Yesterday two right-wing circuit judges signed off on the Trump administration’s new mass detention policy: the extraordinary assertion that vast numbers of noncitizens throughout the country can be arrested and held in detention centers without the right to release until they are deported.
When the Mayor of Ohrdruf killed hinself in April 1945, he was not alone. Both he and his wife took their own lives after being forced — not just to look at — but to carry dead bodies with their own hands to the pits where bulldozers finished the job. They left behind a note with a single sentence on it:
GERALDO LUNAS CAMPOS was ruled death by asphyxia. The deaths of VICTOR MANUEL DIAZ & FRANCISCO ANDRES need official autopsies.
Per Wikipedia, the tent ICE prison of East Montana in the state of TEXAS is run by a company named Acquisition Logistics with a contract valued 1.2 billion dollars.
So we know. Let's make it a couplet & start the 2026 Nuremberg Trials.
Joanne, I expressed this opinion recently, but I can't remember if it was here or in another forum.
One reason to oppose capital punishment is that our justice system sometimes gets it wrong. Life imprisonment allows the system to correct the mistake.
Another reason is that executing a heinous criminal awards them a quick release from the guilt and shame for what they have done, while their victims and/or the families are left to live a lifetime of sorrow and loss.
True justice is served when the criminals are forced to live out their years in shame and confinement.
The only caveat in my theory is my doubt that Donald, Stephen or Kristi have the capacity for shame.
Totally legally and factually innocent persons have been put to death in this country. The only way to avoid making that mistake is to outlaw capital punishment completely. Life in prison is harsh enough and it gives the system time to correct itself.
I read Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, prob. 40 years ago. It presents the many problems about the death penalty. Many people suffer for years because of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Executioner%27s_Song
The families of the victim get to go year after year, relive their misery to uphold it...besides having American citizens kill another..someone who is now sober and after 20 years. a pretty likable nice person.
AND, it is far more expensive than keeping them locked up for life.
It's just plain a bad policy.
Really bad for poor defendants that had sh*t representation.and are innocent. (IE: those not white)
By my instinct: if I was the family of the victim: just let us have the bad guy to tear him limb from limb ourselves. THAT would feel like justice.
I disagree. After what they have done they shouldn't be allowed to have contact with any other humans or any means of communication to spread their vile filth. The justice system is there to protect us against further harm.
I want him to suffer the same sufferage he has inflicted on others. He knows no shame. He does NOT have the capacity for this. As I have said before, he is a poisonous amoeba. A bacteria that must be irradicated somehow. And No...I am NOT a hypocrite. I never said I was a Buddhist Social Worker. I am a very, very good social worker. I advocate for those who have been abused and hurt by a world that really doesn't care much. I work with children. Check out our family court system and you'll see where my foundation of rage was born.
One of the big problems with Camp East Montana is that it is located on Fort Bliss (something I hadn't realized), which means that protesters can't get anywhere near it. I'm sure there is no way the fort would let protesters onto its land.
I was there, covering it for a local newspaper. Allen Ginsberg was the star attraction as I recall. No, lone protests don't do much, but sustained protests, public opposition, pressure on publicofficials and media coverage accompolish a great deal. We'll keep on truckin.
This is par for the course when the oligarchs gain control, as in Russia and China. China has more oligarchs, more than 500 with a net worth of more than $1 billion, than any other country in the world. So, is China a communist state? No, it is an oligarchy under the control of a despotic entity called the Communist Party. It could just as easily be called the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party. The would-be and already-arrived oligarchs use the media to indoctrinate large enough segments of the population to get control of the government, and then after that, those in power begin "feeding at the trough," exploiting the work and production of the workers. A whole lot of those who were suckered into voting against their own best economic interests never catch on. We see that going on in the U.S. today. The FDR New Deal economy produced a huge Middle Class, and that class is shrinking under Republican control.
In regards to Geraldo Lunas Campos: where is the further investigation? the indictment(s)? the arrest(s)? The name(s) of the arrested? "Truth, Justice and the American way!" Remember that? We need to keep remembering that. We need to keep asking the critical questions of the critical people. Perhaps our representatives in congress. Perhaps our U.S. Attorney General.
How to beam this message into mag.a distrcts? To help pick away at the crumbling propaganda there. LMK if anyone knows a group working on such a campaign. I would love to work on it.
Jot this on tiny slips of paper and leave them EVERYWHERE! In public washrooms, on the table at your local coffeeshop/bar/fast-food, between copies of the latest bestseller at the bookstore, public library (or free "little library", at the bus stop or metra station, tuck it in a shoe in the rack at WalMart, Other suggestions, anyone?
Here's you (all of us!) chance to be a secret agent of democracy!
All you postcarders should be up for this--I know you have to have legible handwriting to do that volunteer work! I wish I had saved the info but if frequent commentor DALE reads this, please advise. The suggestion was to get little cards printed up.
We can exsanguinate this administration by our millions of papercuts. Marching, boycotts, phonebanking, calls to Congress, attending town halls (if the cowards hold them) starting a chant at an event.
I believe it was in one of Heather's recent podcasts (sorry if I'm wrong, I listen to a lot) that she said the AVERAGE American spends 4 minutes a day on politics (might even have been a week?) so they aren't INFORMED like we are! It's up to us to get messages out because the Dems aren't very good at messaging.
I have zero tech ability, but it sure would be nice if there was a QR code we could copy and print to leave everywhere. IF such a thing is possible, someone please inform!
Have a good day today. I hope whatever team you are rooting for wins, and lets all watch BAD BUNNY!!😁
Another thought: bring those slips of paper with Heather's substack address on it to the next NO KINGS. At the last one, I was SHOCKED when I addressed a group of protesters (about a dozen folks) and only 2 knew of her and read her Letter!!
Not really surprising, since she has been branded a "political hack" by the right. She is on charlie kirks professor watch list, since the pandemic at least.
My old brain can dream: how wonderful it would be to have some enterprising person start a podcast where they have some teenager read Heather's Letter daily, and then they discuss it with them. Perhaps a rotation of a few teens.
Problem with this: according to my HS teacher kids, teenagers don't read. A positive with this: according to my HS teacher kids, all their students think they are going to make millions being internet influencers.
We need to educate those who will vote for the first time in midterms and in 2028.
Miselle, I read a very long extolling post about her yesterday on Facebook. I do not know who wrote it, but it was full of deserved praise and a little of her bio. Also I am a tech dolt, so i do not know how to post a reference to it here.
Thanks so much, Dale! And Vistaprint is based in the Netherlands - all the more reason to support them with our business :) Everyone in Europe sees exactly what's going on here!
Not everyone in Europe sees it. I've had some discussions recently and there's probably a similar percentage who choose to be uninformed or misinformed.
I know that my sister (75 y/o, no computer access or skill) voted for Trump twice. She "hated Hilary" then voted for Biden. Then SERIOUSLY voted for Trump because of the price of EGGS. I AM NOT JOKING.
She's pretty upset by all this now, and she isn't MAGA. I have taken it upon myself to make sure she is INFORMED. I print out the letter daily, and deliver them to her once a week. YEP, it is costing me in ink and paper, but I think it is worth it. She is paying attention now.
I also forward the Letter daily onto 4 people, a few more when they are focus on an issue which I know impacts them.
I think it is important that we be reminded now and then that some people, more than a few, voted for Trump because of the price of eggs. The low-information voter. Not evil, but misinformed.
Thank you for your persistence, Miselle. It would be so easy to throw up your hands.
I live in a red, rural area although in a blue state. I enjoy weekly/monthly interactions I have with about 8 favorite people who work in or own business I frequent. I have now introduced Heather, Joyce Vance, Robert Reich and The Contrarian to several of these acquaintances who have told me that they’ve introduced their friends to these truth-tellers. And so it grows. We can all do this!
Lemme guess, she hates Clinton because of Benghazi. That was my sister’s war crime. At least my sister did not vote for him twice. None of the family, of course, believed me about Project 2025.
Miselle, i always post the letter to my facebook page (and yeah, i know about that). Now several people read the letter and forward it on. Today i am on a local thread about moving the urban growth boundaries suggested by the governor. I am not for it, but... It is mostly about housing which is a problem, especially low income housing. So first we had someone referring to illegals and when I suggested undocumented, I was doing it because I wanted to feel morally superior instead of refusing to demean people. None of these people want to pay taxes, but want services and problems like the homeless gone just like that.
A Russian artist used a similar tactic to protest the war against Ukraine, posting stickers resembling price labels in a grocery store. She was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
That being said, I think this only has a slight resemblance to this artist. I'm not suggesting it be attached to products. And those who look into HCR can form their own opinions.
So many members of Bedminister and Mar-a-Lago are titans of industry.
I wish there was a list of members of all of his clubs so they could be shamed.
The CFO of Jack Link's is a member of Bedminister which I found out in 2018 when they were interviewing Trump at the club and they named him and some of the other members that were with him. I'm not a big jerky eater, but I'll never buy anything that has Jack Link's brand name on it.
The Epstein files have many names and probably many redacted names of people, both Republican and Democrat who conspired to gain and keep power, no matter what public stance they took.
As more true investigations into these files, the more shocking ties, politically and criminally, on the international stage including espionage, will be revealed.
Epstein was very likely a spy for Putin as is Trump. I'm sure many other wealthy individuals will step down from their positions of power, but they likely will never be prosecuted.
Billboards! I understand billboards are cheap in the rural places. What do you all think could be on a billboard that would help people understand what’s going on?
Wildhoney, I'm in the business. One would have to define "cheap." To get a vinyl wrap printed to install on a billboard structure will cost several hundred dollars, depending on the finished size, who prints the vinyl and where the printer is in relation to the structure on which it is installed.
Billboards are leased, based on availability, billed monthly. Billboard owners may require 1-month, 3-month, 6-month or 1-year commitments. The monthly rent on a typical billboard ranges from a few hundred to more than $1,000 a month, depending on the market and the traffic count for a particular billboard's location. Also, the billboard owner charges an installation fee, as well as a take-down fee. These are usually in the hundreds of dollars.
A billboard on a country highway with a low traffic count may be "cheap," but the return on investment is not very good.
With that understood, outdoor advertising is a good value when compared to radio or television advertising.
I've never done, one, Gary. If you built – or got someone to build – a frame of 2X4s that would sit securely in the truck bed, that would probably cost less than $300 for materials and supplies.
I would design a vinyl wrap that would wrap over the top rail of the wood frame, thereby creating a two-sided sign. The edges of the vinyl would be heat-weld hemmed with grommets installed every 12 inches. The wrap would be secured to the wood frame using fender washers with screws fastened through the grommets into the wood. The vinyl wrap would be maybe $300 plus shipping.
My art production fee would depend what's involved in producing the desired content.
Costs are extremely variable, depending on size of the truck bed and size of the desired billboard.
Christine, all kinds of messaging are advertising. Even if you have no intention of reaping any kind of revenue from your messaging, you still want to make as many impressions on as large an audience for the least amount of money spent. To do less is poor stewardship of the resources you've spent.
It's an excellent idea. It was only a Life magazine cover with a little girl, in flames, running down a street, but has been stuck in my mind for 60 years. Can you imagine the outrage, if Petti's body lying in the street or Good's body dead in her car, were on billboards? We weren't even allowed to see Cargo planes loaded with coffins of soldiers returning from Iraq.
That would be rough if in focus, but maybe something more out of focus like one of the concentration camps. Messaging: Is THIS, really what you voted for? Other small bit history lessons to parallel with town. Want to join a workshop chat on it?
I like the ideas, but I’m definitely thinking of beaming into a demo/market that would not be at a NoKings protest, or even probably the library or bookstore. The Walmrt suggestion is a good one. I’m not personally anywhere near such zipcodes atm, but if I were I would do that. Reminds me of pamphlets, has anyone read the White Rose? Is anyone out there tapped into a more red and rural network? I have been thinking ad space (and I know some do it, I see billboards when I travel), but with this theme of important message. Like, I know that some people don’t know, not yet.
We, the readers of the Letters, are also responsible for the detained people by ICE. What can we do? As an immediate solution, how about asking local church ministers to hold a worship service for the detained people?
Many of you took the time to read part or all of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 which was sponsored by Leonard Leo and the remaining Koch brother among others.
After reading Project 2025 I was terrified as were many of you. We warned people about this and Trump lied that he knew nothing about it.
Russell Vought became Trump's Director of Office and Budget Management. He has withheld funding from projects that Congress has voted for and approved and he has allowed Trump the funds to give himself a military parade and many other unauthorized projects. He supported defunding USAID which murdered by starvation tens of thousands of people around the world.
When the American Nuremberg trials start, he should be among the first to be tried and then publicly executed.
While I disagree with the public execution part, it's clear DJT has surrounded himself with sociopaths such as Vought, Miller, Noem and others. They all must be held accountable, sooner rather than later. Arrest, Impeach - whatever works (Miller can't be impeached, but he could certainly be arrested).
I don’t suppose a SCOTUS SIX impeachment would align with constitutional norms but…. they sure seem to have facilitated the biggest presidential heist in history. “Sticky wicket?”
Both Mike Johnson and John Thune claim to be Bible reading Christians. In Romans 13:1-2 Paul tells us to subject our selves to the authorities. In the case of our democracy the Constitution happens to be the "authorities" established by God. Those who choose to disobey this are subject to God's punishment. They swore an oath to uphold this constitution. By supporting trump they are as guilty as he is and should face all the same punishments as everyone in the trump regime.
I'm still angry that hundreds of insurrectionists weren't shot to death on January 6, 2020 on the capitol steps for trying to over throw our government. That might say a little bit about what I think the punishment for these criminals should be.
While many consider the oath a commitment God, I always considered these oaths to be commitments to citizens. And when they fail to live up to their oath it is a personal betrayal for me.
SCOTUS has preemptively pardoned Donnie. That stupidity has made his rampage even worse than it might have been. The cowardice of the Republican Congress is just beyond any rational explanation. This is simply a perfect storm of evil, inflicted on us by those who “knew but did not know” but damn well should have known.
Yes GJ my political book club started with reading Project 2025. We have gone on to read works that help us understand democracy and freedom and those factors that interfere with both.
That's excellent Linda. We've been watching several movies in the past couple of weeks about the rise and fall of the third Reich. Before Hitler committed suicide he was deluded into thinking that Germany could still win the war. His orders were absolutely ridiculous and impossible to carry out. Like Hitler, Trump is delusional as well. And those around him are doing everything they can because they all know he is too far gone to care.
The incident in which Trump posted a racist image of the Obamas on Truth Social and then admitted it, saying “I didn't make a mistake” by posting it isn’t the act of a rational adult. So I think you’re right about Trump’s mental state but, whether he’s delusional or not, normal politicians would condemn that act and demand that Trump resign or be impeached. As you know, that’s how Republicans dealt with Nixon. But the languid, careless Republicans who inhabit the “moral Slum” created by this government seem unmoved.
The 'moral slum' is expanding at an exponential rate. In the senate an agreement on curbing ICE practices is unlikely to be reached. Republicans keep saying nein. As these detention centers swell both the abuses within them and the absence of these people from our economy will place tremendous pressure on the perpetrators. We will find ourselves in the role of our troops bringing the complicit to view their legacy.
Will they ever awake from their social media stupor and wonder how things went so wrong? I'm talking about both adults and students.
If Social media and AI continue to be unregulated, we will have given up all self-control. The algorithms must be understood; they are in large part to blame for the dystopian reality we are living today.
I don't want to be repetitious, so I won't repost my longer comment which is in here somewhere. I suggest we leave notes in public places with this written on it:
Thanks Linda- I am part of a group like this and we are interested in readings about Project 2025 and its context. Would you mind sharing the titles of things your group read? Thanks!
Karen, here are some of the things we have read since Trump was elected. I don't remember all.
The articles of the US Constitution
Trump's EOs in his first month
Jefferson Cowie's "Freedom's Dominion."
Timothy Snyder's "On Freedom."
Anne Applebaum's "Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World"
Barbara McQuade's "Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America"
Katherine Stewart's, "Money Lies and God :Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" for this book we joined the Democrats Abroad UK book club after we had discussed it as they had Ms. Stewart as a guest speaker to talk about this book.
Articles by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker from the book "The Deadline"
Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We."
George Orwell's, "1984"
Thomas Caruthers and Brendon Hartnett's article, "Misunderstanding Backsliding Democracies"
George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson's "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism"
We meet weekly, and discuss whatever we want to politically as well, and also the books, or articles, which we break up into chunks. We are like a support group, which is why we decided to continue after Trump was reelected, and to learn more about democracy to help shore it up. We also have a project, which is a website on health care, but it is not public yet because of some political problems with releasing it.
Like and Indivisible group, which several of us also belong to, as well as Democrats Abroad, you can start it yourself. We meet online and while most of us are in various parts of Germany, we have had people from England, France and Spain join us as well as one person who is back and forth between the US and Europe.
thank you very much Linda, for this wonderful list and your inspiration.
Trying to understand what is going on and why helps manage to manage despair and to hear of like minded people all over the world getting together warms my heart.
Linda, Were you able to find the actual books or online? I am sending your list to my daughter in Florida— will be interesting if her library has them!!
Reading -near as lost an art as letter writing, cursive. Fox ‘News’, The Newt/Carlson, capitulation, the ways of dissolve -The Kennedy Center. MAGA.
Thank you Linda , et al, trying to wake America up.
The protests swell. Judges are getting pissed off. The polls now indicating disapproval. The World turned away, some walked off, and America ‘s #18th now ? …used to be #1 …dang them ‘ usta bees’!… ‘but hey we’re the richest , huh!
Applause light from the WHITE HOUSE is on folks…hello?
When I taught, I taught cursive, and occasionally would hear parents complain about it, or question the necessity. I have a friend whose son was in a Special ed school where they decided not to teach it, and he cannot read cards written to him in cursive without help. This is one reason why one teaches it, because it is the best way to learn to read cursive.
That was called Civics in my one-room country school. K-8: preview, actual class on my report card, review. We had a teacher who actually showed us our legacy. the cemetery on the hill, the house down the hill with its secret room for slaves on the run, Arbor Lodge, John Brown's Cave
The Koch brothers, Charles and the late David, are of the opinion that the government should exist only to provide for the national defense and the protection of private property. Basically no rules, except for what might benefit them. David was proposing Project 2025 ideas when he was a Libertarian political candidate years ago. I read his ideas and thought back then that he was criminally insane. Now look where we are.
I have never had a conversation with any Libertarian that did not scare the crap out of me and make my head hurt. Insanity is the only way to describe the irrational, supremely selfish, and pie-in-the-sky naivety of the Libertarian position.
Read "Indivisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson. That discusses the rise of this thinking and people like the Kochs.
Gary, I'm with you up to the execution part, public or not. I'd rather he (and many, many others) go into a federal "detention facility" for as long as the laws allow under sentencing guidelines.
Yesterday I posted a reply to the article on FB about Heritage Foundation . An “OPPS SOMETHING WENT WRONG” red box enclosed boundary popped up . I rewrote it and again “OPPS…” with red box ..appeared.
Without doubt I was sanctioned.
We are in the thick of repeating the German atrocities of concentration camps inflicted during the holocaust/WWII - there are FEW US Citizens legitimately able to claim they didn’t know.
I can’t claim all the writers or commenters on Substack know but feel quite assured most try to SHARE what’s written here after collaborated agreement , likely calling their representatives, likely out protesting, and probably supporting financial /donating to those also liberal factions active in informing citing their resources. Exaggerations possible but principle in tact ..no evidence ,no legal representations top the list , murder and neglect are second on ‘that list’…as history repeats -now by the American people who justifiably ended the Hitler horror - America drags its feet over the same atrocity. No gas chambers yet..apparently though, huh? Buts lots of Judges stepping up voicing exhaustion or anger over delayed, denied, and disgusting deportation distraction…the immigration issue. Not Jews this time ( nor then actually) but black,brown, or cat and dog eaters -orders given for slighted ego or obsessive conspiracy constipations.
Yes. And trump should be standing right there with him, along with the rest of the murderous cabinet trump has put in charge of this treason and abuse upon the people of this country. They all deserve to be executed, and those murderers should be grateful that in America, the Bill of Rights will be followed, including the eighth amendment.
