often from people I knew to be dyed-in-the-wool racists. Knowing our immigration/naturalization process is nearly endless, it's just a hypocritical stall to keep Black and brown people in that vulnerable, not-quite-legal status, thus affording white folks privilege and power.
Breach of faith, that is the goal. You can’t trust us. The message for citizens of all stripes and any who so aspire. Do we need more proof.
Annabel, what is also hard for those becoming naturalized is the choice they make to give up citizenship for the place they were born. Gee, I think I remember my school history lessons telling me of how this ENTIRE country was filled with immigrants from around the world. Of course, displacement of indigenous people is a horrible part of our history,
Everything that Jeffries and Schumer are asking for with DHS are strictly common sense measures to conform to our Constitution and law. But it should be clear by now that with Trump’s ratings at all time lows he knows he can’t win the midterms. He is resourcing and massing ICE troops around the country to be in position to intimidate and tamper with elections. In the past he called on extremist groups like The Proud Boys to stand by. Now he’s assembled his own band of regime thugs.
Not only common sense, but common practice by virtually all police forces in every republic or constitutional monarchy where accountability forms the basis of the social contract. That cannot be emphasized enough. Such countries would never accept as normal, right or proper a situation where security forces operating within a country feel they can (and DO) do whatever they feel to anyone they please, much less target racial, ethnic or linguistic minorities, regardless of legal status.
Years ago, after the Dayton Peace Accords brought both a cease-fire and political stability to the former Yugoslavia, monitoring countries brought new standards of governance to ensure that peace survived. At a conference devoted to law enforcement in particular, a senior Dutch police official secunded to Bosnia told attendees how he refused to permit Bosnia’s police —regardless of ethnicity — to wear sunglasses, much less conceal their identities from the public.
People must see your eyes, he told his Bosnian counterparts — you have no right to conceal them. Eye contact saves lives, yours included, he reminded them. Wearing sunglasses (especially those reflector wrap-a-rounds so favored by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere) sends a powerful message of superiority and unaccountability. It invites the abuse of power utterly inconsistent with the very concept of a constabulary force accountable to law, oversight and public service. Military forces steel in attack and secrecy, police forces are the very representatives of a republic accountable to its own people. (Inscribed on every badge of our own Washington DC police force are the Latin words — Justitia Omnibus — justice for all).
Sunglasses. I can only imagine what he thinks of today’s quasi-Brownshirt force of thugs — in AMERICA of all places — right-wing goons and swaggering, dress-up cowboys chosen specifically for their arrogance, racism, cruelty or fuckupery…
ICCT, you've hit the nail on the head. An anecdotal piece to illustrate: After the 9-11 attack in New York, local law enforcement agencies held a vigil at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza in front of the county courthouse. We stood watch in pairs at the flagpole. It was a bright, sunny day, and the rule was "no sunglasses". Our very insightful sergeant in charge of this detail said "they have to see you, not your image."
!!!!! What you said !!!!!
Just like Hitler.
We should never forget that Trump, his efforts to legitimize white-supremacist genocide, the resultant ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, To learn of the carefully hidden roots of the crisis, the documentation of which include a PBS film about the enormous support for Hitler here in the '30s and additional, meticulously footnoted documentation of the plutocracy's support for Nazism, go here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-25-2026?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=205274486
This is also why Trump wants the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, to disqualify vast numbers of eligible voters, many of them married women.
I have to think that equal numbers of GOP voters will be removed from the voter rolls under this Act, no?
I think they would also be checking any voter registration records they manage to extort from the states. Trump tried to get Bondi to demand Minnesota’s voter registration database in order to stop ICE’s hostile takeover of Minneapolis, and Gov. Walz correctly refused to succumb to this blackmail attempt. Homan just declared ICE was pulling out of Minneapolis without getting the voter database Bondi demanded. Bondi also put on an extremely unprofessional and disgraceful performance this week at her House hearing.
Yes, Bondi was a true Mean Girl, immature and incompetent. Since incompetence reigns in this regime, such as how they botched the Epstein files release, do you think they'll be able to pull off eliminating only likely Dem voters with their sweep of registration records? They don't really seem to be smart enough to be that effective.
Just a reminder: Bondi is 60. She was a registered agent/lobbyist for Qatar. She’s no dummy. Her testimony before Congress was a theatrical performance. My view is that while she may not be in the Epstein files, she is well acquainted with those who are, having navigated the Qatar/Kushner/UAE debacle.
Bondi has a sordid legal and political history. This appears in USA Today February 13, 2026:
"Pam Bondi's fiery Epstein hearing raises questions about Trump's defense
The hearing was heated, but nothing about Pam Bondi's performance was new.
Hannah Phillips
Palm Beach Post
Feb. 13, 2026, 5:05 a.m. ET"
Also "Key Points" in the above-mentioned article:
- Attorney General Pam Bondi faced a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files.
-During the hearing, Bondi was accused of protecting President Trump and redacting names of potential co-conspirators from the files.
-Bondi's past actions include declining to investigate Trump University after her political action committee received a donation from a Trump foundation.
-After her tenure as Florida's attorney general, Bondi joined Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial.
They’re going to try their best, but I think you are correct there is a possibility they could prevent Republican women from voting. Not all states have turned over their data, and they have categorically refused to do so.
I suspect (but do not know) that Republican women might be more likely to take their husband’s last name than Democratic women. I did, but I at least have a passport.
