Officials in the Trump administration have worked hard to restrict the access of members of Congress to the detention centers it has established across the country.
In her podcast earlier today Heather analogized two sets of contrasts.
The first was the deliberate effort by Donald’s Department of Homeland Security to remove its tens of thousands in concentration camps all to outside the rule of law.
The second, more recent, larger effort attacks all the U.S.’s intelligence agencies, removing the entire U.S. from the protection of all the laws those agencies have for decades monitored and defended. Criminal Donald’s bid to destroy the latter came today in his nomination of Donald sycophant and rank amateur Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence.
We know from slightly earlier history – criminal Donald’s first term in the White House – that he publicly scorned all American intelligence, saying in Helsinki with Putin that he believed his pal Vlad well over any and all U.S. intelligence.
This is the same criminal, rapist Donald who for years worked in tandem with pal Jeffrey and Russian oligarchs in their money laundering, drug running, arms dealing, and trafficking underage girls and young women. Life is a series of rackets; the law just a nuisance to those profits.
In her Letter, here, after her podcast, Heather ends quoting Greg Bovino -- on the delight from his criminal Donald's fellow far right to destroy the law, and so install their racist, fascist directorate.
Heather also says that it will get worse before it gets better. Her post today goes into the things are getting worse category. It reeks of Trump's desperation, but it still is adding to the very long list of damage we will have to repair.
The one piece of good news Heather noted was the massive loss rate on immigration cases in the courts. What Heather did not mention was the SCOTUS ruling in the Alabama gerrymandering case, which allowed the new map that reduces the number of Black-majority districts from 2 to 1. The partisanship is sickening, Here is reporting from the NY Times:
"The justices rejected a finding by three federal judges, including two appointed by President Trump, that there was evidence the map had been drawn intentionally to discriminate. The majority wrote that the lower court’s analysis had “departed” from the Supreme Court’s recent Voting Rights Act decision."
"Next came a surprise: When a panel of three federal judges re-examined the state’s map through the prism of the Supreme Court’s April decision, it unanimously agreed to block the map again.
In a 79-page decision issued on May 26, the panel, which included two judges appointed by Mr. Trump, wrote that it had carefully re-examined the evidence and again concluded that the map would be discriminatory. The judges said they could not “see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
The judges added that they were “painfully aware of the gravity of our ruling.” But, they added, “we do not find the issue particularly complex or close.”
Republican leaders then asked the Supreme Court to weigh in and clear the way for their preferred map, arguing that they were under time pressure as they prepared for the elections.
The challengers, including civil rights groups and Democratic state politicians, urged the court to reject the Republican state lawmakers’ request, asserting that overturning the lower court’s finding would allow Alabama to “replace a lawful plan with an unlawful and unconstitutional one” in a move that “would create chaos.”"
SCOTUS rejected the three-judge appeals court findings. Then SCOTUS chastised them. Again form the NYTimes:
"The conservative justices in the majority wrote that a unanimous three-judge panel that had blocked the map in late May after determining that it was racially discriminatory had “failed to follow our instruction” in light of the court’s recent Voting Rights Act ruling."
The judicial win rate on SCOTUS decisions is what is Trump's trump card. That is going to loom over election-interference issues in the midterms, and whatever actions a Democrat-led Congress enacts should there be a blue wave. If those bills survive a Trump veto, Trump will appeal to SCOTUS. As far as I can see, the SCOTUS majority will back him on everything except where it would affect the oligarchs' profit, the notable example being the decision on tariffs.
“The judicial win rate on SCOTUS decisions is what is Trump's trump card.” 🎯
We’ve seen what Roberts really meant years ago about “just calling balls and strikes.” And now umpires (at least 6 of them and that’s enough) have been bought, so the strike zone is whatever they say it is.
I agree things absolutely will continue to get worse for a while. The Grump could kick the bucket tomorrow, but there are so many bad actors he has empowered in both high and low profile positions who will continue to do grievous damage. They have become entrenched, surrounding themselves with armed guards, and living behind iron gates and guard towers on our military bases. And their policies, now unleashed, have taken on an inertia of their own which will not easily be stopped.
Not to mention we who resist and the party we look to for resistance in the government have much work to do.
I don’t believe the DNC truly understands the assignment. If they did, they would be facilitating a shadow government, not just sending endless text rants saying “Trump so bad, very bad. Send us money!” This is 1990s-style messaging ill formed to modern communications and utterly naive about the existential threat we face.