No death penalty. People should be brought to justice with due process, under internationally-recognized standards for fair trials and in accordance with human rights agreements to which the U.S. is signatory, followed by appropriate punishment for those found guilty.
I’m not sure what you mean by “that option should be available.” if you mean, a guard or someone else in a position of authority should, say, leave a length of rope in a prisoner’s cell, then, again, no.
In the movie "Nuremberg" Goring ends up taking cyanide the day before his execution. If someone wants to kill themselves before the state tries it I'm fine with that. Charles Starkweather pleaded for and received a speedy trial and then was put to death in an electric chair less than two years after he committed the first murder. Since he murdered people in Wyoming and Nebraska he chose to be tried in Nebraska. Wyoming and Nebraska both had capital punishment, but Starkweather learned after he was back in Nebraska that the Wyoming Governor was inclined to not execute him.
Public executions very well may be the only way to get the attention of the maggots, what these people are doing is so wrong, and it includes murder, that it cries out for a rebalancing. I know there will not be a lot of support for that, but imprisonment without any possibility of parole, might be the only alternative. People are dying because of actions of these maggots and that has to have consequences. 🤷♂️
Since I have only hated a handful of people in my life, I am not a fan of public executions. But Trump is a mass murderer who gladly uses starvation as a weapon and bombs people in fishing boats that may or may not be hauling drugs.
Trials, yes, with due process. Death penalty, no, never. I’ll add — only half in jest — that I like the idea of exile to an otherwise uninhabited island surrounded by shark infested waters. But seriously, no DP, no cruel and unusual punishment, not even for those who’ve been found guilty of inflicting those on others.
This whole right wing controlled government, the Congressional branch, the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court with various right wing Federal Judges such as the ones that ruled immigrants could be held in these inhuman warehouse camps, seem to believe common human decency is weak and that their depraved treatment of mostly non-criminal people will be seen as strong and admired by the American public. They see the fascist, sadistic and brutal tactics against minorities, citizen or not and the people that observe and document their abuses and crimes as something most people will approve and praise. Both terms of trumps presidency are going to be remembered in history as the tragic downfall of a nation that believed in the rule of law and was betrayed by a party that began with, in my opinion, the greatest President, who ended slavery. The comparison to German citizens of the Nazi era is good except, our citizens are aware of what is happening and at least 37% are perfectly fine with it.
We must take action immediately if we are ever going to have a country we aren't embarrassed to call our own.
Free and fair elections are not going to happen under today's government. People should stock up on provisions to last for a prolonged general strike. Demonstrations and protests will become more dangerous as more people participate. Who knows if overwhelming resistance will make it more likely that trump will provoke a war as he seems ready to do with Iran today.
No, there are actually plenty of ignorant people, the elderly for instance who believe themselves compassionate, that only watch garbage tv and read the bible that truly are not seeing the violence and cruelty yet in their feeds if they’re even on social media. There are still people who are not aware the extent to which this has gone so very dark. I know some of them and I don’t know how to convince them that I’m not the radical one, it’s been horrendously divisive the way old rural people have been exploited. I imagine the with less media coverage it was easy enough to miss in Germany if you didn’t have a radio or a regular paper delivery. We have a similar situation with the propaganda now, and algorithms steering feeds to lies. Perhaps the propaganda is even more effective today.. probably. I have wondered so many times lately, was Hitler this stupid in person and if he’d have had so many cams and mics and tweets, would we have recognized it earlier in our own abusive dictator.
Yes. I think we see Americans recognizing that they don't want to be complicit with this agenda. That people incarcerated are not getting critical health care violates human rights and makes the system Nazi-like.
Crimes against humanity. If millions of Americans beg The Hague to begin proceedings against the regime and the businesses making billions off suffering, will The Hague do anything?
I think the first thing to do is to beg a brave country like South Africa to file a case saying that Donald Trump is an international war criminal and name others with him. Then it has to be voted on by other countries, who are basically afraid to stand up to a nuclear power. So, first we have to get Trump declared an international war criminal, which he is, and then look at taking him down, which who can do that? He is protected from defeat by the US military. No, we have to take him down at the ballot box and in the streets and with economic pressure.
I don't think 'I didn't want to be complicit" will go through as an adequate excuse, possibly not for several generations, if Germany history is anything to go by. I don't think the world will forgive and forget in a hurry.
We need to make sure the current form of the Republican Party dies. Get rid of the corrupt, stupid, old, theocratic and cowardly. The list is way too long. We need to bring it down to the state level as well. Get rid of the rest of the Republican Governors or at least most of them.
“The proposed facility does have its supporters. U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, the Trump-backed GOP candidate for governor, held a gathering of Republican activists there last week. He told the Sentinel he thought the detention center was a good idea that could relieve pressure on local jails facing a surge of immigration-related inmates.”
Fl Rep Anna Eskamani is running for mayor of Orlando. She will win and continue to fight for Orlando. Rep Anna is fearless and takes NO corporate donations! 💪💙
I just wrote and shared the Ohrdruf story with the Orlando mayor's staff. Can't find his actual email. I also called Byron Donald's office since his website won't allow non-constituients to comment. I shared the Ohrdruf story with him as well.
Bottom line, many of us who will continue this fight against this nazi, aka republican, regime will die. It is inevitable at this point, and cannot be avoided unless the regime is taken out. Our military should revolt against the atrocity that is the trump regime and save what could could have been the most benevolent country on earth...while there is still time.
Term limits for the Supreme Court, I support. Because they are unelected. The six right-wing Justices today, put their political and religious beliefs ahead of truly interpreting the Constitution accurately and are responsible for the current collapse of the rule of law.
Historian Géraud Létang, who teaches at the Army War College in Paris...
“Nonetheless,” Létang concedes, “the lesson of the Resistance was that the fight for freedom is inseparable from the defense of truth.” The war waged by Trump against truth, he warns, is the primary threat to liberty.
Sure Gary. I think it is helpful to use history to understand the situation we find ourselves in. The importance of Truth highlights how bad it is that the Washington Post and other media have abandoned the truth as they seek to appease this president. We must speak truth when we have the opportunity to do so and share it. I have a friend who vacillates on supporting the Trump administration because she sees it as protecting her investments, and being against them because they are horrid people. She can get mad at me, but weekly conversations keep her more out of the realm of conspiracy and more in the realm of reality. I am sure many of us have people like that.
Have any of our “leaders” in Washington spoken out about this documented build-up of mega detention centers! ? ( of course if they have, it sure won’t be in the Washington Post) Are the “Epstein files” the shiny object that distracts us from this?
I believe that the Epstein files contain much more than the crimes of rape and trafficking of underage victims; it all looks like part of an international espionage operation tied to Putin that used the victims to blackmail powerful people in powerful positions.
It is very damning of our DOJ under Presidents from both parties.
After the defeat of Hitler and his Nazi regime, the new government that was tasked with rebuilding Germany and German society actually passed some laws banning speech that promoted the Nazi ideology. As we get farther away from the horrors of WW2 it seems that those laws have been ignored and the Nazis have emerged from their swamps once again.
I think the majority people of this nation would prefer that all of us deserve (critical and general) healthcare. This regime doesn’t give a shit about “we the peoples’ ” health (eliminating and cutting such programs that were in place to help people like me, afford that care) so in a weird twisted way-
We are all in this together and need to reimagine and find better solutions after this upheaval to the problems we face in this society. We must
I disagree, Nancy, it is not only this regime, the right wing has a long history of opposing healthcare as something everyone has a right to; they have always championed healthcare as a money-making business that employers can use as something to keep their employees in place.
That is true Mystic Shadow. That is part of why my husband and I moved to our other country for retirement. I have written on health care in my Substack, and will write again at some point when I go back to writing articles.
Slavery, the minimum wage, Andersonville/Rock Island, the SS St. Louis, Japanese detention camps. a recent high school graduate trying to convince we just need to deport everyone we round up (sees no difference between criminal and misdemeanor; they are all illegal.) We have a history and, if one comes down from his/her ivory tower, one can see not much has changed.
Not in my classroom when I taught. Sad that it happens anywhere. Also, sad that all the good teachers get a bum rap because of the ones who are not good or are bad.
Capture the courts, you've conquered the nation. Nazi Germany all over again. And yet there are still fools who believe this can be remedied by elections.
This story does not stand alone. It exists inside a country where these detention and deportation systems are visible enough to be known and distant enough to be ignored.
In her February 7, 2026 letter, historian Heather Cox Richardson recalls a moment after the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, when the town’s mayor took his own life rather than face what had happened nearby. The lesson was never that one man alone was responsible. The lesson was that such systems do not operate in secrecy. They operate in proximity. They operate while neighbors live ordinary lives and tell themselves they do not know enough to intervene.
That warning applies now.
ICE detention and deportation centers are not abstractions. They sit near highways and airports, outside small towns and along industrial roads. People are confined, pressured to sign away their rights, and removed from the country at speed. Many have no criminal convictions. Many asked for asylum legally. Many never receive a hearing that meets even a minimal standard of justice.
And many Americans know this.
They know because journalists have reported it.
They know because lawyers and doctors have testified to it.
They know because historians have named the pattern.
They know because these facilities require permits, contracts, staffing, and silence.
The danger is not only what happens inside the camps. The danger is the sentence repeated outside them: we didn’t know. History does not accept that defense once the evidence is public.
If you know, you must speak.
Because systems that normalize rapid detention and deportation do not remain confined to immigrants. Once due process becomes optional, once speed replaces deliberation, once whole groups are defined as removable, the category expands. Protesters become disruptors. Journalists become threats. Political opponents become risks to order.
The infrastructure is already built.
The language is already softened.
The exceptions are already written.
Immigrants are not the end of this story. They are the beginning of the test.
And the question history will ask is not whether these camps existed, but whether those who lived nearby, morally and geographically, chose to speak while there was still time.
“German authorities under National Socialism established a variety of detention facilities to confine those whom they defined as political, ideological, or racial opponents of the regime. In time their extensive camp system came to include concentration camps, where persons were incarcerated without observation of the standard norms applying to arrest and custody; labor camps; prisoner-of-war camps; transit camps; and camps which served as killing centers, often called extermination camps or death camps.”
Ally, you’re correct! As you, I have been following Heather for quite a few years.
It’s frustrating that so many people in the US won’t consider the connection between 1930s rise of the Third Reich and what’s occurring right in front of our eyes. The mirror can’t be big enough!
"Other than four Yugoslav women whom the SS brought to Mauthausen with 46 men to be shot in April 1942, the first female prisoners in Mauthausen were two dozen women from Ravensbrück, whom the SS transferred to provide sex for favored male prisoners."
This statement applies for all of us now. What can we do? I propose that we send this letter to the House and let Republican congressmen and women to read.
With these revelations, ICE has to get chopped in the DHS CR.
The human rights abuses in the detention camps are heinous.
Would that we recognized the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. That would be right up there on my to-do list once Democrats win control.
DHS won't be eliminated because it still has functions to carry out. It was once a legitimate department. What's needed is to impeach all the political appointees who are running DHS now.
All the items on the J&S list, plus a focus on the human and constitutional rights issues, have to apply to what remains of DHS. The list also needs to be applied proactively to the military and National Guard.
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
“MeidasTouch is combing through these documents and posting horrific revelations, but it is also amplifying the voices of the victims. Epstein survivor Anouska De Georgiou posted a video thanking MeidasTouch for taking an interest in her story and continuing to advocate for survivors and transparency. In the video, she described the distress caused by the DOJ’s unredacted release. She explained that the files revealed deeply personal details about her and countless other survivors, including photographs and home addresses, creating immediate and lasting harm. Her attorneys filed an emergency request for judicial intervention under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Judge Berman responded immediately, scheduling a conference and inviting survivors to participate. De Georgiou emphasized that she and other survivors will continue to fight for accountability and will not stop until the DOJ takes action to protect them.”
I'm certain the personal details of the victims were released deliberately as a threat. How many have already been "offed"?? The DOJ will never be impartial on the files as long as Bondi and Blanche are running the show.
Loren Bliss, now we know what happened to Samantha’s mother. I suspected it from the beginning. It came from the top. A coup is the only solution. Congress is not paying attention to this.
Every American in the street every day. Until the Nazis are out. Then we jail them in their facilities until trial. 3-7-77 gather every ice road agent. Let them wander aimlessly tormenting themselves in their own warehouses.
The answer isn’t a coup, it’s a revolution. Make the USA into the country that most people thought it already was. The shining city on a hill that many of your foreparents dreamed of.
You nearly had it until some power hungry white nationalists, back in the 1920s, opted for a different direction that ensured more power for the people they installed. If you’d like more information on what was happening, I recommend finding on twitter: @GeorgeProust and @JWalters314 and @TiminHonolulu and @LincolnsBible and @BaddCompani
Here on Substack, there’s @SethAmbramson who is also on twitter with the same handle.
Many people have been working to understand how the world and the USA have arrived at their current iterations and circumstances.
Twyla, it can be summed up in two words, greed and stupidity. Watching US for 10 years from a small boat in the French canals (front seat to climate change and exceptionalism)) concluded that we are “the bad teenagers on the block.” At 91, I can only write GOTV postcards and write for 11/26. Minnesota is giving US an example of how we may straighten ourselves out.
(Ouch. Preposition. Churchill. WWII all over again.)
Substack says I should follow you. Please continue to let me know what you think of what I write, but I simply don’t have time to follow my followers. Humbled by the attention of all of them, but slower than molasses in winter, have to have time to cook, play a keep-in-shape piano version of the Ukrainian national anthem, and recuperate from
Good for you, Virginia, for surviving to your 90s!
You’re aware of the importance of GOTV campaigns and that’s an excellent contribution.
I will follow in your footsteps and encourage my American friends & neighbours to join together to make your own lives better and by extension, your communities and countries. I will never give up on the people who recognize the importance of everyone having, and being worthy of, human rights.
Once again Georgia, you are right but you have to recognize how fruitless being right is in this situation. You call for impeachment of the offenders without acknowledging what you know, that with both the House and Senate in the hands of the GOP, there is simply no way any of that can or will happen. We MUST focus on 2026 elections because there is the ONLY place we can achieve any kind of balance in the government and maybe crank back some of the most egregious actions of the Trump administration. But for the worst cases, we will need to repulse the entire GOP government and that can't happen until 2028 elections, so we all need to buckle up for the long haul. It seems tragic and it is, but we all chose this. Yes I know some us would like to deny responsibility, but we as a country voted for this monster and we have to accept the consequences of our political system even when it makes us all sick.
As the mayor in the German city noted when he committed suicide, "We knew."
Jon, on a "practical level" you are absolutely right. Dems have little power to do anything.
Except. They can use the filibuster in the Senate to effectively halt legislation. Senators can demand NO funding for ICE. Senators can demand that the $75 billion already booked for ICE be redirected to the humane treatment of detainees and hiring more asylum judges.
Except. They can use the bully pulpits of hearings and the damn front steps of the Capitol to scream "STOP the FASCISM NOW". BE on RECORD.
Except. Every day, Reps and Senators can call out their MAGA colleagues and demand impeachment. There are some Republicans that are now challenging the Orange Menace. Tim Scott spoke up. So did others. The MAGA armour is cracking.
None of this and more will reverse the course of this madness - until the November Earthquake. But we who care will be making note of what leaders at least tried and stood tall and said NO to this insane brutality.
It's not enough to say, we don't have the power now. We need to take a page from the reactionary playbook - insanely bigoted people - who while in the minority built a plan that is now fully in effect.
I understand that such efforts are underway. So...as Georgia said, "we can walk and chew gum at the same time."
You are right. November is when we can really turn things around. But in the meantime we can still make some resistance history.
We ARE all responsible. And. We ALL need to be engaged in "Being Right" loudly, for the history books, for our kids to be proud, for our ability to sleep at night.
We're all on the same side here. Please don't take my comments the wrong way. But we MUST be on record as knowing and proclaiming what's "right". And our Senators can demand MORE.
Thanks for that Gary. Schumer finally lit it up. Tough talk. And then he caved. And he is caving as we speak.
Dems need to shut everything down. Now.
Dems have been losing by being logical, compassionate and reasonable. Thinking we could convince the Nazis to...not be Nazis.
It is not effective to talk tough and then back down. Schumer should tie himself to a horse and ride into the White House holding an American flag. Or something.
No, the Dems are still terminally weak. In the face of fascism, they are absolutely failing. They don't even name it let alone fight it. Schumer should step aside, he is useless. We need younger, stronger leadership with a spine and knowledge of history who can call out what is happening and act accordingly. Nothing else matters and if the Dems can't form a true resistance movement, they will not gain back popular support. They lost a lot of trust when they let Biden run again knowing his faculties were failing.
We keep hearing this, can you be specific as to what a new leader would effectively do different?
Remember the Dems lost not because they weren't radical enough, the data proves they lost by being too radical.
The failure to address the crisis at the border and emphasis on bathroom and locker room issues lost the Independents we needed to win. Loved Kamala, buy her refusal to recognize that the positions of the party was not only out-of-line with who was needed to win, but simply absurd, a refusal to deal with reality gave us Trump.
Yes, they lost trust with holding onto Biden but the data shows they lost more by losing any semblance of common sense. She could have won.
I know how fruitless it may seem, but if voters don’t see Dems at least trying in the House and Senate to rid us of this scum, they will see weakness and a leadership vacuum. And that just makes it harder to achieve what I agree has to happen, taking back Congress with veto-proof majorities.
Dems have to start doing what is right, not because they are guaranteed a win, but because it is the decent and moral thing to do. It is at the point where the administration’s actions are so indecent and immoral that enough Republicans may manage to grow a spine to force Trump to veto reforms. That provides more ammunition for the midterms and 2028.
Recent CivicScience data from early 2026 shows over one-third of Americans (more than 33%) report paying more attention to political news in recent weeks compared to usual—far ahead of other categories like entertainment or lifestyle news. Among likely midterm voters, this figure rises to 41%, with a shift toward national TV networks and news websites as primary sources over social media. That still leaves a lot of people that need to be reached.
Dems have to walk and chew gum at the same time. They have to be out running the strongest campaigns with the strongest candidates contesting every elected office from dog catcher on up, while still fighting like hell in Congress.
" I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole." Malcom X
Totally agree. Either you're with them or against them. The election is over. Mistakes were made and millions couldn't be bothered to vote. It's time to STFU about Democrats unless they are in charge like they are in my state. And they are doing a great job her.
Reposting--
We hate Jeff Bezos but we shop at Amazon.
We despise Mark Zuckerberg but we post on Instagram.
We loathe the Waltons but we shop at Walmart.
Until we see the disconnect in these actions we will continue to live under the thumbs of the überwealthy.
Yes Jon, we should endure and we should focus on the 2026 elections as the ONLY place we can achieve any kind of balance, but this regime already figured out the same and it's already setting up the ground to make the election totally rigged. We need to realize that putting all the eggs in the some, only, basket is suicidal for our democracy. We know they are going to cheat in any way possible and if we don't do something about it , then yes, we will be all guilty.
I wish I held your audacious hope that our elections will mean anything at all. The Nazis have captured all three branches of our old democracy, our public broadcasting , our public education, and now with the tech gurus hacking our information systems, I suspect there WILL be vote manipulation, as our grifter in chief said, his blind devotees “only had to vote just this last time…”
But, giving up is unforgivable….so, thank you professor Richardson, for chronicling all this rot.
So we are beyond hope in your estimation but what then? Insurrectionist against a fully nuclear armed massive armed force? Oh yeah that will work just great. Trump is chomping at the bit to unleash his army on all of us. He just needs the slightest rational excuse. Any hint of armed insurrection will do it.
Yes it is going to be difficult and it in fact may not be successful. But any other course is worse. If WE become the ones to strike out first, he will slaughter us all.
If we can hold him at bay with no excuse to strike us militarily before the elections we MIGHT beat him in 2026 and then his power will drop precipitously.
This is dangerous territory but doing the wrong thing is worse then the hope that doing the right thing will work.
I believe we fail either way if we do the wrong thing. If we do the right thing we have at least a chance. No guarantees but life is never guaranteed.