Apparently women are more likely to vote Dem.
Got my passport, many women won’t. Many will be scrubbed. That’s the plan that is getting pathetic coverage
I have a passport, and also my birth certificate. I was born female and identify as a straight female, just never married. I suppose I am one of those childless cat ladies (I have one cat) whom Vance deplores. Well, I deplore Vance as Thiel bought him one of our state senate seats, and now he’s an obnoxious wannabe fascist VP without Trump’s demagogic appeal.
I'll take childless cat ladies over fascists any day. 😊
So would I! Besides, cats tend not to hide it when they want something from you! They are often better than some people I know.
I wear my Childless Cat Woman shirt once in a while. I get lots of smiles. Meow!
The Felon President Gang of Rabid Criminal Gestapo Goons. Coming to day care near you! Fuck this administration and all its supporters.
Thats a constructive solution. Name calling.
Toughen up a bit. As Hitler gained power in the 1930’s, I’m sure his opponents were castigated for name calling. Are you prepared to actually fight if that is needed to prevent a Trump-MAGA-Nazi takeover of America???
Im not emotionally prepared to read the news!!!
JBR - Name calling may not be effective but I totally agree with the statement and it is a true statement. Unlike anything coming out of Trump administration.
Did you catch MAGA troll Rick Sender swearing like crazy this morning upthread? He used to be at least polite.
My guess is that the Proud Boys are no longer "standing by" -- they are on the ICE payroll, enjoying the manifold opportunities to inflict suffering on whomever they please.
So are the Three Percenters and the various other dregs he:managed to encourage during his terms in office.
He is cheating in plain sight in more ways than we can imagine
I can’t “like” your statement but I totally agree with you.
“ common” and “ sense” these are two words for which Trump and his band of thugs have nothing but contempt
The United States is building concentration camps.
Republicans are trotting out government employees on the devastations of shutdowns. The same Republicans who've empowered and cheered on Elon Musk and Russell Voight to fire tens of thousands of government employees. And are applauding cabinet members decimating their agencies. Personified now by Kristi Noem firing the Coast Guard pilot of her love nest plane because her blankie was left behind. Sheesh.
Yes those are not just detention sites but more accurately concentration camps when Representative Jamie Raskin visits one and he sees “60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets.”
Extrapolate that to the processing centers that can hold 1,000 to 1,500 detainees at a time before funneling them into eight megacenters that can hold up to 10,000 detainees each. While also spending almost $40 billion to "retrofit" a couple dozen warehouses that are to house the detainees. It's obvious for one to see that these are going to be concentration camps holding way more people than the Trumpian regime ever admits or accounts for, with deplorable conditions and food, and callous or even inhumane treatment of detainees.
Worst of all, the centers are privately run for profit, there is a profit incentive to maximize profits by treating detainees as poorly as possible, keeping members of Congress out, although they have a legal right and duty to inspect these facilities, and ignoring their medical needs. The private operators of these detention centers (concentration camps ) have no direct accountability to the public, and it enables them to get away with these tactics.
We should recognize the sexual victimization of terrorized children by the Trumpstein Cult is the immediate predecessor, perhaps even a test run, of the terror the MAGAstapo is now unleashing on anyone who refuses to kowtow to the ChristoNazi theocracy. Thus the vital, know-our-enemy relevance of the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn by the plaintiff in response to credible death threats: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf
And when this is finally all over and the people vote out these monsters, those people who have been traumatized by being in these centers will never be the same. We will be atoning for this for decades and decades. And yes they are most definitely concentration camps where people are not even afforded basic human dignity.
Agreed, Carol. And this nightmare will yield immeasurable hidden costs. Statistics show that "mild criminals" who are abused during incarceration often become hardened, more violent criminals when released. Why would anyone be surprised that an innocent person who's been incarcerated and mistreated would become bitter and angry, ready to lash out at the society that imprisoned them?
Not to mention those who will suffer lifelong psychological problems as a result of the trauma. Who will pay for their treatment, if they are treated at all? And if not, what becomes of them? Homelessness? Who pays for shelters?
Ergo, the voter lists.
Scary thought but also another probable reason the regime wants information like that.
The category of ''enemies'' is elastic. It's a concern I've had since the 2024 election when I worked as a Poll Inspector. In some states, you (can) list your party affiliation when you register to vote in order to vote in the primaries. It has been a concern stewing in the back of my mind ever since.
Every voter needs to chane to "Unaffiliated". I look up my voter registration info at least once a month and in Colorado my registration indicates "Unaffiliated". Maybe a way to stump them besides our blue state Secretary of States refusing to comply.
Agreed. I have friends who have switched to Independent or Unaffiliated, but I have chosen to keep mine as ''D''. If they come after me, so be it. I refuse to be cowed by them.
And they call themselves "populist" lin•. What a tragic paradox.
The point is, whom do they regard as people?
Kathy people who think and act as they do may be spared - the others? Not so much.
I am afraid you’re correct about this.
Hence my argument that Trump, the ChristoNazis and the MAGAT rabble -- most notably because of their utter absence of empathy (and their fanatical belief empathy is a sin) -- may actually mark the emergence of a new subspecies of (sub)human, Homo sapiens inhumanus, its sociopathy -- including the replacement of the love-instinct with a far-more-powerful hate instinct -- the (deliberate) product of five decades of relentless neoliberal conditioning. (See https://news.yale.edu/2025/03/06/violent-experiences-alter-genome-ways-persist-generations )
It infuriates me that our tax dollars are being used for cruelty and concentration camps.