And we on the streets and online spaces like Substack need to stop bashing each other. We have one common enemy. One. And he makes no distinction on whether we are centrist, progressive or something else on the left. In his phraseology we are all the same “radical left” who he wants to silence, jail, and quite possibly even kill.
I agree 100%. The minions are already running the show—they just have to feed Trump whatever the next grievance target should be, and he will spew it forth. The only thing Trump gets to do is pick who is in and who is out at any given moment. Trump enjoys the chaos, thinking it means he is in command, playing Rubio and Vance off of each other while Miller, Vought, and Hegseth seem to be making the decisions.
Rebecca Bennett won the NJ-07 primary after the Republican dirty-tricks fake Progressive PAC was exposed. She has no government experience and is a Mikie Sherrill clone down to flying Black Hawks. Might not be a good thing after Sherrill is blowing her handling of the Delaney Hall protests. But Bennett is visible, which is saying a lot given that her Republican opponent, Tom Kean Jr., still has not been seen for 3 months, secluded in a “place with no cameras.”
The Democrats’ “best and brightest” (at least in NJ) seem to be mostly people who can cough up at least half a million of their own cash to get on the ticket in a primary for a House seat. Bennett was able to do it without staking herself, which I take as a positive sign. I hope she connects with some solid policy wonks to refine her messaging—that is where the real power of a shadow cabinet resides.
I agree with you about the democrats, Chris Johnson. We are their bosses, we pay their salary, vote for them to take care of our problems and should be held accountable. Not only will they have to repair all the damage - and its enormous - but they're going to have to work on fair taxes, common sense/sane gun control, health care for all, a living wage, maybe paid parental leave. Their plate will be piled so high!!
The pacifist definition of "harder and smarter" will never -- say again (never) -- overcome the ChristoNazi gerrymandering. The midterms are thus lost even before Trump officially disenfranchises millions -- myself included -- by forbidding mail-in voting.
OH!! Amen about the DNC. I WILL NOT support them because they have allowed this entire debacle to happen. They are stuck using those 1990 political methods on a totally new and ruthless attack on democracy and the American public. What the hell is wrong with these people??? And I point directly at Schumer and all the old farts who think they are being "reasonable", when they are just being blind. I changed my registration to independent-nonaffiliated when Trump was "elected" the first time, because of my disgust with the ineffectual and hapless "leadership" in the Democratic establishment.
Yes, Chris, as to your call-out of the DNC being so utterly out of touch.
It's what happens when schools dehumanize, and for decades graduate tens of millions all passive to the conceits of testing, but totally unequipped with any of our tools from novels, histories, memoirs, arts.
Love your take on DNC as reduced long now to only "text rants saying 'Trump so bad, very bad. Send us money!'"
Sigh…. For the umpteenth time, the legally chartered responsibilities of the DNC are:
Organizing and executing the Democratic National Convention held every four years to officially nominate the party's presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
The Party Platform: Overseeing the process of writing, updating, and promoting the national party platform that defines the party's core values and policies.
Fundraising: Raising national funds to finance party-building activities and supporting the campaigns of Democratic candidates.
Data & Voter Protection: Developing campaign technologies, maintaining extensive voter databases, combating disinformation, and protecting
Nowhere in the charter is the power to play Luke Skywalker and raise a rebel army. Or organize a shadow government. We’re not a parliamentary government, and there’s no provision for a shadow government in the Constitution.
Perhaps spend this energy helping to elect Democrats at all levels of government. Or run for something yourself.
Or, as Bob Marley might have put it, six so-called SCOTUS justices need to emancipate themselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds, but I'm not expecting them to sing Marley's Redemption Song any time soon. So, I'll just hum a few bars to myself now and then.
Unbelievable, isn't it, Georgia, this Long Dong Clarence court.
We all know its pro-corporate side, its infamously 16 years ago waving the magic wand of Citizens United to bless that corruption.
But it's not only abetting dark money. Long Dong Clarence likely fancies himself in Da Big House, enjoying all the luxuries the enslaving class can dish out to its most servile enablers. I guess he doesn't primarily hate those with skin color such as his own -- mainly instead he hates all those not cold-blooded, avaricious, and greedy such as him, his Donald, and all the others whose dehumanized educations produce the cavalcades of easily rationalized predation and corruption.