And then what? Impeachment? Lol the Senate will never have enough votes to convict and remove either Trump or Vance. You know that Daniel. And the country would never tolerate that much upheaval.
And if by jujitsu you mean a way to get rid of a few more GOP Congress critters I think you are smoking too much dope. Anything other than using our actual process to fix this is tantamount to national suicide. THEY WANT US to do that. Anything we do that is provocative gives them the justification (even if totally insane) to lash out with all their power.
And considering what they managed to do in Minneapolis with just a few thousand poorly trained ICE agents, consider what happens if they declare martial law and bring it the entire us armed forces. It would be a national disaster. And we WOULD lose almost certainly.
Jon you need to take a dose of your own medicine here. You acknowledge congress is useless as tits on a boar yet you advocate allowing this carnage to rage on until elections which you admit may not even be fair. The hot air you ascribe to others seems to me to fill your balloon as well. As the months go by is that helping the Nazis firm up their plans? Is that working into their hands? You don’t want to preempt that possibility? Your council is to wait? We have already waited for Godot too long. This isn’t Tejas and Houston isn’t coming.
Sally -- Please keep your eye on the thousands of elections all across the US this year. Sure November counts bigly, but unless we support the best candidates in the primaries and the special elections as well as the statewide elections, November is just fluff.
I find myself agreeing with Jon here. But if we think the malign foreign forces that influenced the election in 2024 were bad, well, we ain't seen nuthin' yet, given the power of AI, not to mention that a cornered animal is most dangerous. The idjit djt (if he's still around) will try to erase the slate of competitors for the Democratic nomination with whatever means necessary.
I am not surprised. Many people loved Hitler too. I wish I had a magic wand to make it all better but I don't and no one else does either. This is going to be a long hard struggle and we may lose some battles along the way. Sherman and Grant did. So did Eisenhower.
In the end we have to believe that doing the right thing is the best way to prevail. Otherwise a victory will be hollow anyway.
DHS used to not exist but our government did and our country did. I am not usually one for going back in time, but in this instance I say that under Trump these departments should not exist because they are not going to perform the "needed" functions. Instead it should be disbanded. The parts should go back to the agencies they came from. It was never a good idea to gather all that data in one place.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC)
I don’t think you really want all 9 to go. ICE definitely, CBP constrained, USSS in my fondest dreams, temporarily. The others I want to see doing the jobs that they are mandated to do by law done well and fairly.
Gutting a government department like Trump did with the education department makes it almost impossible to bring back, and at huge cost.
DHS had around 211,502 employees as of recent federal data, making it the third-largest Cabinet department. For instance, there are 64,000 in TSA (as of 2024).
Chucking everyone out would be a huge hardship for the decent civil servants who make up the majority of the people there and their families. It’s a major hit to the economy as a whole.
I think the rot and corruption have to be cut out surgically from the top down, amputation for ICE because it is gangrenous. Given what we’ve seen, that means every Trump political appointee. Cutting off the heads of a lot of snakes.
The new rule “Improving the Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness of the Civil Service,” which goes into effect on March 8, 2026, allows Trump to fire more career civil servants at will, allowing him to plant political appointees even deeper into the organizational structure.
This is about silencing dissent. It is about muzzling free speech in the place it most needs to be, inside government.
When it was created it was told that for national security it was dangerous to have so much information centralized in one location. It still is. It is better not to have them all together. This was a Bush Project and I do not approve. As the article I shared said, they were pulled from elsewhere. I am not asking for all of them to disappear, just to go back to where they came from.
Linda and Georgia: I thank you for your comments. Always worth reading. If you make mistakes - which is very rare - you own up. You are shining lights of reason and decency.
Yes Gary, I never trusted anything George Bush did, and never believed the reasons that he said we were going to war with Iraq. In fact, I understood that Bush was not popular and he was going to up his popularity by getting us into a war. So, not only did American men and women die and get wounded to salvage his presidency, but so did men from other countries that have just been disparaged by Trump. It is so unjust I cannot believe it, but believe it I do because it is Trump.
Since I started watching this channel a few years back, their viewership has gone from roughly 300K to now about 875K. Anyone who watches "Belle" regularly knows that many MAGA watch her, too, as she often answers the taunts they send her way.
She puts up 3 SHORT (about 4 min long) videos a day. Weekly, her group does 3 longer (maybe 10-15 or so minutes) videos "The Roads with Belle" on YouTube and two others on Patreon. ("Research Road" and "Interstate News") All are worth a watch/listen, especially for folks who don't have a lot of time to watch the many worthy but LONG podcasts.
When our previous immigration and intelligence system “failed us” and led to 9/11, we “abolished INS” and the other agencies in order to form ICE and DHS etc. We can absolutely abolish it again and form something else that has appropriate checks and balances. It’s been around for less than 25 years and has already shown that it has the capability to be easily used as a tool in an authoritarian takeover. Clearly, it was designed to “get the terrorists,” not for legitimate immigration management. Get rid of it and replace it with a new system that uses the federal courts, not its own separate system (why is DHS its own police, judge and jailor?! No separation of powers whatsoever).
At least some of the immigrants who are being rounded up and incarcerated in the camps are nationals of countries who have signed the Rome Statute.
That’s a longer term accountability solution.
In the short term, Americans need to shut down the camps, because what they are doing in your name, is atrocious.
Try the usual pathway of calling your representatives.
Then consider withdrawing your participation in such a society. The taxes you pay is funding the atrocities. If you’re in the working class, your labour makes the machines run.
Impeachment will only happen with a Democratic Congressional majority and the reason the regime will not allow a free and fair election, ever, not just the midterm and 2028 elections.
How can we ensure that as we address the defunding of the attack arm of ICE, that there is funding to get the detainees, now isolated and without support, to have access to clean water, edible food, medical care and medicine? We need a plan to reunite these people with their families and bring them back to health.
Isn't this, and especially the initial flights to El Salvador that Homan the Bagman intervened to let fly there after the judge demanded they return in mid-air, human trafficking? The combination of the firehose of illegal actions and the steady removal of regular law enforcers who are replaced with Trump mob goons is making it incredibly difficult to hold the fort. I think Minneapolis has it right: it's going to turn out to be up to the people. Christopher Armitage had a good piece Friday on exactly how they've done it.
Shutting it down won't solve anything. First, we need to take the country back from these ultra-right-wing zealots and then get DHS back to what it is supposed to be doing, legally.
Rich, I was slow to come to this, but after the disappearance of Samantha Guthrie’s mother, thinking ICE should be shut down until it can be rebuilt from scratch—on the border and paid like other departments. We must, however, vet and hire many immigration judges. As climate change drives people to our “land of plenty,” we must prepare, if the Mafia doesn’t totally bankrupt US, to produce food to the best of our ability.
Hello again from Minneapolis. I’m going to keep this short and sweet tonight. Quite frankly I don’t know what to do with all the negative feelings I have inside.
Things are not better here in Minnesota, and from what I’ve heard ICE has been expanding their operations further into the suburbs. The lack of national media attention on what’s happening here in Minneapolis is abhorrent. Too many citizens here are doing everything they can to protest, coordinate against ICE, help pack and deliver food to assist our neighbors who won’t leave the house for fear of being stopped just to name a few examples. Too much effort is being done here for the rest of the country to think the problem is over.
Finally as I’ve probably mentioned before I’m a 3rd generation Holocaust survivor. All of this is getting far too real, and this hits way too close for me. I don’t care about MAGA waking up to what’s happening, because they’re a lost fucking cause. I absolutely care about the rest of the country figuring it out. The numbers are there, but still not the will.
You are holding up the sky for the rest of us right now, Minneapolis. Despite appearances to the contrary, millions are paying attention. We can only continue to say thank you for your courage and unfathomable grace under pressure. 🙏
I am 1st generation, Daniel, as I have mentioned before, also. All of the privately owned detention centers hits home with me. Denying essentials, knowing those sweet young babies are crying endlessly, hurts my heart. My parents would have died a thousand deaths knowing that their precious adopted country was killing and torturing its own people. I can’t stand it!
Thank you, Daniel, for you posts. Our media, except for Substacks like this one, are moving on to the next attention-grabber. Today it's a vile, racist post from our vile, racist President. The ongoing disaster in Minnesota (coming soon to a neighborhood like yours, folks!) and the continued withholding of the Trump/Epstein Pedo Files are out of the limelight. By design.
Dear Daniel, as a non-American observer living on the other side of the world, I can only tell you of my outrage and sympathy. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls.
I once thought of trying to obtain Italian citizenship but it was too lengthy. My mother’s parents came from a little town in Sicily. I lived for a time In Firenze in the 1970s. It was a wonderful time I’ll say. The first two acquaintances I made were a Nigerian art student and an Iranian street vendor named Sammy who escaped the military. We were all immigrants living in beautiful Florence. Because of my exposure to the workshops making and carving frames, I eventually learned the craft of picture framing and opened a store.
This seems lame, but can you get any attention from the DNC? Where in the hell is their attention, if not in Minneapolis? They should be hitting the mass media, independents, filling streets , doing something, beyond asking for donations. Are they worried Trump will call it an "insurrection"? Being there, is not an insurrection. Being there is a choice. Flood the city with democrats and independents that care? We are all new at dealing with a dictator. But we will learn!
Daniel, I wonder where the will comes from and for me, an emotional reality arising from the perception of danger, that's aroused in detail, helps motivate me to shift priorities. Your post helps me assemble the pieces, and this also does; I'm sharing this first post from Robert L. Arnold's trip to Minneapolis (he crowdfunded $16,000 to get there -- is eloquent and incisive) : https://open.substack.com/pub/defiance13/p/on-minnesota-1?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email. I discovered him in a conversation last week with Mike Madrid (of which there's another today).
Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. I'm glad you don't care about MAGA - I totally agree they are not worth the attention. Other people are figuring this out. It's just slow. And there are so many things.
I just wrote my reps about, of all things, agriculture. American agriculture, which was financially alright, is on the skids. Farm income down, bankruptcies up. It's all from WH policies. I wrote my reps then wrote a letter to the editor. I live in a farming community. Maybe someone will pay attention to the letter. Suicides increase in farming communities when bankruptcies increase.
People are figuring this out, and the new stuff about detention centers is not going to help poll numbers. Take care of yourself, Daniel. That, from my experience, can be shockingly hard to do. But it is the most important thing. Pull some vibes in from your ancestors. Take a break from the news. It seems selfish, I know, but your ancestors would tell you that saving your sanity is the first priority. Thank you, Daniel. Sending love and gratitude, thoughts of rest and strength.
The concept of a "warehouse" for detainees is repugnant and de-humanising: human beings are note "wares" and use of the term objectifies those interned in them. Let's call these places by what they are: concentration camps. The difference from what happened during the period of the Third Reich in Germany is the method with which the people interned are disposed of. At least for now.
I am suddenly recalling Kristi Noem’s ghastly selfie taken in front of a holding room filled to the brim with half-naked men in bunks — at CECOT in El Salvador, if I remember correctly. Someone juxtaposed it with the famous photo taken in April 1945 by US troops at Buchenwald, with Elie Wiesel peering out from the third or fourth bunk…
Trump was ranting on about lower prices of Ozempic from $1000 to $199 on Fox News of course. He went on to say that this was a 578% decrease in price which isn't how percentages work. Before he could ramble on about some other BS, FOX News cut away to a story about Savannah Guthrie. WTF!!!
This is Trump's private network and even they are aware that he is looney tunes.
Where is Congress? Oh yeah, they are too busy trying to get the Clintons behind closed doors to testify. Why behind closed doors?
Wouldn't it be fun to get Trump to publicly testify for any committee about well anything? It doesn't matter. He would purjure himself in his opening statement and it would go downhill from there.
Well, a 578 percent decrease would imply that Americans are getting a much-deserved refund after many years of being overcharged for their medications! :)
As for testimony by Mueller, Clinton, Hunter Biden etc etc etc, Comer and other Republicans obviously want closed-door testimony so they can cherry-pick, distort and spin it the way they want.
You’re right, Trump’s perjury would start even if asked: "Mr President, what is your height and weight?"
Yes. It would be. They need to spend time behind bars, being treated more humanely than the detainees in the ICE concentration camps, lots of time for them to reflect on their crimes. I think cutting them off from Internet access and TV would be a start.
Give them a chess set and no instructions. King Trump giving power to his cabinet pieces and let them make their own rules. Endlessly. Scatter their ashes at sea. Give them what they wish for confined together. What a wonderful world.
Todd Lyons' comments now make sense (in a depraved way) in relation to comments of some of the ICE goons who talked about moving a "body" or placing a "body" (live human) in detention cells. They see these people as already dead, so no more care (including medical) is needed than in a morgue. They have desensitized themselves, just as the slave owners did in an earlier era, just as the Nazis did. It is shocking and beyond immoral.
I think you nailed it. "Woke" is awareness of inconvenient (for some) truths. The core of any cult is punishment of any efforts and desire for verification. That, and grandiose flattery of those in compliance, the putative "Master Race", the "Righteous", the "Real" Americans, or whatever. The concept adopted in wealthy aristocracies of "superior breeding", as opposed to "commoners". That other races are somehow subhuman, and some people legitimate targets for predation, or exploitation. Evil.
This is the surface of the worst new reality and yes these new warehouses are modern concentration camps and yes we are all complicit to the extent that we are responsible for what happens in our country and communities. Just to imagine the suffering that has already occurred and is continuing and the suffering that will expand for the rest of his SECOND term…we should all be figuring out what we can do to rescue these helpless human beings.
Alas, the cruelty toward immigrants in Trump's first term, especially the capture of children and in many cases separating them permanently from their families, never provoked the level of outrage it deserved.
We need to publicly humiliate every Republican Senator and Congressman by tying their actions to those of ICE. Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, Tommy Tuberville. They are ALL complicit. Protest at their homes and at the Capital and everyone of their offices.
Yes, the GOP is responsible, the GOP is the Fascist Party.
Every Democrat should be rightfully branding every right-winger as a fascist. This should be the end of the Party. History will remember the modern Republican Party as America's Fascist Party.
The Maine State legislature is currently in session. I may make a trip to Augusta and create some good trouble. It shouldn't be hard to find others to help out.
Our only hope of being able reclaim anything worthwhile to be proud of as a country is to act immediately to rid ourselves of this disgusting fascist regime, including all office holders who have not lifted a finger or said a word to end every fascist action committed by this regime.
“Like Amazon Prime…but with human beings.” JFC. These aren’t detention centers. They’re not warehouses. They’re concentration camps all over again. My God.
We remain deeply grateful for the observations of so many researchers, observers, judges, activists, family and friends who have been compiling the reports, detailing the existence of the warehouses, the jails, the absence of proper medical care, the daily cruelties and abominations, the rush to deport 5 year-olds, the hushed-over, uninvestigated deaths, the terror of those who have done nothing to merit it all, the pay-to-play private prison systems, the secret abductions, the daily assaults on decency, common sense, due process, the 4th and 5th Amendments…
In Stanley Kramer’s masterful 1961 “Judgment at Nuremberg” former Nazi Minister of Justice Ernst Janning suddenly takes the stand — not in his own defense, but in bitter self-denunciation:
‘My counsel has given you the excuse that we were not aware…not aware? Where WERE we then? Where were we when Hitler began shrieking out his hatred from the Reichstag? Where were we when every village has a railway station? Where were we when cattle cars filled with children were being carried off to their extermination? Were we deaf, dumb, blind?!
My counsel tells you that we were aware only of the deaths of the hundreds. Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn’t know all the details. But if we didn’t know, it is because we didn’t WANT to know!’
It has been said that the 2016 Presidential Election was a national referendum on Decency – and that Decency lost. Given American voters’ incredible lack of long-term memory, and the huge MAGA-Republican noise machine of influencers, skewed social media, and the bothsiderism (and worse) of the mainstream media, voters did the unthinkable: They returned Trump to the White House.
Yes, I am still in shock after Kamala’s 2024 loss, and still in deep grief after Hillary’s 2016 loss. And I often think of the America that could have been!
That said, I am encouraged by the powerful and growing grassroots movement that is demanding an American Return to Decency, that insists on Democracy, and that rejects the pathetic yet dangerous machinations of Mad King Donald, the wannabe tyrantm and his Fascist sycophants and cult members.
The old truism comes to mind — perhaps it is only when you start losing the things you hold dear that you begin to understand how important it is to keep and strengthen what’s left.
Hell, I'm still in mourning after Bush vs. Gore. Imagine no Afghanistan or Iraq wars. A government that still served most of the people most of the time (the rich, like the poor, will always be with us). As you say, the America that could have been. That America would have been truer to her historical self. But again, as you note, we must support and demand a return to American decency. That starts with resistance to this evil regime.
A judicial coup if there ever was one! That said, it shouldn’t even have been close. Instead of embracing and taking credit or the considerable successes of the Clinton–Gore Administration, Al Gore distanced himself from the still-popular Bill Clinton. A huge strategic mistake!
Agreed. But the Democratic Party accelerated their abandonment of working class (which had been underway since Reagan or even earlier) with the “centrist” DLC project in the mid-1990s. The closeness of that election was partly the fruit of that misdirection. (Of course, the Powell memo project played a large part as well.)
James Coyle, Reagan was destroying the middle class. As I get 10-20 appeals per day from Dems, I think of the ex-middle class who cannot respond because they haven’t funds. I am one. With food inflation I can no longer support the battle against climate change either.
You’re right, Virginia. Reagan was actively trying to destroy them (or at least their support for the Dems), while the Dems were courting the better educated and desperately poor and ignoring blue-collar issues, thinking they had thise votes anyway
One could plausibly pin the beginning of America’s loss of decency,ethics and moral clarity on the advent of Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch. Both of whom have made generous incomes by selling hate and division. Liberals began to lose the war by being liberal and assuming that no American could possibly be so stupid as to believe the corrosive message that came out of these hate mongers mouths. We now have a portion of our population who are uneducable because of the right wing hate machine. The resentment and hate are now the unifying motivation for people who have felt left out for generations.
Well said! And it made me sick to my stomach that Limbaugh was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As for Murdoch, he has been a consistently destructive force in the United Kingdom as well as the USA, plus his native Australia.
Oops didn’t mean to send. My point is really how do we wake up those who aren’t lost causes? There are more of us than those who are on board with the depravity.
Those who for whatever reason just cannot be bothered to “get involved” with politics are freeloaders and should be called out as such. It the responsibility of every citizen to have at least enough knowledge of how our government works and what our constitution stands for.
Reagan’s policies started the extreme wealth disparity that ultimately allowed our government and its processes to be purchased. All these years - too many in this huge country really know very little about our history and don’t care about politics. We missed multiple windows to make substantive changes. Americans have become so comfortable in complacency that
I agree with you about the grief over Hillary and Kamala losing. But I don’t have the longing for what would have been had they been elected. They both would have continued the long standing militarization of local police departments, the US international relationships that created and would have perpetuated the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of a few disgustingly rich, out of touch, people, the heavy hand with which the US has for many decades thrown around the weight of it’s military. And on and on. I grieve more because of what it says about us as an electorate that Trump was elected twice. But the damage he has done to the government makes me think a bit of an alcoholic hitting bottom. Now we have the chance to rebuild something more fair, more sustainable, more life affirming. We’ll see pretty soon if we are up to that challenge.
First, Trump tried to use the army to control Blue States with the plan to take over the voting. But the army is too disciplined, and there are clear restrictions on what an army can do.
Then, Miller and Landowski designed a New ICE. Ice had always been about the border, and deporting the people who judges said should be deported. It was small and had few people paying attention to it.
New ICE has no limitations. They have become the federal roving, marauding, enforcement agency, and now some carefully selected judges have given them almost unlimited power.
Now, the Republicans can feel that they don’t have come to terms with the Democrats.
The Democrats have to shut down the government, and then impeach Pam Bondi. There are no laws left in America. It all has a kick back that goes to Trump.
Two parties' elected representatives WANT this because they ARE funding it!!
Seven Democrats, enough to pass an increase, WANT this. The minority "leader" who refused to whip the Democratic Party votes to at least express a warning WANT this.
Enough of the partisan stooging and praising of platitudes that produce no action. A majority are showing by their ACTIONS that they WANT this police state.