Guys and gals, waiting around for a politician to solve the problems they created is a fools errand. You cannot fix something broken with the same level of thinking that broke it. We are going to have to fix it ourselves because DC is so dysfunctional they cannot and it is only going to get worse unless we act and there is no one else to come to our rescue. Here is how:
We first need to build a platform of local strength, self-reliance, and resiliency. Once done, and we have a solid foundation from which to stand, from there we begin working on taking back the higher levels: country, state, federal.
The following solutions were crowdsouced from various forums across the web. I have distilled them into this:
The solution is to get local, get self-reliant, get the common unity back in community by building webs of resilience with your neighbors, get control of your school boards, mayors and sherrif's office, and town councils (the last places we still hold all of the cards), get a garden in your lawn no matter how small, a single tomato plant is better than nothing, get a well (water is your most important resource hands down), get ready, get moving, get doing, and, if so inclined, get God.
Don't build a bigger fence to keep our your neighbor, build a bigger table, and let's get together and take our country back. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
You do know that is gibberish. Don't you?
What we must do is organize and elect Democrats to every office at every level. Take power. Restore government. Reform the party.
A Big Tent = A 2026 Blue Wave
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." —Albert Einstein
Still gibberish. An Einstein quote doesn't change that.
Although Einstein had some interesting things to say about politics, they were not a formula for taking power. The Civil Rights Movement had the practical solution - voting,
"It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs."
-Albert Einstein
"The vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy.” — John Lewis in a 2019 CommonWealth Interview
Getting local control and gaining self-reliance and becoming the master of your fate is gibberish….. That’s a new one. This directive requires more than voting:
“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual… Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.” —John Hancock
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul. —William Ernest Henley
Actually no. A good basic rule of thumb is to not trust the accuracy of any supposed quote whose textual or spoken source is not cited, and never ever trust any quote attributed to Einstein. He never said this. The earliest documented source for something similar to this particular quote per the quote investigator folks is from an October 1981 piece about an AlAnon meeting that appeared in a Knoxville, TN newspaper. It may be a great deal older than that, and certainly the general sentiment is, which is explained in the QI article https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/
Craig, I guess I didn't read far enough. I cited the same source. I'm leaving my comment, just to make the point.
There’s something weird about that Tritorch character. I’ve noticed it before.
Well, TriTorch, if you're going to be wrong, be consistently wrong. Einstein never said that.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/
Big tent and clear focus.
Can't both things be true? It's not either/or.
Your second paragraph was good.
Too bad you invalidated it with your sneering first.
I do lin.
TriTorch, you are exactly right. Our Democrat representatives/senators are not going to save us. It's up to us the people, plain and simple. Protect the 2026 midterm vote. Starting now!
Your democratic representatives are — at this moment — the only legal, active, current levers of power and accountability you have. Right now, they have managed to stop an out-of-control, lawless administration from doing whatever it pleases to whoever it likes with your tax dollars (for the moment at least). You abandon them at the moment you should be doing everything you can to support them.
It isn’t a question of them saving you, but you AND them working together to save a republic. That’s the whole point of voting, isn’t it? Try taking more of an interest in what they’re actually doing, what they’ve managed to do already thus far, in spite of arithmetic not being on their side.
They don't care about the arithmetic being on their side It's Come To This. They'll use brute force or outright cheating in the next election. What could be wrong with that plot?
Lots of things. But rather than start soiling our pants in anticipation, try adopting Churchillian resolve in the face of coming attacks — “keep calm and carry on.”
My question about what can go wrong with that plot was rhetorical . And the answer it's not " lots of things " but all the things, as in everything will go wrong. I appreciate yours and Churchill's advise about keeping the calm and carry on even if it's getting almost impossible to keep the calm. So, just carry on. 😅
Ah, got it. 👍
In the end, the buck stops with us; but we have representatives for good reasons. We need better reasons than some of the reasons some of them get elected. I think we need more engagement than letting party bosses pick the candidates, and better reasons for hiring than a candidates celebrity. We ought to insure that those we hire honor a fiduciary duty to the public's interests; not just because they entertain us.
Speaking of which JL, what do you think of Nancy Pelosi backing Caroline Kennedy's boy Jack Schlossberg for rep?
"... what do you think of Nancy Pelosi backing Caroline Kennedy's boy Jack Schlossberg for rep?"
Not much.
But better than CarpetBagger George - I Was Part Of the Problem - Conway suddenly moving to NYC. He'd be braver and do better by running to reform his Republican party.
There is plenty of local Democratic talent in the race. Across the Democratic range.
I'll miss Nadler, but he did the right thing.
yep, pretty bad.
That and younger Democrats demanding change at the party leadership level. I am a registered Democrat, but I am aware of the need to address rural and urban issues, to focus on working people of all backgrounds and ethnic groups, and to stop chasing billionaire dollars. We also need to expose white Christian nationalism as a hoax on the public. We have a First Amendment for a reason, not everyone is a Christian or a believer, and there are plenty of Christians, including evangelicals, who thoroughly reject Christian Nationalism.