Or do I err? I assume some decent teacher (or, plural, teachers) might have forced, induced, stimulated Long Dong Clarence and criminal Donald yet in their youths to read "Light in August," "Doctor Zhivago," "Gentlemen Prefers Blondes," "The Makioka Sisters," at least one Dashiell Hammett, and "Cry, the Beloved Country."
Nope? Then what are the percentages -- do they change over time -- of even the most expensive schools having teachers schooling only the mechanization, assembly-lining, packaging of humanity?
Add to the above all the Republican Senators and Representatives who have Law Degrees from Yale and Harvard and Stetson. Those degrees are badly tainted.
Phil, The Court's lone curly pubic hair is, indeed, despicable, but I think you err in naming The Court after him. Recall that he sat like a bump on the bench for 20ish years as a silent spectator until he was joined by Donald's christofascist appointees confirmed by the McConnell Senate. Suddenly, the racially confused Clarence found his voice, encouraged by his white daddy, John Roberts. The bench is correctly named The Roberts Court.
Yes the long dong Clarance court allied by the great leader himself, Joe Biden, who wanted to save his little white ass at the hearings by tossing Anita Hill under the bus after long dong say “… this is nothing but a high tech lynch mob.” Thereby appointing Long Dong. Ya baby love that ole stumbling stuttering Joe.
Of course. It’s important that we keep perspective of who we support. But so often those in office want to stay there and they will compromise their positions. I wonder if anyone ever asked Biden why he ultimately didn’t object to the worst justice ever.
Solution to that: don't even try. Imagine life as without contradictions, entangled contexts, complications, emotional debts, and accident and serendipity.
Imagine life simply as a place where only anonymous others put the questions, always with only the possible answers A)-B)-C)-D) -- and one only is ever correct.
Of course many of us defy understanding even to ourselves.
I can't come up with a rudimentary understanding of Thomas. I think I read one once but it did not stick. There are people who do bad things and are to be forgiven because on balance they are good (sorry to use bad vs good). But then there are people who are really thoroughly bad. Oppositional, defiant. And they get elected or put in high position.
Though the regime is losing the vast majority of their cases, are they actually complying with the decisions? It seems to me that they ignore them. If that is the case, then are they really losing?
A valid point. I am not sure how many cases count as outright defiance of a Court order or an Act of Congress. The response to the Epstein files should, but that is because the Republican Congress is letting the non-compliance slide, like with the not-under-oath testimony from Bondi. There is certainly a reliance on foot-dragging to delay, delay, delay.
Yes, James -- but let's add some adjectives or relative clauses to "we the people."
That is, Heather genuinely sees, respects, and celebrates an active, energetic "we the people." She's meditated on "we the people" over the past 250 years who've seen each other -- including gotten well-schooled in the newspapers, magazines, books of history, case law, memoirs, novels, and other arts all well in touch with each other's conditions and contexts on the ground.
We equip, energize, fuel, rhyme, sing each other by our trust in this heritage we've propelled forward.
We the people must seek justice by sowing the seeds of truth and reconciliation so we will reap what we sow. To paraphrase Nelson Mandela, justice always seems impossible until it’s done because it always appears to be impossible with foresight ... until it is always obvious in hindsight.
The powers that be believe themselves to be impregnable and do everything they can to make us agree — right up until the moment it…all…comes…crashing…down.
You don't have to read Pema Chodron's book, When Things Fall Apart, to know that "things falling apart" is often nature's way, and it can be a very good thing, but that is the book's message. And I agree.
Fair enough but nature doesn't care if humans exist or not. Humans themselves need to do the caring and working to prevent "things falling apart." I don't think "nature's way" really applies.
Wake up, Mr. Carey; history proves that "truth and reconciliation" with Evil is impossible. And capitalism -- the larva of Nazism -- is the most ecogenocidal Evil on this planet.
Wake up, Mr. Bliss. History proves that truth and reconciliation is the only alternative to lies and retribution. When you discard the former, then you might as well stop at the local Unconstrained Ignorance vendor on the way home, buy yourself a MAGA hat, and wear it with pride.
Don't tell me truth and reconciliation doesn't work. Tell Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Best of luck.
Real capitalism is based on Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments (1759). If you're referring to capitalism in name only (based on Milton Friedman's 1962 theory that rich people don't need to be moral), then please stop blaming me for your naivety.