They do not want this. And the vote you refer to was taken before Alex Pretti’s murder, not afterward. Today, no one believes even those 7 would vote the way they did.
Reality is changing in front of us. If you summon the old circular firing squads, you will simply reap the usual rewards. Stop turning everything into a witch-hunt for purity — you will find none. But if you support right action consistently, you’ll do both the right thing and help convince others to do the same.
You seem trying to get me to disbelieve the actions and believe the rhetoric, finger-pointing and partisan stooging. The vote of those seven Democrats may have killed Alex Pretti by ICE seeing it as endorsing their murdering Renee Good, that HAD just happened by communicating the message "Yes indeedy! You are above the law, so do more of what you just did!!" Rewarding her murderers with a raise is what the seven DID. Why wasn't Good's murder enough to snap them to reality? Because she was a woman?? Good grief, listen to that rationalization!
Keep doing what you did and you'll get what you got. What you have got is a massive, lethal army of occupation killing people, kidnapping them, terrorizing local elected officials, claiming sovereign immunity from laws and courts, building files on American citizens they already openly call "domestic terrorists" constructing concentration camps ultimately to be used for protesters and dissent, not "immigrants." Free country so you can do that. You seem quite ready to be an apologist for the reality under construction.
I can't believe there are people who are so easily convinced to cast aside evidence and reasoning because they have relinquished their reasoning to a Party telling citizens to believe that it is in their interest to continue supporting more of the same.
You're privilege, but there are laws, and believe me the Trump administration will enforce them on you if you decide to step outside of them. This is a bad time, and I empathize with your anger and frustration but you will only cause yourself great harm if you decide to violate the law as you seem to be proposing. The moment we all decide to do that we will no longer be a country of law. Maybe we aren't anyway under Trump, but I believe we still have the power and the means to avoid the worst. And I will continue to protest in every legal way I can in the hope that time will move things in the right direction.
Am I a fool? Possibly, as were many of my relatives who were killed in the German death camps, but I sadly don't know what any of them could have done to change that. Let us all hope (pray if you must) that it doesn't come to that.
Senator Gallego has proposed a National Strike. Slow down at work, boycott businesses, drive slow on roads into cities, think of ways to do the legal annoyances that affect business. Stop Amazon buying, Get off Facebook. Mass protests in the streets. Build a wall of humanity. It is time to use our heads, because anger alone will not get it done. We should never let fear control this country!
No you are not a fool. You are a propagandist trying to label dissent as a decision to violate the law. Two groups are doing this--MAGA and hirelings of the Israeli government both of whom advocate to crush citizens' Bill of Rights. Both sound like the thugs terrorizing our streets now by designating witnesses daring to record their actions, a First Amendment right, as "criminals" and "domestic terrorists." So, which are you representing, in your innuendo dog-whistle trying to convince readers I advocated violating the law?
Thanks for the message of hope. But is it not too late? Is there any way to back out of that big horrible bill that funds all this evil? It is too late for those who have already been killed or deported or had their lives and families torn apart. At this point, paying for a gauche ballroom and a ludicrous "arch of triumph" doesn't sound so bad. At least those monstrosities aren't killing people.
Indeed. We should never forget that Trump, his efforts to legitimize white-supremacist genocide, the resultant ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, To learn of the carefully hidden roots of the crisis, the documentation of which include a PBS film about the enormous support for Hitler here in the '30s and additional, meticulously footnoted documentation of the plutocracy's support for Nazism, go here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-25-2026?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=205274486
Bush II's reaction to 9/11 was to Trump up a war on Iraq and posit that anyone he suspected or even simply called a "terrorist" or "the worst of the worst" was exempt from the protection of the US Constitution or international treaties. One of Bush's initiatives was to attempt to "militarize" police work and make policing more ready for battle than keeping the peace. It produced SWAT teams attending apartment evictions and theatrical "overkill" such as this: https://www.alternet.org/2014/12/jim-hightower-frightening-swat-team-raid-called-business-barbering-without-license
How can the Democrats impeach Bondi-or anyone? They are in the minority, and it's clear that the Republicans are either in lockstep or too afraid to go against their party.
What I am about to say will infuriate a lot of people here, but I will say it anyway because it must be said. Firstly, the fact the Regime is in the poll-sewer both domestically and internationally is obviously meaningless; in fact, I cannot remember a time in which a U.S. regime was so glaringly indifferent to the polls. Secondly, though the pollsters are profoundly reluctant to acknowledge this, respondents are not always honest; if they believe a true response will make them look bad, they'll lie. Thirdly, how many of the respondents who claim to be opposed to the Regime's ecogenocidal savagery are willing to act upon their views? Fourthly, if the Regime believed the poll numbers were at all valid, it would not be doing what it is doing, which is actually escalating its escalation. Thus, fifthly and in conclusion, I believe it is fair to assume that (1)-the Regime believes a majority of the poll respondents are lying to save face; that (2)- the Regime's one true principle of governance is the Maoist principle that power grows from the barrel of a gun; that (3)-knowing it has far greater firepower than any population or nation on this planet, the Regime is not threatened by any -- say again (any) -- measures directed against it either domestically or internationally; that (4)-the Regime is therefore effectively omnipotent; and that (5)-in the ultimate sense -- here as it was in Nazi Germany -- the regime feels absolutely secure in its belief it truly represents the will of the white (Aryan) majority. Which I'm sorry to say means in this burgeoning Auschwitz realm we are at last witnessing the true face of the nation, the final fulfillment of the long-simmering Nazism Jeff Sharlet euphemized as "the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power."
Why do you think what you say will infuriate readers of this Substack? I think most of us, sadly, agree with your points. Regarding "fourthly," I think they choose not to believe the polls and ignore them. And they're doubling down because that's all they know how to do. And your assumptions (2) and (5) are spot on. But it remains our duty to resist and to oppose the crimes being committed in our name
Obviously I am so disturbed by the fact the ChristoNazis just proved that like their Original Nazi forefathers they are now able to legalize whatever atrocities they choose to inflict, I failed to write with proper clarity, for which I apologize.
I am now convinced that what we are seeing -- the conduct of the ChristoNazi Regime, the cunningly perfected, always plausibly deniable collaboration of the Democrats and the embrace of tyranny implicit in the refusal of the people to (effectively) resist -- is the true face of the (real) "America."
Thus the Unified Reich -- like the Third Reich that fathered it -- will not be overthrown save by invasion, and that only if the liberators first achieve the scientifically impossible miracle of doing what it is alleged some flights of UFOs have done, paralyzing the USian CBR arsenal so that the Regime cannot destroy the world to avoid defeat, surrender, the replay of V-E Day celebration and retributive justice by partisans and judicial authorities.
My oldest half-brother, my father's first-born son and one of the founding directors of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said before he died that he believed Trump's 2016 victory was literally the beginning of the end of the world. Until the ChristoNazis flexed their judicial omnipotence, I believed there was some hope our species might survive. Now I believe he spoke prophetic truth.
No apology necessary. I thought you expressed yourself with more than proper clarity. I'm still hopeful that your second paragraph is incorrect and that our resistance will be effective sooner rather than later. And that your third paragraph scenario will never occur. But I share the worry expressed in your final paragraph. It may well be the ending of our world. We humans will adapt, until we can't adapt anymore. And there are other species that might survive or even prosper in an environment unfit for humans. Best wishes.
Loren, in the old parlance, you’ve just “called a spade a spade”. Far from infuriating me (at least towards you) you’ve just clearly articulated what I see in my retired cop cohort. The regime represents EXACTLY what they want: Christofascistism.
Ally, we should also recognize that the true depth of this nation's Nazification -- its ultimate embrace of ecogenocidal Evil -- is its Better Dead Than Red policy. This is our capitalist masters' plan to literally destroy the world rather than face defeat and surrender -- which, as the heroic Red Army encircled Berlin, Hitler lamented he would have done had he been able, and which -- no doubt under the tutelage of the legions of Nazi war criminals the capitalist plutocracy gleefully adopted as advisors and comrades-at-arms -- became U.S. policy sometime in the '50s, as soon as our masters had arms-raced a chemical, biological and radiological (nuclear) arsenal formidable enough to reduce our Mother Earth to (permanent) Precambrian lifelessness.
That's why -- just as our masters' control of the Moronic Majority guarantees that liberation from within is impossible -- so does BDTR prohibit liberation from without. Barring earthly reproduction of the (scientifically impossible) miracles that deluded devotees of extraterrestrial rescue attribute to UFOs, no nation will ever dare attack the Unified Reich save in retaliation for a first strike. Thus what we are experiencing now is the unabashed revelation that the nation once posited as the ultimate hope of humanity has in fact become the most bottomlessly Evil realm in all human experience; the horrors of its run-amok death squads and lethal concentration camps are ever-more-obviously but prelude to the (unthinkably horrible) Auschwitz Nation that -- powered by technological omnipotence -- the ChristoNazis are imposing.
Evidently, Republicans DO want this. There have been too many votes to back funding these horrors and too many passed opportunities to stop them. It's been a while since I've heard anyone say, "This is not who we are." This IS who we are: a country who pays an army of armed, masked thugs to pick people up off our streets and put them in camps we pay to build and maintain.
It's funny you should mention a kickback. That jogged my memory about something I read earlier this morning about "TrumpRX". My immediate thought was, "What's his cut?"
We hope, Oldandintheway, that you are right about Republicans. Too many believe the propaganda. Look at our troll’s comment yesterday. I reached out on finding he plays French horn (as did my husband), has a degree in philosophy, and that he claims fluency in Spanish. But with all that, he apparently believes everything bad about our asylum seekers and immigrants that the administration puts out.
Ally, my ally, I tried to reach out to Rick Sender after getting his bio and learning that he is desperate for a job. But mafia propaganda has him by the head. It’s particularly sad as he is a French horn player (rare bird).
So America is not using gas chambers to kill people the country has gathered into detainment centers. But America HAS started killing people by denying medical attention completely.
It couldn’t be more clear that republicans have gone full NAZI
It couldn’t be more clear that cruelty is the point and maximum pain and suffering is the goal
It couldn’t be more clear that republican “leadership” is guilty of crimes against humanity.
It couldn’t be more clear that republicans have hijacked our government and our electoral process in order to commit these crimes in our names.
It couldn’t be’t be more clear that the oligarchs and Vlad have planned, executed and rule the fools who have betrayed every ideal the founders had when they passed on to us the right to choose a “more perfect union.”
How much more proof do you need, people who have groceries to buy, games to watch, and excuses to make.
It couldn’t be more clear that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country..
In a book on Studio Ghibli, “Ghibliverse,” authors Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham draw on a valuable perspective from Ursula Le Guin. Her 1968 novel, “A Wizard of Earthsea” became Ghibli’s 2006 film “Tales from Earthsea.” The film erred, she said, introducing an obvious villain: “The darkness within us can’t be done away with by swinging a magic sword . . . In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil.”
Her books, she went on, “are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions.”
As “Ghibliverse’s authors also went on to say, Le Guin “rejects the simple paradigm of good versus evil for a more complex, personal framework: a relationship with darkness, rather than a fight against it.”
How many of us would follow her when, today, we face such corruption in Donald, such cruelties, violence, and murders? How many of us would like a clear no to his cravings for more power for himself, more white supremacist racism, more impunity from his corrupted “supreme” court, more alliances with all his dictator friends?
And yet, might we also look through Ursula Le Guin’s eyes as we see how so many of our richest elites enjoy the immunities which being elite has given them? Might more from among us concede how simple-minded our own normality is when only one set of measures, those of testing, govern all meritocracy’s doors that open for winners (outside those of inherited money)?
Viewing the Hayao Miyazaki film "Princess Mononoke" quite literally changed my daughter's life, and ours (of my wife and I) as well. It think she was 10. She really appreciated the complexity of the characters compared to Disney.
Relieved to see no ICE detention centers planned for Ohio, but that doesn't mean some cash-strapped shady commercial real estate developer in one of our many little 'burgs or 'villes wouldn't love the chance to unload an empty warehouse given the chance.
“Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.” Yes. Just simply, Yes.
When the Mayor of Ohrdruf killed hinself in April 1945, he was not alone. Both he and his wife took their own lives after being forced — not just to look at — but to carry dead bodies with their own hands to the pits where bulldozers finished the job. They left behind a note with a single sentence on it:
“We didn’t know — but we knew.”
Yes, history is rhyming again.
GERALDO LUNAS CAMPOS was ruled death by asphyxia. The deaths of VICTOR MANUEL DIAZ & FRANCISCO ANDRES need official autopsies.
Per Wikipedia, the tent ICE prison of East Montana in the state of TEXAS is run by a company named Acquisition Logistics with a contract valued 1.2 billion dollars.
So we know. Let's make it a couplet & start the 2026 Nuremberg Trials.
I just wrote that we should have Nuremberg trials. Like minds.
They all deserve solitary confinement. Which is worse than death.
Joanne, I expressed this opinion recently, but I can't remember if it was here or in another forum.
One reason to oppose capital punishment is that our justice system sometimes gets it wrong. Life imprisonment allows the system to correct the mistake.
Another reason is that executing a heinous criminal awards them a quick release from the guilt and shame for what they have done, while their victims and/or the families are left to live a lifetime of sorrow and loss.
True justice is served when the criminals are forced to live out their years in shame and confinement.
The only caveat in my theory is my doubt that Donald, Stephen or Kristi have the capacity for shame.
Totally legally and factually innocent persons have been put to death in this country. The only way to avoid making that mistake is to outlaw capital punishment completely. Life in prison is harsh enough and it gives the system time to correct itself.
I read Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, prob. 40 years ago. It presents the many problems about the death penalty. Many people suffer for years because of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Executioner%27s_Song
The families of the victim get to go year after year, relive their misery to uphold it...besides having American citizens kill another..someone who is now sober and after 20 years. a pretty likable nice person.
AND, it is far more expensive than keeping them locked up for life.
It's just plain a bad policy.
Really bad for poor defendants that had sh*t representation.and are innocent. (IE: those not white)
By my instinct: if I was the family of the victim: just let us have the bad guy to tear him limb from limb ourselves. THAT would feel like justice.
...It's just not "civilized".
Solitary is inhumane and should be abolished. Bringing people to justice does not mean inflicting equal harm on those found guilty of harming others.
I disagree. After what they have done they shouldn't be allowed to have contact with any other humans or any means of communication to spread their vile filth. The justice system is there to protect us against further harm.
Nothing like a hypocritic social worker. Got my fill of them years ago, both personally and professionally.
I want him to suffer the same sufferage he has inflicted on others. He knows no shame. He does NOT have the capacity for this. As I have said before, he is a poisonous amoeba. A bacteria that must be irradicated somehow. And No...I am NOT a hypocrite. I never said I was a Buddhist Social Worker. I am a very, very good social worker. I advocate for those who have been abused and hurt by a world that really doesn't care much. I work with children. Check out our family court system and you'll see where my foundation of rage was born.
ICE are American heroes. No punishment for guys in disguise.
One of the big problems with Camp East Montana is that it is located on Fort Bliss (something I hadn't realized), which means that protesters can't get anywhere near it. I'm sure there is no way the fort would let protesters onto its land.
The next "No Kings" Day is set for upcoming MARCH 28!
Organizers are going for more than 8 Million person participants to take the second largest count behind 'Earth Day'.
During the Vietnam War we
had a protest at Ft. Dix in NJ. Didn’t get very far
I was there, covering it for a local newspaper. Allen Ginsberg was the star attraction as I recall. No, lone protests don't do much, but sustained protests, public opposition, pressure on publicofficials and media coverage accompolish a great deal. We'll keep on truckin.
Putting them on US bases means towns have no say also! Communities around the country are showing up at council meetings to say NO!
I have learned that they have done so in El Paso, where the administration is looking to build more detention centers.
Concur.
This is par for the course when the oligarchs gain control, as in Russia and China. China has more oligarchs, more than 500 with a net worth of more than $1 billion, than any other country in the world. So, is China a communist state? No, it is an oligarchy under the control of a despotic entity called the Communist Party. It could just as easily be called the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party. The would-be and already-arrived oligarchs use the media to indoctrinate large enough segments of the population to get control of the government, and then after that, those in power begin "feeding at the trough," exploiting the work and production of the workers. A whole lot of those who were suckered into voting against their own best economic interests never catch on. We see that going on in the U.S. today. The FDR New Deal economy produced a huge Middle Class, and that class is shrinking under Republican control.
In regards to Geraldo Lunas Campos: where is the further investigation? the indictment(s)? the arrest(s)? The name(s) of the arrested? "Truth, Justice and the American way!" Remember that? We need to keep remembering that. We need to keep asking the critical questions of the critical people. Perhaps our representatives in congress. Perhaps our U.S. Attorney General.
There has to be a better name for “like” button than like. Thank you for sharing this.
I think so too. How about Agree.
or "understood"
or 'oh, hell yes!'
My favorite, but any will do.
Acknowledged and emotionally understood
I think of the "like" button as "agree."
Do too
Strongly agree.
YES!
In the end-to such a state of horror as they witnessed- they were powerless. We are not powerless.
Thank you, Potter. Essential to remember. HCR remembers. What a finale to her letter today. I am so grateful.
Not yet. So don’t wait to do whatever you can do, including enabling others to do what *they* can do.
How to beam this message into mag.a distrcts? To help pick away at the crumbling propaganda there. LMK if anyone knows a group working on such a campaign. I would love to work on it.
I believe one of the readers here said she tucks notes about democracy between the produce at her grocery story.
How can you fit it ALL on a tiny slip? The following should suffice:
https://heathercoxricharson.substack.com
Jot this on tiny slips of paper and leave them EVERYWHERE! In public washrooms, on the table at your local coffeeshop/bar/fast-food, between copies of the latest bestseller at the bookstore, public library (or free "little library", at the bus stop or metra station, tuck it in a shoe in the rack at WalMart, Other suggestions, anyone?
Here's you (all of us!) chance to be a secret agent of democracy!
All you postcarders should be up for this--I know you have to have legible handwriting to do that volunteer work! I wish I had saved the info but if frequent commentor DALE reads this, please advise. The suggestion was to get little cards printed up.
We can exsanguinate this administration by our millions of papercuts. Marching, boycotts, phonebanking, calls to Congress, attending town halls (if the cowards hold them) starting a chant at an event.
I believe it was in one of Heather's recent podcasts (sorry if I'm wrong, I listen to a lot) that she said the AVERAGE American spends 4 minutes a day on politics (might even have been a week?) so they aren't INFORMED like we are! It's up to us to get messages out because the Dems aren't very good at messaging.
I have zero tech ability, but it sure would be nice if there was a QR code we could copy and print to leave everywhere. IF such a thing is possible, someone please inform!
Have a good day today. I hope whatever team you are rooting for wins, and lets all watch BAD BUNNY!!😁
Another thought: bring those slips of paper with Heather's substack address on it to the next NO KINGS. At the last one, I was SHOCKED when I addressed a group of protesters (about a dozen folks) and only 2 knew of her and read her Letter!!
Not really surprising, since she has been branded a "political hack" by the right. She is on charlie kirks professor watch list, since the pandemic at least.
My old brain can dream: how wonderful it would be to have some enterprising person start a podcast where they have some teenager read Heather's Letter daily, and then they discuss it with them. Perhaps a rotation of a few teens.
Problem with this: according to my HS teacher kids, teenagers don't read. A positive with this: according to my HS teacher kids, all their students think they are going to make millions being internet influencers.
We need to educate those who will vote for the first time in midterms and in 2028.
Miselle, I read a very long extolling post about her yesterday on Facebook. I do not know who wrote it, but it was full of deserved praise and a little of her bio. Also I am a tech dolt, so i do not know how to post a reference to it here.
Love these suggestions!!
Miselle, when I clicked on the link in your comment, I got a "not found" message. Maybe there's a hidden typo?
In any case, I created the QR code that Jane Sanders requested, and it can be downloaded from: https://use07.thegood.cloud/s/xrisCo29H4sJRfk
Also, slips of paper can fall out of sight or be blown away by a breeze. Sticky notes stay put. You can get the QR code printed on sticky notes from https://www.vistaprint.com/promotional-products/writing-office/sticky-notes
Goods Unite Us gives Vistaprint a positive score.