Here is the mentality we are up against:
———
WEF Head Yuval Harari, NYTimes Interview: thinking about all this, puts it this way: “Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.” … The useless class he describes is uniquely vulnerable. “If a century ago you mounted a revolution against exploitation, you knew that when bad comes to worse, they can’t shoot all of us because they need us,” he said, citing army service and factory work.
Now it is becoming less clear why the ruling elite would not just kill the new useless class. “You’re totally expendable,” he told the audience. … “We don’t need you. But we are nice, so we’ll take care of you.” —Archived Uneditable Source (worth reading in full): https://archive.is/rWLoO
———
Voting got us into this, and it’s going to take more than that to get us out. We must get local control…
You hit the nail on the head! We have become expendable. With the coming of robotic manufacturing there will be no jobs for us. They think themselves superior and us as ants under their feet. They don’t care if we die and may prefer it. We must lose our naivety and think like they do or all is lost.
Thank you Patricia. Please give this a read, it is brilliant and dissects how they are dividing America against itself: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned
I have seen this orchestrated dividing of Americans for over 15 years now. I stood back from emotionality and looked at things logically, and that was the only conclusion that I could come to: it is intentional.
You got it!
They have successfully weaponized the Red vs Blue, East vs West, Vaxxed vs Unvaxxed, Boy vs Girl, Gay vs Straight, Brown vs White, and Pro-Life vs Choice dichotomies to exploit (and dramatically magnify) our innate tribal nature, and in doing so are dividing and conquering us. This us-vs-them separation makes us easy to control and direct with simple angry thoughts about the enemy who isn’t really our enemy - while blinding us to the actual enemy behind the curtain pulling the puppet strings. If we could collectively recognize this for what it is we could unite and become whole again.
Politicization is so effective at manipulating the populace because most people emotionally connect their personal belief system to the belief system of their political party, and so then any attack on their party - legitimate or otherwise - is interpreted by their brain as an attack on themselves. Reason and logic then jump out the nearest window as raw emotion takes the helm, thus making them even more susceptible to the predatory controlling influences.
Dr. King knew well the art of this war against us and warned:
“We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools.” —MLK Jr.
"Voting got us into this, and it’s going to take more than that to get us out. We must get local control…"
Seriously. What does that even mean? An ellipsis is not a strategy. Spell it out.
It looks like RFK, Jr.’s strategy for public health, which is to destroy any concern for it by discouraging vaccination, encouraging eating unhealthy foods, to say nothing of defunding medical research and the ACA.
Yes, Kathy, that is certainly part of it, as well as the decades-long destruction of our public education system (and Citizens United, and voter suppression and ...).
Yes. One thing Trump and his various cheerleaders can’t afford is a population which thinks critically. This is why disinformation and out right lying has been so spectacularly successful in traditional and social media.
There is a professional organizer, community college educator on this platform; Your Weirdo Friend, who pushes exactly this - she calls it The Daisy Chain. She belongs to a marginalized group & she feels the impending & immediate danger in her core. All of her livestreams that are recorded & there for anyone, are excellent.
Just imagine going back in time- say 10 or 20 years - and reading what you wrote tonight. One could/ would only pass it off as fiction, perhaps as a permutation of Orwell’s 1984.
It’s all happening right now and it is unthinkable but it is all real. trump and his enablers - every single one of them AND every single person who was rotten and/or stupid enough to vote for him - are a nightmare that historians will still be analyzing and writing about centuries from now.
We, The People, shall only perish from this earth if we let the sewer rats and their billionaire overlords continue their now naked, blatant and transparent bid for absolute power.
Every single one of us must, repeat MUST, make a personal oath, a full on commitment to doing every single thing in our individual power to turn this shitshow around…..NOW.
If not now, when? It is getting perilously close to too late. I have faith….I really do. But there is not a minute to lose. Not one minute……..
Thank you, Heather - thank ALL those - who are carrying the torches of Truth and Light that will ultimately send the true vermin slithering back to the hell that created them.
Happy Valentine’s Day Heather ❤️….and thank you. You too Buddy…..
I am cautiously optimistic that a growing number of Americans will tire of careening down the Highway to Hell. That said, I am shocked at (with some salient exceptions), the vast cohort of non-partisan government workers seems to treat their new and anti-constitutional assignments as par for the course. Even in the midst the heavy corruption of $COTUS, the majority of courts seem most strongly resistant to excesses of the coup.
Here you touch on something that seriously concerns me. The role of government workers. I heard yesterday that Trump was going to set his own election rules. This is, of course, completely bonkers and unconstitutional. Most state governments will either sue or simply ignore this illegal imposition of rules. So the question is who Trump will get to enforce his illegal rules. The MAGAstapo (ICE)? Will he try to federalize the National Guard of non-cooperative states? Will he try to get regular US forces involved under the Insurrection Act? Then again, it might just be more Trumpian BS.
It is Trumpian BS. On a stick.
Not that any of this should be overlooked or dismissed, but we must never forget we’re dealing with the ultimate carnival-barker and phony. A truly pissant phony in so many ways. A fake to his core, who thrives on bluster, intimidation, the misuse of the courts, and of course, BIG money. It’s all a facade designed to deter YOU.
The other side of all of this is what Heather’s report hinted at in her coverage of the shutdown — the increasingly large number of times Trump and his clowns keep failing in court, not getting what they want, facing real pushback and deep, advancing cracks throughout MAGAland. They’re bellowing bullshit about elections now. But TACO is the emerging reality — chickens and bullies folding under scrutiny and increasing pressure. Those institutions who gave their lunch money to the bully are re-thinking their idiot strategy. Multiple forces are fighting back.