Loren appears to me to be awake. History also proves that authoritarianism succeeds when the "people" let it! The people's representatives in DC are not stopping the takeover, but aiding it. Other than a civil war, since our laws are being ignored by congress and the administration, the people are screwed!
Thanks, James R. Carey. I don't know who originated this, but here's a profound adage that I think is appropriate for this discussion: "Hate can never stop hate; only love stops hate."
Perhaps it's easier for some to understand the term "love" as "compassionate kindness." Consider words from diarist Anne Frank and then those of poet Audre Lorde, which follows Anne's: "We all live with the objective of being happy. Our lives are all different and yet the same." And: "It's not our differences that divide us, but our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
Capitalism is hardly the larva of Nazism. But, like all major components of the modern world, it has proven to be a double-edged sword. At once a builder and destroyer, it has evolved in ways that Smith did see and he both celebrated its potential and warned us of its risks.
Well said, James Quinn. And one can find out more about "PROGRESSIVE CAPITALISM" (similar to that used in Denmark & elsewhere effectively to benefit "the people" and not just the investor class) by reading "THE PRICE OF INEQUALITY" & "PEOPLE, POWER, & PROFITS" by Nobel Laureate ECONOMIST, Joseph Stiglitz, and reading "SUPERCAPITALISM" by FORMER SECRETARY OF LABOR, Robert Reich and visiting his Substack, as well as that of Nobel Laureate ECONOMIST, Paul Krugman (and/or take his MasterClass).
Unregulated capitalism. The Scandinavians have capitalism, but it is regulated. America used to regulate capitalism, then the John Birch Society came along which morphed into the Heritage Foundation.
Capitalism on steroids is what I call it. Capitalism per se isn’t bad; but when it’s unregulated, as you say, and given huge boosts through laws, mergers and political power, it’s really corrosive and destructive. So much to undo if we get the chance.
If an arsonist burns down your house, or an excavator tears down the East Wing of our house, and a judge ruling months or years later that the laws were ignored--you are still homeless and it only takes about two hours for your home and everything in it to become a pile of ashes.
trump is democracy's arsonist and no matter what the justice system metes out later (usually much later if at all) our democracy is still ashes.
This is the core problem of our justice system embraced by how we practice capitalism. Justice is slow, expensive, and delivers very little actual justice for crimes committed by those with means or power. If only our political arsonists were treated as harshly as shoplifters! Fines, restitution, jail time, and banned from the premises are all on the table.
The ever increasing speed of 'society' for lack of a better word has left our speed of justice in the dust. We have no actually enforceable federal laws that are the equivalent of malpractice in governance. Crooked lawyers get not much more than a judicial tongue lashing. The punishments where some actually exist, are not equal to the seriousness of the crimes.
We desperately need deep enforcement and judicial reforms that focus on the really injurious political crimes. That is the lesson we need to learn from our trump horror show.
I feel fairly confident that you mean well, Loren Bliss, however, I must say that you have overstated the true panoramic big picture. Some are incorrigible and beyond redemption, but many if not most are misguided and may well wake up and join the true patriots...
By and large, Loren, I don't agree with your perception on truth and reconciliation. James, I believe, is correct that this method works as proven by the likes of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. The problem doesn't lie in T&R, it lies in the either perceived notion or the often-proven lack in justice absent to those who committed the offence. South Africa's P.W. Botha was never brought to justice after his tenure. De Klerk accepted the belief that what Botha promoted was damaging and caused death in too many of S.A. population. The real visceral bite in all of this revolves more around all those who escape justice when any party commits to T&R. With criminal deviants like Trump and his sycophants, on this point, I would have to agree that T&R "'truth and reconciliation' with Evil is impossible." With Trump, there is nothing to prove and little for which to hope, when employing T&R in coming to terms and putting finality to criminal conduct such that Trump and co. have committed. The real and only solution for a case or matter such as this, is in fact, the "long arm of the law." This is what we all need to concentrate on and push our representatives to commit.
One may say, Loren, that capitalism has destroyed America, as it has become an authoritarian capitalism, which, in turn, has allowed some - aka the parasitic creatures - to gift or bribe the deity.
Thanks, and yes, BUT the trumpian misguided, sometimes murderously brutal minions have been hindering true education and pushing false evil propaganda. Our task is enormous, and we must continue to RESIST & DEFY!