Thanks so much, Dale! And Vistaprint is based in the Netherlands - all the more reason to support them with our business :) Everyone in Europe sees exactly what's going on here!
Not everyone in Europe sees it. I've had some discussions recently and there's probably a similar percentage who choose to be uninformed or misinformed.
The link Miselle posted is missing the "d" in richardson.
Yep! Sure is! So obvious when it's pointed out for me. This is why I copy/paste. I don't trust my rebellious fingers.
I hoped you'd show up, Dale!
THANK YOU, and thanks for those links!
It wouldnt open for me. "share not found"
Joette, I assume from where your reply is located that you tried the original link, which was problematic. I've since moved the QR code here:
https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/08ff4TBtax7UHD38-iMcFV77A#HeatherCoxRichardsonSubstack
That one seems to be working.
I tried both links & got a "share not found."
Ah, link to QR code is password protected...
Jane, the platform doesn't seem to allow sharing without password protection. The password follows. Please let me know if it doesn't work.
mFnEX`60i*
Let me see if I can fix that.
She said 4 MINUTES A WEEK!
Thanks, Marj!! I knew I was shocked by it.
I know that my sister (75 y/o, no computer access or skill) voted for Trump twice. She "hated Hilary" then voted for Biden. Then SERIOUSLY voted for Trump because of the price of EGGS. I AM NOT JOKING.
She's pretty upset by all this now, and she isn't MAGA. I have taken it upon myself to make sure she is INFORMED. I print out the letter daily, and deliver them to her once a week. YEP, it is costing me in ink and paper, but I think it is worth it. She is paying attention now.
I also forward the Letter daily onto 4 people, a few more when they are focus on an issue which I know impacts them.
We chip away and we don't give up. EVER.
I think it is important that we be reminded now and then that some people, more than a few, voted for Trump because of the price of eggs. The low-information voter. Not evil, but misinformed.
Thank you for your persistence, Miselle. It would be so easy to throw up your hands.
I live in a red, rural area although in a blue state. I enjoy weekly/monthly interactions I have with about 8 favorite people who work in or own business I frequent. I have now introduced Heather, Joyce Vance, Robert Reich and The Contrarian to several of these acquaintances who have told me that they’ve introduced their friends to these truth-tellers. And so it grows. We can all do this!
Lemme guess, she hates Clinton because of Benghazi. That was my sister’s war crime. At least my sister did not vote for him twice. None of the family, of course, believed me about Project 2025.
Miselle, i always post the letter to my facebook page (and yeah, i know about that). Now several people read the letter and forward it on. Today i am on a local thread about moving the urban growth boundaries suggested by the governor. I am not for it, but... It is mostly about housing which is a problem, especially low income housing. So first we had someone referring to illegals and when I suggested undocumented, I was doing it because I wanted to feel morally superior instead of refusing to demean people. None of these people want to pay taxes, but want services and problems like the homeless gone just like that.
I love the idea of leaving slips with Heather's substack URL everywhere. There must be a way to create a QR code for stickers, too.
A Russian artist used a similar tactic to protest the war against Ukraine, posting stickers resembling price labels in a grocery store. She was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/artist-prison-sentence-russia-ukraine-war-crackdown-protest-putin/
Jane, thank you for this -- and for the introduction to Frontline..
Incredible!
That being said, I think this only has a slight resemblance to this artist. I'm not suggesting it be attached to products. And those who look into HCR can form their own opinions.
Start boycotting all FOX advertisers and radio/tv stations and personalities. Picket them all with signs that scream YOU LIE!!
So many members of Bedminister and Mar-a-Lago are titans of industry.
I wish there was a list of members of all of his clubs so they could be shamed.
The CFO of Jack Link's is a member of Bedminister which I found out in 2018 when they were interviewing Trump at the club and they named him and some of the other members that were with him. I'm not a big jerky eater, but I'll never buy anything that has Jack Link's brand name on it.
The Epstein files have many names and probably many redacted names of people, both Republican and Democrat who conspired to gain and keep power, no matter what public stance they took.
As more true investigations into these files, the more shocking ties, politically and criminally, on the international stage including espionage, will be revealed.
Epstein was very likely a spy for Putin as is Trump. I'm sure many other wealthy individuals will step down from their positions of power, but they likely will never be prosecuted.
Billboards! I understand billboards are cheap in the rural places. What do you all think could be on a billboard that would help people understand what’s going on?
Wildhoney, I'm in the business. One would have to define "cheap." To get a vinyl wrap printed to install on a billboard structure will cost several hundred dollars, depending on the finished size, who prints the vinyl and where the printer is in relation to the structure on which it is installed.
Billboards are leased, based on availability, billed monthly. Billboard owners may require 1-month, 3-month, 6-month or 1-year commitments. The monthly rent on a typical billboard ranges from a few hundred to more than $1,000 a month, depending on the market and the traffic count for a particular billboard's location. Also, the billboard owner charges an installation fee, as well as a take-down fee. These are usually in the hundreds of dollars.
A billboard on a country highway with a low traffic count may be "cheap," but the return on investment is not very good.
With that understood, outdoor advertising is a good value when compared to radio or television advertising.
Robert Reich and pals have a billboard campaign going on, great stuff we can donate to support.
Yes, many donors together can defray the costs. But it's inaccurate to describe outdoor advertising as "cheap."
How much for a mobile billboard like on a pick-up truck?
I've never done, one, Gary. If you built – or got someone to build – a frame of 2X4s that would sit securely in the truck bed, that would probably cost less than $300 for materials and supplies.
I would design a vinyl wrap that would wrap over the top rail of the wood frame, thereby creating a two-sided sign. The edges of the vinyl would be heat-weld hemmed with grommets installed every 12 inches. The wrap would be secured to the wood frame using fender washers with screws fastened through the grommets into the wood. The vinyl wrap would be maybe $300 plus shipping.
My art production fee would depend what's involved in producing the desired content.
Costs are extremely variable, depending on size of the truck bed and size of the desired billboard.
But what we are talking about here is not advertising. No ROI needed. The goal of the messaging is just about how many eyeballs one can capture.
I need to win the Lottery.
Christine, all kinds of messaging are advertising. Even if you have no intention of reaping any kind of revenue from your messaging, you still want to make as many impressions on as large an audience for the least amount of money spent. To do less is poor stewardship of the resources you've spent.
It's an excellent idea. It was only a Life magazine cover with a little girl, in flames, running down a street, but has been stuck in my mind for 60 years. Can you imagine the outrage, if Petti's body lying in the street or Good's body dead in her car, were on billboards? We weren't even allowed to see Cargo planes loaded with coffins of soldiers returning from Iraq.
That would be rough if in focus, but maybe something more out of focus like one of the concentration camps. Messaging: Is THIS, really what you voted for? Other small bit history lessons to parallel with town. Want to join a workshop chat on it?
Like the movie “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri”
That is an excellent idea. Even if you are driving by, your brain can't escape the message..
True MAGAS are all in on this type of torture. They are a rotten bunch. We have to overrule them in huge numbers. Stand for humanity.
I like the ideas, but I’m definitely thinking of beaming into a demo/market that would not be at a NoKings protest, or even probably the library or bookstore. The Walmrt suggestion is a good one. I’m not personally anywhere near such zipcodes atm, but if I were I would do that. Reminds me of pamphlets, has anyone read the White Rose? Is anyone out there tapped into a more red and rural network? I have been thinking ad space (and I know some do it, I see billboards when I travel), but with this theme of important message. Like, I know that some people don’t know, not yet.
Another quote to force people to face. We all know! We know about the cruelty and injustice! It’s past time to stop all of this insanity.
Thank you for posting this.
A powerful addendum to HCR”s already powerful historical remembrance. Thanks to both!
Jesus.
We, the readers of the Letters, are also responsible for the detained people by ICE. What can we do? As an immediate solution, how about asking local church ministers to hold a worship service for the detained people?
Many of you took the time to read part or all of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 which was sponsored by Leonard Leo and the remaining Koch brother among others.
After reading Project 2025 I was terrified as were many of you. We warned people about this and Trump lied that he knew nothing about it.
Russell Vought became Trump's Director of Office and Budget Management. He has withheld funding from projects that Congress has voted for and approved and he has allowed Trump the funds to give himself a military parade and many other unauthorized projects. He supported defunding USAID which murdered by starvation tens of thousands of people around the world.
When the American Nuremberg trials start, he should be among the first to be tried and then publicly executed.
While I disagree with the public execution part, it's clear DJT has surrounded himself with sociopaths such as Vought, Miller, Noem and others. They all must be held accountable, sooner rather than later. Arrest, Impeach - whatever works (Miller can't be impeached, but he could certainly be arrested).
I don’t suppose a SCOTUS SIX impeachment would align with constitutional norms but…. they sure seem to have facilitated the biggest presidential heist in history. “Sticky wicket?”
Instead of execution, they should be placed in one of those ICE detention centers that they claim is perfectly fine for thousands of immigrants.
If no execution, at least let them spend the rest of their miserable days incarcerated and treated the same as they are their victims today.
Both Mike Johnson and John Thune claim to be Bible reading Christians. In Romans 13:1-2 Paul tells us to subject our selves to the authorities. In the case of our democracy the Constitution happens to be the "authorities" established by God. Those who choose to disobey this are subject to God's punishment. They swore an oath to uphold this constitution. By supporting trump they are as guilty as he is and should face all the same punishments as everyone in the trump regime.
I'm still angry that hundreds of insurrectionists weren't shot to death on January 6, 2020 on the capitol steps for trying to over throw our government. That might say a little bit about what I think the punishment for these criminals should be.
While many consider the oath a commitment God, I always considered these oaths to be commitments to citizens. And when they fail to live up to their oath it is a personal betrayal for me.
He probably promised to pardon them all. Maybe he is so cocky because he knows he can pardon himself.
SCOTUS has preemptively pardoned Donnie. That stupidity has made his rampage even worse than it might have been. The cowardice of the Republican Congress is just beyond any rational explanation. This is simply a perfect storm of evil, inflicted on us by those who “knew but did not know” but damn well should have known.
It's not cowardice, it's conspiracy!
He can only pardon everyone else if he's still president. If he's not, they're SOL, aren't they? They're going down with him.
Don’t you think he offered them all blanket pardon?
And like all of his followers….they believed his lie that it was in his power to exempt them from the law. Surprise!!!
Yes GJ my political book club started with reading Project 2025. We have gone on to read works that help us understand democracy and freedom and those factors that interfere with both.
That's excellent Linda. We've been watching several movies in the past couple of weeks about the rise and fall of the third Reich. Before Hitler committed suicide he was deluded into thinking that Germany could still win the war. His orders were absolutely ridiculous and impossible to carry out. Like Hitler, Trump is delusional as well. And those around him are doing everything they can because they all know he is too far gone to care.
The incident in which Trump posted a racist image of the Obamas on Truth Social and then admitted it, saying “I didn't make a mistake” by posting it isn’t the act of a rational adult. So I think you’re right about Trump’s mental state but, whether he’s delusional or not, normal politicians would condemn that act and demand that Trump resign or be impeached. As you know, that’s how Republicans dealt with Nixon. But the languid, careless Republicans who inhabit the “moral Slum” created by this government seem unmoved.
The 'moral slum' is expanding at an exponential rate. In the senate an agreement on curbing ICE practices is unlikely to be reached. Republicans keep saying nein. As these detention centers swell both the abuses within them and the absence of these people from our economy will place tremendous pressure on the perpetrators. We will find ourselves in the role of our troops bringing the complicit to view their legacy.
We need to practice economic resistance as well.
Rational people would never vote for trump.
I wonder how much of Project 2025 is being exposed to high school students, and with what effect.
Zero.
How I long for the days of emphasis on critical thinking skills, so needed today.
Not much smaller a group than with adults.
Will they ever awake from their social media stupor and wonder how things went so wrong? I'm talking about both adults and students.
If Social media and AI continue to be unregulated, we will have given up all self-control. The algorithms must be understood; they are in large part to blame for the dystopian reality we are living today.
It would best be put on Tiktok and paraphrased. Otherwise it is too poorly written to hold the attention of most teens unless they have to act it out.
Linda, you are wise and I am too long out of the classroom, not a Tiktoker!
I wish I were in your book club! I do what I can but need to do more.
I don't want to be repetitious, so I won't repost my longer comment which is in here somewhere. I suggest we leave notes in public places with this written on it:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
I often forward the pieces to my various political chat groups.
Please correct the link.
Thank you, Beverly!
Done!
Thanks Linda- I am part of a group like this and we are interested in readings about Project 2025 and its context. Would you mind sharing the titles of things your group read? Thanks!
Karen, here are some of the things we have read since Trump was elected. I don't remember all.
The articles of the US Constitution
Trump's EOs in his first month
Jefferson Cowie's "Freedom's Dominion."
Timothy Snyder's "On Freedom."
Anne Applebaum's "Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World"
Barbara McQuade's "Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America"
Katherine Stewart's, "Money Lies and God :Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" for this book we joined the Democrats Abroad UK book club after we had discussed it as they had Ms. Stewart as a guest speaker to talk about this book.
Articles by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker from the book "The Deadline"
Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We."
George Orwell's, "1984"
Thomas Caruthers and Brendon Hartnett's article, "Misunderstanding Backsliding Democracies"
Here is a link to an article I wrote on it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lindaweide/p/backsliding-democracies-like-ours?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson's "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism"
We meet weekly, and discuss whatever we want to politically as well, and also the books, or articles, which we break up into chunks. We are like a support group, which is why we decided to continue after Trump was reelected, and to learn more about democracy to help shore it up. We also have a project, which is a website on health care, but it is not public yet because of some political problems with releasing it.
Like and Indivisible group, which several of us also belong to, as well as Democrats Abroad, you can start it yourself. We meet online and while most of us are in various parts of Germany, we have had people from England, France and Spain join us as well as one person who is back and forth between the US and Europe.
thank you very much Linda, for this wonderful list and your inspiration.
Trying to understand what is going on and why helps manage to manage despair and to hear of like minded people all over the world getting together warms my heart.
..absolutely: many thanks
Linda, Were you able to find the actual books or online? I am sending your list to my daughter in Florida— will be interesting if her library has them!!
Reading -near as lost an art as letter writing, cursive. Fox ‘News’, The Newt/Carlson, capitulation, the ways of dissolve -The Kennedy Center. MAGA.
Thank you Linda , et al, trying to wake America up.
The protests swell. Judges are getting pissed off. The polls now indicating disapproval. The World turned away, some walked off, and America ‘s #18th now ? …used to be #1 …dang them ‘ usta bees’!… ‘but hey we’re the richest , huh!
Applause light from the WHITE HOUSE is on folks…hello?
Hello?
(They must be out-to-lunch?)
When I taught, I taught cursive, and occasionally would hear parents complain about it, or question the necessity. I have a friend whose son was in a Special ed school where they decided not to teach it, and he cannot read cards written to him in cursive without help. This is one reason why one teaches it, because it is the best way to learn to read cursive.
Linda, you are a true patriot, as are those in your group.
That was called Civics in my one-room country school. K-8: preview, actual class on my report card, review. We had a teacher who actually showed us our legacy. the cemetery on the hill, the house down the hill with its secret room for slaves on the run, Arbor Lodge, John Brown's Cave
Read Project 2025 in 2024 and called a business broker to sell my business. This does not end well.
There are too much competition within this regime to determine who should be among the first to be tried Gl. Maybe we should implement a ruffle.
I can't disagree Ricardo.
😀
.. a ruffle or a raffle?
The Koch brothers, Charles and the late David, are of the opinion that the government should exist only to provide for the national defense and the protection of private property. Basically no rules, except for what might benefit them. David was proposing Project 2025 ideas when he was a Libertarian political candidate years ago. I read his ideas and thought back then that he was criminally insane. Now look where we are.
I have never had a conversation with any Libertarian that did not scare the crap out of me and make my head hurt. Insanity is the only way to describe the irrational, supremely selfish, and pie-in-the-sky naivety of the Libertarian position.
Read "Indivisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson. That discusses the rise of this thinking and people like the Kochs.
And now he may experience his own comeuppance as the truth of the Epstein Files unfolds. How deserving is he?
Gary, I'm with you up to the execution part, public or not. I'd rather he (and many, many others) go into a federal "detention facility" for as long as the laws allow under sentencing guidelines.
I am not a fan of the death penalty except for mass murderers.
They get life in detention centres when innocents are held in concentration camps?
Same
Yesterday I posted a reply to the article on FB about Heritage Foundation . An “OPPS SOMETHING WENT WRONG” red box enclosed boundary popped up . I rewrote it and again “OPPS…” with red box ..appeared.
Without doubt I was sanctioned.
We are in the thick of repeating the German atrocities of concentration camps inflicted during the holocaust/WWII - there are FEW US Citizens legitimately able to claim they didn’t know.
I can’t claim all the writers or commenters on Substack know but feel quite assured most try to SHARE what’s written here after collaborated agreement , likely calling their representatives, likely out protesting, and probably supporting financial /donating to those also liberal factions active in informing citing their resources. Exaggerations possible but principle in tact ..no evidence ,no legal representations top the list , murder and neglect are second on ‘that list’…as history repeats -now by the American people who justifiably ended the Hitler horror - America drags its feet over the same atrocity. No gas chambers yet..apparently though, huh? Buts lots of Judges stepping up voicing exhaustion or anger over delayed, denied, and disgusting deportation distraction…the immigration issue. Not Jews this time ( nor then actually) but black,brown, or cat and dog eaters -orders given for slighted ego or obsessive conspiracy constipations.
I’m over simplifying?
We didn’t know…but we really did.
🤦♀️
Yes. And trump should be standing right there with him, along with the rest of the murderous cabinet trump has put in charge of this treason and abuse upon the people of this country. They all deserve to be executed, and those murderers should be grateful that in America, the Bill of Rights will be followed, including the eighth amendment.
Here is my all-time favorite on the execution subject: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DOVyoebjMhl/
..he nailed it!
No death penalty. People should be brought to justice with due process, under internationally-recognized standards for fair trials and in accordance with human rights agreements to which the U.S. is signatory, followed by appropriate punishment for those found guilty.
In 1945, several of the German high command committed suicide. That option should be available to Trump's staff and cabinet.
I’m not sure what you mean by “that option should be available.” if you mean, a guard or someone else in a position of authority should, say, leave a length of rope in a prisoner’s cell, then, again, no.
In the movie "Nuremberg" Goring ends up taking cyanide the day before his execution. If someone wants to kill themselves before the state tries it I'm fine with that. Charles Starkweather pleaded for and received a speedy trial and then was put to death in an electric chair less than two years after he committed the first murder. Since he murdered people in Wyoming and Nebraska he chose to be tried in Nebraska. Wyoming and Nebraska both had capital punishment, but Starkweather learned after he was back in Nebraska that the Wyoming Governor was inclined to not execute him.
I read it and I knew! Tho I try daily to be a protester, I feel the shame!
Those who struggle against this need not feel any shame.
Public executions very well may be the only way to get the attention of the maggots, what these people are doing is so wrong, and it includes murder, that it cries out for a rebalancing. I know there will not be a lot of support for that, but imprisonment without any possibility of parole, might be the only alternative. People are dying because of actions of these maggots and that has to have consequences. 🤷♂️
Since I have only hated a handful of people in my life, I am not a fan of public executions. But Trump is a mass murderer who gladly uses starvation as a weapon and bombs people in fishing boats that may or may not be hauling drugs.
We don't hear nearly enough about Vaught, or Peter Theil.
We aren't supposed to.
Or Curtis Yarvin
I was trying to remember his name - yes, thank you.
Trials, yes, with due process. Death penalty, no, never. I’ll add — only half in jest — that I like the idea of exile to an otherwise uninhabited island surrounded by shark infested waters. But seriously, no DP, no cruel and unusual punishment, not even for those who’ve been found guilty of inflicting those on others.
Gitmo's available.
