The past two days have seen a growing struggle between Democrats, who are demanding accountability from the Trump administration, and Republicans trying to hide what the administration is up to.
On top of everything, now “there is no longer a cap on nuclear weapons for the U.S. or Russia.” Awesome. (Sarcastic). I had not heard that and would be lying if I didn’t say it’s extremely concerning. Now I have another topic to send a round of messages to Congress about. 🤦♀️ Thanks for keeping us informed!
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.
Senator Wyden’s carefully worded open letter about a classified letter is as serious as anything any of us could imagine. None of us has a clue as to what this is all about, but whatever it is — it ain't small potatoes.
Send Senator Wyden a message of support even if you’re not his constituent. Actions like this are both serious and rare, and urgently needed if Article I of our Constitution is to regain any meaning whatever.
I think Sen. Wyden is a great example of leadership. His town halls are engaging, he respects differing opinions, and ultimately, he is a " bloodhound" in his quest for justice and truth. And now, he is a"whistle blower" of possible danger. In this darkness, he shines...
Sen. Wyden obviously knows that Trump, the ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, and his carefully worded open letter is therefore entirely appropriate. 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
Penny, yes, one would have thought we would never want that insanity and utter cruelty again, but it seems a bunch of men just love hurting people, particularly people different from themselves: women, people of color, and poor and disabled folks. Those men are all cowards who need others to do their dirty work for them and know just how to find people with no moral code, just like themselves, but who are willing to do actual harm for the pleasure of it. It is sick! It needs to be stopped. The elected head of a nation should not be such an appalling human being!
One third, of Trump's cabinet are women, Wiles is the first female Chief of Staff. A woman directed the occupation of Minneapolis, a woman spins Trump's lies, a woman prosecutes political opponents for Trump, his chief legal counselor is a woman, a woman is confiscating voting machines.
Evangelical women fawn at the alter of Trump.
And a man died fighting all this in Minneapolis.
The first lesson in the Art of War is to know your enemy. It's not just "men".
Last Saturday, ABC reported, “Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull.” Agents told hospital personnel the man, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, had tried to flee and had run into a brick wall on purpose. But hospital personnel said his injuries were inconsistent with what ICE claimed.
Prior to his arrest, the man was fine. Four hours later, he was taken to a hospital emergency room. He had “swelling and bruising around his right eye and bleeding. A CT scan revealed at least eight skull fractures and life-threatening hemorrhages in at least five areas of his brain.” The reporter asked a board-certified forensic pathologist who worked as a medical examiner in Minnesota for more than 30 years whether she agreed with hospital employees’ conclusions the injuries weren’t the result of an intentional run at a wall. She responded, “one doesn't have to be a physician to conclude that a person can't get skull fractures on both the right and left sides of their head and from front to back by running themselves into a wall."
One agent subsequently admitted to hospital employees that Castañeda Mondragón, who was arrested the day after Renee Good was killed, "got his (expletive) rocked" after they arrested him.
When he was first admitted to the hospital, Castañeda Mondragón was reportedly “alert and speaking, telling staff he was ‘dragged and mistreated by federal agents.’” But his condition deteriorated rapidly. By the following week, his condition was described as “minimally responsive and communicative, disoriented and heavily sedated.” Nonetheless, ICE agents insisted on shackling Castañeda Mondragón’s ankles to his bed with handcuffs to keep him from escaping. That despite the fact that he “was so disoriented he did not know what year it was and could not recall how he was injured.”
Castañeda Mondragón entered the country legally in 2022. He has no criminal history and started a company in Minnesota. Agents only became aware after they arrested him that he had overstayed his visa. A judge ordered his release and he is no longer in ICE custody, but his friends told the reporter he could no longer work and was at, perhaps, 20% of what he had been before. Hospital employees were surprised he was no longer receiving care. Joyce Vance
Ruth, you are right on about the use of peons to do the dirty work as well as finding those who are willing to break windows, throw people on the ground, pursue people for driving while brown and of course shooting them with tear gas, etc. and real bullets. I have a feeling that some of them take special pleasure at dragging women out of their cars and throwing them on the ground as they did here in Salem to a brown US citizen last week.
Donald Trump is NOT the ELECTED head of this nation. He is the person who coordinated the actions of many others in order to claim he had won the election.
Not only is history repeating itself, we are creating a more horrendous history. Future generations will find it incredulous that our constitution was so plundered and burned.
Sadly, I have minimal Substack sources, and Ms. Vance is not amongst them. This is partly due to poverty, but mostly because -- after I subscribed to Dr. Richardson -- goddamned closet-Nazi Gmail started maliciously routing everything into "Promotions," and there is nothing -- say again (nothing) (and believe me I've tried) -- I can do to avoid having to spend approximately two hours a day separating the news links (AP, BBC, Guardian plus paid subscriptions to NYT and four other Substackers) out of their burial within the day's tsunami of approximately 200 advertisements for products I neither need nor care about. Gmail is truly Garbagemail, but I was forced to it when Century Link's email service shut down four years ago and it took them two weeks to admit the problem was theirs and not our individual computers. Any suggestions from folks more computer savvy than I are most emphatically solicited, with thanks in advance.
We may not be Nazis, but too many are already 'Good Germans.' Hitler drew on American racism and American eugenics theory. Nazi racial laws drew on Jim Crow. Today's Republican party are the blood heirs and fellow travelers of the Confederate enslavers. The Nazi regime did not begin with death camps - there were many steps before the Final Solution. Segregation, disenfranchisement, pressure for self deportation. The Nazis planned deportation to Madagascar, but the logistics were daunting. With gains in the East there were opportunities for ghettos and concentration and work camps - even plans to use a defeated Soviet Union's gulags. The Nazi regime diverted immense amounts of critical national resources to persecuting and eventually slaughtering Jews and others. Hitler also allocated resources to vanity projects - architectural and film. The Nazis along with banning books, banned 'degenerate art.' Before the GOP meme factories, the Nazis created propaganda drawing on culturally familiar forms and themes. Throughout, some people resisted.
Claudia Koonz - "How the Nazis Made Anti-Semitism Respectable" "In her talk at OSU, Professor Koonz examines with the question, "How did it happen that Germany, the nation celebrated as the home of 'philosophers and poets,' became the site of an unprecedented drive to exterminate every Jew in Europe?" She investigates the moral transformation that prepared most Germans to participate in crimes against Jews with impunity. Using images from films, humor magazines, racial science textbooks, and mass market print media, she will examine the sophisticated persuasive techniques that prepared ordinary Germans to ostracize, blackmail, rob, and expel fellow citizens with Jewish ancestors." Claudia Koonz - "How the Nazis Made Anti-Semitism Respectable" .https://youtu.be/usL9bmrnQRk?si=18tNT-Yhewce51Zv.
Resisters How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany by Wolf Gruner "Drawing on twelve years of research in dozens of archives in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book tells the story of five Jewish people—a merchant, a homemaker, a real estate broker, and two teenagers—who bravely resisted persecution and defended themselves in Nazi Germany. These stories have not been told until now, and each case is one of many, as Gruner shows by resurfacing similar accounts of Jewish refusal to accept persecution and violence in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1943, upending the notion of passive Jews and expanding the concept of resistance. Each individual described here represents a category of resistance: written opposition, oral protest, contesting Nazi propaganda, defiance of anti-Jewish laws and measures, and self-defense against physical attacks."
Without a doubt our Indigenous, Black, Asian and Hispanic populations will find parallels in their history with Germany's persecution of Jews. Whether any group will recognize and reject the persecution of another group depends to some extent on their level of empathy.
LGBT people are in the process of establishing themselves as a subset that includes members of all these other groups. Their progress since Stonewall is the most heartening thing we have seen lately.
Nazis based their persecution of Jews on U.S. and Canadian genocide, enslavement, land and property theft, forced segregation, and more against Native Americans, Africans, and African Americans. Nazis came to th U.S. and Canada for guidance and pointers to craft their "final solution."
An historical note that is perhaps relevant here is the institution of the concentration camp by Kitchener during the Boer War. Instituted to suppress the guerrilla war tactics used by the Boer forces, great numbers of families were rounded up so as not to enable and aid in the war. A bit of a black spot for the British, I would suppose.
True. Royalists jumped on the anti-Dreyfusard bandwagon, and many anti-Dreyfusards refused to change their minds when Major Esterházy was exposed as the spy. This hate encouraged antisemitism, and it helped to encourage people who later cooperated with the Vichy government, Charles Maurras, and followers of an Irish priest named Denis Fahey, who wrote some vile screeds his order shouid have copyrighted and suppressed. Fahey’s work is regrettably available in the public domain.
Loren, I copied your comment from the HCR post of 1-25-2026 and saved. Thank you for the work you did to compile this information and make it available to HCR subscribers. Much appreciated!
Tendentious, pontificating nonsense. You don’t have a clue what this is about anymore than anybody else. You just like hearing yourself using words like “Christonazi” over and over again…
Careful, now; don't let your hatefulness take total control; you'll reveal yourself as the collaborator you are -- and then be of no more use to the ChristoNazi Regime.
Heather's catching the gravity of Senator Wyden's letter for this historical moment reminded me how she caught Adam Schiff's demand for Russia documents.
Just a guess -- came to me as I was shutting down to go to bed -- maybe der neu Führer is planning an executive order giving (his) CIA "emergency" permission for unlimited domestic operations. As I say, just a guess, but I can't think of anything more scandalous he could do with that particular agency. Obviously, we'll see.
Loren, I thought I read that the CIA is not supposed to have any operations within the United States. That would give Congress another reason to ditch Trump and the whole toddler pool because that would be treason along with what is being done with ICE.
It amazes me that Johnson and Thune have such power over republicans. No matter what these rabid animals in this regime do, They condone it. It's hard to imagine but these animals are no better than the rabid animals that beat the hell out of Cateneda Mondragon. Whether I ever see it or not, there will be a time of God's retribution on them! Woe unto them when it happens!
Ruth...You're absolutely correct; that's why it would be, as Dr. Richardson put it, "something bad," really bad. I can already hear Donnie the Destroyer's dickus-by-divine-decree-dismissal: "Con-gress? Fake Politicians making Fake News. Con-stitution? A Democrat hoax. Thank you for your attention to this."
Not to repeat conspiracy theories (but I will), supposedly the administration is using the CIA to surveil American citizens within the borders of the US.
I’m, no way I am signing up for a free account with WaPo ( I cancelled my account when Bezos stuck his nose into editorial business before the election). I do not want Bezos to have ANY information about me. He has sold himself to the fascist crime family.
So, I cannot read the article that was linked. It will be one of the last investigative articles that will come from the Post, as Bezos has gutted the reportorial team so that the Trump regime can continue their crime spree without any accountability.
Federal immigration officers fanning out across Minnesota and other parts of the country are newly equipped with an array of state-of-the-art surveillance technologies, thanks to a bill passed last summer that transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the country’s most highly funded law enforcement agency. ICE has wasted no time spending its war chest, buying new tools ranging from biometric trackers to mobile phone location databases, spyware and drones, while loosening restrictions on how it uses some of these technologies.
These new surveillance powers come at a time when ICE is also pushing the bounds of its traditional role of immigration enforcement. In recent months, ICE leaders, backed by top Trump administration officials, have asserted the authority to use all available tools to monitor and investigate anti-ICE protester networks, including U.S. citizens. Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups say the agency’s expanding use of its surveillance tools infringes on privacy and free speech rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
The Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, disclosed in an annual report on Wednesday that the agency has significantly expanded the operational scope for its use of facial recognition, AI and other advanced technologies. In a statement to the Washington Post, DHS said ICE’s use of innovative technologies in investigations is “no different” than other law enforcement agencies. “We are not going to divulge law enforcement sensitive methods," it said.
I do wonder if Bezos has given FBI, CIA, ICE, NSA, IRS access to its subscribers' names, addresses, along with the handles they use for commenting on the news articles. Wouldn't surprise me.
Yeah, it's behind a paywall for me too. If you cut and paste a few paragraphs we could at least get the drift of the article.
We are trying to wean ourselves off of Bezos related enterprises.
Especially after the Melania debacle. (IMDB rating of 1.1) The lowest IMDB rating ever and IMDB has been around for at least 20 years and has rated movies as old as 1929.
here is one: As part of its buying spree last year, ICE signed contracts with the Israeli companies Paragon Solutions, which makes spyware that can hack into phones remotely, and Cellebrite, which allows agents to access the contents of locked phones it has seized and automatically sort the data. It also bought Finaldata’s FINALMobile Forensics and other, similar software that can recover deleted data from devices.
Cellebrite said in a statement that its contract with DHS is for national security investigations. “Cellebrite’s technology is forensic, requiring physical possession of a device and appropriate legal authority,” the company said.
Finaldata did not respond to a request for comment. Paragon does not publish contact information.
Wondering if Wyden’s classified info about the CIA is related to this? This kind of surveillance of legal protestors is definitely infringing on their civil rights, and who knows where else they are gathering information on the rest of us. There are no morals or ethics in this bunch, so nothing and nobody is safe from them.
This may be that French thing that has to have been simmering for a couple of weeks. The classified world is weird at times. If something is classified and yet public, one is still bound by the constraints of classification. I've seen this play out in a couple of fairly absurd ways in the past.
I do that on occasion with my Congress critters too, Ally. It’s important to me that I let them know I support them. I recently attended a gathering in Eureka that was attended by Rep Jared Huffman, state and local reps to push back hard on this admin’s push to open up western coastal waters to oil drilling. My hometown, Carpenteria, was devastated—as was the whole coastal region—by the big oil spill in 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel….so I am a hard “no” on the issue. I’d moved to Humboldt County the year before, so was not personally one of the many volunteers (as my friends were) to help with the catastrophic mess cleanup.
ICTT, I am the Senator's constituent and I appreciate his work always. Recently he invited the women's basketball team who was in Maryland to play to visit him. It was posted on the women's page. Predictably we had a few Rs diss him instead of concentrating on the team. I did post that the page is about them and not politics. We have a lot of dopes here in Oregon who never miss a chance to take a shot at him. I suspect some are bots.
We the people certainly have our work cut out for us - short of experimenting with stones and other methods of divination and magic spells. If only someone would succumb to a fit of apoplexy after a heavy meal of overindulging in burgers and fries.....
I've been calling my legislators every day with the same message and I tell them we will hold them accountable at election time if Schumer and his 'centrists' fold. Horse trading time is done - now it's time to stand your ground.
NO funding for DHS without meeting our demands. This is public money they're misspending.
Pretty rich that the response to the Democrats demands was to call them extreme and leftist -- really? unmasking / wearing ID / needing a judicial warrant / wearing regular uniforms and not nazi cosplay outfits. How do these people sleep at night?
"We want an opposition Party that fights back. Fighting back against the regime does work… and we will remake this party to represent the people because it is currently full of too many people who are too weak. We’re not asking. We’re demanding."
Gary, it is clear Democrats are terrible negotiators. They need to go with the biggest demand like abolishing DHS and ICE in particular. All the things that are in the demands about ICE on the table are the very basics any law enforcement should meet which should never have to be negotiated. Where do they go from that basic? When Republicans balk at that basic set of rules, they are telling us all that they are OK with the brutalization of the American people which lets us all know they should not be in office anywhere in this nation. On this one, the "center" should have started negotiations with dump DHS!
They're the wrong ones to be negotiating. These individuals aren't opposition leaders - they're peacetime administrators. Good ones possibly - but not suited for the moment at hand. They need to be replaced with people who 1.) have a workable plan they can sell to the public, and 2.) are commited to fight to implement it and who will keep fighting until they do.
As the old quote goes, "I have no place for good losers! We need tough sons of bitches who can go out there and win"
We absolutely need some tough, determined badasses who KNOW that Republicans do not operate in good faith. Any Democrat who thinks Republicans will cooperate with Democrats for the common good is out of their mind. Absolutely demand abolishing ICE.
Exactly. Back in the 1990s, republicans started this process with the idea of cut nothing but taxes and regulations inside the starve the beast strategy to force democrats to cut social programs while they built up the military and domestic security forces. Grover Norquist got repubs to sign the no new taxes pledge and the strategy of the conservatives became no compromise. A turn from the Barry Goldwater statement the governing takes compromise when he warned about the religious leaders getting involved.
Gary, and ones who can get the people on board with them and their actions. I think there are a lot of people out here who want this insanity stopped. I think it was clear in the elections back in November, which is why Trump is trying so hard to undermine our elections. We have to make sure he can't do that.
That is exactly how I took it as well. Too many republicans appear to be just fine with the brutality and cruelty ICE forces on the American public and that says tons of the kind of people they really are. Democrats demands aren't impossible requests. Why are republicans fighting so hard to keep their gestapo force unknown to the rest of us.
The Democratic Party has lost the will and consent of the people. We are actually risking our lives in the streets, dying in the streets and watching our neighbors being disappeared. The Democrats issue statements from their safe positions.
HCR with Nicolle Wallace November 17, 2025.
“I’m not sure Democrats ran the tables. The American people ran the tables.
We are seeing the end of a 40-year era in political history in America.