These people are running scared. That hysterical, shrieking performance by Pam Bondi the other day was filled with fear and terror, not self-confidence. They’re beginning to lose. They know it, and they know we know it, too.
Take heart. It’s going to get really messy but do not give them the sadistic pleasure of thinking they’re winning. They’re not.
ICTT, as I listen to ICE sirens and write 12 GOTV postcards a day, seven days a week, this voter and marcher from Kent State to Dobbs rally feels as reassured by HCR tonight as troubled by the “Christian” tone of Little Marco in Munich. Thank you, dear Professor, for being a grownup American. Minnesotans care for their international neighbors is the example all of US need(s).
You’re shining, Virginia. And we all thank Minnesota for holding up the sky for the rest of us.
Thank you, It’s Come To This. Thank you for this “like” as I thank all who follow me who I haven’t time to follow back. The “War Effort” that I learned as a child during WWII, and the inspiration of public school teachers and later the internationalism of many college profs (look at “our” HCR) and the luck to be in Europe for three weeks as the Berlin Wall was coming down (tried to go from Amsterdam to Berlin, but the Grateful Dead had filled the trains from Amsterdam there). Instead we had three unforgettable days in Prague in transition. I wish international travel for every American for the perspective it brings and the passports that would allow all of US to thumb our noses at DT at this moment.
Minnesota showed us that ordinary Americans won’t take police state tactics very well, and ultimately Homan had to announce they were pulling out of Minneapolis, only after ICE killed at least 2 citizens and detained many more citizens and noncitizens alike.
Well said, sir! A pissant phony indeed. I haven’t heard that term in a while and I cannot think of a more appropriate person to whom it could be applied 😁
At a certain point -- if it has not already been reached -- I fear they will just declare the courts as illegitimate arms of the "deranged radical left" and ignore or actually disband them.
Yes, I too was stupefied to read he's announced that regardless of what Congress does, he will impose picture-ID rules for the midterms and will limit if not eliminate mail-in voting. He will rule by fiat, even though the Constitution gives law-making power to Congress and not the president.
He can try. And he’s stupid and willful enough to try. If he does try, the pushback will be like nothing he’s ever seen. And that’s what worries me.
A recent Substack post by Chris Armitage is a good summary of the why & how of “every single person who was rotten and/or stupud enough to vote for him”: https://open.substack.com/pub/cmarmitage/p/registered-sex-offenders-love-trump?r=41pd0&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay <> I see us heading toward general strike & massive boycotts of the corporations run by the nihilist freaks bankrolling & supporting the mafia extortion racket that is 47.
Thanks for the link, John.
Thanks indeed. Though I don't normally post the same comment twice on the same thread, the statistically confirmed behavioral data revealed by Chris Armitage would seem to demand it: I suspect Trump, the ChristoNazis and the MAGAT rabble -- most notably because of their utter absence of empathy (and their fanatical belief empathy is a sin) -- may actually mark the emergence of a new subspecies of (sub)human, Homo sapiens inhumanus, its sociopathy -- including the replacement of the love-instinct with a far-more-powerful hate instinct -- the (deliberate) product of five decades of relentless neoliberal conditioning. (See https://news.yale.edu/2025/03/06/violent-experiences-alter-genome-ways-persist-generations )
Heather's on a roll now.
In her broadcast today she returned to the themes in her letter here yesterday -- and hers here today amplifies the danger we're in.
Yesterday she quoted "Talking Points Memo" editor Josh Marshall on “a host of authoritarian governments around the world, the princelings of the Gulf monarchies, the sprinkling of European right-ravanchist governments, the rightward portion of Silicon Valley . . . the Israeli private intel sector, various post-Soviet oligarchs and, increasingly, the world’s billionaire class.”
Today she continues on how Donald and his criminal cronies (U.S. and fellow authoritarians abroad) not only gobble up more and more of the world's money and resources, but rely more and more, too, on disinformation. Goodbye U.S. voting rights as determined by the states (as deemed by the Constitution). Hello much more vast, cruel, and illegal concentration camps. Not just for today's input of brown and black tinted people -- but any and all who do not cotton to his alliance with other dictators working in secret as Josh Marshall cited.
This secretive, international cabal Donald is engineering also, by the way, coincides exactly with the personnel he's also covering for in the Epstein class
Same old serpent...
" 'President Trump has delivered a very clear message: that the U.N. and many nations of the world have gone wildly off track, exaggerating climate change into the world’s greatest threat,' according to the cable sent Tuesday and obtained by The Associated Press."
(...)
"It asserted that other Group of 7 economic powers as well as China, Saudi Arabia and Russia have all indicated to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. that they share Americans’ concerns with 'aspects” of the draft.' "
https://apnews.com/article/un-resolution-climate-international-court-justice-trump-31f4164aebd2b7bf8b9b4d1c89af9f50?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
Unbelievable, J L.
Indeed Phil.
If anyone has gone off the rails, it is the United States voters who by staying home or voting for Donald Trump, managed to put this fool back into office for a second time. He definitely has no intention of leaving office, and he thinks if he loses an election, it’s because someone cheated him. Look at his chronic lying about the 2020 election, when even Bill Barr told Donald to face reality and admit he lost fair and square. Donald doesn’t have the ability to do this, and he will try his utmost to have his minions violate the 22nd Amendment on his behalf.