This whole right wing controlled government, the Congressional branch, the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court with various right wing Federal Judges such as the ones that ruled immigrants could be held in these inhuman warehouse camps, seem to believe common human decency is weak and that their depraved treatment of mostly non-criminal people will be seen as strong and admired by the American public. They see the fascist, sadistic and brutal tactics against minorities, citizen or not and the people that observe and document their abuses and crimes as something most people will approve and praise. Both terms of trumps presidency are going to be remembered in history as the tragic downfall of a nation that believed in the rule of law and was betrayed by a party that began with, in my opinion, the greatest President, who ended slavery. The comparison to German citizens of the Nazi era is good except, our citizens are aware of what is happening and at least 37% are perfectly fine with it.
We must take action immediately if we are ever going to have a country we aren't embarrassed to call our own.
Free and fair elections are not going to happen under today's government. People should stock up on provisions to last for a prolonged general strike. Demonstrations and protests will become more dangerous as more people participate. Who knows if overwhelming resistance will make it more likely that trump will provoke a war as he seems ready to do with Iran today.
No, there are actually plenty of ignorant people, the elderly for instance who believe themselves compassionate, that only watch garbage tv and read the bible that truly are not seeing the violence and cruelty yet in their feeds if they’re even on social media. There are still people who are not aware the extent to which this has gone so very dark. I know some of them and I don’t know how to convince them that I’m not the radical one, it’s been horrendously divisive the way old rural people have been exploited. I imagine the with less media coverage it was easy enough to miss in Germany if you didn’t have a radio or a regular paper delivery. We have a similar situation with the propaganda now, and algorithms steering feeds to lies. Perhaps the propaganda is even more effective today.. probably. I have wondered so many times lately, was Hitler this stupid in person and if he’d have had so many cams and mics and tweets, would we have recognized it earlier in our own abusive dictator.
Restacked. Thank you.
Yes. I think we see Americans recognizing that they don't want to be complicit with this agenda. That people incarcerated are not getting critical health care violates human rights and makes the system Nazi-like.
Crimes against humanity. If millions of Americans beg The Hague to begin proceedings against the regime and the businesses making billions off suffering, will The Hague do anything?
Some of the immigrants who have been captured, detained and who knows what else, are from countries who signed the Rome Statute.
That means that the ICC can investigate and try the people who allowed/perpetrated the death/torture camps.
That’s the long term solution though. First, Americans will have to shut the facilities down.
Try withholding your money and labour. Ensure that your representatives don’t vote to fund the atrocities.
Only when this war on Americans is over.
I think the first thing to do is to beg a brave country like South Africa to file a case saying that Donald Trump is an international war criminal and name others with him. Then it has to be voted on by other countries, who are basically afraid to stand up to a nuclear power. So, first we have to get Trump declared an international war criminal, which he is, and then look at taking him down, which who can do that? He is protected from defeat by the US military. No, we have to take him down at the ballot box and in the streets and with economic pressure.
I don't think 'I didn't want to be complicit" will go through as an adequate excuse, possibly not for several generations, if Germany history is anything to go by. I don't think the world will forgive and forget in a hurry.
We need to make sure the current form of the Republican Party dies. Get rid of the corrupt, stupid, old, theocratic and cowardly. The list is way too long. We need to bring it down to the state level as well. Get rid of the rest of the Republican Governors or at least most of them.
“The proposed facility does have its supporters. U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, the Trump-backed GOP candidate for governor, held a gathering of Republican activists there last week. He told the Sentinel he thought the detention center was a good idea that could relieve pressure on local jails facing a surge of immigration-related inmates.”
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/02/06/potential-ice-facility-in-orlando-rickrolls-removed-listings-and-a-backlash-as-a-sale-appears-near/?share
Fl Rep Anna Eskamani is running for mayor of Orlando. She will win and continue to fight for Orlando. Rep Anna is fearless and takes NO corporate donations! 💪💙
https://www.annafororlando.com/
I just wrote and shared the Ohrdruf story with the Orlando mayor's staff. Can't find his actual email. I also called Byron Donald's office since his website won't allow non-constituients to comment. I shared the Ohrdruf story with him as well.
As bad as the polls are for trump, 77% of Republicans think he is doing a great job.
Bottom line, many of us who will continue this fight against this nazi, aka republican, regime will die. It is inevitable at this point, and cannot be avoided unless the regime is taken out. Our military should revolt against the atrocity that is the trump regime and save what could could have been the most benevolent country on earth...while there is still time.
Term limits would be useful too.
Term limits for the Supreme Court, I support. Because they are unelected. The six right-wing Justices today, put their political and religious beliefs ahead of truly interpreting the Constitution accurately and are responsible for the current collapse of the rule of law.
Yes, but getting out and protesting and protecting people from ICE will not be seen as complicit. That will be seen as the resistance.
https://newlinesmag.com/essays/minneapolis-protests-sound-a-lot-like-the-french-resistance/
Thank you for sharing,
Historian Géraud Létang, who teaches at the Army War College in Paris...
“Nonetheless,” Létang concedes, “the lesson of the Resistance was that the fight for freedom is inseparable from the defense of truth.” The war waged by Trump against truth, he warns, is the primary threat to liberty.
Sure Gary. I think it is helpful to use history to understand the situation we find ourselves in. The importance of Truth highlights how bad it is that the Washington Post and other media have abandoned the truth as they seek to appease this president. We must speak truth when we have the opportunity to do so and share it. I have a friend who vacillates on supporting the Trump administration because she sees it as protecting her investments, and being against them because they are horrid people. She can get mad at me, but weekly conversations keep her more out of the realm of conspiracy and more in the realm of reality. I am sure many of us have people like that.
We do, I work with some. And when they whine about the economy I remind them who pays tariffs and who doesn't pay their fair share.
That article hit home for me. Lots of food for thought, helpful to my decisions about how and when to act.
Have any of our “leaders” in Washington spoken out about this documented build-up of mega detention centers! ? ( of course if they have, it sure won’t be in the Washington Post) Are the “Epstein files” the shiny object that distracts us from this?
I believe that the Epstein files contain much more than the crimes of rape and trafficking of underage victims; it all looks like part of an international espionage operation tied to Putin that used the victims to blackmail powerful people in powerful positions.
It is very damning of our DOJ under Presidents from both parties.
After the defeat of Hitler and his Nazi regime, the new government that was tasked with rebuilding Germany and German society actually passed some laws banning speech that promoted the Nazi ideology. As we get farther away from the horrors of WW2 it seems that those laws have been ignored and the Nazis have emerged from their swamps once again.
I think the majority people of this nation would prefer that all of us deserve (critical and general) healthcare. This regime doesn’t give a shit about “we the peoples’ ” health (eliminating and cutting such programs that were in place to help people like me, afford that care) so in a weird twisted way-
We are all in this together and need to reimagine and find better solutions after this upheaval to the problems we face in this society. We must
I disagree, Nancy, it is not only this regime, the right wing has a long history of opposing healthcare as something everyone has a right to; they have always championed healthcare as a money-making business that employers can use as something to keep their employees in place.
That is true Mystic Shadow. That is part of why my husband and I moved to our other country for retirement. I have written on health care in my Substack, and will write again at some point when I go back to writing articles.
Because the system is becoming Nazi like.
Not “becoming” … it already is. And they are using our tax money for this. We did not vote for this!
Yes. It is like the Nazis in the early stages. The way it is not like the Nazis is that we have a larger resistance than they did in Germany.
Polls suggest that it is exactly what Republicans voted for.
Slavery, the minimum wage, Andersonville/Rock Island, the SS St. Louis, Japanese detention camps. a recent high school graduate trying to convince we just need to deport everyone we round up (sees no difference between criminal and misdemeanor; they are all illegal.) We have a history and, if one comes down from his/her ivory tower, one can see not much has changed.
Not in my classroom when I taught. Sad that it happens anywhere. Also, sad that all the good teachers get a bum rap because of the ones who are not good or are bad.
Straight out of Luke 10. Of course, ignorance of those teachings has become a prerequisite for working in DHS.
Capture the courts, you've conquered the nation. Nazi Germany all over again. And yet there are still fools who believe this can be remedied by elections.
And MAGA as a whole.
But just ask these goons on our streets……8 out of ten will claim to be “Christians”.
Afterword: If You Know, You Must Speak
This story does not stand alone. It exists inside a country where these detention and deportation systems are visible enough to be known and distant enough to be ignored.
In her February 7, 2026 letter, historian Heather Cox Richardson recalls a moment after the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, when the town’s mayor took his own life rather than face what had happened nearby. The lesson was never that one man alone was responsible. The lesson was that such systems do not operate in secrecy. They operate in proximity. They operate while neighbors live ordinary lives and tell themselves they do not know enough to intervene.
That warning applies now.
ICE detention and deportation centers are not abstractions. They sit near highways and airports, outside small towns and along industrial roads. People are confined, pressured to sign away their rights, and removed from the country at speed. Many have no criminal convictions. Many asked for asylum legally. Many never receive a hearing that meets even a minimal standard of justice.
And many Americans know this.
They know because journalists have reported it.
They know because lawyers and doctors have testified to it.
They know because historians have named the pattern.
They know because these facilities require permits, contracts, staffing, and silence.
The danger is not only what happens inside the camps. The danger is the sentence repeated outside them: we didn’t know. History does not accept that defense once the evidence is public.
If you know, you must speak.
Because systems that normalize rapid detention and deportation do not remain confined to immigrants. Once due process becomes optional, once speed replaces deliberation, once whole groups are defined as removable, the category expands. Protesters become disruptors. Journalists become threats. Political opponents become risks to order.
The infrastructure is already built.
The language is already softened.
The exceptions are already written.
Immigrants are not the end of this story. They are the beginning of the test.
And the question history will ask is not whether these camps existed, but whether those who lived nearby, morally and geographically, chose to speak while there was still time.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/another-day
Especially those who voted this clown in for the second time and who continue to support him.
I can hear them now: “but that’s not what I was told” since they get their information from the propaganda sources they so willingly consume.
“German authorities under National Socialism established a variety of detention facilities to confine those whom they defined as political, ideological, or racial opponents of the regime. In time their extensive camp system came to include concentration camps, where persons were incarcerated without observation of the standard norms applying to arrest and custody; labor camps; prisoner-of-war camps; transit camps; and camps which served as killing centers, often called extermination camps or death camps.”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camp-system-in-depth
Concentration Camp System: In Depth | Holocaust Encyclopedia
The professor has been calling these facilities “Concentration Camps” for quite some time.
Ally, you’re correct! As you, I have been following Heather for quite a few years.
It’s frustrating that so many people in the US won’t consider the connection between 1930s rise of the Third Reich and what’s occurring right in front of our eyes. The mirror can’t be big enough!
"Other than four Yugoslav women whom the SS brought to Mauthausen with 46 men to be shot in April 1942, the first female prisoners in Mauthausen were two dozen women from Ravensbrück, whom the SS transferred to provide sex for favored male prisoners."
Yes
Every single person who voted for Donald Trump is responsible for what’s happening to our country now.
This statement applies for all of us now. What can we do? I propose that we send this letter to the House and let Republican congressmen and women to read.
The mayor of Ohrfruf said that they all knew. They all knew enough…
Just ghastly. No funding for DHS. Shut it down!
With these revelations, ICE has to get chopped in the DHS CR.
The human rights abuses in the detention camps are heinous.
Would that we recognized the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. That would be right up there on my to-do list once Democrats win control.
DHS won't be eliminated because it still has functions to carry out. It was once a legitimate department. What's needed is to impeach all the political appointees who are running DHS now.
All the items on the J&S list, plus a focus on the human and constitutional rights issues, have to apply to what remains of DHS. The list also needs to be applied proactively to the military and National Guard.
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
“MeidasTouch is combing through these documents and posting horrific revelations, but it is also amplifying the voices of the victims. Epstein survivor Anouska De Georgiou posted a video thanking MeidasTouch for taking an interest in her story and continuing to advocate for survivors and transparency. In the video, she described the distress caused by the DOJ’s unredacted release. She explained that the files revealed deeply personal details about her and countless other survivors, including photographs and home addresses, creating immediate and lasting harm. Her attorneys filed an emergency request for judicial intervention under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Judge Berman responded immediately, scheduling a conference and inviting survivors to participate. De Georgiou emphasized that she and other survivors will continue to fight for accountability and will not stop until the DOJ takes action to protect them.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/meidastouch/p/listen-to-the-survivors?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Meidas Touch has been relentless in preserving/exposing the Epstein files.⬇️
“DOJ Deleted an Epstein Prosecution Memo About Possible Co-Conspirators. We Saved It.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/meidastouch/p/doj-deleted-an-epstein-prosecution?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
I'm certain the personal details of the victims were released deliberately as a threat. How many have already been "offed"?? The DOJ will never be impartial on the files as long as Bondi and Blanche are running the show.
That's what I think as well. No way they didn't know.
Loren Bliss, now we know what happened to Samantha’s mother. I suspected it from the beginning. It came from the top. A coup is the only solution. Congress is not paying attention to this.
Every American in the street every day. Until the Nazis are out. Then we jail them in their facilities until trial. 3-7-77 gather every ice road agent. Let them wander aimlessly tormenting themselves in their own warehouses.
What is this referring to?:
“now we know what happened to Samantha’s mother.”
What do we know?
The answer isn’t a coup, it’s a revolution. Make the USA into the country that most people thought it already was. The shining city on a hill that many of your foreparents dreamed of.
You nearly had it until some power hungry white nationalists, back in the 1920s, opted for a different direction that ensured more power for the people they installed. If you’d like more information on what was happening, I recommend finding on twitter: @GeorgeProust and @JWalters314 and @TiminHonolulu and @LincolnsBible and @BaddCompani
Here on Substack, there’s @SethAmbramson who is also on twitter with the same handle.
Many people have been working to understand how the world and the USA have arrived at their current iterations and circumstances.
Twyla, it can be summed up in two words, greed and stupidity. Watching US for 10 years from a small boat in the French canals (front seat to climate change and exceptionalism)) concluded that we are “the bad teenagers on the block.” At 91, I can only write GOTV postcards and write for 11/26. Minnesota is giving US an example of how we may straighten ourselves out.
(Ouch. Preposition. Churchill. WWII all over again.)
Substack says I should follow you. Please continue to let me know what you think of what I write, but I simply don’t have time to follow my followers. Humbled by the attention of all of them, but slower than molasses in winter, have to have time to cook, play a keep-in-shape piano version of the Ukrainian national anthem, and recuperate from
Pilates sessions.
Good for you, Virginia, for surviving to your 90s!
You’re aware of the importance of GOTV campaigns and that’s an excellent contribution.
I will follow in your footsteps and encourage my American friends & neighbours to join together to make your own lives better and by extension, your communities and countries. I will never give up on the people who recognize the importance of everyone having, and being worthy of, human rights.
I'm sorry: what do we now know about Nancy?
Once again Georgia, you are right but you have to recognize how fruitless being right is in this situation. You call for impeachment of the offenders without acknowledging what you know, that with both the House and Senate in the hands of the GOP, there is simply no way any of that can or will happen. We MUST focus on 2026 elections because there is the ONLY place we can achieve any kind of balance in the government and maybe crank back some of the most egregious actions of the Trump administration. But for the worst cases, we will need to repulse the entire GOP government and that can't happen until 2028 elections, so we all need to buckle up for the long haul. It seems tragic and it is, but we all chose this. Yes I know some us would like to deny responsibility, but we as a country voted for this monster and we have to accept the consequences of our political system even when it makes us all sick.
As the mayor in the German city noted when he committed suicide, "We knew."
We ARE all responsible.
Jon, on a "practical level" you are absolutely right. Dems have little power to do anything.
Except. They can use the filibuster in the Senate to effectively halt legislation. Senators can demand NO funding for ICE. Senators can demand that the $75 billion already booked for ICE be redirected to the humane treatment of detainees and hiring more asylum judges.
Except. They can use the bully pulpits of hearings and the damn front steps of the Capitol to scream "STOP the FASCISM NOW". BE on RECORD.
Except. Every day, Reps and Senators can call out their MAGA colleagues and demand impeachment. There are some Republicans that are now challenging the Orange Menace. Tim Scott spoke up. So did others. The MAGA armour is cracking.
None of this and more will reverse the course of this madness - until the November Earthquake. But we who care will be making note of what leaders at least tried and stood tall and said NO to this insane brutality.
It's not enough to say, we don't have the power now. We need to take a page from the reactionary playbook - insanely bigoted people - who while in the minority built a plan that is now fully in effect.
I understand that such efforts are underway. So...as Georgia said, "we can walk and chew gum at the same time."
You are right. November is when we can really turn things around. But in the meantime we can still make some resistance history.
We ARE all responsible. And. We ALL need to be engaged in "Being Right" loudly, for the history books, for our kids to be proud, for our ability to sleep at night.
We're all on the same side here. Please don't take my comments the wrong way. But we MUST be on record as knowing and proclaiming what's "right". And our Senators can demand MORE.
So how are the Democrats not on record?
Democratic leadership has said all the things you ask, if people aren't hearing them it's likely they aren't listening.
Here's just one example...on You Tube for god's sake.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LkT-cuIot34
Thanks for that Gary. Schumer finally lit it up. Tough talk. And then he caved. And he is caving as we speak.
Dems need to shut everything down. Now.
Dems have been losing by being logical, compassionate and reasonable. Thinking we could convince the Nazis to...not be Nazis.
It is not effective to talk tough and then back down. Schumer should tie himself to a horse and ride into the White House holding an American flag. Or something.
Every Democrat lawmaker should start engaging in forms of non-violent action. It's time to break the glass and pull the alarm.
No, the Dems are still terminally weak. In the face of fascism, they are absolutely failing. They don't even name it let alone fight it. Schumer should step aside, he is useless. We need younger, stronger leadership with a spine and knowledge of history who can call out what is happening and act accordingly. Nothing else matters and if the Dems can't form a true resistance movement, they will not gain back popular support. They lost a lot of trust when they let Biden run again knowing his faculties were failing.
We keep hearing this, can you be specific as to what a new leader would effectively do different?
Remember the Dems lost not because they weren't radical enough, the data proves they lost by being too radical.
The failure to address the crisis at the border and emphasis on bathroom and locker room issues lost the Independents we needed to win. Loved Kamala, buy her refusal to recognize that the positions of the party was not only out-of-line with who was needed to win, but simply absurd, a refusal to deal with reality gave us Trump.
Yes, they lost trust with holding onto Biden but the data shows they lost more by losing any semblance of common sense. She could have won.
So what would new leadership give us?
I know how fruitless it may seem, but if voters don’t see Dems at least trying in the House and Senate to rid us of this scum, they will see weakness and a leadership vacuum. And that just makes it harder to achieve what I agree has to happen, taking back Congress with veto-proof majorities.
Dems have to start doing what is right, not because they are guaranteed a win, but because it is the decent and moral thing to do. It is at the point where the administration’s actions are so indecent and immoral that enough Republicans may manage to grow a spine to force Trump to veto reforms. That provides more ammunition for the midterms and 2028.
Recent CivicScience data from early 2026 shows over one-third of Americans (more than 33%) report paying more attention to political news in recent weeks compared to usual—far ahead of other categories like entertainment or lifestyle news. Among likely midterm voters, this figure rises to 41%, with a shift toward national TV networks and news websites as primary sources over social media. That still leaves a lot of people that need to be reached.
https://www.newscaststudio.com/2026/01/30/midterm-elections-reshape-media-trust-and-news-consumption-habits/
Dems have to walk and chew gum at the same time. They have to be out running the strongest campaigns with the strongest candidates contesting every elected office from dog catcher on up, while still fighting like hell in Congress.
" I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole." Malcom X
Democrats are doing what you ask now, it's up to us to support them.
Totally agree. Either you're with them or against them. The election is over. Mistakes were made and millions couldn't be bothered to vote. It's time to STFU about Democrats unless they are in charge like they are in my state. And they are doing a great job her.
Reposting--
We hate Jeff Bezos but we shop at Amazon.
We despise Mark Zuckerberg but we post on Instagram.
We loathe the Waltons but we shop at Walmart.
Until we see the disconnect in these actions we will continue to live under the thumbs of the überwealthy.
This is the real problem.
I'm in Blue New York with a governor willing to take on Trump, and live in the shadow of a sanctuary city.
I count my blessings.