Erasure of agency for everyday Americans …has been pernicious and has been incredibly dangerous for Democracy.
Among a lot of people who have been taking directions from leadership who are more interested in staying power than they are in doing what is good for the Country.
…and that refocusing on Democracy becoming as being work of everyday people as opposed to be told what we are going to do is the whole ballgame.”
I am urging people to think about what comes next. People need to be thinking about that they want."
Hahahaa.., "Party".., YGTBSM Barbara.., What "Democratic Party"? Seen any members wearing a hat or t-shirt emblazoned with "I'm A Democrat" or "I'm Proud To Be a Democrat"? Huh? Hell no. Plenty of Proud to be MAGA's out there though. We need a 'team' , only then can we "Party" later.
Because the corporations don't care about ICE reform.
Schumer and Jefferies care nothing... N.O.T.H.I.N.G... about 'voters' , even less about immigrants and everything about corporate profits and 401Ks. They care more about Bibi's overseas accounts than they do about a single voter or voter group.
Everyday the Dems make it more and more clear that they don't care about people's rights any more than the GOP does.
They make far more money from Blackstone and AIPAC than they do us. Thank Citizen's United and John Roberts for that.
.... or for all we know they are both in the Epstein files as well and are unable to negotiate in good faith because they are covering their arses.
There could be a dozen reasons... but whatever their reason is the result is the same. They will throw us under the bus. Again.
We need a 'Team' Marcus. Jeffries and Schumer and a good number of others can''t carry the ball alone, in an honorable manner. We're up against for very dirty-pool players.
Threat to humanity indeed. That's why 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 in response to credible death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf Please let us ensure this text is linked early (and therefore prominently) on as many Resistance sites as possible every day until the traitorous regime of ecogenocidal ChristoNazi pedophiles is no more. (I'll do my best to be responsible for this posting, but I am 85 years old and terminally ill, which means others need be ready to pick up the torch on days I am absent and after I am no more.)
Not only are public funds being misspent, but Republicans accuse Democrats of abusing the appropriations process to force policy changes but forget that appropriations are not merely amounts of money. They must specify the purpose, activity, and legal authority for which funds may be used. It is precisely Congress’s power of the purse that gives it the constitutional authority to define the character of executive action.
Thank you again for this, Megan. Stay safe, and try to get some rest. Some day you, HCR, Jess Craven (Chop Wood, Carry Water), Joyce Vance, and other activist women will enjoy good sleep after we've gotten rid of the FPFOTUS and his cronies.
Please write to your Senators and Representatives to strengthen protections for the human and constitutional rights of detainees in the ICE detention centers that are currently proposed in the DHS continuing resolution.
YES! I am part way through messaging all the Senators. It is WAY bigger than a constituents only topic. People (of all ages) will continue to die if funding continues.
Write or call your Senators and House Rep EVERY DAY. Think of it as brushing your teeth or using the toilet. And it can be done SO easily. I use a password manager that autofills all the contact info into the required email form - instantly. Write my message and copy it before sending it. Paste the message into the other two contact forms. The whole thing takes 3 to 5 minutes and I have made some good noise.
But there is another easier way to make some noise with your legislators. RESISTBOT.
"The documents claim that Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly acted as a “madam and broker” for sex parties or orgies, with reported participants including Jeffrey Epstein, Robin Leach, and President Donald Trump. Within these anonymous reports, Leach is accused of participating in high-profile sex parties linked to Epstein’s circle."
Robin Leach the emcee or whatever of the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” was a pathetic panderer to the people he desperately wanted to be part of. He was a sleezbag and no doubt would do anything to be part of the rich sleezebags he admired.
''Classified Transparency: Democracy Is Perfectly Fine, Please Stop Looking at It''
There are two kinds of secrecy in American government. The first exists to protect national security. The second exists to protect people who would prefer not to explain themselves under oath. At the moment, the second kind is thriving, well-funded, and clearly running the meeting.
Washington has entered a brisk new phase of governance where accountability is treated like malware and elections are classified as a foreign substance. This is not authoritarianism, officials insist. It is simply innovation, brought to you by the same people who think the problem with oversight is that it exists.
When a senior senator issues a public warning about classified intelligence abuses and then reposts a journalist saying “I don’t like this,” that is not political theater. That is the emergency broadcast system clearing its throat. It is the sound of someone who knows something alarming and is legally prohibited from screaming.
The message is elegant in its simplicity. Something is very wrong. You are not allowed to know what it is. The paper trail has been eaten. Please continue shopping.
Meanwhile, intelligence agencies have developed a sudden and intense interest in domestic elections. This is exciting for them. For decades, they were told not to touch that subject with a ten-foot pole. Now they are gently encouraged to rummage through it like a curious raccoon. Voting machines are seized. Data is collected. Officials are summoned to briefings that no one can explain. Everyone agrees there is no evidence of foreign interference, which somehow makes all of this even more necessary.
It turns out that if you whisper “foreign affairs” over an election long enough, it stops being a democracy and becomes a national security situation. Once that happens, oversight becomes optional, and secrecy becomes a virtue. Congress can be notified later, after the helpful parts are blacked out and the inconvenient ones are labeled executive privilege.
This is not paranoia. This is procedure.
Congress has attempted to respond by doing what it still knows how to do, which is write letters asking whether law enforcement might consider behaving like law enforcement. The requests are modest. Warrants before entering homes. Faces uncovered. Names visible. No racial profiling. No raids on schools, hospitals, churches, or polling places. Body cameras for accountability, not surveillance. Standards. Consequences.
Republicans reacted with horror. These demands were described as radical, extreme, and dangerously close to the Constitution. One cannot simply expect federal agents to identify themselves. That is how order collapses. Today it is badges and warrants. Tomorrow it is laws.
The irony is thick enough to require ventilation. None of these requests would exist if things were going well. You do not need to ban secret memos authorizing warrantless raids unless secret memos authorizing warrantless raids already exist. You do not need to insist that agents stop wearing masks unless anonymity has quietly become policy.
But the center of gravity is elsewhere. The administration’s true obsession remains unchanged. Reality was wrong in 2020, and reality must be corrected.
The former president recently clarified that overturning an election was not about power or ideology. It was about emotional closure. Losing would have been bad for his ego. Democracy failed to account for that, and now democracy must be disciplined until it learns empathy.
To support this deeply felt grievance, the government has revived familiar characters. Foreign hackers. Seized machines. Convenient villains who may be encouraged to confirm whatever version of events is currently trending. If evidence does not exist, it can be implied. If implication fails, classification will handle the rest.
Elections, after all, are now a branch of foreign policy. This is a useful reclassification. Courts must defer. Congress must wait. Intelligence agencies can intervene. The public is expected to nod thoughtfully and not ask follow up questions.
Oversight has responded with the blunt instrument of precedent. If one former president can be compelled to testify, then eventually they all can. This is less about justice and more about deterrence through mutual irritation. Open this door, and it will not close quietly. It will swing wide, carrying subpoenas, depositions, and very long public hearings.
Even the courts have become inconvenient. Judges are allowing depositions. People who insist they are too important to explain themselves are being asked to explain themselves. The audacity is staggering. In a properly managed system, consequential decisions are made orally, off the record, and preferably while walking briskly down a hallway.
As if this were not enough, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty has expired. There is now no cap on the most destructive weapons ever created by a species with poor impulse control and an allergy to consequences. The official response is cheerful. Experts may design a new treaty someday. Until then, everyone is on the honor system.
This would all be darkly funny if it were not so tightly coordinated. Secrecy here. Obfuscation there. Accountability redirected. Elections reframed. Oversight mocked. Power concentrated. Every piece fits. None of it is accidental.
The system is not malfunctioning. It is adapting. It has decided that transparency is dangerous, that truth is flexible, and that democracy works best when managed by people who resent it. If this feels urgent, it is because it is. If it feels absurd, that is intentional.
Absurdity is the lubricant of authoritarian drift. Laugh long enough, and the emergency starts to feel normal.
Everything is under control, you are told. You just are not cleared to know how, or why, or for how long.
This is so frightening to learn that the last existing arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia expired today. As if just dealing with Trump and the regime's lawlessness, chaos and menacing intentions wasn't bad enough already, now there's the specter of another nuclear arms race or ,much worse, nuclear warfare.
The term overkill is used often today without thinking about what it really means. It was was first used in the mid-1940s to 1950s, as a military term to describe nuclear capabilities exceeding what was necessary for target destruction. First used as a verb in 1946, it was used as a noun in military discourse by 1957 because the atomic weaponry was becoming so much more destructive, and unnecessarily so.
Today there are an estimated 12,331 nuclear warheads, with over 9,600 in active military stockpiles, according to the Federation of Atomic Scientists' 2025 Status of the Worlds Nuclear Forces. Russia has about 5459...The U.S. 5277...which is not being overdramatic to say that those numbers alone would be enough to blow the world up 1000s of times over. North Korea has 50 nuclear weapons and that's enough to cause millions of deaths and major damage around the world like a nuclear winter.
During the height of the Cold War there were approximately 70,000 warheads owned by the nuclear-armed states, so at least the number of nuclear weapons have been reduced. But now that the New START treaty of 2011 has officially ended, nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decades and today’s nuclear weapons are vastly more capable than ever before.
While it's concerning the treaty has expired, I don't worry about it as much as the other aspects of what this administration is doing. Between, the US, China, Russia, Isreal, Pakistan, and India there are enough weapons available to kill all of mankind and a lot of the animal kingdom as well at just a touch of the button. I worry more about who's behind the button than the weapon and that goes for all the aforementioned countries.
The last paragraph of the newsletter was actually the important news because it shows that while this Trumpian shitshow is going on, important things are not being done. Putin offered in September last year to extend the treaty’s central limits for a year and despite Trump saying that it “sounds like a good idea” nothing was done. In January, Trump said of New START, “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement.” Yet again, nothing has been done.
Under the treaty, the United States and Russia were limited to deploy each a maximum of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and 700 nuclear weapon delivery systems (which include land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers). In addition, each side was allowed to have 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers for these delivery vehicles, such as missile launchers, submarine launchers, and heavy bombers. That seems like plenty of weapons to me.
Furthermore, START did not limit nonstrategic nuclear weapons, even though Russia possesses more than 1,000 of them, nor did it limit new strategic weapon systems. Russia has not shared data on its deployed strategic nuclear forces since September 2022, it suspended its treaty participation altogether in February 2023, and the United States has not published any aggregate numbers since May 2023. This ought to have been high on the administration's agenda.
The casual reaction of the Trump administration to the expiry of the treaty stands in storng contrast to the warnings by both Barack Obama
although he has also said: “No START-4 is better than a treaty that only masks mutual distrust and provokes an arms race in other countries...”.
Trump claims to be making America great again but he's actually making the whole world less safe by his stupidity, like claiming that both China and Russia were secretly testing nuclear weapons.
The MAGAtt's aren't reading your post. They're looking at the $2.09 per gallon of gas that'll go into their truck which will take them to the polls. It's 'the gas'stupid!! Ughh!
Russell, stating the obvious, none of that is important to Donald. He is only concerned with adding to his wealth and retaining unlimited power to do so.
He has already managed to disable the legal apparatus that would have landed him in prison. Now, his immediate concern is maintaining control of the legislature so he can't be impeached, convicted and pushed out of office. Once he's achieved that, he will turn his attention to removing constitutional limits to his time as president. He's told us as much.
Well he is so demented and deluded that we can just tell him that he has saved the world and give him some gold plated prize to thank him for it, he will believe it. Meanwhile someone needs to be talking to the Russians, and there is no one in this aggregation of incompetents and grifters who can be trusted not to trade off Alaska or something to make that “deal”.
It's a dreary day in Chicagoland, and sadly, the damp is causing my arthritis to flare up along with the bone spurs (the single thing I have "in common" with Trump. 🤪) so it's a good day to stay in and bug Congress.
Thank you for your steadfast efforts for Democracy. Someday, you will have stories fabout these times for your grandchildren, and you can hold your head up.
I agree. At least especially when democracy is hanging on by a thread. My first round of emails from the contact me links had a lot bounce back saying I wasn't a constituent so it either didn't get sent or basically wouldn't be read. So I changed the way I sent messages. I use one of their own in state addresses (listed on my spreadsheet to help with this) on the address line because technically it doesn't say "my" address. I also don't want to misrepresent myself any more than that, so in my messages I typically put (at the bottom) that while I'm not a constituent, I am reaching out because (insert name) does represent me on the (insert committee that fits the topic my message is about).
Another thing I do is call after hours. I don't leave my name or address/zip code so my voice doesn't go towards a count, but the more they hear from us, the better.
I also send faxes using faxzero.com (5 free/day). I don't send a lot of letters, but when I do I put the same “while I’m not a constituent” blurb I do in my emails.
Finally great to see Schumer and Jeffries standing up together. I’m nauseously optimistic that we will see substantial change in ICE thuggery, but how much remains unknown. The non-negotiable changes should include no masks, training similar to the local police and local law enforcement, all similar uniforms with identification and last but not least, be subject to criminal and civic liability. One more, no long guns, they are for the National Guard and Army.
Who’s to say there aren’t? Were any background checks done when hiring ICE agents? I’d laugh if the same gang members/drug dealers they’re looking for are members of ICE. Stupid is as stupid does.🙄
The S&J list doesn't adequately address the human and constitutional rights abuses in the detention centers. It does it in a couple of words in point #8.
They are a worse stain on American history than the Japanese internment camps.
We can see for ourselves what is going on in the streets. The administration is hiding what is going on in the detention centers.
The transcript of the recent hearing in Minnesota, where the ICE attorney asked to be held in contempt, is a start.
Yes, I saw that. Apparently, saying the word sucks in front of a judge was the initially newsworthy event. Noticing the human rights and constitutional abuses came later after the transcript was released.
Context: Heather's second to last paragraph tonight on Elon Musk:
********
Harper Collins is distributing a new book titled "Muskism" authored by Professor Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff. I already ordered a copy that is not available in my hands until April 2, 2026
The authors cover the on-going prosecutors' investigations in the UK , France & Spain. The French inquiry started a year ago when Musk's 'X' was busted manipulating algorithms that included sexual imagery of over 2 million & up to 20K of children. The images are a are apparently a cauldron of AI manipulations
.
IMO, Musk is creating a Frankenstein corporate merger -- a new Musk monster likely labeled ‘XAI’.
We need the preliminary discoveries of the Euro investigations now!
"Robert A. Heinlein coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms." [Wikipedia]
Then there’s also apparently a science fiction book that Nazi rocket scientist Werner Von Braun wrote in which some Martian overlord is called the Elon…
Hello Mike.... From HCR Today: " Another court case might tear away some of the administration’s obfuscation, as well. Zoe Tillman of Bloomberg reported today that U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang of the District of Maryland has denied the government’s request to block depositions of Elon Musk and two other former officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in a lawsuit charging Musk with unlawfully dismantling the agency.
Because Musk and the other two “likely have personal, first-hand knowledge of the facts relevant and essential to the resolution of this case,” Chuang said the testimony could go forward. While courts have generally said that “high-ranking government officials may not be deposed or called to testify about their reasons for taking official actions absent ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” Chuang said it was not clear that Musk and the other two were, in fact, high-ranking government officials.At the same time, the case appeared to meet the criteria for extraordinary circumstances. The government employees who brought the case argue that Musk personally dismantled USAID when he had no authority to do so. The judge noted that the government’s failure to produce documents that explained the decisions killing the agency, as required, suggested that the decisions had been made orally, so the testimony of Musk and the other two men is crucial to the case." ... ... Finally Elon Musk may be held Accountable for the Cruel Agonizing Deaths of Thousands.... Elon should lose his USA Citizenship, and should be sent back to South Africa if not be imprisoned here ...
HCR. Our heroic reporter in the times of Propaganda and Augmented Reality. Thank you. Today's newsletter paints the real picture of our current political life in America.
All Trump's bizarre but dangerous train cars rushing wildly down the tracks to who knows what station maybe heading for a massive crash or maybe they're just about to evaporate into the ether of Trump's deranged "mind". Who knows??
And who exactly is "running" foreign policy in a world where nuclear weapon limitations expire and we'll get around to making a better deal?? Meanwhile, full speed ahead. Oh yeah.. it's Sec Rubio running foreign policy and also Venezuela and national security and the let's keeping kissing Trump's butt fan club.
Or maybe the werewolf, Tulsi Gabbard, was skulking around the Georgia ballot storage facility looking for nuclear weapons plans?? We should ask Karoline Leavitt. She'll explain.
Thankfully, the Dems in Congress are starting to push back. And We the People have so many options in our States to recover our Representative Democracy, we'll win the War on America. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Here is the video of the powerful, compelling testimony on Capitol Hill from Ms Rahman, starting around 16 minutes in, as well as from Renee Good’s brothers, and from another victim of ICE brutality, Ms Martinez: https://youtu.be/A9ZcMfdOooM?si=tr_oT8H72z8w9kfz
I’m hung up on what the compromises might mean. If Schumer and Jeffries have to say OK to stripping some demands, doesn’t that mean rubber stamping some of the thuggery?