It's a power you can only effectively exercise once every four years and that's why Trump continues to act with impunity. It also doesn't help that a large minority of 'you, the people', continue to support him.
"A large minority" continues to support him?? That's a contradiction. In any event, none of those people are on this forum, so lay the blame somewhere else.
Why is it a contradiction? It is a scale of the size of the minority. A small minority might be 1% of the total, a middling minority 25% of the total and a large minority 49% of the total.
Yes, a large minority of people support Trump, if it were a small minority the kowtowing Republican candidates wouldn't be bowing to Trump.
Ellen, at the risk of "mansplaining," there is nothing incorrect about Netto's use of the phrase "large minority." Any percentage less than 50% is a minority. Of the 152,320,193 votes cast in 2024, Donald got 49.8% of the votes, a minority. But given that it's almost 50%, I think anyone would agree that it's large minority.
It may also help to understand that Netto is not a resident of the U.S. When he refers to the collective "you," he is referring to all of us U.S. residents, not just HCR's readers.
"It's a power you can only effectively exercise once every four years and that's why Trump continues to act with impunity. It also doesn't help that a large minority of 'you, the people', continue to support him."
Are you saying I support Dissembling Don? Really? Help me understand where on God's green earth you got that idea.
So, we all agree about "right." That means we agree that right makes might, and that reveals how we (in Lincoln's words) must "dare to do our duty as we understand it."
For the moment, perhaps, we still have the power to reestablish the democratic process here. Success is not a foregone conclusion.
Years ago I read that "words matter." I can't remember the context. In her report, HCR reports that Rene and Alex were killed by ICE agents. True, they were killed, but more accurately, they were murdered. Words matter.
Yes, and later, following a private 2-hour meeting with Putin, Trump confiscated the interpreter's notes and told her never to reveal what was discussed. I have no doubt that Trump committed treason then and that he continues to do so now. It's the Moscow hotel room videos from the 1990's. We can guess what was filmed but it may be worse than we think.
It's true Chris, therefore it's an infinite problem....till we finally find a solution. That solution should accomplish and infinite " never again" . Thank You For Replay. 😅
Super good, Hulit -- I'd already seen it, many here will appreciate it very much.
Barbara McQuade talking with Rachel Maddow -- on how mobster Donald runs his extortions. Elite law. The top universities. The largest of legacy media and social media. Tech giants. So much corruption, over-the-top corruption.
Hello GJ... 'The Ghost In The Machine' says it makes the Israeli Theft of USA Military Tech Easier... Netanyahu has said that in 3-Years, Weapons from the USA will be un-necessary... OBW: The Israelis sell their Tech to anyone, including the Russians, and Chinese... Indeed the Closest Ally of the Apartheid South African Regime was Israel...
Markwayne Mullin has discovered a brave new theory of government: obey the Constitution, unless a judge expects you to mean it.
Asked whether DHS would follow court orders, Mullin refused to answer. This was bold, in the same way walking into traffic while yelling “I understand crosswalks” is bold. He insisted DHS would “never break the Constitution,” while declining to say whether court rulings count as part of it.
Apparently, in MAGA civics, the Constitution is not a legal framework. It is a scented candle.
This is the whole Trump project in miniature. Praise the law. Dodge the judge. Blame the courts. Militarize the bureaucracy. Call it freedom with a straight face.
If the administration wins, democracy has spoken. If it loses, the judiciary has been weaponized. If it loses roughly 90% of the time, that is not evidence of lawlessness. That is just hundreds of judges being very unfair to the poor, misunderstood deportation machine.
Mullin’s proposed accountability system is even better: “We’ll hold each other accountable.” Wonderful. Nothing says rule of law like the suspects forming a book club to review their own behavior.
Meanwhile, detainees are begging for due process, inspectors are blocked, lawmakers are treated as pests, and armed federal agents operate like a traveling constitutional crisis with tactical gear.
The new slogan writes itself: No kings, no courts, no problem.
Just vibes, badges, contracts, and a government that loves the Constitution so much it keeps trying to protect it from the people legally authorized to enforce it.
As long as people don't get this, it will only get worse.
Why does the entire GOP support the destruction of the rule of law and claim that only the executive branch has the right to interpret the law, not the judiciary branch of government?