Yes Jon, we should endure and we should focus on the 2026 elections as the ONLY place we can achieve any kind of balance, but this regime already figured out the same and it's already setting up the ground to make the election totally rigged. We need to realize that putting all the eggs in the some, only, basket is suicidal for our democracy. We know they are going to cheat in any way possible and if we don't do something about it , then yes, we will be all guilty.
They will try to rig the elections in every conceivable way and if needed, they will deny election results and refuse to seat Democrats who win.
I wish I held your audacious hope that our elections will mean anything at all. The Nazis have captured all three branches of our old democracy, our public broadcasting , our public education, and now with the tech gurus hacking our information systems, I suspect there WILL be vote manipulation, as our grifter in chief said, his blind devotees “only had to vote just this last time…”
But, giving up is unforgivable….so, thank you professor Richardson, for chronicling all this rot.
So we are beyond hope in your estimation but what then? Insurrectionist against a fully nuclear armed massive armed force? Oh yeah that will work just great. Trump is chomping at the bit to unleash his army on all of us. He just needs the slightest rational excuse. Any hint of armed insurrection will do it.
Yes it is going to be difficult and it in fact may not be successful. But any other course is worse. If WE become the ones to strike out first, he will slaughter us all.
If we can hold him at bay with no excuse to strike us militarily before the elections we MIGHT beat him in 2026 and then his power will drop precipitously.
This is dangerous territory but doing the wrong thing is worse then the hope that doing the right thing will work.
I believe we fail either way if we do the wrong thing. If we do the right thing we have at least a chance. No guarantees but life is never guaranteed.
Look at Ukraine's Orange Revolution; this is the way to end this fascist regime. It would be prudent to prepare for a prolonged general strike.
There is nothing wrong with being ready to defend your family and property, the rule of law is collapsing right now.
With a little jujitsu, Jeffries could be Speaker within a couple of days.
And then what? Impeachment? Lol the Senate will never have enough votes to convict and remove either Trump or Vance. You know that Daniel. And the country would never tolerate that much upheaval.
And if by jujitsu you mean a way to get rid of a few more GOP Congress critters I think you are smoking too much dope. Anything other than using our actual process to fix this is tantamount to national suicide. THEY WANT US to do that. Anything we do that is provocative gives them the justification (even if totally insane) to lash out with all their power.
And considering what they managed to do in Minneapolis with just a few thousand poorly trained ICE agents, consider what happens if they declare martial law and bring it the entire us armed forces. It would be a national disaster. And we WOULD lose almost certainly.
YOU NEVER KNOW.
Jon you need to take a dose of your own medicine here. You acknowledge congress is useless as tits on a boar yet you advocate allowing this carnage to rage on until elections which you admit may not even be fair. The hot air you ascribe to others seems to me to fill your balloon as well. As the months go by is that helping the Nazis firm up their plans? Is that working into their hands? You don’t want to preempt that possibility? Your council is to wait? We have already waited for Godot too long. This isn’t Tejas and Houston isn’t coming.
Yes. I am keeping my eye on the ball: the '26and '28 elections -- everything else is noise.
Signed, Dedicated Noise Maker (and Voter).
Sally -- Please keep your eye on the thousands of elections all across the US this year. Sure November counts bigly, but unless we support the best candidates in the primaries and the special elections as well as the statewide elections, November is just fluff.
Noise does matter. But noise has to be used carefully. There is a hair trigger just waiting to be pulled.
I find myself agreeing with Jon here. But if we think the malign foreign forces that influenced the election in 2024 were bad, well, we ain't seen nuthin' yet, given the power of AI, not to mention that a cornered animal is most dangerous. The idjit djt (if he's still around) will try to erase the slate of competitors for the Democratic nomination with whatever means necessary.
An aquaintance said she would vote again for this.
I am not surprised. Many people loved Hitler too. I wish I had a magic wand to make it all better but I don't and no one else does either. This is going to be a long hard struggle and we may lose some battles along the way. Sherman and Grant did. So did Eisenhower.
In the end we have to believe that doing the right thing is the best way to prevail. Otherwise a victory will be hollow anyway.
DHS used to not exist but our government did and our country did. I am not usually one for going back in time, but in this instance I say that under Trump these departments should not exist because they are not going to perform the "needed" functions. Instead it should be disbanded. The parts should go back to the agencies they came from. It was never a good idea to gather all that data in one place.
https://steadystate1.substack.com/p/a-primer-a-two-minute-primer-the
DHS includes nine primary standalone components:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)
U.S. Secret Service (USSS)
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC)
I don’t think you really want all 9 to go. ICE definitely, CBP constrained, USSS in my fondest dreams, temporarily. The others I want to see doing the jobs that they are mandated to do by law done well and fairly.
Gutting a government department like Trump did with the education department makes it almost impossible to bring back, and at huge cost.
DHS had around 211,502 employees as of recent federal data, making it the third-largest Cabinet department. For instance, there are 64,000 in TSA (as of 2024).
Chucking everyone out would be a huge hardship for the decent civil servants who make up the majority of the people there and their families. It’s a major hit to the economy as a whole.
I think the rot and corruption have to be cut out surgically from the top down, amputation for ICE because it is gangrenous. Given what we’ve seen, that means every Trump political appointee. Cutting off the heads of a lot of snakes.
The new rule “Improving the Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness of the Civil Service,” which goes into effect on March 8, 2026, allows Trump to fire more career civil servants at will, allowing him to plant political appointees even deeper into the organizational structure.
This is about silencing dissent. It is about muzzling free speech in the place it most needs to be, inside government.
When it was created it was told that for national security it was dangerous to have so much information centralized in one location. It still is. It is better not to have them all together. This was a Bush Project and I do not approve. As the article I shared said, they were pulled from elsewhere. I am not asking for all of them to disappear, just to go back to where they came from.
Linda: I am so sorry, you are absolutely correct. I thought I was replying to someone else’s post that said to get rid of DHS.
Never my best before my first giant mug of coffee. The wind chill here is -13F this morning, which isn’t helping.
Linda and Georgia: I thank you for your comments. Always worth reading. If you make mistakes - which is very rare - you own up. You are shining lights of reason and decency.
Georgia and Linda:
-17F Wind chill here. Just want you both to know how appreciated your analysis and thoughts are.
I hope you got your crushed bitter bean juice! Thanks, as always, for your insightful comments!
Georgia, stay warm.
Let us not forget the creation of DHS was a response to the attack on US soil on 9/11.
It was so that information could be centralized, not the other way around.
Although I was always wary of an agency with the term "Homeland" in it.
Yes Gary, I never trusted anything George Bush did, and never believed the reasons that he said we were going to war with Iraq. In fact, I understood that Bush was not popular and he was going to up his popularity by getting us into a war. So, not only did American men and women die and get wounded to salvage his presidency, but so did men from other countries that have just been disparaged by Trump. It is so unjust I cannot believe it, but believe it I do because it is Trump.
Linda, I was also suspicious of that action in creating DHS.
Stalin's Mother Russia, Hitler's Fatherland...our Homeland.
Never liked the ring of it.
Georgia, excellent post, which goes into detail about what "Belle" is talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofOBAHmmw_s
Since I started watching this channel a few years back, their viewership has gone from roughly 300K to now about 875K. Anyone who watches "Belle" regularly knows that many MAGA watch her, too, as she often answers the taunts they send her way.
She puts up 3 SHORT (about 4 min long) videos a day. Weekly, her group does 3 longer (maybe 10-15 or so minutes) videos "The Roads with Belle" on YouTube and two others on Patreon. ("Research Road" and "Interstate News") All are worth a watch/listen, especially for folks who don't have a lot of time to watch the many worthy but LONG podcasts.
Agreed. I watch Belle daily, at 1.5 X speed, because I grew up as a fast-talking New Yorker. Absolutely some of the best explainers out there.
Thank You, Georgia . I had no idea .
Agreed, Georgia. And ee need to claw back the obscene billions of our tax dollars used to advance this corrupt, morally and otherwise, scheme.
When our previous immigration and intelligence system “failed us” and led to 9/11, we “abolished INS” and the other agencies in order to form ICE and DHS etc. We can absolutely abolish it again and form something else that has appropriate checks and balances. It’s been around for less than 25 years and has already shown that it has the capability to be easily used as a tool in an authoritarian takeover. Clearly, it was designed to “get the terrorists,” not for legitimate immigration management. Get rid of it and replace it with a new system that uses the federal courts, not its own separate system (why is DHS its own police, judge and jailor?! No separation of powers whatsoever).
What is a J&S list Georgia?
Jeffries’ & Schumer List of 10 ICE reforms
At least some of the immigrants who are being rounded up and incarcerated in the camps are nationals of countries who have signed the Rome Statute.
That’s a longer term accountability solution.
In the short term, Americans need to shut down the camps, because what they are doing in your name, is atrocious.
Try the usual pathway of calling your representatives.
Then consider withdrawing your participation in such a society. The taxes you pay is funding the atrocities. If you’re in the working class, your labour makes the machines run.
Impeachment will only happen with a Democratic Congressional majority and the reason the regime will not allow a free and fair election, ever, not just the midterm and 2028 elections.
How can we ensure that as we address the defunding of the attack arm of ICE, that there is funding to get the detainees, now isolated and without support, to have access to clean water, edible food, medical care and medicine? We need a plan to reunite these people with their families and bring them back to health.
“Shut it down”. My sentiments exactly. My question to you is “How?”
Isn't this, and especially the initial flights to El Salvador that Homan the Bagman intervened to let fly there after the judge demanded they return in mid-air, human trafficking? The combination of the firehose of illegal actions and the steady removal of regular law enforcers who are replaced with Trump mob goons is making it incredibly difficult to hold the fort. I think Minneapolis has it right: it's going to turn out to be up to the people. Christopher Armitage had a good piece Friday on exactly how they've done it.
It was the DOJ that defied the judge's order, the Prosecutor's had been told to tell the Courts to fuck off.
I agree Mojave Rich!
Shutting it down won't solve anything. First, we need to take the country back from these ultra-right-wing zealots and then get DHS back to what it is supposed to be doing, legally.
Rich, I was slow to come to this, but after the disappearance of Samantha Guthrie’s mother, thinking ICE should be shut down until it can be rebuilt from scratch—on the border and paid like other departments. We must, however, vet and hire many immigration judges. As climate change drives people to our “land of plenty,” we must prepare, if the Mafia doesn’t totally bankrupt US, to produce food to the best of our ability.
Yes..
Hello again from Minneapolis. I’m going to keep this short and sweet tonight. Quite frankly I don’t know what to do with all the negative feelings I have inside.
Things are not better here in Minnesota, and from what I’ve heard ICE has been expanding their operations further into the suburbs. The lack of national media attention on what’s happening here in Minneapolis is abhorrent. Too many citizens here are doing everything they can to protest, coordinate against ICE, help pack and deliver food to assist our neighbors who won’t leave the house for fear of being stopped just to name a few examples. Too much effort is being done here for the rest of the country to think the problem is over.
Finally as I’ve probably mentioned before I’m a 3rd generation Holocaust survivor. All of this is getting far too real, and this hits way too close for me. I don’t care about MAGA waking up to what’s happening, because they’re a lost fucking cause. I absolutely care about the rest of the country figuring it out. The numbers are there, but still not the will.
You are holding up the sky for the rest of us right now, Minneapolis. Despite appearances to the contrary, millions are paying attention. We can only continue to say thank you for your courage and unfathomable grace under pressure. 🙏
I am 1st generation, Daniel, as I have mentioned before, also. All of the privately owned detention centers hits home with me. Denying essentials, knowing those sweet young babies are crying endlessly, hurts my heart. My parents would have died a thousand deaths knowing that their precious adopted country was killing and torturing its own people. I can’t stand it!
Same here, Marlene. I'm sure my grandparents - who fled Italy during Mussolini's reign - would be heartbroken.
Thank you, Daniel, for you posts. Our media, except for Substacks like this one, are moving on to the next attention-grabber. Today it's a vile, racist post from our vile, racist President. The ongoing disaster in Minnesota (coming soon to a neighborhood like yours, folks!) and the continued withholding of the Trump/Epstein Pedo Files are out of the limelight. By design.
Dear Daniel, as a non-American observer living on the other side of the world, I can only tell you of my outrage and sympathy. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls.
I once thought of trying to obtain Italian citizenship but it was too lengthy. My mother’s parents came from a little town in Sicily. I lived for a time In Firenze in the 1970s. It was a wonderful time I’ll say. The first two acquaintances I made were a Nigerian art student and an Iranian street vendor named Sammy who escaped the military. We were all immigrants living in beautiful Florence. Because of my exposure to the workshops making and carving frames, I eventually learned the craft of picture framing and opened a store.
This seems lame, but can you get any attention from the DNC? Where in the hell is their attention, if not in Minneapolis? They should be hitting the mass media, independents, filling streets , doing something, beyond asking for donations. Are they worried Trump will call it an "insurrection"? Being there, is not an insurrection. Being there is a choice. Flood the city with democrats and independents that care? We are all new at dealing with a dictator. But we will learn!
Daniel, I wonder where the will comes from and for me, an emotional reality arising from the perception of danger, that's aroused in detail, helps motivate me to shift priorities. Your post helps me assemble the pieces, and this also does; I'm sharing this first post from Robert L. Arnold's trip to Minneapolis (he crowdfunded $16,000 to get there -- is eloquent and incisive) : https://open.substack.com/pub/defiance13/p/on-minnesota-1?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email. I discovered him in a conversation last week with Mike Madrid (of which there's another today).
Thank you for this report. I haven’t seen this anywhere else (not to imply my research is exhaustive, by any stretch of the imagination.)
We are a sad country. Keep fighting. Don’t let them get away with it.
Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. I'm glad you don't care about MAGA - I totally agree they are not worth the attention. Other people are figuring this out. It's just slow. And there are so many things.
I just wrote my reps about, of all things, agriculture. American agriculture, which was financially alright, is on the skids. Farm income down, bankruptcies up. It's all from WH policies. I wrote my reps then wrote a letter to the editor. I live in a farming community. Maybe someone will pay attention to the letter. Suicides increase in farming communities when bankruptcies increase.
People are figuring this out, and the new stuff about detention centers is not going to help poll numbers. Take care of yourself, Daniel. That, from my experience, can be shockingly hard to do. But it is the most important thing. Pull some vibes in from your ancestors. Take a break from the news. It seems selfish, I know, but your ancestors would tell you that saving your sanity is the first priority. Thank you, Daniel. Sending love and gratitude, thoughts of rest and strength.
The concept of a "warehouse" for detainees is repugnant and de-humanising: human beings are note "wares" and use of the term objectifies those interned in them. Let's call these places by what they are: concentration camps. The difference from what happened during the period of the Third Reich in Germany is the method with which the people interned are disposed of. At least for now.
I am suddenly recalling Kristi Noem’s ghastly selfie taken in front of a holding room filled to the brim with half-naked men in bunks — at CECOT in El Salvador, if I remember correctly. Someone juxtaposed it with the famous photo taken in April 1945 by US troops at Buchenwald, with Elie Wiesel peering out from the third or fourth bunk…
Not too hard to find... try 'christi noem german concentration camp'
It’s right next to the Donald J. Trump Sewage Treatment Plant.
Trump was ranting on about lower prices of Ozempic from $1000 to $199 on Fox News of course. He went on to say that this was a 578% decrease in price which isn't how percentages work. Before he could ramble on about some other BS, FOX News cut away to a story about Savannah Guthrie. WTF!!!
This is Trump's private network and even they are aware that he is looney tunes.
Where is Congress? Oh yeah, they are too busy trying to get the Clintons behind closed doors to testify. Why behind closed doors?
Wouldn't it be fun to get Trump to publicly testify for any committee about well anything? It doesn't matter. He would purjure himself in his opening statement and it would go downhill from there.
Well, a 578 percent decrease would imply that Americans are getting a much-deserved refund after many years of being overcharged for their medications! :)
As for testimony by Mueller, Clinton, Hunter Biden etc etc etc, Comer and other Republicans obviously want closed-door testimony so they can cherry-pick, distort and spin it the way they want.
You’re right, Trump’s perjury would start even if asked: "Mr President, what is your height and weight?"
I remember Clinton testifying to congress during the Monica Lewinsky impeachment trial. Wish we could get Trump in a similar situation.
And a new Epstein location—Rape Island.
Treating people as objects may be the essence of evil.
Concentration camps and rounding upon innocent people for torture is essence of evil.
And our tax dollars are paying for it!
Frim viet nam years ago to the depths of hell. What depraved leaders. Educated. Rich. Pampered. Depraved!
Desmond Tutu once spoke of "that obscenity, "collateral damage", with reference to the innocent victims of war.
As evil as it gets, and an example of treating people as right-less objects. The most malignant form of narcissism.
We need to keep Gitmo going as a place to incarcerate this administration.
I'm starting to believe a firing squad is too good for them.
Yes. It would be. They need to spend time behind bars, being treated more humanely than the detainees in the ICE concentration camps, lots of time for them to reflect on their crimes. I think cutting them off from Internet access and TV would be a start.
Send them to CECOT?
Give them a chess set and no instructions. King Trump giving power to his cabinet pieces and let them make their own rules. Endlessly. Scatter their ashes at sea. Give them what they wish for confined together. What a wonderful world.
Todd Lyons' comments now make sense (in a depraved way) in relation to comments of some of the ICE goons who talked about moving a "body" or placing a "body" (live human) in detention cells. They see these people as already dead, so no more care (including medical) is needed than in a morgue. They have desensitized themselves, just as the slave owners did in an earlier era, just as the Nazis did. It is shocking and beyond immoral.
But, John…meanwhile….? It has to happen fast. People are dying. And as farms are unattended, many of US
Will go hungry.
I don't think right-wingers think of the detainees as human.
To do so would be too woke and as heroic as they imagine themselves to be.
I think you nailed it. "Woke" is awareness of inconvenient (for some) truths. The core of any cult is punishment of any efforts and desire for verification. That, and grandiose flattery of those in compliance, the putative "Master Race", the "Righteous", the "Real" Americans, or whatever. The concept adopted in wealthy aristocracies of "superior breeding", as opposed to "commoners". That other races are somehow subhuman, and some people legitimate targets for predation, or exploitation. Evil.
Yes 💙 — call them what they are!
This is the surface of the worst new reality and yes these new warehouses are modern concentration camps and yes we are all complicit to the extent that we are responsible for what happens in our country and communities. Just to imagine the suffering that has already occurred and is continuing and the suffering that will expand for the rest of his SECOND term…we should all be figuring out what we can do to rescue these helpless human beings.
Alas, the cruelty toward immigrants in Trump's first term, especially the capture of children and in many cases separating them permanently from their families, never provoked the level of outrage it deserved.
True and the extent was less and less known
We need to publicly humiliate every Republican Senator and Congressman by tying their actions to those of ICE. Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, Tommy Tuberville. They are ALL complicit. Protest at their homes and at the Capital and everyone of their offices.
Every last one of them!
Yes, the GOP is responsible, the GOP is the Fascist Party.
Every Democrat should be rightfully branding every right-winger as a fascist. This should be the end of the Party. History will remember the modern Republican Party as America's Fascist Party.
The Maine State legislature is currently in session. I may make a trip to Augusta and create some good trouble. It shouldn't be hard to find others to help out.
Yes. May I add Dave McCormick, the junior senator from Pennsylvania to the list?
Our only hope of being able reclaim anything worthwhile to be proud of as a country is to act immediately to rid ourselves of this disgusting fascist regime, including all office holders who have not lifted a finger or said a word to end every fascist action committed by this regime.
“Like Amazon Prime…but with human beings.” JFC. These aren’t detention centers. They’re not warehouses. They’re concentration camps all over again. My God.
That line jumped off the page to me, as well. Under what rocks to they find such creatures to serve them?
Just plain depravity.
It is so far beyond appalling. The words gave me actual palpitations.