It is the ability to be anonymous that is giving these bullies license to break laws and terrorize citizens. They have no authority to police the general population. How many of these goons are J6 criminals who have been pardoned by Trump and expect to be pardoned again for the crimes they are committing now?
What they are too stupid to imagine is that their savior will not be in power when they go to trial this next time. They will answer to courts that will not be sympathetic to their repeated lawless behavior.
Abolish the bastards. It’s a stage play to create a military occupation and spectacle. It’s staged to get us to look away from All of the chaotic grifts and deals by the Trump family. ICE is employed by the tax payers, who want health care. These sadists are all hired from a pool of wannabe terrorists and PTSD veterans who need mental health care.
ICE, with its lowest of the low standards for hiring, MUST be banned from carrying ANY and ALL firearms. Also, its employees must be banned from putting their knees on peoples’ heads and employing chokeholds. In fact, they should be banned from employing violence. There’s no need for it.
Agreed. The conditions on DHS funding are not extreme, but rather an unfortunately necessary restatement of already established constitutional norms. The extremity is in needing to insist on them at all.
Extreme leftists demands? It is almost impossible to believe what is going on. Trump’s ego. His kind words for Hillary? President T for transparency. Mr. T has no self awareness, like a child. And they voted for T and still support him. AMAZING!
The conditions in ICE detention violate constitutional and human rights. The transcript of the Minnesota hearing, where the special US Attorney asked to be held in contempt so she could get some sleep, documents these abuses.
The press treated it as a joke.
It is one of the worst stains on our history, right up there with the Japanese internment camps.
ICE has to be abolished. The question is how.
Details of the transcript and Schumer's list are in the link.
I don’t think the press is treating it “like a joke” unless you are referring to the cheerleaders and non-entities on Fox News. Jennifer Psaki and others have had detailed segments on this, presenting it to the public with the seriousness and scrutiny it deserves.
It is the violation of constitutional and human rights that has led to the need for conditions of DHS funding. Republicans are framing the dispute as a disagreement over immigration enforcement policy and operational feasibility. In practice however, this conflict highlights a deeper issue at the core of constitutional governance.
Hello Georgia... Visit Contemporary Indigenous Tribal Lands... We have the lowest Life-Spans, the Highest UnEmployment, and now ICE Raids... The Japanese Internment Camps were situated close to some of our Tribal Lands, and the interned Japanese felt Sympathy for us....
Apache: There is a long list of stains on American history, the treatment of indigenous people being the longest and incredible in its brutality. Trump is trying to erase a lot of history and hide a lot more that is still in the making. Thank you for the source.
I used the Japanese internment camps as the most recent parallel because of the ethnic profiling and detentions, but it doesn't capture the current brutality. Says something about our history that there are so many choices for the comparison.
Hello Georgia... I appreciate your intent... The Indigenous Holocaust is ongoing Today... Just visit Big Pine Reservation in South Dakota, or wander around Arizona... The Indigenous have called ourselves the 'Forgotten Minority'....
Apache, I hold that until the US acknowledges that it was built on stolen land whose Indigenous population was the target of genocide and on the backs of enslaved Black people, we cannot achieve true status.
Apache, do you mean this "Spirit - The Seventh Fire": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgVI3j3vtSs. I just watched it and it's been a stunning experience. I think you described it as "epoch". What a reference for our capacity to be fully human, and so much else. The child is amazing and I love the theme of generations together. And more . . .
Not a comment on "Spirit" that I dosed off watching it and thanks for the reminder to return to it. I'll let you know. As I recall, I was jolted by the blend of contrasting influences.
My second reply -- whatever I watched and fell asleep during the first time was NOT this in my reply that follows. Also, I wonder if there's a way to message you directly thru your Substack, but I dont see that option?
No kidding Apache, we have the lowest life-spans. I have had to wait about a year for an appointment with a medical specialist! We also pay the highest costs for medical services.
Let's face it- most of us were asleep at the wheel for years and allowed this to happen.
Maybe get every eligible citizen registered to vote and devote all other efforts to getting them to actually vote. Not sure how many votes wouldn't happen successfully anyway in spite of Trump's attempt to cancel the vote. At some point civil war will loom.
Write to your representatives in Congress about the detention centers today. If S&J are smart they will not vote on the bill until as late as possible to allow that story to develop and to get some members of the Congressional oversight committees into visit the detention centers.
Find out if you are the constituent of someone on the oversight Committee and make a personal appeal for them to go before the vote. If you are close to a detention center, join a demonstration there.
tRvmp is off the rails because of the release of some of the Epstein files. He's running scared thus he's determined to stay in office by nationalizing elections. He's doing everything in his power to interfere in our ability to vote. Confiscating ballots, voting machines, banning paper ballots and getting rid of mail-in ballots. The worst is the intimidation by ICE at polling places.
What good is "impeachment" or "conviction" without immediate incarceration? Not just bail or an ankle bracelet. Guilty! Ka-klang! Like we shoulda locked Nixon into the slammer, but didn't. How about the guy who shot Ms Good.., he in jail? How about the gun-boys who shot Pretti.., they in jail? How's prince Andrew doing..? He get to that little girl on the floor? This administration has clearly broken laws or worse, defied a Judge's order.., anybody locked up YET? Nope.
Well, Alex, impeachment and conviction are things our Constitution requires before we can arrest, try, convict and jail Trump for the rest of his life. Immediate incarceration is what Trump wants to do to people like me or even you for all I know. He is a dangerously crazy leader who will likely get us all killed if the necessary number of GOP Reps and Senators do not figure out that's what he is up to. It's clear they too will end up under the Trump bus pretty soon.
Agree David. Jail time is immediate for the likes of you and I when we are cited for local civil offenses.., unless we have the needed cash for lawyers etc. Keeps us in line. Every now and then a "Bernie maid off" gets sent to prison (having bilked the wrong person!). Mr trump is well insulated riding in his bus, and all in all is quite tolerant in light of the insults he brings upon himself. We have no idea how much "freedom" we have yet to lose. Keep tossing billion$ in ICE direction.., the detainment facilities are under contract and are being constructed. And, our 'right to keep and bear firearms' has yet to impede things., though that was the intent..., wasn't it? Whew!
It is very, very late, and we are very far down the road to tyranny, but many people continue to live in their bubbles, saying that "living a happy life is a form of resistance" and that they can't stand to follow the news. I guarantee that every day that passes while this shitshow continues makes resistance harder and the eventual crash and subsequent clean-up longer, more difficult and more painful.
"Living a happy life is a form of resistance" is nonsense. Living a happy life while others suffer and our country is demolished is a form of unbelievable selfishness.
THIS! Thank you! You can still resist and do your best with whatever you have (time, joining an organization, money, just sharing an important message, passing on info, etc) and still have happiness and joy in your life. I will not be in the presence though of people who continue to bury their heads in the sand. White, well off, privileged friends who don’t want to hear about anything happening? Yeah those were people I knew and refuse to be around. They are complicit. Their silence is repulsive.
Agree. I am currently under some pressure to resume friendships I ended because of this very sense that continuing such relationships was complicity with a view I deplore and also just living a lie. Thanks for the strengthening message.
MaryPat, I agree that awakening will not come until faux news is killed. All of it. Reinstate regulations to all media that they CANNOT publish or disseminate lies and/or false information. Violators to be sued by the states in which they operate.
Yes, one by one when they admit they were wrong, the relationships will resume. Until then not so much. I will continue to cross the street. I don't let it own me anymore like I did in the beginning bc I realized the con people are really good at conning people and people with low resistance jumped on board. I kinda feel sorry for them.
Finding joy is a necessary act of self-care and very important. And supporting the arts, writing, making art or crafts, etc., are almost subversive acts of resistance these days, at least sometimes.
Agree with the self-care and supporting the arts and all that but we can't flatter ourselves that it is "subversive." Survival, maybe, and maintaining parts of culture that can be reborn when the darkness lifts, yes.
Would you prefer self flagellation for all in the resistance?? To conflate the pursuit of happiness, with ignoring the current state of affairs is a bit dramatic don’t you think? Happiness is a process, a journey, not a state of ignorance and denial. If we can’t find some joy what is left to fight for. Have you not felt joy and connection after a protest? The love of family and the realization that we still live in privilege and have a country worthy of fighting for is not to be forgotten. When you give up on happiness, you admit your defeat. Buck up!!
We are caught in the time of monsters. The Trump gang has broken so many laws and lied so constantly that they are tangled in their own web. They contradict each other hour to hour. Yet, they still hold the power to not only waste our time and money while keeping us anxious, they make people sick, suffer and die.
But 98% of elected Republicans still support him. So, we have to defy the threats and keep the pressure on. We have to break the media bubble and the also pressure the silent corporations.
He knows he can’t win legally. His only answer is to act like the government in Iran. That’s why he clings to ICE. THE Dems have to stick to their “ unrealistic “ demands.
Chief Seattle said, "The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected . . . Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
With every evil action tRump & Company take, they harm others and they also harm themselves. This current madness in the US will end, but those who orchestrated all this harm will reap what they have sown. There is no one who is HATED more than tRump and his minions right now.
They will be hunted down just like the Nazis were after WWII. They brought this evil on themselves. It's not wise to make deals with the devil.
As racist as tRump is, I truly believe he will try to screw over the Saudis who invested in his cryptocrap. Since all that was just a bribe, he's never going to allow them to profit; he'll keep any profit for himself. His dirty dealings with some of the most ruthless authoritarian leaders might lead to his falling out of a window from, oh say, the 13th floor. There is no place on the planet he can hide.
tRump's insane nature will be the death of him. He thinks he can "rip off" the devil, but I believe there are much more ruthless men on the planet.
Brazenly and with impunity this president has lied, violated laws, disregarded court orders, showed only contempt for rule of law itself. How can any man escape accountability so completely? It's ironic that it's in Britain where public figures are paying the price for their alliances with Epstein. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been stripped of his birthright title and his honors and his home, and made a pariah. Keir Starmer looks set to lose his position at the top of his government and all that goes with that. Peter Mandelson faces the possibility of a jail term for his dealings with Epstein. And here in America, where Epstein made his fortune and executed his pedophilia, our complicit president remains smug and secure, because our Congress is silent.
This is precisely what I suggested on several fora after Congress separately passed the other funding bills: Isolate ICE in order to apply even greater pressure to implement Democratic Demands. But pass funding for FEMA, the Coast Guard, TSA and other essential parts of DHS.
Several knowledgeable commenters shot that down with "No, that’s not how the budget process works."
They are right, of course – but these are NOT normal times!
The money for ICE in the CR is a pittance compared to the multiyear authorization in the OBBB Act. It has to be abolished as an institution to force the OBBBA to be amended.
Schumer and Jeffries' list of ICE reforms does not adequately address the human and constitutional rights abuses going on in the detention facilities. Those were exposed in the Minnesota court hearing, where the ICE attorney asked to be held in contempt so she could get some sleep. The press treated that as a clickbait story and left out the horrific news.
It remains to be seen how firmly Schumer and Jeffries maintain their position. And it also impossible to 'reform' ICE: abolishing it is the only solution. Our government should not have a private army of thugs at the disposal of the occupant of the Oval Office.
I agree ICE has to be abolished. That has to be done in a bipartisan way with a veto-proof majority in both houses. Therein lies the rub. The only way we got the Epstein Files Transparency Act was when Trump realized his veto would be overridden.
I think the only way to manage that in this case is to roll ICE into something else like CBP and put constraints on the combined entity, including vetting and retraining employees hired since January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2024, standards.
Then impeach Noem and every political appointee in a supervisory capacity at ICE for the human and constitutional rights abuses including those in the detention centers.
Amend the OBBBA to eliminate the multi-year ICE appropriations and put some of the money to expanding and reforming the immigration courts, and for a fund to cover the judgments in the civil cases arising from the abuse.
Write new legislation to require political appointees to have at least 5 years of supervisory experience in the agencies they are to head as a minimum requirement for Senate confirmation. That avoids the Noem and Patel disasters, unfortunately not Homan.
Before abolishing ICE, we have to insist that all adults and children warehoused be released now before DHS AND ICE ARE FUNDED! If Schumer or Jeffries had a child or family member that disappeared that would undoubtedly be their 1st priority.
I agree. I think the Democrats should acknowledge that we need proper immigration rules and that removing undocumented adjudicated criminals makes sense - and propose a new agency. To often - as in "defund the police" their message is skewed and spun as "democrats hate police" -- the same way Trump kept saying that Biden loved open borders. So I think they should move ahead with the idea of reform - and say that the very name ICE is now so associated with thuggish behavior that we need a clean slate to start again.
Ing/ reinventing an immigration enforcement system, our immigration laws regarding immigration from South and Central America need to be overhauled. In fact ALL of our immigration laws need to be updated.
Again, you state things as fact that are simply not true. Serious reporters are treating her testimony with the seriousness it clearly deserves. And independent media is all over it.
As far as trying to line up the circular firing squad against Jeffries and Schumer, it makes no sense. Your outrage is better directed against Thune and Barraso, who are both clearly terrified of the very concept of accountability widely considered routine for civilized police forces in all modern democracies.
I tire of listening to regular barrages against Democrats who have been skillfully manipulating their minority status to become a genuine pain in the ass for the lickspittle of the GOP. It’s like being upset with Ivory soap because it’s only 99 and 44/100% pure, instead of 114%. It just doesn’t make much sense.
Well said! We need to direct our ire at the Trump Regime and Republican lawmakers. It’s a huge mistake to channel energies into what is essentially a "circular firing squad" – in fact, it’s brain-dead and amounts to doing Trump’s and MAGA’s work for them!
ICTT: I form my opinions after using the feedly news consolidator which covers all of the major news outlets so I research what is appearing and where.
ICTT i am with you on this, it’s easy to be frustrated with the Dem establishment given their failures in the past, but we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. As liberals we like the rule of law, and will only right this ship with slow and methodical wins. We need to support the opposition in place and improve over time when we get the power to do so.
If you had a family member or a child that disappeared, your 1st priority I think would be to get them out. That is where the pressure should be. These people can't withstand months and years of investigations, negotiations and elections.
MSNOW, Jacob Soboroff has done some excellent reporting. Yesterday it reached unbearable for me with the story of the two year-old in her father’s arms. It was so bad that he, wife and child will self-deport to Ecuador. It hit me because of my family connection.
I am so sorry this horror is impacting you and your family.
I think the dam broke on the reporting yesterday, in part because of the court transcript reporting the extent of the purposeful systematic human and constitutional rights abuses in how ICE is handling detainees in the detention centers.
Up to then, the news focused on individual cases that broke your heart, but there was a resolution for little Liam. It couldn’t be all bad if little Liam and his Dad got to go back home. The reality behind what is happening is far darker.
Heather is dead on that the administration has been hiding as much as they can. S&J have to make the detention center conditions a major focus in the DHS CR debate and part of the bill. I hope it is enough to abolish ICE with a veto-proof majority like the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
But my gut tells me it’s not—it’s too existential an issue for Trump, especially after he saw he couldn’t control the narrative on the files once the bill was passed. He needs to keep ICE in place to fix the elections so he can stave off personal jeopardy.
Be sure to check Jonathan White (from Ail Velshi, MSNOW today 3/15 on YouTube) for a worse story: what Stephen Miller is doing to pregnant girls. It’s more Nazi Germany still. We are becoming the worst of the worst and will soon be completely morally bankrupt as a country.
I saw Senator Slotkin interviewed on Jim Acosta's show today. She's very smart and had a lot of insight about the intelligence agencies in the time of Trump and the strange case of Tulsi Gabbard, among so many other criminal acts by the regime, like ICE thuggery and funding. Very good interview and glad she's in the Senate doing much more than Schumer or a useless Susan Collins.
She is fantastic IMHO. She is my Senator and I stand with her. She’s been very vocal and provides insight and facts based on her experience working inside the administration under both parties. Additionally, she recently lost her father after a long illness but still stood strong for us. I hope she continues to be a shining star!
No. Shut it all down. Shut down Coast Guard to stop more wars. Shut down Customs to stop tax collection. FEMA is akready dead. So shut it all down, and let them all suffer while these goons are in charge of this NAZI inspired department of government.
The anti-ICE chants from protestors on the street are being echoed by real demands from our Democratic lawmakers. That alone is a huge step forward! And I am so relieved and encouraged to see Chuck Schumer & Hakeem Jeffries acting in tandem. Now we need to have their back.
These are great demands from Schumer & Jeffries! Very substantial. This one under #10 is huge:
“Prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in First Amendment activities.”
#8 on the detention facilities is unconsiencably weak. S&J are only constraining what we can see on the streets. What is going on inside the facilities is being ignored.
Has anyone noticed that the US debt is around 37.7 trillion and as it's going, will pass 40 trillion this year? It costs a lot to fund chaos and authoritarianism. And who pays in the end?
Check the Guardian on Tusk who is looking into the whole connection of Epstein-Trump, etc. It’s great to know as I remember that the founder of the grandparent of the KGB was a Dherzinsky (Polish).