I’d like to know two things:
Who are the hundreds of employees at the detention camps? Do they know what they’re implicated in? Are they just “following orders“? Will they be the guilty victims after this debacle is all behind us? Do they understand the culpability they will assume? Do they have respect for their fellow human beings?
I want to know, secondly, who the architects are, the corporate American architects, that are designing these facilities. Facilities like this do not simply appear, they do not happen as if they were magic rocks grown in water. Permits have to be issued, which means building departments have to approve them. Humans have to design them. Buildings don’t happen by accident. Who is getting contracts for this work? Who are the legion of architects and interior designers and engineers that are allowing this to happen. Are they also “following orders“?
I want to know. I imagine other Americans also want to know.
The contracts are being withheld from public scrutiny in the name of "national security." You know what that means. Follow the money, if you can.
Take photos of trucks gong to and from the sites.
Another great act of protesting from Minneapolis ✊
Be LOUD. These are unprecedented times 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
I thought for a brief few hours that Trump’s pulling back the National Guard in the sanctuary cities and moving most of ICE out of Minneapolis was a win for democracy.
Showing up the Trump regime’s weakness stimulated even more dangerous actions designed to attack voting rights and free speech and to create a surveillance state. It's a sign of Trump's desperation and of further escalation. Remember that Trump said the only constraint on him was his morality. We know he has none.
The depth of the cabinet’s corruption, cupidity, and stupidity is being revealed daily. It feels overwhelming.
Right now, the Senate is the fragile shield protecting us from full-on authoritarianism. The House is at a delicate tipping point, with just two Representatives able to swing the majority if Democrats stand firm.
If you are committed to living in a democracy, you need to be contacting your senators and representative DAILY on these issues.
Democracy in America could be gone tomorrow.
It is a win, and it is also a recalibration. I think we can hold both thoughts in our heads without straining reality. I never expected them not to pushback. That takes not one whit away from the reality that they lost Minneapolis (in spite of claiming victory).
Democracy could actually be winning the long game here precisely because so many ARE pushing back.
"That the Defense Department is loaning a military weapon to CBP is itself concerning, but that a weapon powerful enough to cause the closure of El Paso’s airspace was in the hands of someone who mistook balloons for cartel drones is also a problem. So, too, of course, is that the administration’s initial impulse was to lie about what happened. "
"nothing but the best people".
Saying that the ICE thugs are well trained. Just another lie.
This regime has less than zero respect for the US citizens: it has distain.
Like Bondi busying herself with papers on her desk and looking like no was addressed HER.
Total distain.
Every statement that comes out of this administration's representatives is a lie. I think that's one reason grand juries are rejecting government requests for prosecution.
Bondi’s performance was shamefully unprofessional for a lawyer and officer of the courts. It is not her job to serve as Trump’s personal shield against criminal charges, but here we are, and Bondi is doing exactly that. She brought a book of insults to lob at Democratic House members, ignored the group of women who were Epstein victims attending the hearings, and tried to deflect to other issues every time Rep. Raskin or other Democratic members tried to ask her questions. Raskin gave a very clear explanation of what he would not tolerate Bondi dojng, but she proceeded to do exactly what he didn’t want.
"It is not her job to serve as Trump’s personal shield against criminal charges, but here we are, and Bondi is doing exactly that."
It is certainly not her job from a constitutional, public service preservative. It is the job that a plutocratic coup d'etat hired her to do, which is to serve a criminal enterprise. A single Bondi episode would self-evidently end her career in any responsible administration. We as a society are now way too inured to corruption, and we come to be in septic emergency.
It's time we stop, hey what's that sound? EVERYBODY look what's going down.
I was looking for a lot more full throated drama from the Dems: why don't they shout out that she is being beyond disrespectful.
She deserved serious anger. Something akin to a hard slap in her face.
How about those now grown up victims stand up and start dis-robbing. Show how helplessly naked they were then and now still are. Get disruptive!
Showing proper decorum, sitting quietly, being respectful in that arena in front of disdainful "attorney general" Bondi is frankly pointless, inappropriate and weak!
Our side needs a good Hollywood or International Director to guide the Congresspeople, the demonstrators and those Epstein victims to make front page news.
Time to stop being appropriate.
WAR!
Well there is all kinds of appropriate but appropriate is appropriate, and some situations merit intense anger. But anger is different from rage, which is defensive and comes from a much weaker place. Sometimes adult, focused anger will silence a room, and not just a room of kids. But it is anger presenting conviction and grace. The anger of Lincoln when he spoke of slavery. The anger of FDR or Churchill in response to fascist outrages. Joseph Welch prosecuting Joe McCarthy. Indictments that penetrate the banter, because they so lucidly, passionately, and memorably focused and true.
Plenty of reasons to be angry now. And frightened. Combine those two and find ways to be effective. To win.
We are losing.
I can understand the need for being irate and getting onto her level. Rep. Raskin warned here but she took her marching orders from Trump. Naturally, he was pleased with her performance, even if most people were not.
It would be impossible to get on her level. She's a sewer rat.
The Dem.s and the demonstrators should do better than a NO KINGS message. This USA is being taken over by criminal bullies. We have to fight back. And, not w/ wimpy messages.
The whole world is watching. As La FLOTUS would say: BE BEST!