For the same reason that the entire GOP supports what Mike Johnson publicly declared the job of the legislative branch to be, ever since "we the people" gave them full control over DC: merely to "codify the executive orders signed by the president".
The end of the independence of three co-equal branches of government has a name: it's called FASCISM, literally the bundling ("fasces" = "bundle", in Latin) of the power of the legislative and judiciary branches of government into that of the executive branch.
Steve Bannon called this (euphemistically) "governing the way a business is governed". In a WSJ interview, he said that the GOP sees governing as similar to how to private sector businesses merge: first both CEOs meet and negotiate the deal. Then, lawyers come in to put it all into fine print.
The GOP has become a party of neofascist ideologues, and the end of the rule of law in immigration detention camps is merely a rehearsal for what will soon be done to anyone who actively fights for democracy.
It has always been unfathomable to me that people think government should be run like a business. They are not at all the same sort of creature with the same purpose, and most businesses are callous, ignorant and capricious.
It was not always thus, but the move from stakeholder to shareholder primacy, has done much to ruin the institutions.
Exactly, and then there's that (the fact that many businesses aren't that well run in the first place).
That being said, if we go back to the origins of Western civilization, Aristotle was a strong advocate of democracy but Plato, his teacher, actually had quite some good arguments pro authoritarianism. He proposed that an authoritarian regime in which a group of 11 people (who use the majority vote among them to make decisions for the entire community) decide everything guarantees the best possible outcome for society as a whole IF those 11 people are the best among peers. Who are those "aristos" (ancient Greek for "the best")?
Philosophers - in Plato's meaning of the term, so the original meaning of it - in other words those who have trained their minds in rational thinking, in considering all options on the table (including all proposals/views coming from all others), in ethical thinking (having a clear understanding of "the supreme good", after very thorough analysis and without ever imagining that that understanding is a definitive one) and in consulting everyone.
Aristotle's main counterargument is that even the best cannot truly know what is important for all citizens, so they still risk making worse decisions compared to a democracy in which all citizens can vote and where all citizens together engage in constant public debates.
Today, private businesses aren't designed to deliver "the supreme good" for society as a whole in at the first place. That alone already is enough to see how useless this model is, when it comes to governing...
True on every count. Two things in the last day leave me unsettled.
1st, the 'concession' on 'backing away' (sic) from the paramilitary support fund (i.e., $1776 million) leaves the tax-&-racketeering immunity for Trump and his brooding brood in place (sick). What I recall is when we played wiffle-ball as kids. One kid would say that he and A, B, C, D would be one one team; all of the better players. Of course that would never fly. So that captain would "give up" B and C or / and D. Keeping player A is what that captain had sought all along. That manipulation worked in grade school, not in international diplomacy. So, Trump and his gangster family walks away with what they prize most: escapring transparency of, and accountability for, their financial transgressions.
2nd, during the Rubio hearing in the Senate, Senator Kaine pointed out that the murder on the high seas occurs after a vetting process that does NOT include adducing evidence or citing indications of drugs being on board of the boats. Senator Paul made the same observation and added that intelligence of guns being on board of these speed-boats is NOT included in attack criteria. These are small boats; hence not much space to hide things. Interdicting passage of these boats to inspect them makes more sense.
You know, we actually can read virtually everything Heather writes by ourselves, for ourselves. Even summarize it for ourselves. We can even read Greg Bovino’s quote on our own, too — all by our little selves, just imagine. And summon our own indignation afterward.
Did I miss the part where you added something new, funny, or pertinent that wasn’t already there in the original?
Five years ago, laurie, I wrote ICTT under his real name, raising questions he hated.
He'd published a book the previous year dealing with some intransigent nastiness perennial to the rich and powerful. I made the case to him that schools might humanize, could, anyway.
He never answered then, and has hated seeing my comments here about how our using humanities might help us humanize. For him, the Powell memo did its damage to many, to him, too, in ways he cannot admit, will not consider. That is, to rid humanities from schools, K-12 and "higher," the far-right foundations consequent to the 1971 Powell memo spent the entirety of the 1970s asserting all humanities as no more than decoration, ornamentation, all just marginal to the forms of intelligence which -- all normal people know -- testing so easily measures and keeps confined to its such-nicely-rational-only categories.
Those far-right foundations won. Testing took over. And you don't see many public figures or media elites any more citing characters from novels, histories, or memoirs.