Trump boasts about a trade deal with India which amounts to the US reducing tariffs on Indian imports to 18% (from 50%) and India reciprocating in some unspecified manner (although Trump claims that they will but 500bn worth of US goods) and also agreeing not to buy Russian oil.
Meanwhile, the EU and India have signed a massive trade deal creating a free-trade area representing around a quarter of the world’s population (nearly two billion people) and covering about 25% of the world’s GDP. This will effectively reduce the EU's dependence on China, something that Trump has signally failed to achieve for the US.
This is how far the US is sinking under Trump as former allies seek new partnerships to escape his bullying trade policies.
By setting a precedent that allows the spouses and family members of a former president to be forced to testify under threat of criminal charges, the Trump administration has created a new potential starring role for Melania. How about a real-life sequel?
I think there is at least a possibility that there is no reform possible, and that these captured institutions need to be abolished. Their functions can be performed by actual law enforcement groups.
I hope you aren't ignoring the constant lefty outcry about local police abuse, racism and brutality. At least ICE is trained for this mission ... and yes, I AM aware of the discussion on that point.
Not saying some of these topics aren't reasonable but framing them as "demands" is hardly a good faith start to negotiations. Or is "good faith" is too much to expect?
As for masks, how about the protesters leave their masks home too?
"Good faith" in what? In the president's promises? In some action he takes today but TACOs tomorrow. Look who we are dealing with. Good faith is far to much to expect or bestow.
Trump aside, the point is anybody who is serious does not begin negotiations with demands. All that says is "you give us what we want or we pout and hold our breath".
This president does not negotiate. He bullies he threatens he extorts. The Democrats have tried negotiating in good faith repeatedly, to the point of seeming weak. They are dealing with a pathological liar whose ego cannot abide defeat or loss. And most true negotiations will of necessity involve some loss. Each party will give up something. Our president cannot do that, he is congenitally, constitutionally if you will, unable to handle losing. He'll eviscerate the Constitution, the rule of law, the world order to look invincible, if he must.
To argue that these demands are not good faith starting points is... well you are arguing for the right to violate the law.
Which leaves, uniforms, and not invading the sanctuary of a place of worship or school, and wearing clear identifying uniforms. These are both common sense reforms.
A reasonable ending place is to recognize that these institutions are not serving the people and their mission should be performed in other less corrupt agencies.
Good callout concerning the ‘madhatter’ mask comment above. It’s the old “false equivalency” technique used by those who want to sound clever but haven’t really thought through the question. Famously, kids use it to put their parents in a bind. Most of us outgrow its use, but not all. [A false equivalency is a logical fallacy, often called "comparing apples and oranges," that wrongly equates two opposing arguments or situations as having equal merit or weight, despite significant differences in evidence, intent, or scale. It is commonly used in politics, media, and propaganda to create a false sense of balance, diminish the severity of one side, or confuse public discourse.]
Re your mask comment: I bet you could improve your credibility if you resisted making “false equivalency” statements. It may sound clever to some but it’s a rookie move and not a good look for anyone with something important to say who wants to be taken seriously. [A false equivalency is a logical fallacy, often called "comparing apples and oranges," that wrongly equates two opposing arguments or situations as having equal merit or weight, despite significant differences in evidence, intent, or scale. It is commonly used in politics, media, and propaganda to create a false sense of balance, diminish the severity of one side, or confuse public discourse.]
False equivalency? Poppycock! People wear masks to hide their identity. If protesters are so righteous, why the masks? In today's environment, protesters fear identification for the individual risk of being lawfully charged with a crime. ICE agents fear for the physical safety of themselves and that of their families. All apples here, not an orange in sight
Protesters are wearing protection for tear gas. You almost never see them "masks up" unless there is a direct threat of the use of chemical agents against them.
I see a lot of lower face masks of the usual fabric or paper medical masks. No gas protection for the eyes. Admitted, not everybody. If not for hiding identity, why any at all if they are so committed?
Heather shows an unceasing Republican campaign to hide, and to defend Donald's criminality.
But the Epstein part of it shows it's worse than such repetition alone would make it. To that worse, Representative Ro Khanna put it today as how “we have a moral crisis in America.”
He asked, too: “How shallow, reckless, self-entitled, arrogant is America’s elite that they did this for decades and no one blew the whistle?” And he added, “You have people at the highest levels in our universities, and in the media, in technology, and in finance all thinking this is totally normal?”
If we move on from this, it must include freeing teachers to set higher personal standards. They can do this teaching youth to write essays, and not at the impersonal levels which computers and AI easily score.
One shudders to think that there is so much we don’t know, when what we do know is so egregious. What they hide should keep us awake at night. And chump is chomping at the nuclear bit…
"a classroom banner that featured the words “Everyone is Welcome Here” and hands with various skin tones, according to a federal lawsuit."
"In July, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador wrote in a Fox News op-ed that the state stood against 'woke' attempts at "indoctrination' like Inama’s sign.
Labrador, a Republican, claimed the sign was linked to a “broader ecosystem of political resistance groups launched in protest of the political rise of President Donald Trump” and alleged the sign was part of a left-wing movement that 'transformed learning spaces into venues for DEI messaging disguised as inclusion.' ”
Admin should serve teachers, J L. Not the other way around.
Finland has a great record showing the success of putting teachers first. Hire the best of them. Then get out of their way. If they need advice or consultation, they'll do that with each other.
Those who can, teach. Those who can't teach become administrators.
I come from a family of teachers, both sides and my mother-in-law. As a cop, I spent about 1/4 of my time as an instructor or OJT trainer. It seems to be the case in both professions, that if you're not good at the main job, you go "up the chain" to management.
Remember, Virginia, what happened nearly four years ago?
Russia invaded Ukraine then -- and many hundreds of thousands of Russian young men fled Putin's madness. Long lines of cars packed with people and their possessions waited to enter many neighboring countries, and one of the most popular was Finland.
Finland closed the border in 2022 but not before 17,000 Russians had crossed. EU member states with eastern borders with Russia did not want to recognise young Russian men fleeing conscription as refugees under the 1951 Convention even though they faced ten years in prison and other forms of persecution. In spite of this, some 200,000 people had fled Russia to neighbouring countries.
I erred a bit, too, when I referred to "Russian men fleeing conscription." Russian women largely did, too.
I used to enjoy a You Tube video by one young Russian woman from very far east in that country -- she'd spent a year at the University of Minnesota. I forget her name. But her videos were non-political, just very good on people, nature, food, and small-town life in a remote, quiet part of the world.
Gosh! Do you mean that schools should actually require students to THINK? I am afraid that is a quaintly outdated goal of the education establishment. And overworked and absent parents do not seem to care.
Thank you Heather…Senator Wyden is my Oregon legislator and I will email him a note of appreciation—
Here is the context of what was happening:
* The Letter (Feb 4–5, 2026): As a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden sent an unclassified, two-sentence public letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe. It pointedly noted that he had sent a separate, classified letter regarding "deep concerns about CIA activities".
* The Goal: Because the details are classified, Wyden cannot publicly disclose the nature of the activities. By publishing this letter, he is creating a public paper trail, warning the public that something serious is happening, and ensuring the CIA Director cannot later claim he was unaware of congressional concerns.
This is part of a pattern where Wyden has historically warned the public about secret government overreach, such as the NSA's bulk surveillance or the FBI's use of data brokers.
(Thanks HCR for sharing the CIA bit at the beginning of tonight’s newsletter. And I love your midday videos.☀️)
Okay, this surprises me, come from Dr. Richardson, so I have to call it out here.
"a team working for Gabbard seized voting machines and data in Puerto Rico in what sources told the Reuters reporters was an attempt to prove that Venezuela had hacked the voting machines there."
Residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in Presidential elections and cannot vote for representatives of Congress. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but they do not live in a state, so they can only vote for local officials. It's the same for all US territories. When I lived in the US Virgin Islands, I could not vote in the Presidential Election, but when I moved to Pennsylvania, I could.
So how would seizing voting machines in Puerto Rico prove anything about Venezuelan interference in the 2020 Presidential Election? Or (as suspected) is Gabbard and her team just too stupid to realize you can't vote in Presidential Elections in Puerto Rico?
Yeah, Kass, you’d think they would have thought of that!🤦🏻♀️ I feel that this admin is like the “theatre mask” image….one side showing a laughing face (comedy), the other side showing grief (tragedy); it’s very exhausting!
I get that. But to what end? Venezuela hacked Puerto Rico's voting booths so they could make sure Pierluisi beat Garced instead of Garced staying governor? For what?
Honestly, I was living in the US Caribbean when Puerto Rico voted to become a state in 2012, and no one has gotten around to providing them a mechanism to do that yet, mostly because it would add about 2.3 million Democratic voters to the rolls. Same with granting full voting right to US citizens living in territories. US citizen residents of US territories cannot vote in US Presidential Elections, but US citizen residents of the British Virgin Islands (that in some cases you can walk to!) can vote in US Presidential Elections!
You are correct, but the conspiracy consumers who watch Fauxnooz do not know that. They believe whatever lies they hear on Faux, and will never do any fact checking on their own.
“Those demands are pretty straightforward, but if written into law as required for the release of funds, they would change behavior.”
We already have an administration that is not following the law, including those in the Bill of Rights. What guarantee do we have if/when money is allocated they will follow the (new) law?
Idiotic. Schumer is living in the 1970s. Or whoever said this. These are poison pills to Republicans. Yo6 want them to eat them ? Kill all further funding for DHS. The bloody votes are there !
> This morning, in a rambling and often crazed speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump told attendees: “They rigged the second election. I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego, though.
I think he’s lost what’s left of his mind and no longer bothering to hide it at these little get-togethers. The real question is how attendees at that “breakfast” could keep from laughing out loud.
On top of everything, now “there is no longer a cap on nuclear weapons for the U.S. or Russia.” Awesome. (Sarcastic). I had not heard that and would be lying if I didn’t say it’s extremely concerning. Now I have another topic to send a round of messages to Congress about. 🤦♀️ Thanks for keeping us informed!
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 ✊
Senator Wyden’s carefully worded open letter about a classified letter is as serious as anything any of us could imagine. None of us has a clue as to what this is all about, but whatever it is — it ain't small potatoes.
Send Senator Wyden a message of support even if you’re not his constituent. Actions like this are both serious and rare, and urgently needed if Article I of our Constitution is to regain any meaning whatever.
I think Sen. Wyden is a great example of leadership. His town halls are engaging, he respects differing opinions, and ultimately, he is a " bloodhound" in his quest for justice and truth. And now, he is a"whistle blower" of possible danger. In this darkness, he shines...
Sen. Wyden obviously knows that Trump, the ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, and his carefully worded open letter is therefore entirely appropriate. 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
Did you read Joyce Vance today? She quoted Ann Frank's diary entry. Reminds me of what's happening today. In 2026.
Penny, yes, one would have thought we would never want that insanity and utter cruelty again, but it seems a bunch of men just love hurting people, particularly people different from themselves: women, people of color, and poor and disabled folks. Those men are all cowards who need others to do their dirty work for them and know just how to find people with no moral code, just like themselves, but who are willing to do actual harm for the pleasure of it. It is sick! It needs to be stopped. The elected head of a nation should not be such an appalling human being!
Corruption, cruelty, lawlessness knows no sex.
One third, of Trump's cabinet are women, Wiles is the first female Chief of Staff. A woman directed the occupation of Minneapolis, a woman spins Trump's lies, a woman prosecutes political opponents for Trump, his chief legal counselor is a woman, a woman is confiscating voting machines.
Evangelical women fawn at the alter of Trump.
And a man died fighting all this in Minneapolis.
The first lesson in the Art of War is to know your enemy. It's not just "men".
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-white-house-administration-cabinet-powerful-women-2025-3
Last Saturday, ABC reported, “Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull.” Agents told hospital personnel the man, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, had tried to flee and had run into a brick wall on purpose. But hospital personnel said his injuries were inconsistent with what ICE claimed.
Prior to his arrest, the man was fine. Four hours later, he was taken to a hospital emergency room. He had “swelling and bruising around his right eye and bleeding. A CT scan revealed at least eight skull fractures and life-threatening hemorrhages in at least five areas of his brain.” The reporter asked a board-certified forensic pathologist who worked as a medical examiner in Minnesota for more than 30 years whether she agreed with hospital employees’ conclusions the injuries weren’t the result of an intentional run at a wall. She responded, “one doesn't have to be a physician to conclude that a person can't get skull fractures on both the right and left sides of their head and from front to back by running themselves into a wall."
One agent subsequently admitted to hospital employees that Castañeda Mondragón, who was arrested the day after Renee Good was killed, "got his (expletive) rocked" after they arrested him.
When he was first admitted to the hospital, Castañeda Mondragón was reportedly “alert and speaking, telling staff he was ‘dragged and mistreated by federal agents.’” But his condition deteriorated rapidly. By the following week, his condition was described as “minimally responsive and communicative, disoriented and heavily sedated.” Nonetheless, ICE agents insisted on shackling Castañeda Mondragón’s ankles to his bed with handcuffs to keep him from escaping. That despite the fact that he “was so disoriented he did not know what year it was and could not recall how he was injured.”
Castañeda Mondragón entered the country legally in 2022. He has no criminal history and started a company in Minnesota. Agents only became aware after they arrested him that he had overstayed his visa. A judge ordered his release and he is no longer in ICE custody, but his friends told the reporter he could no longer work and was at, perhaps, 20% of what he had been before. Hospital employees were surprised he was no longer receiving care. Joyce Vance
Ruth, the women they have doing their bidding are as bad as the men. Noem? Bondi? I mean, we can’t only blame men for this debacle.
Ruth, you are right on about the use of peons to do the dirty work as well as finding those who are willing to break windows, throw people on the ground, pursue people for driving while brown and of course shooting them with tear gas, etc. and real bullets. I have a feeling that some of them take special pleasure at dragging women out of their cars and throwing them on the ground as they did here in Salem to a brown US citizen last week.
Donald Trump is NOT the ELECTED head of this nation. He is the person who coordinated the actions of many others in order to claim he had won the election.
Not only is history repeating itself, we are creating a more horrendous history. Future generations will find it incredulous that our constitution was so plundered and burned.
See my comment about COVERTURE
Sadly, I have minimal Substack sources, and Ms. Vance is not amongst them. This is partly due to poverty, but mostly because -- after I subscribed to Dr. Richardson -- goddamned closet-Nazi Gmail started maliciously routing everything into "Promotions," and there is nothing -- say again (nothing) (and believe me I've tried) -- I can do to avoid having to spend approximately two hours a day separating the news links (AP, BBC, Guardian plus paid subscriptions to NYT and four other Substackers) out of their burial within the day's tsunami of approximately 200 advertisements for products I neither need nor care about. Gmail is truly Garbagemail, but I was forced to it when Century Link's email service shut down four years ago and it took them two weeks to admit the problem was theirs and not our individual computers. Any suggestions from folks more computer savvy than I are most emphatically solicited, with thanks in advance.
Do you have a link? Thanks!
We may not be Nazis, but too many are already 'Good Germans.' Hitler drew on American racism and American eugenics theory. Nazi racial laws drew on Jim Crow. Today's Republican party are the blood heirs and fellow travelers of the Confederate enslavers. The Nazi regime did not begin with death camps - there were many steps before the Final Solution. Segregation, disenfranchisement, pressure for self deportation. The Nazis planned deportation to Madagascar, but the logistics were daunting. With gains in the East there were opportunities for ghettos and concentration and work camps - even plans to use a defeated Soviet Union's gulags. The Nazi regime diverted immense amounts of critical national resources to persecuting and eventually slaughtering Jews and others. Hitler also allocated resources to vanity projects - architectural and film. The Nazis along with banning books, banned 'degenerate art.' Before the GOP meme factories, the Nazis created propaganda drawing on culturally familiar forms and themes. Throughout, some people resisted.
Claudia Koonz - "How the Nazis Made Anti-Semitism Respectable" "In her talk at OSU, Professor Koonz examines with the question, "How did it happen that Germany, the nation celebrated as the home of 'philosophers and poets,' became the site of an unprecedented drive to exterminate every Jew in Europe?" She investigates the moral transformation that prepared most Germans to participate in crimes against Jews with impunity. Using images from films, humor magazines, racial science textbooks, and mass market print media, she will examine the sophisticated persuasive techniques that prepared ordinary Germans to ostracize, blackmail, rob, and expel fellow citizens with Jewish ancestors." Claudia Koonz - "How the Nazis Made Anti-Semitism Respectable" .https://youtu.be/usL9bmrnQRk?si=18tNT-Yhewce51Zv.
Resisters How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany by Wolf Gruner "Drawing on twelve years of research in dozens of archives in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book tells the story of five Jewish people—a merchant, a homemaker, a real estate broker, and two teenagers—who bravely resisted persecution and defended themselves in Nazi Germany. These stories have not been told until now, and each case is one of many, as Gruner shows by resurfacing similar accounts of Jewish refusal to accept persecution and violence in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1943, upending the notion of passive Jews and expanding the concept of resistance. Each individual described here represents a category of resistance: written opposition, oral protest, contesting Nazi propaganda, defiance of anti-Jewish laws and measures, and self-defense against physical attacks."