They were having a discussion , right? When she speaks/responds doesn't the Congressperson look at her? But, she does not pay any attention when spoken to by a Dem.
What would you do if you were addressing your teenager and he/she was arrogantly not paying attention?
Stop speaking until they pay attention? Deny them something?
It felt to me like Raskin had an agenda he wanted on the record so he just kept speaking to her disrespectful turned away face. I wish he had addressed what she was showing not just to him but to the American public, that she obviously has no respect for either. Isn't there something he could have denied her? Her disinterest? He should have found a way to cleverly insult her. Maybe her appearance.
"You ....look....very .....good ...for...(she will look up) your age....60 year old women rarely look this good. To what to you credit that?"
Raskin is super smart. He should turn it around.
These people are living in a bubble like the cabal of Epstein "higher ups" who believed they had complete impunity...like Israel.
The current US regime is copying Israel. Look what they are getting away with. Look how easy it is. Just plow ahead, break rules, commit war crimes, murder bystanders, investigate nothing.
Voilà!
Yes, doesn’t THAT little episode inspire confidence!
Clearly, they were far more concerned with Kristi Noem losing her BLANKIE. No, I didn’t make that up. Those damn libruhl domestic terrorists stole her BLANKIE! waaaaaaaaa…. 😭😢😭😝😜🤪
It's not for nothing that Feckless Leader is so often depicted as an infant; but leadership of a whole damned country is a big kid job; it really is; and you don't hand a petulant two year old a pocket knife, let alone an army and nuclear codes.
Might be time for about 10 million Americans to surround the White House - very peacefully, of course - and for a National Strike to begin at the same time... all to continue without break until Trump resigns
“Today, ICE protesters carried a giant U.S. Constitution through the streets of Minneapolis, demanding that federal agents honor the rights the Framers established with that foundational document.” Oh, I like that.
First, I do not understand how DHS can "run out of funding" and still have funding through the One Big Blatantly Biased Bill. Can someone please explain that?
Second, it is growing increasingly obvious that the crisis on voting is not going to happen next fall, but is happening now. I'd love to hear thoughts on what ordinary citizens can do now. To write a Congress critter and saw we won't vote for you again is not much of a threat when there might not be a chance to vote fairly. Anyone got ideas? Thanks!
A small thing, but one that is requiring more courage with each election, is to work for your local Democratic precinct for the primaries and election. I've had a few people cuss me and give me the finger but I've also seen people happy and relieved to see a friendly face at the polls. It's not a very heavy lift but it does make a statement that we won't be intimidated. If you get in contact with the precinct now you can do canvassing and such too. It looks like this time it will be more important than ever to encourage people to vote.
I agree. I signed up to be a poll worker.
Me too!
Good on you too!
One of my friends and former coworkers manages her polling place as her way of serving the local community. I have worked as a poll observer to make sure people were given chances to cast their ballots and there were no problems with insufficient ballots.
You are a great American, Kathy.
Not really, just an ordinary, average concerned citizen who wants to make sure all people can fully participate in their civic rights and duties. I know a lot about some of the shadier aspects our history, but Heather Cox Richardson fills in what we should know about our history and ties it to the present.
Your concern sets you apart as a true citizen.
Good on you!
Volunteer indeed. And plan for their chickenshit in advance. Make sure your signature exactly matches the one your county registrar has. And though you shouldn’t have to, consider getting a passport (waiting times can be in tte months). Vote ahead of Election Day at your county’s facilities, especially if you’re unsure about voting by mail. Anticipate Election Day shenanigans by not waiting til then if you can avoid it.
Monitor and resist, but do duck when the chickenshit starts flying. In places like Atlanta, you can set your watch to it.
I would think it important also to screaming like bloody murder if your secretary of state starts talking about eliminating vote by mail.
My concern is that by the time voting rolls around, too much damage will already have been done.
There’s lots to be done before then,to be sure.
Yes, that's what I am trying to get a handle on--what are the elements of "lots?"
This is an entirely understandable concern. If people are this angry with Trump in the second year of his second term, can you imagine how angrier they’ll be in November as Trump continues to ignore economic hardship and favoring the rich? Historically, a mixed economy works best, as markets are a human creation, they do not exist in a state of nature.
Work for the Democratic party. They have plans in action already in your area. Talk to your friends and family about what's going on and encourage them to vote. That's a lot of the "lots" and you may have to step out of your comfort zone to do it so it's extra good for you.
I share your concern. Keep the faith.
As I understand it, TSA and FEMA are among the departments within DHS that will be unfunded in two weeks. ICE and CBP have received enough money through the “Big Beautiful Bill” to keep going for the next seven years.
So in essence, the shutdown hurts the agencies that are supposed to help ordinary citizens and doesn't harm the excessive vigilante agencies?
As intended.
I somehow had forgotten that purpose in the onslaught of everything else. Thanks for the confirmation.
KEM: I can't recall FEMA helping anyone under Trump?
Recheck your voter registration. Become familiar with what your Chief Election Official (state and local) does. The Campaign Legal Center gives more detail, which then might give you specific ideas. And Marc Elias's Democracy Docket has an article, "Seven Voting Laws Every Blue State Should Enact Right Now." Some of this is time-consuming, tedious, and not a one-stop-shop type of thing. Perhaps you can find a buddy, someone who is part of voter registration; together you can figure this out locally, and urge each other on. Good luck. Let's be human doings, and not just human beings.
💠 Stop ICE 💠 Email letters to Congress are working!