Thank you for this, Phil. Ever since I have been a member of HCR's commenter community, I have not understood ICTT's perpetual axe-grinding with you. He often contributes meaningful comments, but the repeated sniping is tiresome.
Lest you (or he) mistake my comment for taking sides, I am not. In all honesty, I think you sometimes see a connection to standardized testing and/or humanities education where there is none. Nevertheless, I am sympathetic; no doubt, some find my connection of bad politics to bad theology misplaced. We all have our passions.
How would you respond if somebody tried to “translate” stuff you’re perfectly capable of reading for yourself? It’s unnecessary and condescending both.
Trump promised America a golden age and delivered the pyrite age: cheap shine, counterfeit patriotism, and glitter over rot. All that glitters is not gold, especially when the con man crowns himself.
Well, I've met some bad people, but none as bad as trump and his merry band of henchmen and henchwomen. Not one decent cell in their body existing within a culture of impunity. Daily we are fighting to claim the country instead of the king claiming the world. I haven't written anything new, but I've got a lot of anger in and I've got to let a lot of anger out...
The Nazis made their undesirables stateless; therefore, there was no law to protect their rights. Apparently, we have learned a lot from them and are employing their methods. So very disheartening to think that there are such evil people who spend a lot of time figuring out how to hurt others.
Such a disgusting reign by this administration! History will both excoriate It (and them) as well as try to explain the confluences of voters who didn’t care about anyone but themselves
What you say of the future will be true, Winkie, if schools change.
Not caring "about anyone but themselves" has featured our schools since they evicted humanities, civics, and essay writing. Restore them and we've got consciences back.
It's your blind faith in your Constitution and political institutions that has in fact led you down this dangerous path to autocracy. You urgently need to reform your democracy so that it actually protects you from people like Trump.
In any other country a Trump would have been voted out by the cabinet. Why even Margaret Thather was ousted in that manner when it was perceived she was becoming autocratic. I hope the constitution is amended, if and when we return to normal...
" ... when it was perceived [Thatcher] was coming autocratic." Fast forward to yesterday's National Security Intelligence travesty:
BOB PULTE, "Little Trump", who now heads the FHA has been appointed to replace Tulsi Gabbard's attack-hack position. Pulte has no qualifications for any National Intelligence position as in zero, nada, none.
"Acting" positions have a maximum length of 210 Days. So the "acting" Pulte position ends near the end of 2026.
Per Ari Melbar's investigation on "The Beat" Tuesday, Pulte was involved with the FAILED attack Fed Chairman Powell. Ari's guest yesterday, Andrew Weissman, confirms that Pulte has "no experience or qualifications in keeping the Country safe" putting us all at risk. Pulte is an autocratic, crude "Hatchet Man".
Paging Norm Eisen, Democracy Docket, you have a phone call.
Russell ... correct me if I'm wrong. Meanwhile, I'll assume you're looking in the mirror speaking to yourself. I do too from time to time. In the words of Viktor Frankl, "When we are no longer able to challenge a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." Have faith that right makes might, but not blind faith.
Absolutely Russell. There is nationalism on both sides that prevents us from seeing the foundational cracks in our democracy. American exceptionalism is the root of this problem.
Yes. Sadly Nazism has broken out across America and the GOP, who may not like the optics of Trump's utter corruption, are willing to fund the ICE/Nazi movement with our tax dollars, to the hilt.
So much work to do. So many Nuremberg 2 trials to hold in 2029 or before. So many places to shine sunlight.
You really need to cut back on that drinking habit. When when you do, pick any of the thousands of books about the Nazis, and maybe even a book about America. And them compare.
They probably move people to different detention centers around the country in order to up numbers and gain more contract fees for all we know - and double up on days held counts.
The question Emma is how? When Congressional delegations give notice of visits to the detention centers, on several occasions ALL of the detainees (prisoners) have been relocated. And then they are moved back after the visit?
How much are we spending just on transportation costs for ICE because of this human shell game?
It was a story several months ago. I don't remember the details but I believe it was a center in TX where there was another one somewhat nearby??? Sorry.
Probably someone on the inside, or someone suing for being subject to such movement. A US born (hence citizen) with Mexican parents was held for 30 ish days and recently released. She was sent to 5 or 6 detention centers in that period.