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267198/resisters/
Johannesburg Launch of Resisters by Wolf Gruner https://youtu.be/n8ojMkVMz8g?si=MHJjkwH7kxzlECPP
Without a doubt our Indigenous, Black, Asian and Hispanic populations will find parallels in their history with Germany's persecution of Jews. Whether any group will recognize and reject the persecution of another group depends to some extent on their level of empathy.
LGBT people are in the process of establishing themselves as a subset that includes members of all these other groups. Their progress since Stonewall is the most heartening thing we have seen lately.
Nazis based their persecution of Jews on U.S. and Canadian genocide, enslavement, land and property theft, forced segregation, and more against Native Americans, Africans, and African Americans. Nazis came to th U.S. and Canada for guidance and pointers to craft their "final solution."
An historical note that is perhaps relevant here is the institution of the concentration camp by Kitchener during the Boer War. Instituted to suppress the guerrilla war tactics used by the Boer forces, great numbers of families were rounded up so as not to enable and aid in the war. A bit of a black spot for the British, I would suppose.
Antisemitism was already respectable! throughout Christendom. It was normal.
My mother once said that it was France, not Germany, that might have committed the Holocaust. Remember Dreyfus?
True. Royalists jumped on the anti-Dreyfusard bandwagon, and many anti-Dreyfusards refused to change their minds when Major Esterházy was exposed as the spy. This hate encouraged antisemitism, and it helped to encourage people who later cooperated with the Vichy government, Charles Maurras, and followers of an Irish priest named Denis Fahey, who wrote some vile screeds his order shouid have copyrighted and suppressed. Fahey’s work is regrettably available in the public domain.
Fantastic summary of nazi history. Thank you
Loren, I copied your comment from the HCR post of 1-25-2026 and saved. Thank you for the work you did to compile this information and make it available to HCR subscribers. Much appreciated!
Thank you.
Tendentious, pontificating nonsense. You don’t have a clue what this is about anymore than anybody else. You just like hearing yourself using words like “Christonazi” over and over again…
Careful, now; don't let your hatefulness take total control; you'll reveal yourself as the collaborator you are -- and then be of no more use to the ChristoNazi Regime.
Get over yourself.
Once again, thank you.
Heather's catching the gravity of Senator Wyden's letter for this historical moment reminded me how she caught Adam Schiff's demand for Russia documents.
Just a guess -- came to me as I was shutting down to go to bed -- maybe der neu Führer is planning an executive order giving (his) CIA "emergency" permission for unlimited domestic operations. As I say, just a guess, but I can't think of anything more scandalous he could do with that particular agency. Obviously, we'll see.
Loren, I thought I read that the CIA is not supposed to have any operations within the United States. That would give Congress another reason to ditch Trump and the whole toddler pool because that would be treason along with what is being done with ICE.
“Laws? There are no laws other than the ones I approve of!!! Only I can stop me”
Author Unidentified
I thought the author was pretty clear as to who he is.
Wed have entered the "I am the law" stage of the dictator take over by the Heritage Foundation
It amazes me that Johnson and Thune have such power over republicans. No matter what these rabid animals in this regime do, They condone it. It's hard to imagine but these animals are no better than the rabid animals that beat the hell out of Cateneda Mondragon. Whether I ever see it or not, there will be a time of God's retribution on them! Woe unto them when it happens!
Ruth...You're absolutely correct; that's why it would be, as Dr. Richardson put it, "something bad," really bad. I can already hear Donnie the Destroyer's dickus-by-divine-decree-dismissal: "Con-gress? Fake Politicians making Fake News. Con-stitution? A Democrat hoax. Thank you for your attention to this."
And the FBI aren't supposed to operate outside the United States, but they do.
Wyden is a fabulous Senator! His town halls are amazing!
Not to repeat conspiracy theories (but I will), supposedly the administration is using the CIA to surveil American citizens within the borders of the US.
Obviously this is quite illegal.
If you read this WaPo article https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2026/ice-surveillance-immigrants-protesters/?itid=sf_business-technology_article-list_1_3
It is Homeland with CIA tools spying on Americans.
I’m, no way I am signing up for a free account with WaPo ( I cancelled my account when Bezos stuck his nose into editorial business before the election). I do not want Bezos to have ANY information about me. He has sold himself to the fascist crime family.
So, I cannot read the article that was linked. It will be one of the last investigative articles that will come from the Post, as Bezos has gutted the reportorial team so that the Trump regime can continue their crime spree without any accountability.
an excerpt:
Federal immigration officers fanning out across Minnesota and other parts of the country are newly equipped with an array of state-of-the-art surveillance technologies, thanks to a bill passed last summer that transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the country’s most highly funded law enforcement agency. ICE has wasted no time spending its war chest, buying new tools ranging from biometric trackers to mobile phone location databases, spyware and drones, while loosening restrictions on how it uses some of these technologies.
These new surveillance powers come at a time when ICE is also pushing the bounds of its traditional role of immigration enforcement. In recent months, ICE leaders, backed by top Trump administration officials, have asserted the authority to use all available tools to monitor and investigate anti-ICE protester networks, including U.S. citizens. Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups say the agency’s expanding use of its surveillance tools infringes on privacy and free speech rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
The Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, disclosed in an annual report on Wednesday that the agency has significantly expanded the operational scope for its use of facial recognition, AI and other advanced technologies. In a statement to the Washington Post, DHS said ICE’s use of innovative technologies in investigations is “no different” than other law enforcement agencies. “We are not going to divulge law enforcement sensitive methods," it said.
Thank you for this vital information...and for defeating the Bezospost paywall.
I dropped them completely the day that Bezos interfered with backing candidates.
I do wonder if Bezos has given FBI, CIA, ICE, NSA, IRS access to its subscribers' names, addresses, along with the handles they use for commenting on the news articles. Wouldn't surprise me.
Yeah, it's behind a paywall for me too. If you cut and paste a few paragraphs we could at least get the drift of the article.
We are trying to wean ourselves off of Bezos related enterprises.
Especially after the Melania debacle. (IMDB rating of 1.1) The lowest IMDB rating ever and IMDB has been around for at least 20 years and has rated movies as old as 1929.
here is one: As part of its buying spree last year, ICE signed contracts with the Israeli companies Paragon Solutions, which makes spyware that can hack into phones remotely, and Cellebrite, which allows agents to access the contents of locked phones it has seized and automatically sort the data. It also bought Finaldata’s FINALMobile Forensics and other, similar software that can recover deleted data from devices.
Cellebrite said in a statement that its contract with DHS is for national security investigations. “Cellebrite’s technology is forensic, requiring physical possession of a device and appropriate legal authority,” the company said.
Finaldata did not respond to a request for comment. Paragon does not publish contact information.
Wondering if Wyden’s classified info about the CIA is related to this? This kind of surveillance of legal protestors is definitely infringing on their civil rights, and who knows where else they are gathering information on the rest of us. There are no morals or ethics in this bunch, so nothing and nobody is safe from them.
This may be that French thing that has to have been simmering for a couple of weeks. The classified world is weird at times. If something is classified and yet public, one is still bound by the constraints of classification. I've seen this play out in a couple of fairly absurd ways in the past.
Sen. Wyden's DC office
(202) 224-5244
Done.
I second this. I email Wyden (my senator) once weekly to tell him I love what he is doing for Oregon and the country.
I do that on occasion with my Congress critters too, Ally. It’s important to me that I let them know I support them. I recently attended a gathering in Eureka that was attended by Rep Jared Huffman, state and local reps to push back hard on this admin’s push to open up western coastal waters to oil drilling. My hometown, Carpenteria, was devastated—as was the whole coastal region—by the big oil spill in 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel….so I am a hard “no” on the issue. I’d moved to Humboldt County the year before, so was not personally one of the many volunteers (as my friends were) to help with the catastrophic mess cleanup.
Done.
ICTT, I am the Senator's constituent and I appreciate his work always. Recently he invited the women's basketball team who was in Maryland to play to visit him. It was posted on the women's page. Predictably we had a few Rs diss him instead of concentrating on the team. I did post that the page is about them and not politics. We have a lot of dopes here in Oregon who never miss a chance to take a shot at him. I suspect some are bots.
Not surprised about the "dopes." Oregon joined the Union as a whites-only state.
We the people certainly have our work cut out for us - short of experimenting with stones and other methods of divination and magic spells. If only someone would succumb to a fit of apoplexy after a heavy meal of overindulging in burgers and fries.....
We can guess- information about Trump or Gabbard disclosing highly classified, sensitive information to Putin.
I sent an email of support.
I've been calling my legislators every day with the same message and I tell them we will hold them accountable at election time if Schumer and his 'centrists' fold. Horse trading time is done - now it's time to stand your ground.
NO funding for DHS without meeting our demands. This is public money they're misspending.
Pretty rich that the response to the Democrats demands was to call them extreme and leftist -- really? unmasking / wearing ID / needing a judicial warrant / wearing regular uniforms and not nazi cosplay outfits. How do these people sleep at night?
Laurie, in terms of how they sleep at night, as the joke goes, from the rafters. (At least regarding Stephen Miller,)
do you mean bats?
Please...no insulting bats.
Bats are our friends. Not these people.
Gary, any perceived insult against flying mammals is unintended, to be sure.
LOL. Thanks, Gary, I needed that!
I’m thinking more like Nosferatu?!!!
Thune has done a remarkable thing. He has willingly made himself a eunuch in order to serve a tyrant.
Make It Make Sense
https://open.substack.com/pub/katiejanell/p/make-it-make-sense?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2fj21q
"We want an opposition Party that fights back. Fighting back against the regime does work… and we will remake this party to represent the people because it is currently full of too many people who are too weak. We’re not asking. We’re demanding."
Indivisible Las Vegas
YES, Barbara!
Gary, it is clear Democrats are terrible negotiators. They need to go with the biggest demand like abolishing DHS and ICE in particular. All the things that are in the demands about ICE on the table are the very basics any law enforcement should meet which should never have to be negotiated. Where do they go from that basic? When Republicans balk at that basic set of rules, they are telling us all that they are OK with the brutalization of the American people which lets us all know they should not be in office anywhere in this nation. On this one, the "center" should have started negotiations with dump DHS!
They're the wrong ones to be negotiating. These individuals aren't opposition leaders - they're peacetime administrators. Good ones possibly - but not suited for the moment at hand. They need to be replaced with people who 1.) have a workable plan they can sell to the public, and 2.) are commited to fight to implement it and who will keep fighting until they do.
As the old quote goes, "I have no place for good losers! We need tough sons of bitches who can go out there and win"
We absolutely need some tough, determined badasses who KNOW that Republicans do not operate in good faith. Any Democrat who thinks Republicans will cooperate with Democrats for the common good is out of their mind. Absolutely demand abolishing ICE.
Exactly. Back in the 1990s, republicans started this process with the idea of cut nothing but taxes and regulations inside the starve the beast strategy to force democrats to cut social programs while they built up the military and domestic security forces. Grover Norquist got repubs to sign the no new taxes pledge and the strategy of the conservatives became no compromise. A turn from the Barry Goldwater statement the governing takes compromise when he warned about the religious leaders getting involved.
If they run on "Abolish ICE" (like defund the police), they will lose. Reform ICE doesn't sound like a platform either.
Gary, and ones who can get the people on board with them and their actions. I think there are a lot of people out here who want this insanity stopped. I think it was clear in the elections back in November, which is why Trump is trying so hard to undermine our elections. We have to make sure he can't do that.
Yet, the ones the "progressives" tend to want, are not the ones who will get the independents and moderates needed to win on board.
Rahm Emanuel and others see this, the so-called progressives should pay attention to that call if they want an end to this madness.
Gary, you do not know that.
That is exactly how I took it as well. Too many republicans appear to be just fine with the brutality and cruelty ICE forces on the American public and that says tons of the kind of people they really are. Democrats demands aren't impossible requests. Why are republicans fighting so hard to keep their gestapo force unknown to the rest of us.
2 of the 3 MAGA House Reps here in Baghdad By the Sea have broken with Trump on immigration. Both Cuban Americans.
But that doesn't mean they'll publicly support Dems.
Hopefully, Jeffries has been working the problem solvers' conference.
More good news for Florida. Marc Elias is representing Fl voters as he represents us in suit against DeSantis for trying to gerrymander us yet again.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/voters-sue-flordia-governor-ron-desantis-gop-redistricting/
💪💙
Breaking with MAGA sounds good.
The Democratic Party has lost the will and consent of the people. We are actually risking our lives in the streets, dying in the streets and watching our neighbors being disappeared. The Democrats issue statements from their safe positions.
HCR with Nicolle Wallace November 17, 2025.
“I’m not sure Democrats ran the tables. The American people ran the tables.
We are seeing the end of a 40-year era in political history in America.
Erasure of agency for everyday Americans …has been pernicious and has been incredibly dangerous for Democracy.
Among a lot of people who have been taking directions from leadership who are more interested in staying power than they are in doing what is good for the Country.
…and that refocusing on Democracy becoming as being work of everyday people as opposed to be told what we are going to do is the whole ballgame.”
I am urging people to think about what comes next. People need to be thinking about that they want."
HCR
Hahahaa.., "Party".., YGTBSM Barbara.., What "Democratic Party"? Seen any members wearing a hat or t-shirt emblazoned with "I'm A Democrat" or "I'm Proud To Be a Democrat"? Huh? Hell no. Plenty of Proud to be MAGA's out there though. We need a 'team' , only then can we "Party" later.
Saw an article in The New Republic that Schumer and Jeffries already wobbling on ICE agents wearing masks or not.
How is that possible??
Because the corporations don't care about ICE reform.
Schumer and Jefferies care nothing... N.O.T.H.I.N.G... about 'voters' , even less about immigrants and everything about corporate profits and 401Ks. They care more about Bibi's overseas accounts than they do about a single voter or voter group.
Everyday the Dems make it more and more clear that they don't care about people's rights any more than the GOP does.
They make far more money from Blackstone and AIPAC than they do us. Thank Citizen's United and John Roberts for that.
.... or for all we know they are both in the Epstein files as well and are unable to negotiate in good faith because they are covering their arses.
There could be a dozen reasons... but whatever their reason is the result is the same. They will throw us under the bus. Again.
https://americanpromise.net
We need a 'Team' Marcus. Jeffries and Schumer and a good number of others can''t carry the ball alone, in an honorable manner. We're up against for very dirty-pool players.
This! And how do we know there isn’t another negotiation simmering behind or within this demand strategy? Israel, Russia, Epstein, something?
They are weakest on Epstein.
Threat to humanity and they're ignoring it.
Threat to humanity indeed. That's why 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 in response to credible death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf Please let us ensure this text is linked early (and therefore prominently) on as many Resistance sites as possible every day until the traitorous regime of ecogenocidal ChristoNazi pedophiles is no more. (I'll do my best to be responsible for this posting, but I am 85 years old and terminally ill, which means others need be ready to pick up the torch on days I am absent and after I am no more.)
Not only are public funds being misspent, but Republicans accuse Democrats of abusing the appropriations process to force policy changes but forget that appropriations are not merely amounts of money. They must specify the purpose, activity, and legal authority for which funds may be used. It is precisely Congress’s power of the purse that gives it the constitutional authority to define the character of executive action.
Make It Make Sense
https://open.substack.com/pub/katiejanell/p/make-it-make-sense?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2fj21q
Thank you again for this, Megan. Stay safe, and try to get some rest. Some day you, HCR, Jess Craven (Chop Wood, Carry Water), Joyce Vance, and other activist women will enjoy good sleep after we've gotten rid of the FPFOTUS and his cronies.
Thanks for continuing to share this important resource.
Please write to your Senators and Representatives to strengthen protections for the human and constitutional rights of detainees in the ICE detention centers that are currently proposed in the DHS continuing resolution.
YES. We must keep the pressure on about these virtual concentration camps. Simon Rosenberg's excellent newsletter yesterday is horrifying and enlightening: https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/we-know-enough-powerful-testimony
I watched yesterday and it changed my sense of purpose. This is urgent.
No 'Massive Detention' centers. No detention centers huge or small. NO ICE!
Thank you for the link.
Powerful. Thank you.
YES! I am part way through messaging all the Senators. It is WAY bigger than a constituents only topic. People (of all ages) will continue to die if funding continues.
Yes! Thank you Megan.
Write or call your Senators and House Rep EVERY DAY. Think of it as brushing your teeth or using the toilet. And it can be done SO easily. I use a password manager that autofills all the contact info into the required email form - instantly. Write my message and copy it before sending it. Paste the message into the other two contact forms. The whole thing takes 3 to 5 minutes and I have made some good noise.
But there is another easier way to make some noise with your legislators. RESISTBOT.
Here is one petition. But you will find many at this site: https://resist.bot/petitions/PRISZH
And if you need more ideas to scream about (not likely) just read Jess Craven's "Chop Wood, Carry Water". She is a public treasure and indefatigable.
https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/
Whatever tool you use, don't stop. Don't let them wear you down.