We remain deeply grateful for the observations of so many researchers, observers, judges, activists, family and friends who have been compiling the reports, detailing the existence of the warehouses, the jails, the absence of proper medical care, the daily cruelties and abominations, the rush to deport 5 year-olds, the hushed-over, uninvestigated deaths, the terror of those who have done nothing to merit it all, the pay-to-play private prison systems, the secret abductions, the daily assaults on decency, common sense, due process, the 4th and 5th Amendments…
In Stanley Kramer’s masterful 1961 “Judgment at Nuremberg” former Nazi Minister of Justice Ernst Janning suddenly takes the stand — not in his own defense, but in bitter self-denunciation:
‘My counsel has given you the excuse that we were not aware…not aware? Where WERE we then? Where were we when Hitler began shrieking out his hatred from the Reichstag? Where were we when every village has a railway station? Where were we when cattle cars filled with children were being carried off to their extermination? Were we deaf, dumb, blind?!
My counsel tells you that we were aware only of the deaths of the hundreds. Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn’t know all the details. But if we didn’t know, it is because we didn’t WANT to know!’
It has been said that the 2016 Presidential Election was a national referendum on Decency – and that Decency lost. Given American voters’ incredible lack of long-term memory, and the huge MAGA-Republican noise machine of influencers, skewed social media, and the bothsiderism (and worse) of the mainstream media, voters did the unthinkable: They returned Trump to the White House.
Yes, I am still in shock after Kamala’s 2024 loss, and still in deep grief after Hillary’s 2016 loss. And I often think of the America that could have been!
That said, I am encouraged by the powerful and growing grassroots movement that is demanding an American Return to Decency, that insists on Democracy, and that rejects the pathetic yet dangerous machinations of Mad King Donald, the wannabe tyrantm and his Fascist sycophants and cult members.
The old truism comes to mind — perhaps it is only when you start losing the things you hold dear that you begin to understand how important it is to keep and strengthen what’s left.
ICTT, a Polish friend who has lived under PiS wrote exactly that to me yesterday about US.
Agree, my father used to tell me 'If you want to get their attention, hit them in their wallets.'
Hell, I'm still in mourning after Bush vs. Gore. Imagine no Afghanistan or Iraq wars. A government that still served most of the people most of the time (the rich, like the poor, will always be with us). As you say, the America that could have been. That America would have been truer to her historical self. But again, as you note, we must support and demand a return to American decency. That starts with resistance to this evil regime.
A judicial coup if there ever was one! That said, it shouldn’t even have been close. Instead of embracing and taking credit or the considerable successes of the Clinton–Gore Administration, Al Gore distanced himself from the still-popular Bill Clinton. A huge strategic mistake!
Agreed. But the Democratic Party accelerated their abandonment of working class (which had been underway since Reagan or even earlier) with the “centrist” DLC project in the mid-1990s. The closeness of that election was partly the fruit of that misdirection. (Of course, the Powell memo project played a large part as well.)
James Coyle, Reagan was destroying the middle class. As I get 10-20 appeals per day from Dems, I think of the ex-middle class who cannot respond because they haven’t funds. I am one. With food inflation I can no longer support the battle against climate change either.
You’re right, Virginia. Reagan was actively trying to destroy them (or at least their support for the Dems), while the Dems were courting the better educated and desperately poor and ignoring blue-collar issues, thinking they had thise votes anyway
One could plausibly pin the beginning of America’s loss of decency,ethics and moral clarity on the advent of Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch. Both of whom have made generous incomes by selling hate and division. Liberals began to lose the war by being liberal and assuming that no American could possibly be so stupid as to believe the corrosive message that came out of these hate mongers mouths. We now have a portion of our population who are uneducable because of the right wing hate machine. The resentment and hate are now the unifying motivation for people who have felt left out for generations.
Well said! And it made me sick to my stomach that Limbaugh was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As for Murdoch, he has been a consistently destructive force in the United Kingdom as well as the USA, plus his native Australia.
Oops didn’t mean to send. My point is really how do we wake up those who aren’t lost causes? There are more of us than those who are on board with the depravity.
Those who for whatever reason just cannot be bothered to “get involved” with politics are freeloaders and should be called out as such. It the responsibility of every citizen to have at least enough knowledge of how our government works and what our constitution stands for.
Reagan’s policies started the extreme wealth disparity that ultimately allowed our government and its processes to be purchased. All these years - too many in this huge country really know very little about our history and don’t care about politics. We missed multiple windows to make substantive changes. Americans have become so comfortable in complacency that
I agree with you about the grief over Hillary and Kamala losing. But I don’t have the longing for what would have been had they been elected. They both would have continued the long standing militarization of local police departments, the US international relationships that created and would have perpetuated the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of a few disgustingly rich, out of touch, people, the heavy hand with which the US has for many decades thrown around the weight of it’s military. And on and on. I grieve more because of what it says about us as an electorate that Trump was elected twice. But the damage he has done to the government makes me think a bit of an alcoholic hitting bottom. Now we have the chance to rebuild something more fair, more sustainable, more life affirming. We’ll see pretty soon if we are up to that challenge.
Agree 💯. This country needs a complete reboot.
Sharing on FB, if you don't mind, ICTT.
Morning, Lynell! Excellent idea; I’ll have to wait until I get back home; I’ll mess it up if I use my phone.
BTW, winter concert season is approaching: 3 groups have concerts on two days!
Morning, Ally!
Still On my phone now. As my cats say when they don’t like something, “I don’t like it!” Speaks volumes and I try to fix it for them…
Also happy winter concerting - if that’s a word🙃
First, Trump tried to use the army to control Blue States with the plan to take over the voting. But the army is too disciplined, and there are clear restrictions on what an army can do.
Then, Miller and Landowski designed a New ICE. Ice had always been about the border, and deporting the people who judges said should be deported. It was small and had few people paying attention to it.
New ICE has no limitations. They have become the federal roving, marauding, enforcement agency, and now some carefully selected judges have given them almost unlimited power.
Now, the Republicans can feel that they don’t have come to terms with the Democrats.
The Democrats have to shut down the government, and then impeach Pam Bondi. There are no laws left in America. It all has a kick back that goes to Trump.
No one, not even republicans, want this
"No one, not even republicans, want this"
Two parties' elected representatives WANT this because they ARE funding it!!
Seven Democrats, enough to pass an increase, WANT this. The minority "leader" who refused to whip the Democratic Party votes to at least express a warning WANT this.
Enough of the partisan stooging and praising of platitudes that produce no action. A majority are showing by their ACTIONS that they WANT this police state.
They do not want this. And the vote you refer to was taken before Alex Pretti’s murder, not afterward. Today, no one believes even those 7 would vote the way they did.
Reality is changing in front of us. If you summon the old circular firing squads, you will simply reap the usual rewards. Stop turning everything into a witch-hunt for purity — you will find none. But if you support right action consistently, you’ll do both the right thing and help convince others to do the same.
You seem trying to get me to disbelieve the actions and believe the rhetoric, finger-pointing and partisan stooging. The vote of those seven Democrats may have killed Alex Pretti by ICE seeing it as endorsing their murdering Renee Good, that HAD just happened by communicating the message "Yes indeedy! You are above the law, so do more of what you just did!!" Rewarding her murderers with a raise is what the seven DID. Why wasn't Good's murder enough to snap them to reality? Because she was a woman?? Good grief, listen to that rationalization!
Keep doing what you did and you'll get what you got. What you have got is a massive, lethal army of occupation killing people, kidnapping them, terrorizing local elected officials, claiming sovereign immunity from laws and courts, building files on American citizens they already openly call "domestic terrorists" constructing concentration camps ultimately to be used for protesters and dissent, not "immigrants." Free country so you can do that. You seem quite ready to be an apologist for the reality under construction.
I can't believe there are people who are so easily convinced to cast aside evidence and reasoning because they have relinquished their reasoning to a Party telling citizens to believe that it is in their interest to continue supporting more of the same.
I'm not doing it.
You're privilege, but there are laws, and believe me the Trump administration will enforce them on you if you decide to step outside of them. This is a bad time, and I empathize with your anger and frustration but you will only cause yourself great harm if you decide to violate the law as you seem to be proposing. The moment we all decide to do that we will no longer be a country of law. Maybe we aren't anyway under Trump, but I believe we still have the power and the means to avoid the worst. And I will continue to protest in every legal way I can in the hope that time will move things in the right direction.
Am I a fool? Possibly, as were many of my relatives who were killed in the German death camps, but I sadly don't know what any of them could have done to change that. Let us all hope (pray if you must) that it doesn't come to that.
Senator Gallego has proposed a National Strike. Slow down at work, boycott businesses, drive slow on roads into cities, think of ways to do the legal annoyances that affect business. Stop Amazon buying, Get off Facebook. Mass protests in the streets. Build a wall of humanity. It is time to use our heads, because anger alone will not get it done. We should never let fear control this country!
Ed has not proposed violating the law. Why did you write that??
Please reread my comment. I didn't say he did, I said IF you are, be prepared for the worst. If is asking a question. I hope you understand that.
No you are not a fool. You are a propagandist trying to label dissent as a decision to violate the law. Two groups are doing this--MAGA and hirelings of the Israeli government both of whom advocate to crush citizens' Bill of Rights. Both sound like the thugs terrorizing our streets now by designating witnesses daring to record their actions, a First Amendment right, as "criminals" and "domestic terrorists." So, which are you representing, in your innuendo dog-whistle trying to convince readers I advocated violating the law?
Thanks for the message of hope. But is it not too late? Is there any way to back out of that big horrible bill that funds all this evil? It is too late for those who have already been killed or deported or had their lives and families torn apart. At this point, paying for a gauche ballroom and a ludicrous "arch of triumph" doesn't sound so bad. At least those monstrosities aren't killing people.
Indeed. We should never forget that Trump, his efforts to legitimize white-supremacist genocide, the resultant ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, To learn of the carefully hidden roots of the crisis, the documentation of which include a PBS film about the enormous support for Hitler here in the '30s and additional, meticulously footnoted documentation of the plutocracy's support for Nazism, go here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-25-2026?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=205274486
Bush II's reaction to 9/11 was to Trump up a war on Iraq and posit that anyone he suspected or even simply called a "terrorist" or "the worst of the worst" was exempt from the protection of the US Constitution or international treaties. One of Bush's initiatives was to attempt to "militarize" police work and make policing more ready for battle than keeping the peace. It produced SWAT teams attending apartment evictions and theatrical "overkill" such as this: https://www.alternet.org/2014/12/jim-hightower-frightening-swat-team-raid-called-business-barbering-without-license
In that spirit, Bush created ICE.
How can the Democrats impeach Bondi-or anyone? They are in the minority, and it's clear that the Republicans are either in lockstep or too afraid to go against their party.
What I am about to say will infuriate a lot of people here, but I will say it anyway because it must be said. Firstly, the fact the Regime is in the poll-sewer both domestically and internationally is obviously meaningless; in fact, I cannot remember a time in which a U.S. regime was so glaringly indifferent to the polls. Secondly, though the pollsters are profoundly reluctant to acknowledge this, respondents are not always honest; if they believe a true response will make them look bad, they'll lie. Thirdly, how many of the respondents who claim to be opposed to the Regime's ecogenocidal savagery are willing to act upon their views? Fourthly, if the Regime believed the poll numbers were at all valid, it would not be doing what it is doing, which is actually escalating its escalation. Thus, fifthly and in conclusion, I believe it is fair to assume that (1)-the Regime believes a majority of the poll respondents are lying to save face; that (2)- the Regime's one true principle of governance is the Maoist principle that power grows from the barrel of a gun; that (3)-knowing it has far greater firepower than any population or nation on this planet, the Regime is not threatened by any -- say again (any) -- measures directed against it either domestically or internationally; that (4)-the Regime is therefore effectively omnipotent; and that (5)-in the ultimate sense -- here as it was in Nazi Germany -- the regime feels absolutely secure in its belief it truly represents the will of the white (Aryan) majority. Which I'm sorry to say means in this burgeoning Auschwitz realm we are at last witnessing the true face of the nation, the final fulfillment of the long-simmering Nazism Jeff Sharlet euphemized as "the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power."
Why do you think what you say will infuriate readers of this Substack? I think most of us, sadly, agree with your points. Regarding "fourthly," I think they choose not to believe the polls and ignore them. And they're doubling down because that's all they know how to do. And your assumptions (2) and (5) are spot on. But it remains our duty to resist and to oppose the crimes being committed in our name
Obviously I am so disturbed by the fact the ChristoNazis just proved that like their Original Nazi forefathers they are now able to legalize whatever atrocities they choose to inflict, I failed to write with proper clarity, for which I apologize.
I am now convinced that what we are seeing -- the conduct of the ChristoNazi Regime, the cunningly perfected, always plausibly deniable collaboration of the Democrats and the embrace of tyranny implicit in the refusal of the people to (effectively) resist -- is the true face of the (real) "America."
Thus the Unified Reich -- like the Third Reich that fathered it -- will not be overthrown save by invasion, and that only if the liberators first achieve the scientifically impossible miracle of doing what it is alleged some flights of UFOs have done, paralyzing the USian CBR arsenal so that the Regime cannot destroy the world to avoid defeat, surrender, the replay of V-E Day celebration and retributive justice by partisans and judicial authorities.
My oldest half-brother, my father's first-born son and one of the founding directors of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said before he died that he believed Trump's 2016 victory was literally the beginning of the end of the world. Until the ChristoNazis flexed their judicial omnipotence, I believed there was some hope our species might survive. Now I believe he spoke prophetic truth.
No apology necessary. I thought you expressed yourself with more than proper clarity. I'm still hopeful that your second paragraph is incorrect and that our resistance will be effective sooner rather than later. And that your third paragraph scenario will never occur. But I share the worry expressed in your final paragraph. It may well be the ending of our world. We humans will adapt, until we can't adapt anymore. And there are other species that might survive or even prosper in an environment unfit for humans. Best wishes.
My vote for the next alpha species? Wolves and ravens. (Best wishes back.)
Loren, in the old parlance, you’ve just “called a spade a spade”. Far from infuriating me (at least towards you) you’ve just clearly articulated what I see in my retired cop cohort. The regime represents EXACTLY what they want: Christofascistism.
Ally, we should also recognize that the true depth of this nation's Nazification -- its ultimate embrace of ecogenocidal Evil -- is its Better Dead Than Red policy. This is our capitalist masters' plan to literally destroy the world rather than face defeat and surrender -- which, as the heroic Red Army encircled Berlin, Hitler lamented he would have done had he been able, and which -- no doubt under the tutelage of the legions of Nazi war criminals the capitalist plutocracy gleefully adopted as advisors and comrades-at-arms -- became U.S. policy sometime in the '50s, as soon as our masters had arms-raced a chemical, biological and radiological (nuclear) arsenal formidable enough to reduce our Mother Earth to (permanent) Precambrian lifelessness.
That's why -- just as our masters' control of the Moronic Majority guarantees that liberation from within is impossible -- so does BDTR prohibit liberation from without. Barring earthly reproduction of the (scientifically impossible) miracles that deluded devotees of extraterrestrial rescue attribute to UFOs, no nation will ever dare attack the Unified Reich save in retaliation for a first strike. Thus what we are experiencing now is the unabashed revelation that the nation once posited as the ultimate hope of humanity has in fact become the most bottomlessly Evil realm in all human experience; the horrors of its run-amok death squads and lethal concentration camps are ever-more-obviously but prelude to the (unthinkably horrible) Auschwitz Nation that -- powered by technological omnipotence -- the ChristoNazis are imposing.
Evidently, Republicans DO want this. There have been too many votes to back funding these horrors and too many passed opportunities to stop them. It's been a while since I've heard anyone say, "This is not who we are." This IS who we are: a country who pays an army of armed, masked thugs to pick people up off our streets and put them in camps we pay to build and maintain.
It's funny you should mention a kickback. That jogged my memory about something I read earlier this morning about "TrumpRX". My immediate thought was, "What's his cut?"
They don't want it, why do they allow it?
We hope, Oldandintheway, that you are right about Republicans. Too many believe the propaganda. Look at our troll’s comment yesterday. I reached out on finding he plays French horn (as did my husband), has a degree in philosophy, and that he claims fluency in Spanish. But with all that, he apparently believes everything bad about our asylum seekers and immigrants that the administration puts out.
Geeze, I missed that thread, Virginia.
Ally, my ally, I tried to reach out to Rick Sender after getting his bio and learning that he is desperate for a job. But mafia propaganda has him by the head. It’s particularly sad as he is a French horn player (rare bird).
So America is not using gas chambers to kill people the country has gathered into detainment centers. But America HAS started killing people by denying medical attention completely.
Shut it down!
But the Commander in Chief says it's OK. And he's the best ever. He reminds us of this after his opening sentence on any subject at all.
Yet.
Clearly the Fascist class is getting a strong return on its recruitment and purchase of extremist judges!
Thank you for this very powerful report. We are all responsible, and we must find a way to stop this state cruelty.
Official cruelty, SOP and all the rules. IBM helped the Nazis with the bureaucratic red tape. Are they on board now???
Yep, no more index cards. Just a DNA database
Whose computers do you think power the facial recognition system used at every airport?
Palantir
MAGA is Fascism. MAGA is Murder. MAGA is the worst of Us. MAGA is the Enemy from Within.
Putin loves them....
“‘Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.’”
Indeed we are.
The people of Surprise who showed up at the council meeting took on that responsibility, as are millions of their fellow countrymen.
What’s being done in our name, paid for with our taxes, in the end, is our responsibility.
It couldn’t be more clear that republicans have gone full NAZI
It couldn’t be more clear that cruelty is the point and maximum pain and suffering is the goal
It couldn’t be more clear that republican “leadership” is guilty of crimes against humanity.
It couldn’t be more clear that republicans have hijacked our government and our electoral process in order to commit these crimes in our names.
It couldn’t be’t be more clear that the oligarchs and Vlad have planned, executed and rule the fools who have betrayed every ideal the founders had when they passed on to us the right to choose a “more perfect union.”
How much more proof do you need, people who have groceries to buy, games to watch, and excuses to make.
It couldn’t be more clear that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country..
Do we like things complicated?
In a book on Studio Ghibli, “Ghibliverse,” authors Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham draw on a valuable perspective from Ursula Le Guin. Her 1968 novel, “A Wizard of Earthsea” became Ghibli’s 2006 film “Tales from Earthsea.” The film erred, she said, introducing an obvious villain: “The darkness within us can’t be done away with by swinging a magic sword . . . In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil.”
Her books, she went on, “are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions.”
As “Ghibliverse’s authors also went on to say, Le Guin “rejects the simple paradigm of good versus evil for a more complex, personal framework: a relationship with darkness, rather than a fight against it.”
How many of us would follow her when, today, we face such corruption in Donald, such cruelties, violence, and murders? How many of us would like a clear no to his cravings for more power for himself, more white supremacist racism, more impunity from his corrupted “supreme” court, more alliances with all his dictator friends?
And yet, might we also look through Ursula Le Guin’s eyes as we see how so many of our richest elites enjoy the immunities which being elite has given them? Might more from among us concede how simple-minded our own normality is when only one set of measures, those of testing, govern all meritocracy’s doors that open for winners (outside those of inherited money)?
Viewing the Hayao Miyazaki film "Princess Mononoke" quite literally changed my daughter's life, and ours (of my wife and I) as well. It think she was 10. She really appreciated the complexity of the characters compared to Disney.
I think such boosts in empathy and in beauty come to many via Ghibli, J L.
Beautiful and timely analysis, Phil! Studio Ghibli and Ursula LeGuin have long been favorites of my daughter and me.
The Detention Map: Is A New ICE Warehouse Planned For Your Town?
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/01/09/ice-detention-center-expansion-map/
Mapping how billions being spent to build concentration camps by slashing Medicare.
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/08/28/american-concentration-camps-map/
Relieved to see no ICE detention centers planned for Ohio, but that doesn't mean some cash-strapped shady commercial real estate developer in one of our many little 'burgs or 'villes wouldn't love the chance to unload an empty warehouse given the chance.
Note: Link 1 was locked by Microsoft Defender as unsafe. I didn't try link 2.
Thanks for letting me know. I'm not sure why Microsoft is blocking it ?
Try this link which goes directly to the PADLET platform where the warehouse map is. https://padlet.com/bluewavepad/ice-detention-centers-zefq4brsx8l5r4ja
Let me know if that works for you. Thanks.
This link works.
Seems like a legit link...