— 373,320 K — New Goal 400 K. * Began as 150 K !
🔆 Alex Pretti / Keith Porter / Renee Good 🌺
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/stop-ices-attack-our-communities?utm_
The big ugly bill provided them with a war chest of $164B.
And for hat we have thanks to Schumer's cave-in.
The short answer to your first question is that if you have a budget of $35 billion (or whatever it is) to start with, there’s an awful lot of tucked-away mattresses you can stuff for a rainy day in the future. Most federal agencies do something like this, but on a much smaller scale — and with greater accuracy.
We can't win this fight without younger adult political participation in the U.S. We need to engage younger people through nonprofits like Indivisible which was founded in December of 2016 and has more than 2,000 local, volunteer-led groups in urban, suburban, and rural communities across every state providing in-person connections with people in their neighborhoods fighting against the violation of our rights. We need Millennials and Gen Zers to protect themselves from the harm being done to their economic and political futures by becoming more politically active, and by exercising their right to vote as well as helping others register to vote. We need them to participate in protests against the violations of our constitutional rights in our communities, and generally engage with other community members about issues of importance to them [see our monthly post for February 2026: Younger People in the U.S. and Community at OneClick2BetterWorld.substack.com].
COMMENTARY
''Warehouses of Fear: Why America’s Expanding ICE Detention Network Is a Democratic Alarm Bell''
When a government builds vast detention complexes for people who are largely not violent criminals, it is not responding to danger. It is manufacturing a permanent state of emergency, and history teaches that emergency powers rarely confine themselves to their original target...
https://essayx.substack.com/p/warehouses-of-fear-why-americas-expanding
“What we have witnessed over the past 60 days in Minneapolis was never about immigration enforcement for the safety of Americans.
🧨 This was a deliberate, calculated assault on communities of color masquerading as public safety. And as I write this from the headquarters of our Indigenous non profit NATIFS (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems) I can tell you that every person in our organization and thousands across the Twin Cities understands this the same way. This was a racial purge brought on by our own federal government.”
🔥 By The Numbers: The Reality Behind The Propaganda
Let me be clear about what actually happened in Minneapolis. DHS claimed they arrested over 4,000 “dangerous criminal illegal aliens.” Here’s what the data actually shows:
🔥 The Arrests:
- 4,000 total arrests claimed by DHS
- Only 335 names publicly documented (11% transparency)
- 74.2% of ICE detainees nationwide have no criminal record or have already served their sentences
- Many arrested were U.S. citizens, legal residents, asylum seekers, Native Americans, and children.
🔥 The Federal Occupation Costs:
- Cost to taxpayers a minimum $2.6 million per day ($360,000 for hotels alone, plus $1.3 million in agent salaries, $643,000 in meals and lodging, $228,000 in detention costs, and $500,000 daily in Minneapolis police overtime) totaling $18 million per week at the low end
-3000 ICE Agents at the peak (Late Dec - Jan), Normal ICE presence in Minnesota: 150 agents, That’s 20 times the normal footprint
- Minneapolis Police Department overtime: $2 million in just 4 days (January 8-11)
🔥 The Economic Devastation:
- Minneapolis businesses losing $10-20 million per week
- Lake Street corridor alone: $46 million lost (December-January)
- Customer-facing businesses reporting 50-80% revenue declines
- 80% of immigrant-owned businesses closed in a single week
- Business owners say it’s worse than COVID-19 because of zero government support for the economic damage
🔥 The Constitutional Violations:
- 96 court orders violated by ICE (January 1-28, 2026)
- Federal judge threatened ICE Acting Director with contempt
- Hundreds of wrongful detention lawsuits filed
- Warrantless arrests ruled unconstitutional
🔥 The Body Count:
- 8 people have been shot and killed by federal agents since Jan 2025 including Renee Good and Alex Pretti
- 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, 6 so far in 2026
- Countless brutalized, traumatized, terrorized”
…
The Failed Spectacle of Operation ‘Racial Purge’
THE SIOUX CHEF BY SEAN SHERMAN
FEB 13 2026 | Substack
https://open.substack.com/pub/siouxchef/p/the-failed-spectacle-of-operation?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios
.
Yep. It’s an example of poor use of our tax money, and definitely an assault on Black and Brown people. For example, ICE was interrogating Black American police officers in Minneapolis, and these were not members of the Somali American community.
Governors should mobilize the national but not deploy them yet. The mobilization would be on a stand-by basis to preempt their use by Trump. They then deploy on voting days to establish safety perimeters to protect voters from I.C.E.
If possible and legal, that's a great idea Ned.
"If possible and legal . . . ." The million voter question. Thank you Ricardo.
I have been reflecting upon your thought, Ricardo. I can not tell whether it is legally do-able. But there is one way to find out. If the twenty-four Democratic governors jointly announce a contingent mobilization of their states' militias to protect the right to vote from I.C.E. agents and Border Control boors, the Trump gang will have to respond, hopefully making their intentions clear.
There is wayyyy too much here to respond to, but that’s the point. What we are seeing is that these people don’t even understand that there are laws. Their job is to please Trump , and he has always only pleased himself. They have no bottom, and no limits. They have demonstrated that killing is ok. They seem confused that people are upset by that.
Job #1 is get everyone out of those inhumane detention centers. Tens of thousands of people held indefinitely with no specific charges. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING HERE!!!