And after all that, I am sure you have some energy left to read a brilliant article that explains a lot. And should make us even more motivated.
https://richarddavidhames.substack.com/p/the-woman-in-the-dock
Epstein=Trump=Putin
How about:
Epstein Files: Who Is Robin Leach? British Reporter Accused Of Strangling A Young Girl To Death
https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/robin-leach-lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous-british-reporter-newly-released-epstein-files-strangle-a-young-girl-to-death-article-153534563
"The documents claim that Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly acted as a “madam and broker” for sex parties or orgies, with reported participants including Jeffrey Epstein, Robin Leach, and President Donald Trump. Within these anonymous reports, Leach is accused of participating in high-profile sex parties linked to Epstein’s circle."
Robin Leach the emcee or whatever of the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” was a pathetic panderer to the people he desperately wanted to be part of. He was a sleezbag and no doubt would do anything to be part of the rich sleezebags he admired.
''Classified Transparency: Democracy Is Perfectly Fine, Please Stop Looking at It''
There are two kinds of secrecy in American government. The first exists to protect national security. The second exists to protect people who would prefer not to explain themselves under oath. At the moment, the second kind is thriving, well-funded, and clearly running the meeting.
Washington has entered a brisk new phase of governance where accountability is treated like malware and elections are classified as a foreign substance. This is not authoritarianism, officials insist. It is simply innovation, brought to you by the same people who think the problem with oversight is that it exists.
When a senior senator issues a public warning about classified intelligence abuses and then reposts a journalist saying “I don’t like this,” that is not political theater. That is the emergency broadcast system clearing its throat. It is the sound of someone who knows something alarming and is legally prohibited from screaming.
The message is elegant in its simplicity. Something is very wrong. You are not allowed to know what it is. The paper trail has been eaten. Please continue shopping.
Meanwhile, intelligence agencies have developed a sudden and intense interest in domestic elections. This is exciting for them. For decades, they were told not to touch that subject with a ten-foot pole. Now they are gently encouraged to rummage through it like a curious raccoon. Voting machines are seized. Data is collected. Officials are summoned to briefings that no one can explain. Everyone agrees there is no evidence of foreign interference, which somehow makes all of this even more necessary.
It turns out that if you whisper “foreign affairs” over an election long enough, it stops being a democracy and becomes a national security situation. Once that happens, oversight becomes optional, and secrecy becomes a virtue. Congress can be notified later, after the helpful parts are blacked out and the inconvenient ones are labeled executive privilege.
This is not paranoia. This is procedure.
Congress has attempted to respond by doing what it still knows how to do, which is write letters asking whether law enforcement might consider behaving like law enforcement. The requests are modest. Warrants before entering homes. Faces uncovered. Names visible. No racial profiling. No raids on schools, hospitals, churches, or polling places. Body cameras for accountability, not surveillance. Standards. Consequences.
Republicans reacted with horror. These demands were described as radical, extreme, and dangerously close to the Constitution. One cannot simply expect federal agents to identify themselves. That is how order collapses. Today it is badges and warrants. Tomorrow it is laws.
The irony is thick enough to require ventilation. None of these requests would exist if things were going well. You do not need to ban secret memos authorizing warrantless raids unless secret memos authorizing warrantless raids already exist. You do not need to insist that agents stop wearing masks unless anonymity has quietly become policy.
But the center of gravity is elsewhere. The administration’s true obsession remains unchanged. Reality was wrong in 2020, and reality must be corrected.
The former president recently clarified that overturning an election was not about power or ideology. It was about emotional closure. Losing would have been bad for his ego. Democracy failed to account for that, and now democracy must be disciplined until it learns empathy.
To support this deeply felt grievance, the government has revived familiar characters. Foreign hackers. Seized machines. Convenient villains who may be encouraged to confirm whatever version of events is currently trending. If evidence does not exist, it can be implied. If implication fails, classification will handle the rest.
Elections, after all, are now a branch of foreign policy. This is a useful reclassification. Courts must defer. Congress must wait. Intelligence agencies can intervene. The public is expected to nod thoughtfully and not ask follow up questions.
Oversight has responded with the blunt instrument of precedent. If one former president can be compelled to testify, then eventually they all can. This is less about justice and more about deterrence through mutual irritation. Open this door, and it will not close quietly. It will swing wide, carrying subpoenas, depositions, and very long public hearings.
Even the courts have become inconvenient. Judges are allowing depositions. People who insist they are too important to explain themselves are being asked to explain themselves. The audacity is staggering. In a properly managed system, consequential decisions are made orally, off the record, and preferably while walking briskly down a hallway.
As if this were not enough, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty has expired. There is now no cap on the most destructive weapons ever created by a species with poor impulse control and an allergy to consequences. The official response is cheerful. Experts may design a new treaty someday. Until then, everyone is on the honor system.
This would all be darkly funny if it were not so tightly coordinated. Secrecy here. Obfuscation there. Accountability redirected. Elections reframed. Oversight mocked. Power concentrated. Every piece fits. None of it is accidental.
The system is not malfunctioning. It is adapting. It has decided that transparency is dangerous, that truth is flexible, and that democracy works best when managed by people who resent it. If this feels urgent, it is because it is. If it feels absurd, that is intentional.
Absurdity is the lubricant of authoritarian drift. Laugh long enough, and the emergency starts to feel normal.
Everything is under control, you are told. You just are not cleared to know how, or why, or for how long.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/classified-transparency
This is so frightening to learn that the last existing arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia expired today. As if just dealing with Trump and the regime's lawlessness, chaos and menacing intentions wasn't bad enough already, now there's the specter of another nuclear arms race or ,much worse, nuclear warfare.
The term overkill is used often today without thinking about what it really means. It was was first used in the mid-1940s to 1950s, as a military term to describe nuclear capabilities exceeding what was necessary for target destruction. First used as a verb in 1946, it was used as a noun in military discourse by 1957 because the atomic weaponry was becoming so much more destructive, and unnecessarily so.
Today there are an estimated 12,331 nuclear warheads, with over 9,600 in active military stockpiles, according to the Federation of Atomic Scientists' 2025 Status of the Worlds Nuclear Forces. Russia has about 5459...The U.S. 5277...which is not being overdramatic to say that those numbers alone would be enough to blow the world up 1000s of times over. North Korea has 50 nuclear weapons and that's enough to cause millions of deaths and major damage around the world like a nuclear winter.
During the height of the Cold War there were approximately 70,000 warheads owned by the nuclear-armed states, so at least the number of nuclear weapons have been reduced. But now that the New START treaty of 2011 has officially ended, nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decades and today’s nuclear weapons are vastly more capable than ever before.
https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals.
While it's concerning the treaty has expired, I don't worry about it as much as the other aspects of what this administration is doing. Between, the US, China, Russia, Isreal, Pakistan, and India there are enough weapons available to kill all of mankind and a lot of the animal kingdom as well at just a touch of the button. I worry more about who's behind the button than the weapon and that goes for all the aforementioned countries.
The last paragraph of the newsletter was actually the important news because it shows that while this Trumpian shitshow is going on, important things are not being done. Putin offered in September last year to extend the treaty’s central limits for a year and despite Trump saying that it “sounds like a good idea” nothing was done. In January, Trump said of New START, “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement.” Yet again, nothing has been done.
Under the treaty, the United States and Russia were limited to deploy each a maximum of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and 700 nuclear weapon delivery systems (which include land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers). In addition, each side was allowed to have 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers for these delivery vehicles, such as missile launchers, submarine launchers, and heavy bombers. That seems like plenty of weapons to me.
Furthermore, START did not limit nonstrategic nuclear weapons, even though Russia possesses more than 1,000 of them, nor did it limit new strategic weapon systems. Russia has not shared data on its deployed strategic nuclear forces since September 2022, it suspended its treaty participation altogether in February 2023, and the United States has not published any aggregate numbers since May 2023. This ought to have been high on the administration's agenda.
The casual reaction of the Trump administration to the expiry of the treaty stands in storng contrast to the warnings by both Barack Obama
https://x.com/BarackObama/status/2018323947230540249
and Dmitri Medvedev (who signed the treaty with Obama in 2010)
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/russias-medvedev-says-expiry-start-070109249.html
although he has also said: “No START-4 is better than a treaty that only masks mutual distrust and provokes an arms race in other countries...”.
Trump claims to be making America great again but he's actually making the whole world less safe by his stupidity, like claiming that both China and Russia were secretly testing nuclear weapons.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/29/trump-pentagon-us-nuclear-weapons
The MAGAtt's aren't reading your post. They're looking at the $2.09 per gallon of gas that'll go into their truck which will take them to the polls. It's 'the gas'stupid!! Ughh!
Russell, stating the obvious, none of that is important to Donald. He is only concerned with adding to his wealth and retaining unlimited power to do so.
He has already managed to disable the legal apparatus that would have landed him in prison. Now, his immediate concern is maintaining control of the legislature so he can't be impeached, convicted and pushed out of office. Once he's achieved that, he will turn his attention to removing constitutional limits to his time as president. He's told us as much.
Probably Donald just wants to stamp his name on a new treaty, and claim that he, and only he, has saved the world.
Well he is so demented and deluded that we can just tell him that he has saved the world and give him some gold plated prize to thank him for it, he will believe it. Meanwhile someone needs to be talking to the Russians, and there is no one in this aggregation of incompetents and grifters who can be trusted not to trade off Alaska or something to make that “deal”.
Thank you for always making this available and sharing your spreadsheet.
Thank you again. Just followed ICTT’s suggestion below and called Wyden’s office. Also suggested he hold a leadership class for senators.
On top of everything, here is your useful spreadsheet! Thank you for helping us fight fascism.
Megan,
It's a dreary day in Chicagoland, and sadly, the damp is causing my arthritis to flare up along with the bone spurs (the single thing I have "in common" with Trump. 🤪) so it's a good day to stay in and bug Congress.
Thank you for your steadfast efforts for Democracy. Someday, you will have stories fabout these times for your grandchildren, and you can hold your head up.
I try telling and showing my girls my spreadsheet now but at 2 and 4 they have noooo idea what all the marks on the screen are 🤣
😉
The idea that one can only contact one’s senator on national issues is silly. Senator’s votes influence national policy.
I agree. At least especially when democracy is hanging on by a thread. My first round of emails from the contact me links had a lot bounce back saying I wasn't a constituent so it either didn't get sent or basically wouldn't be read. So I changed the way I sent messages. I use one of their own in state addresses (listed on my spreadsheet to help with this) on the address line because technically it doesn't say "my" address. I also don't want to misrepresent myself any more than that, so in my messages I typically put (at the bottom) that while I'm not a constituent, I am reaching out because (insert name) does represent me on the (insert committee that fits the topic my message is about).
Another thing I do is call after hours. I don't leave my name or address/zip code so my voice doesn't go towards a count, but the more they hear from us, the better.
I also send faxes using faxzero.com (5 free/day). I don't send a lot of letters, but when I do I put the same “while I’m not a constituent” blurb I do in my emails.
Thank you, Megan for sharing your his important information with us 🙏
Finally great to see Schumer and Jeffries standing up together. I’m nauseously optimistic that we will see substantial change in ICE thuggery, but how much remains unknown. The non-negotiable changes should include no masks, training similar to the local police and local law enforcement, all similar uniforms with identification and last but not least, be subject to criminal and civic liability. One more, no long guns, they are for the National Guard and Army.
Yes. Take away the long guns and swat gear. I wonder how many J6ers are now in ICE living out their fantasies.
General Mark Milley called "The Proud Boys" etc. 'the same people we fought in WWII".
The first time we went to Cancun I was shocked to see militia with a machine gun as we exited the airport on a bus.
And they weren't wearing masks and terrorizing the population.
I'm all in on them wearing regular police uniforms and losing the pepper spray and tears gas on peaceful protesters.
FUCK TRUMP, FUCK ICE and FUCK REPUBLICANS.
They are all Fascists pigs.
Same feeling I had when I was in the Tel Aviv airport. I remember being detained and treated as a bad guy. It was a terrifying experience.
and all those paramilitary militias that played warrior on the weekend - this must be their wet dream.
I've wondered that as well.
J6ers, plenty.
I have to wonder if there aren't some "gang members" enrolled as ICE agents?
You can bet on it, some of the lowest of the low, when you shoot people in the face and back you are a coward and a low life MFer.
Who’s to say there aren’t? Were any background checks done when hiring ICE agents? I’d laugh if the same gang members/drug dealers they’re looking for are members of ICE. Stupid is as stupid does.🙄
The S&J list doesn't adequately address the human and constitutional rights abuses in the detention centers. It does it in a couple of words in point #8.
They are a worse stain on American history than the Japanese internment camps.
We can see for ourselves what is going on in the streets. The administration is hiding what is going on in the detention centers.
The transcript of the recent hearing in Minnesota, where the ICE attorney asked to be held in contempt, is a start.
I believe the administration, ahem, regime just fired her.
Yes, I saw that. Apparently, saying the word sucks in front of a judge was the initially newsworthy event. Noticing the human rights and constitutional abuses came later after the transcript was released.
Context: Heather's second to last paragraph tonight on Elon Musk:
********
Harper Collins is distributing a new book titled "Muskism" authored by Professor Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff. I already ordered a copy that is not available in my hands until April 2, 2026
The authors cover the on-going prosecutors' investigations in the UK , France & Spain. The French inquiry started a year ago when Musk's 'X' was busted manipulating algorithms that included sexual imagery of over 2 million & up to 20K of children. The images are a are apparently a cauldron of AI manipulations
.
IMO, Musk is creating a Frankenstein corporate merger -- a new Musk monster likely labeled ‘XAI’.
We need the preliminary discoveries of the Euro investigations now!
*******************************************************************
Xai sounds pernicious evil and menacing
Here is another Musk product "Grok". Frankly, I not understand it or its creepy symbol.
Techies, please advise.
It’s a reference to an old Robert Heinlein novel. Musk thinks he’s the first person in the world to have read and “grokked” 1950s sci-fi.
Elon Musk keeps acting like a "stranger in a strange land" – and in his case I don’t mean that in a good way.
"Robert A. Heinlein coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms." [Wikipedia]
Then there’s also apparently a science fiction book that Nazi rocket scientist Werner Von Braun wrote in which some Martian overlord is called the Elon…
That's where Musk's first name comes from. He's not the first in his family to be, well, what he is.
It's Come To This, Thank you
And, good one horhai.
Michigan, Mary Pat, thank you one again.
Nazi salutes
Nauseously optimistic- says it all
Hello Mike.... From HCR Today: " Another court case might tear away some of the administration’s obfuscation, as well. Zoe Tillman of Bloomberg reported today that U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang of the District of Maryland has denied the government’s request to block depositions of Elon Musk and two other former officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in a lawsuit charging Musk with unlawfully dismantling the agency.
Because Musk and the other two “likely have personal, first-hand knowledge of the facts relevant and essential to the resolution of this case,” Chuang said the testimony could go forward. While courts have generally said that “high-ranking government officials may not be deposed or called to testify about their reasons for taking official actions absent ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” Chuang said it was not clear that Musk and the other two were, in fact, high-ranking government officials.At the same time, the case appeared to meet the criteria for extraordinary circumstances. The government employees who brought the case argue that Musk personally dismantled USAID when he had no authority to do so. The judge noted that the government’s failure to produce documents that explained the decisions killing the agency, as required, suggested that the decisions had been made orally, so the testimony of Musk and the other two men is crucial to the case." ... ... Finally Elon Musk may be held Accountable for the Cruel Agonizing Deaths of Thousands.... Elon should lose his USA Citizenship, and should be sent back to South Africa if not be imprisoned here ...
Most excellent! What Musk did to USAID should alone bar him from entering the United States, let alone be a free man.
Hello Mike... Justice would be seizing Musk's Assets, and using them to Reconstitute USAID...
High-ranking official? I don't think he was officially appointed an official of any kind.
Hello Elizabeth... Elon Musk wasn't Appointed... Elon Bought his Power in an Administration where Everything Is For Sale...
HCR. Our heroic reporter in the times of Propaganda and Augmented Reality. Thank you. Today's newsletter paints the real picture of our current political life in America.
All Trump's bizarre but dangerous train cars rushing wildly down the tracks to who knows what station maybe heading for a massive crash or maybe they're just about to evaporate into the ether of Trump's deranged "mind". Who knows??
And who exactly is "running" foreign policy in a world where nuclear weapon limitations expire and we'll get around to making a better deal?? Meanwhile, full speed ahead. Oh yeah.. it's Sec Rubio running foreign policy and also Venezuela and national security and the let's keeping kissing Trump's butt fan club.
Or maybe the werewolf, Tulsi Gabbard, was skulking around the Georgia ballot storage facility looking for nuclear weapons plans?? We should ask Karoline Leavitt. She'll explain.
Thankfully, the Dems in Congress are starting to push back. And We the People have so many options in our States to recover our Representative Democracy, we'll win the War on America. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
More ICE thuggery:
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/ice-aliya-rahman-minneapolis-autism-b2912407.html
Here is the video of the powerful, compelling testimony on Capitol Hill from Ms Rahman, starting around 16 minutes in, as well as from Renee Good’s brothers, and from another victim of ICE brutality, Ms Martinez: https://youtu.be/A9ZcMfdOooM?si=tr_oT8H72z8w9kfz
I’m hung up on what the compromises might mean. If Schumer and Jeffries have to say OK to stripping some demands, doesn’t that mean rubber stamping some of the thuggery?
Nauseously? LOL.
They are basically asking the Department follow the Constitution. I don't see how that's so radical or unrealistic.
Bingo. I guess the Constitution is a radical document.
Definitely Leftist propaganda, Ally.
And George Washington was a traitor….
It is the ability to be anonymous that is giving these bullies license to break laws and terrorize citizens. They have no authority to police the general population. How many of these goons are J6 criminals who have been pardoned by Trump and expect to be pardoned again for the crimes they are committing now?
What they are too stupid to imagine is that their savior will not be in power when they go to trial this next time. They will answer to courts that will not be sympathetic to their repeated lawless behavior.
Abolish the bastards. It’s a stage play to create a military occupation and spectacle. It’s staged to get us to look away from All of the chaotic grifts and deals by the Trump family. ICE is employed by the tax payers, who want health care. These sadists are all hired from a pool of wannabe terrorists and PTSD veterans who need mental health care.
ICE, with its lowest of the low standards for hiring, MUST be banned from carrying ANY and ALL firearms. Also, its employees must be banned from putting their knees on peoples’ heads and employing chokeholds. In fact, they should be banned from employing violence. There’s no need for it.
Agreed. The conditions on DHS funding are not extreme, but rather an unfortunately necessary restatement of already established constitutional norms. The extremity is in needing to insist on them at all.
Make It Make Sense
https://open.substack.com/pub/katiejanell/p/make-it-make-sense?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2fj21q
Agree and if DHS cannot function within the law in dealing with these hybrid threats then they need to be reimagined and done so with empathy.
Exactly!
Extreme leftists demands? It is almost impossible to believe what is going on. Trump’s ego. His kind words for Hillary? President T for transparency. Mr. T has no self awareness, like a child. And they voted for T and still support him. AMAZING!
I read in The Morning Republic’s morning newsletter that Schumer already wavering on masks.
Grrrrr....
The conditions in ICE detention violate constitutional and human rights. The transcript of the Minnesota hearing, where the special US Attorney asked to be held in contempt so she could get some sleep, documents these abuses.
The press treated it as a joke.
It is one of the worst stains on our history, right up there with the Japanese internment camps.
ICE has to be abolished. The question is how.
Details of the transcript and Schumer's list are in the link.
https://georgiafisanick.substack.com/p/the-end-of-ice-and-conviction-of
I don’t think the press is treating it “like a joke” unless you are referring to the cheerleaders and non-entities on Fox News. Jennifer Psaki and others have had detailed segments on this, presenting it to the public with the seriousness and scrutiny it deserves.
It is the violation of constitutional and human rights that has led to the need for conditions of DHS funding. Republicans are framing the dispute as a disagreement over immigration enforcement policy and operational feasibility. In practice however, this conflict highlights a deeper issue at the core of constitutional governance.
Make It Make Sense
https://open.substack.com/pub/katiejanell/p/make-it-make-sense?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2fj21q
"...........unless.............."
Hello Georgia... Visit Contemporary Indigenous Tribal Lands... We have the lowest Life-Spans, the Highest UnEmployment, and now ICE Raids... The Japanese Internment Camps were situated close to some of our Tribal Lands, and the interned Japanese felt Sympathy for us....
Apache: There is a long list of stains on American history, the treatment of indigenous people being the longest and incredible in its brutality. Trump is trying to erase a lot of history and hide a lot more that is still in the making. Thank you for the source.
I used the Japanese internment camps as the most recent parallel because of the ethnic profiling and detentions, but it doesn't capture the current brutality. Says something about our history that there are so many choices for the comparison.
This regime it's erasing the parts of history they don't like in order to be able to repeat them. Plain and simple 😌
Hello Georgia... I appreciate your intent... The Indigenous Holocaust is ongoing Today... Just visit Big Pine Reservation in South Dakota, or wander around Arizona... The Indigenous have called ourselves the 'Forgotten Minority'....
Apache, I hold that until the US acknowledges that it was built on stolen land whose Indigenous population was the target of genocide and on the backs of enslaved Black people, we cannot achieve true status.
Ouch! You made it real, thanks Apache.
Happy New Year Joan... Did You like Peter Buffet's 'Spirit'?...
Apache, do you mean this "Spirit - The Seventh Fire": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgVI3j3vtSs. I just watched it and it's been a stunning experience. I think you described it as "epoch". What a reference for our capacity to be fully human, and so much else. The child is amazing and I love the theme of generations together. And more . . .
Hello Joan.... That is the One... I'm Glad you Watched It.... It Is An Excellent Rock, and Traditional Indigenous Fusion.... I'll DM You.....
Not a comment on "Spirit" that I dosed off watching it and thanks for the reminder to return to it. I'll let you know. As I recall, I was jolted by the blend of contrasting influences.
My second reply -- whatever I watched and fell asleep during the first time was NOT this in my reply that follows. Also, I wonder if there's a way to message you directly thru your Substack, but I dont see that option?
No kidding Apache, we have the lowest life-spans. I have had to wait about a year for an appointment with a medical specialist! We also pay the highest costs for medical services.
Let's face it- most of us were asleep at the wheel for years and allowed this to happen.
Hello Marj... You are Indigenous?.... Which Nation?...
I was confirming we as a country have had the lowest life spans. I am not Indigenous.
Hello Marj... Thanks for the clarification....
Hear what the people are saying. No more ICE. No more money fir it. Period. Repair is by disposal.
Tyler: Disposal requires a veto-proof majority in both houses. How do you get there sooner than the intolerably long wait for 2028?
Georgia, how about impeachment and conviction?
Love it. Got 2/3 in the Senate to convict?
Maybe the human and constitutional rights abuses in the ICE detention camps will get it there if S&J push it hard enough. My ardent hope.
But it is an existential issue for Trump. He will pull out all the stops in pressuring the Senate Republicans. There has to be a Plan B.
Maybe get every eligible citizen registered to vote and devote all other efforts to getting them to actually vote. Not sure how many votes wouldn't happen successfully anyway in spite of Trump's attempt to cancel the vote. At some point civil war will loom.
Write to your representatives in Congress about the detention centers today. If S&J are smart they will not vote on the bill until as late as possible to allow that story to develop and to get some members of the Congressional oversight committees into visit the detention centers.
Find out if you are the constituent of someone on the oversight Committee and make a personal appeal for them to go before the vote. If you are close to a detention center, join a demonstration there.
tRvmp is off the rails because of the release of some of the Epstein files. He's running scared thus he's determined to stay in office by nationalizing elections. He's doing everything in his power to interfere in our ability to vote. Confiscating ballots, voting machines, banning paper ballots and getting rid of mail-in ballots. The worst is the intimidation by ICE at polling places.
What good is "impeachment" or "conviction" without immediate incarceration? Not just bail or an ankle bracelet. Guilty! Ka-klang! Like we shoulda locked Nixon into the slammer, but didn't. How about the guy who shot Ms Good.., he in jail? How about the gun-boys who shot Pretti.., they in jail? How's prince Andrew doing..? He get to that little girl on the floor? This administration has clearly broken laws or worse, defied a Judge's order.., anybody locked up YET? Nope.
Well, Alex, impeachment and conviction are things our Constitution requires before we can arrest, try, convict and jail Trump for the rest of his life. Immediate incarceration is what Trump wants to do to people like me or even you for all I know. He is a dangerously crazy leader who will likely get us all killed if the necessary number of GOP Reps and Senators do not figure out that's what he is up to. It's clear they too will end up under the Trump bus pretty soon.
Agree David. Jail time is immediate for the likes of you and I when we are cited for local civil offenses.., unless we have the needed cash for lawyers etc. Keeps us in line. Every now and then a "Bernie maid off" gets sent to prison (having bilked the wrong person!). Mr trump is well insulated riding in his bus, and all in all is quite tolerant in light of the insults he brings upon himself. We have no idea how much "freedom" we have yet to lose. Keep tossing billion$ in ICE direction.., the detainment facilities are under contract and are being constructed. And, our 'right to keep and bear firearms' has yet to impede things., though that was the intent..., wasn't it? Whew!
Georgia, I appreciate your diligence.
Thank you!
Thank You, Georgia. Shared.
It is very, very late, and we are very far down the road to tyranny, but many people continue to live in their bubbles, saying that "living a happy life is a form of resistance" and that they can't stand to follow the news. I guarantee that every day that passes while this shitshow continues makes resistance harder and the eventual crash and subsequent clean-up longer, more difficult and more painful.
"Living a happy life is a form of resistance" is nonsense. Living a happy life while others suffer and our country is demolished is a form of unbelievable selfishness.
THIS! Thank you! You can still resist and do your best with whatever you have (time, joining an organization, money, just sharing an important message, passing on info, etc) and still have happiness and joy in your life. I will not be in the presence though of people who continue to bury their heads in the sand. White, well off, privileged friends who don’t want to hear about anything happening? Yeah those were people I knew and refuse to be around. They are complicit. Their silence is repulsive.
Agree. I am currently under some pressure to resume friendships I ended because of this very sense that continuing such relationships was complicity with a view I deplore and also just living a lie. Thanks for the strengthening message.
Leave a window open for (former) friends who begin to sense they've been conned. Of course, that awakening won't come until Faux News is killed.
MaryPat, I agree that awakening will not come until faux news is killed. All of it. Reinstate regulations to all media that they CANNOT publish or disseminate lies and/or false information. Violators to be sued by the states in which they operate.
Yes, one by one when they admit they were wrong, the relationships will resume. Until then not so much. I will continue to cross the street. I don't let it own me anymore like I did in the beginning bc I realized the con people are really good at conning people and people with low resistance jumped on board. I kinda feel sorry for them.
Finding joy is a necessary act of self-care and very important. And supporting the arts, writing, making art or crafts, etc., are almost subversive acts of resistance these days, at least sometimes.
Agree with the self-care and supporting the arts and all that but we can't flatter ourselves that it is "subversive." Survival, maybe, and maintaining parts of culture that can be reborn when the darkness lifts, yes.
If they can’t stand it now, what’s an ostrich to do as they up the ante…
Word up.
Would you prefer self flagellation for all in the resistance?? To conflate the pursuit of happiness, with ignoring the current state of affairs is a bit dramatic don’t you think? Happiness is a process, a journey, not a state of ignorance and denial. If we can’t find some joy what is left to fight for. Have you not felt joy and connection after a protest? The love of family and the realization that we still live in privilege and have a country worthy of fighting for is not to be forgotten. When you give up on happiness, you admit your defeat. Buck up!!
There is almost nothing else that angers me more ER! Or 'Oh, I don't watch the news.'
We are caught in the time of monsters. The Trump gang has broken so many laws and lied so constantly that they are tangled in their own web. They contradict each other hour to hour. Yet, they still hold the power to not only waste our time and money while keeping us anxious, they make people sick, suffer and die.
But 98% of elected Republicans still support him. So, we have to defy the threats and keep the pressure on. We have to break the media bubble and the also pressure the silent corporations.
He knows he can’t win legally. His only answer is to act like the government in Iran. That’s why he clings to ICE. THE Dems have to stick to their “ unrealistic “ demands.
The demands don't go far enough.
Of course, Gabbard, Bondi, Noem, and Hegseth should be relieved of their positions immediately. We’ll get to the rest next. Criminals, all
Chief Seattle said, "The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected . . . Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
With every evil action tRump & Company take, they harm others and they also harm themselves. This current madness in the US will end, but those who orchestrated all this harm will reap what they have sown. There is no one who is HATED more than tRump and his minions right now.
They will be hunted down just like the Nazis were after WWII. They brought this evil on themselves. It's not wise to make deals with the devil.
I hope you're right.
As racist as tRump is, I truly believe he will try to screw over the Saudis who invested in his cryptocrap. Since all that was just a bribe, he's never going to allow them to profit; he'll keep any profit for himself. His dirty dealings with some of the most ruthless authoritarian leaders might lead to his falling out of a window from, oh say, the 13th floor. There is no place on the planet he can hide.
tRump's insane nature will be the death of him. He thinks he can "rip off" the devil, but I believe there are much more ruthless men on the planet.
Brazenly and with impunity this president has lied, violated laws, disregarded court orders, showed only contempt for rule of law itself. How can any man escape accountability so completely? It's ironic that it's in Britain where public figures are paying the price for their alliances with Epstein. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been stripped of his birthright title and his honors and his home, and made a pariah. Keir Starmer looks set to lose his position at the top of his government and all that goes with that. Peter Mandelson faces the possibility of a jail term for his dealings with Epstein. And here in America, where Epstein made his fortune and executed his pedophilia, our complicit president remains smug and secure, because our Congress is silent.
Bingo!
"Senator Slotkin raises idea of funding everything at DHS but ICE."
https://bsky.app/profile/burgessev.bsky.social/post/3me4yzhdzoc25
This is precisely what I suggested on several fora after Congress separately passed the other funding bills: Isolate ICE in order to apply even greater pressure to implement Democratic Demands. But pass funding for FEMA, the Coast Guard, TSA and other essential parts of DHS.
Several knowledgeable commenters shot that down with "No, that’s not how the budget process works."
They are right, of course – but these are NOT normal times!
The money for ICE in the CR is a pittance compared to the multiyear authorization in the OBBB Act. It has to be abolished as an institution to force the OBBBA to be amended.
Schumer and Jeffries' list of ICE reforms does not adequately address the human and constitutional rights abuses going on in the detention facilities. Those were exposed in the Minnesota court hearing, where the ICE attorney asked to be held in contempt so she could get some sleep. The press treated that as a clickbait story and left out the horrific news.
It remains to be seen how firmly Schumer and Jeffries maintain their position. And it also impossible to 'reform' ICE: abolishing it is the only solution. Our government should not have a private army of thugs at the disposal of the occupant of the Oval Office.
I agree ICE has to be abolished. That has to be done in a bipartisan way with a veto-proof majority in both houses. Therein lies the rub. The only way we got the Epstein Files Transparency Act was when Trump realized his veto would be overridden.
I think the only way to manage that in this case is to roll ICE into something else like CBP and put constraints on the combined entity, including vetting and retraining employees hired since January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2024, standards.
Then impeach Noem and every political appointee in a supervisory capacity at ICE for the human and constitutional rights abuses including those in the detention centers.
Amend the OBBBA to eliminate the multi-year ICE appropriations and put some of the money to expanding and reforming the immigration courts, and for a fund to cover the judgments in the civil cases arising from the abuse.
Write new legislation to require political appointees to have at least 5 years of supervisory experience in the agencies they are to head as a minimum requirement for Senate confirmation. That avoids the Noem and Patel disasters, unfortunately not Homan.
Do you see another way to do it?
Before abolishing ICE, we have to insist that all adults and children warehoused be released now before DHS AND ICE ARE FUNDED! If Schumer or Jeffries had a child or family member that disappeared that would undoubtedly be their 1st priority.
I agree. I think the Democrats should acknowledge that we need proper immigration rules and that removing undocumented adjudicated criminals makes sense - and propose a new agency. To often - as in "defund the police" their message is skewed and spun as "democrats hate police" -- the same way Trump kept saying that Biden loved open borders. So I think they should move ahead with the idea of reform - and say that the very name ICE is now so associated with thuggish behavior that we need a clean slate to start again.
Along with reform
Ing/ reinventing an immigration enforcement system, our immigration laws regarding immigration from South and Central America need to be overhauled. In fact ALL of our immigration laws need to be updated.
Brown Shirts by any other name...
Again, you state things as fact that are simply not true. Serious reporters are treating her testimony with the seriousness it clearly deserves. And independent media is all over it.
As far as trying to line up the circular firing squad against Jeffries and Schumer, it makes no sense. Your outrage is better directed against Thune and Barraso, who are both clearly terrified of the very concept of accountability widely considered routine for civilized police forces in all modern democracies.
I tire of listening to regular barrages against Democrats who have been skillfully manipulating their minority status to become a genuine pain in the ass for the lickspittle of the GOP. It’s like being upset with Ivory soap because it’s only 99 and 44/100% pure, instead of 114%. It just doesn’t make much sense.
Well said! We need to direct our ire at the Trump Regime and Republican lawmakers. It’s a huge mistake to channel energies into what is essentially a "circular firing squad" – in fact, it’s brain-dead and amounts to doing Trump’s and MAGA’s work for them!
ICTT: I form my opinions after using the feedly news consolidator which covers all of the major news outlets so I research what is appearing and where.
Do you?
My comments are directed at your judgment. All of us are capable of gathering whatever facts we like to support our own conclusions.
But we know that the MSM is not reporting the worst, right?
Mainstream media may not but independent media certainly is.
ICTT i am with you on this, it’s easy to be frustrated with the Dem establishment given their failures in the past, but we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. As liberals we like the rule of law, and will only right this ship with slow and methodical wins. We need to support the opposition in place and improve over time when we get the power to do so.
If you had a family member or a child that disappeared, your 1st priority I think would be to get them out. That is where the pressure should be. These people can't withstand months and years of investigations, negotiations and elections.
MSNOW, Jacob Soboroff has done some excellent reporting. Yesterday it reached unbearable for me with the story of the two year-old in her father’s arms. It was so bad that he, wife and child will self-deport to Ecuador. It hit me because of my family connection.
I am so sorry this horror is impacting you and your family.
I think the dam broke on the reporting yesterday, in part because of the court transcript reporting the extent of the purposeful systematic human and constitutional rights abuses in how ICE is handling detainees in the detention centers.
Up to then, the news focused on individual cases that broke your heart, but there was a resolution for little Liam. It couldn’t be all bad if little Liam and his Dad got to go back home. The reality behind what is happening is far darker.
Heather is dead on that the administration has been hiding as much as they can. S&J have to make the detention center conditions a major focus in the DHS CR debate and part of the bill. I hope it is enough to abolish ICE with a veto-proof majority like the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
But my gut tells me it’s not—it’s too existential an issue for Trump, especially after he saw he couldn’t control the narrative on the files once the bill was passed. He needs to keep ICE in place to fix the elections so he can stave off personal jeopardy.
Be sure to check Jonathan White (from Ail Velshi, MSNOW today 3/15 on YouTube) for a worse story: what Stephen Miller is doing to pregnant girls. It’s more Nazi Germany still. We are becoming the worst of the worst and will soon be completely morally bankrupt as a country.
I saw Senator Slotkin interviewed on Jim Acosta's show today. She's very smart and had a lot of insight about the intelligence agencies in the time of Trump and the strange case of Tulsi Gabbard, among so many other criminal acts by the regime, like ICE thuggery and funding. Very good interview and glad she's in the Senate doing much more than Schumer or a useless Susan Collins.
She is fantastic IMHO. She is my Senator and I stand with her. She’s been very vocal and provides insight and facts based on her experience working inside the administration under both parties. Additionally, she recently lost her father after a long illness but still stood strong for us. I hope she continues to be a shining star!
She's terrific -- I grew up in Michigan and am proud that she represents the state!
same here! Michigan hasn’t been home for 50 years. I absolutely love where I am now, I still Michigan’s woods, lakes and the people I love.
So proud to have voted for Senator Slotkin here in Michigan!
And, don't underestimate our esteemed Senator Slotkin (Michigan)!
No. Shut it all down. Shut down Coast Guard to stop more wars. Shut down Customs to stop tax collection. FEMA is akready dead. So shut it all down, and let them all suffer while these goons are in charge of this NAZI inspired department of government.
ECHOING THE CHANTS OF PROTESTORS
The anti-ICE chants from protestors on the street are being echoed by real demands from our Democratic lawmakers. That alone is a huge step forward! And I am so relieved and encouraged to see Chuck Schumer & Hakeem Jeffries acting in tandem. Now we need to have their back.
These are great demands from Schumer & Jeffries! Very substantial. This one under #10 is huge:
“Prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in First Amendment activities.”
#8 on the detention facilities is unconsiencably weak. S&J are only constraining what we can see on the streets. What is going on inside the facilities is being ignored.
This will not make up for Schumers past sins. He has got to go.
Here we go again! Let’s crank up that ole’ time circular firing squad. It’s worked SO well in the past, hasn’t it?
But will they cave, repubs think so.
Has anyone noticed that the US debt is around 37.7 trillion and as it's going, will pass 40 trillion this year? It costs a lot to fund chaos and authoritarianism. And who pays in the end?
Putin is laughing as he plans which pieces of Europe to take over first.
Since he already successfully took over the U.S.A.
Check the Guardian on Tusk who is looking into the whole connection of Epstein-Trump, etc. It’s great to know as I remember that the founder of the grandparent of the KGB was a Dherzinsky (Polish).
Trump boasts about a trade deal with India which amounts to the US reducing tariffs on Indian imports to 18% (from 50%) and India reciprocating in some unspecified manner (although Trump claims that they will but 500bn worth of US goods) and also agreeing not to buy Russian oil.
Meanwhile, the EU and India have signed a massive trade deal creating a free-trade area representing around a quarter of the world’s population (nearly two billion people) and covering about 25% of the world’s GDP. This will effectively reduce the EU's dependence on China, something that Trump has signally failed to achieve for the US.
This is how far the US is sinking under Trump as former allies seek new partnerships to escape his bullying trade policies.
Yes Stephen Ranck….Bankrupt
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUOa5yuDQNI/?igsh=MWNpMnJ5dGtkNmdwZQ==
By setting a precedent that allows the spouses and family members of a former president to be forced to testify under threat of criminal charges, the Trump administration has created a new potential starring role for Melania. How about a real-life sequel?
Are you really saying that some folks are actually above the law?
Haha...if only it were a laughing matter!
Yeah, it's not a laughing matter ... but still I laugh.
Given Donnie’s health and mental condition it is unlikely that he will ever be called to account for his crimes.
Yes, you're probably correct, which is unfortunate. The key will be to learn from this distasteful experience to prevent a repeat.
Heather Cox Richardson lays out the Democratic demands for DHS funding:
• Judicial warrants for home entries
• Visible identification and badges
• Body cameras
• Standard law enforcement uniforms
• Protection of sensitive sites
Republicans call these "very unrealistic."
Minneapolis proved why each one matters:
Judicial warrants: Bovino's memo authorized door-kicks on administrative warrants—no judge, no Fourth Amendment.
Visible identification: BORTAC agents traveled from El Paso to Chicago to Minneapolis with no accountability—until court-ordered footage exposed them.
Body cameras: Agent Meza's footage was "missing" the 12-minute window when he fired at bystanders. Vazquez had no footage at all.
Sensitive sites: ICE attempted to enter the Ecuadorian consulate. Agents detained parents near school bus stops in Ypsilanti. Showed up at hospitals.
Two citizens killed. Both vindicated by video. Commander removed.
These demands aren't "radical." They're what Minneapolis already proved is necessary.
https://theramm.substack.com/p/the-four-thresholds
Minneapolis also proved the necessity for ICE to be disarmed, which is not included among the Democratic "demands."
I think there is at least a possibility that there is no reform possible, and that these captured institutions need to be abolished. Their functions can be performed by actual law enforcement groups.
ICE has been around for decades enforcing FEDERAL law. Locals are not empowered for this mission, they have their hands full enforcing local law.
And there have been decades of abuses. And of course federal agencies like the FBI would have to take on the mission.
I hope you aren't ignoring the constant lefty outcry about local police abuse, racism and brutality. At least ICE is trained for this mission ... and yes, I AM aware of the discussion on that point.
The history of immigration enforcement is quite dark:
https://theramm.substack.com/p/noems-podium-one-of-ours-all-of-yours
Not saying some of these topics aren't reasonable but framing them as "demands" is hardly a good faith start to negotiations. Or is "good faith" is too much to expect?
As for masks, how about the protesters leave their masks home too?
"Good faith" in what? In the president's promises? In some action he takes today but TACOs tomorrow. Look who we are dealing with. Good faith is far to much to expect or bestow.
Trump aside, the point is anybody who is serious does not begin negotiations with demands. All that says is "you give us what we want or we pout and hold our breath".
This president does not negotiate. He bullies he threatens he extorts. The Democrats have tried negotiating in good faith repeatedly, to the point of seeming weak. They are dealing with a pathological liar whose ego cannot abide defeat or loss. And most true negotiations will of necessity involve some loss. Each party will give up something. Our president cannot do that, he is congenitally, constitutionally if you will, unable to handle losing. He'll eviscerate the Constitution, the rule of law, the world order to look invincible, if he must.
Nothing you have said negates my position that one should not go into serious negotiations with a take it or leave it stance.
Tell that to the president.
Body cameras, badges with ID, warrants.
These are not new demands, they are the law.
To argue that these demands are not good faith starting points is... well you are arguing for the right to violate the law.
Which leaves, uniforms, and not invading the sanctuary of a place of worship or school, and wearing clear identifying uniforms. These are both common sense reforms.
A reasonable ending place is to recognize that these institutions are not serving the people and their mission should be performed in other less corrupt agencies.
are you equating protestors' actions with ICE actions re masks? Seriously?
Good callout concerning the ‘madhatter’ mask comment above. It’s the old “false equivalency” technique used by those who want to sound clever but haven’t really thought through the question. Famously, kids use it to put their parents in a bind. Most of us outgrow its use, but not all. [A false equivalency is a logical fallacy, often called "comparing apples and oranges," that wrongly equates two opposing arguments or situations as having equal merit or weight, despite significant differences in evidence, intent, or scale. It is commonly used in politics, media, and propaganda to create a false sense of balance, diminish the severity of one side, or confuse public discourse.]
Re your mask comment: I bet you could improve your credibility if you resisted making “false equivalency” statements. It may sound clever to some but it’s a rookie move and not a good look for anyone with something important to say who wants to be taken seriously. [A false equivalency is a logical fallacy, often called "comparing apples and oranges," that wrongly equates two opposing arguments or situations as having equal merit or weight, despite significant differences in evidence, intent, or scale. It is commonly used in politics, media, and propaganda to create a false sense of balance, diminish the severity of one side, or confuse public discourse.]
False equivalency? Poppycock! People wear masks to hide their identity. If protesters are so righteous, why the masks? In today's environment, protesters fear identification for the individual risk of being lawfully charged with a crime. ICE agents fear for the physical safety of themselves and that of their families. All apples here, not an orange in sight
Protesters are wearing protection for tear gas. You almost never see them "masks up" unless there is a direct threat of the use of chemical agents against them.
I see a lot of lower face masks of the usual fabric or paper medical masks. No gas protection for the eyes. Admitted, not everybody. If not for hiding identity, why any at all if they are so committed?
Heather shows an unceasing Republican campaign to hide, and to defend Donald's criminality.
But the Epstein part of it shows it's worse than such repetition alone would make it. To that worse, Representative Ro Khanna put it today as how “we have a moral crisis in America.”
He asked, too: “How shallow, reckless, self-entitled, arrogant is America’s elite that they did this for decades and no one blew the whistle?” And he added, “You have people at the highest levels in our universities, and in the media, in technology, and in finance all thinking this is totally normal?”
If we move on from this, it must include freeing teachers to set higher personal standards. They can do this teaching youth to write essays, and not at the impersonal levels which computers and AI easily score.
One shudders to think that there is so much we don’t know, when what we do know is so egregious. What they hide should keep us awake at night. And chump is chomping at the nuclear bit…
But we do know, JD, what our schools too dutifully do.
These dehumanized elites -- not our great teachers -- have schools set to the same agendas as made them, the Epstein class, empty souls.
Idaho teacher sues after her ‘Everyone is Welcome’ banner hung at school is outlawed
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/idaho-lawsuit-everyone-is-welcome-dei-b2914897.html
"a classroom banner that featured the words “Everyone is Welcome Here” and hands with various skin tones, according to a federal lawsuit."
"In July, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador wrote in a Fox News op-ed that the state stood against 'woke' attempts at "indoctrination' like Inama’s sign.
Labrador, a Republican, claimed the sign was linked to a “broader ecosystem of political resistance groups launched in protest of the political rise of President Donald Trump” and alleged the sign was part of a left-wing movement that 'transformed learning spaces into venues for DEI messaging disguised as inclusion.' ”
Admin should serve teachers, J L. Not the other way around.
Finland has a great record showing the success of putting teachers first. Hire the best of them. Then get out of their way. If they need advice or consultation, they'll do that with each other.
Those who can, teach. Those who can't teach become administrators.
I come from a family of teachers, both sides and my mother-in-law. As a cop, I spent about 1/4 of my time as an instructor or OJT trainer. It seems to be the case in both professions, that if you're not good at the main job, you go "up the chain" to management.
Sigh.
Phil Balla, you have told US why Finland will be the next country Putin invades. We have to get over Trump and help Ukraine
Remember, Virginia, what happened nearly four years ago?
Russia invaded Ukraine then -- and many hundreds of thousands of Russian young men fled Putin's madness. Long lines of cars packed with people and their possessions waited to enter many neighboring countries, and one of the most popular was Finland.
Finland closed the border in 2022 but not before 17,000 Russians had crossed. EU member states with eastern borders with Russia did not want to recognise young Russian men fleeing conscription as refugees under the 1951 Convention even though they faced ten years in prison and other forms of persecution. In spite of this, some 200,000 people had fled Russia to neighbouring countries.
Thanks for more exact numbers, Russell.
I erred a bit, too, when I referred to "Russian men fleeing conscription." Russian women largely did, too.
I used to enjoy a You Tube video by one young Russian woman from very far east in that country -- she'd spent a year at the University of Minnesota. I forget her name. But her videos were non-political, just very good on people, nature, food, and small-town life in a remote, quiet part of the world.
Gosh! Do you mean that schools should actually require students to THINK? I am afraid that is a quaintly outdated goal of the education establishment. And overworked and absent parents do not seem to care.
<sarcasm font> Here I thought that RepubliKlan's had the "moral majority."
Thank you Heather…Senator Wyden is my Oregon legislator and I will email him a note of appreciation—
Here is the context of what was happening:
* The Letter (Feb 4–5, 2026): As a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden sent an unclassified, two-sentence public letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe. It pointedly noted that he had sent a separate, classified letter regarding "deep concerns about CIA activities".
* The Goal: Because the details are classified, Wyden cannot publicly disclose the nature of the activities. By publishing this letter, he is creating a public paper trail, warning the public that something serious is happening, and ensuring the CIA Director cannot later claim he was unaware of congressional concerns.
This is part of a pattern where Wyden has historically warned the public about secret government overreach, such as the NSA's bulk surveillance or the FBI's use of data brokers.
(Thanks HCR for sharing the CIA bit at the beginning of tonight’s newsletter. And I love your midday videos.☀️)
Okay, this surprises me, come from Dr. Richardson, so I have to call it out here.
"a team working for Gabbard seized voting machines and data in Puerto Rico in what sources told the Reuters reporters was an attempt to prove that Venezuela had hacked the voting machines there."
Residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in Presidential elections and cannot vote for representatives of Congress. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but they do not live in a state, so they can only vote for local officials. It's the same for all US territories. When I lived in the US Virgin Islands, I could not vote in the Presidential Election, but when I moved to Pennsylvania, I could.
So how would seizing voting machines in Puerto Rico prove anything about Venezuelan interference in the 2020 Presidential Election? Or (as suspected) is Gabbard and her team just too stupid to realize you can't vote in Presidential Elections in Puerto Rico?
Jennifer Psaki made that startlingly obvious point in her interview with Senator Warner (D-VA) last night.
Perhaps Diaper Donnie now believes 3.7 million unenfranchised Puerto Ricans surged from Hillary’s sex-pizza basement to vote against him in 2016?
LOL The visual! LOL!!!
Thanks ICTT!
Good grief, what kind of topping goes on a "sex-pizza"?
Uh, on second thought, I don't want to know!
Yeah, Kass, you’d think they would have thought of that!🤦🏻♀️ I feel that this admin is like the “theatre mask” image….one side showing a laughing face (comedy), the other side showing grief (tragedy); it’s very exhausting!
I believe that the conspiracy theory is that Venezuela hacked Puerto Rico's voting machines.
I get that. But to what end? Venezuela hacked Puerto Rico's voting booths so they could make sure Pierluisi beat Garced instead of Garced staying governor? For what?
Honestly, I was living in the US Caribbean when Puerto Rico voted to become a state in 2012, and no one has gotten around to providing them a mechanism to do that yet, mostly because it would add about 2.3 million Democratic voters to the rolls. Same with granting full voting right to US citizens living in territories. US citizen residents of US territories cannot vote in US Presidential Elections, but US citizen residents of the British Virgin Islands (that in some cases you can walk to!) can vote in US Presidential Elections!
You are correct, but the conspiracy consumers who watch Fauxnooz do not know that. They believe whatever lies they hear on Faux, and will never do any fact checking on their own.
“Those demands are pretty straightforward, but if written into law as required for the release of funds, they would change behavior.”
We already have an administration that is not following the law, including those in the Bill of Rights. What guarantee do we have if/when money is allocated they will follow the (new) law?
Idiotic. Schumer is living in the 1970s. Or whoever said this. These are poison pills to Republicans. Yo6 want them to eat them ? Kill all further funding for DHS. The bloody votes are there !
> This morning, in a rambling and often crazed speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump told attendees: “They rigged the second election. I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego, though.
I think he is letting slip that the 2024 elections were rigged in his favor. https://electiontruthalliance.org
I think he’s lost what’s left of his mind and no longer bothering to hide it at these little get-togethers. The real question is how attendees at that “breakfast” could keep from laughing out loud.
I grew up with one of the founders of the prayer breakfast group. He is very devout, taught well by his church to be obedient to God and Oil and...