Okay third thought. I wish I could edit these comments. I forgot until now that the contracts are for a certain number of beds anyway. So if they are contracted for 170 beds, they get paid for 170 whether 170 are filled or not. I assume it is still this way, I can't imagine that it is not. Jails are basically the same as they budget vendor contracts etc that way as well. Still though, even if this is how it is done, been some years before I have thought about this so I will go look, this is still not an idea to let go. They would argue for more bed space and money by saying they filled beds and need more, essentially that double count, so it ends up the same. Such a perverse system when you need to jail people to meet a prexisting contract. Prisons and jails across the US are the same, especially since prisons are built in areas with little other employment, so shutting one down is political suicide.
I hadn't heard about that case. I will look online. Yes, exactly right, perfect case for that. I really don't want this idea to die, there is something here, I am sure of it. I wonder what software they use. I also wonder if they ghost them, ie take them off the log showing transfer, but then hours or more go by before transfer [separate reasons for that]; or vice versa and leave them on after transfer. I assume they get paid at 12:01. But say they go from one geo facility to another geo facility same day, which was that previous excellent thought. Is geo getting paid twice? I would bet heavily that they are. Sounds like something congress should have access to.
I couldn't edit my last comment just now. Someone should also look at whether those transfers are for example geo to geo or geo to core civic and back etc. Also curious who is doing the transfers - ie ICE or contractors, and if contractors, which company[s].
I could make a case it’s more about making money. Racism is certainly the “how” but the end game in everything connected to these awful people seems to continuously involve a money scam of one kind or another.
It’s all about money for sure. American style capitalism and democracy depend on keeping “we the people” divided.
Our nation ended up with skin color as a dividing line because the “aristocrats” were afraid of laborers coming together to oppose the exploitation of laborers. (See Bacon’s Rebellion from the 1600s.)
Now in this century we have too many citizens who are afraid of the “Great Replacement”. They’re so afraid that they voted for a criminal, liar and thief to protect them. Why fear people with different skin color?
If you go back and examine the laws put in place to insure a divided population, you’ll see how white supremacy was designed and implemented to accomplish this division.
It was all about the money. It still
is. Racism is the how, the why and the what we need to fight against. The power is with the people. Hungary showed us that change is possible.
There’s a reason the Confederates made up stories about The “Lost Cause”. It’s the same reason this regime wants to erase our true history. If we could expose more of our history people would understand what a detriment racism is to all of us. It doesn’t just hurt Black and Brown people.
If our politics, practices and policies which are based on white supremacy were eliminated, the wealthy class would lose power-and money.
The fact it is "the same old serpent" convinces me our only (rational) hope for Liberation is creation of an overseas shadow government; mobilization of a domestic partisan Resistance as determined as that which hamstrung the Original Nazis in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia and especially the Soviet Union; and a massive, four-pronged D-Day-II invasion by an international humanitarian alliance -- preferably a quadruple envelopment: simultaneous offensives from Canada and all three coastlines.
I say this with profound woe because I am a Regular Army veteran, (active duty 1959-1962 including 16 months in Korea). But when the sociological data about the ChristoNazi rabble is compared to the data about NSDAP membership revealed by the following links, the result is entirely supportive of my frankly horrifying conclusion:
Even so, the apocalyptic fly that contaminates this ointment of potential rescue is that Trump, like every USian president after Kennedy, is credibly reported to be pledged to follow the "Better Dead than Red" recommendation of Adolf Hitler to destroy the world if threatened by the prospect of defeat. As I have said before, the only possible counter-measure to this policy is a scientific impossibility: the alleged ability of UFOs to paralyze the entire USian war machine.
Meanwhile, our attackers' remain omnipotent, able to escalate their ecogenocidal hatred to ever-more-obscenely sadistic fanaticism..
Ooof - yes! Hard to swallow let alone digest… to be metaphorical. I’ll see if I have the ‘guts’ to read the links. Though I’ve read plenty of history and Robert J. Lifton, Timothy Snyder…
"Better dead than red"... To me, it's more kindergarten level thinking, but elevated to world scale: "If I can't have it, NO one will!" Puzzles me still that the result is the same: if Trump feels he's threatened with defeat, he'll destroy the world; if he is left in office, he'll destroy the world, too.
It seems America truly has elected the Anti-Christ...
I hope someone, Phil, does some investigation as to just WHO these people are that hide behind their corporations or LLC’s….private equity? who are the investors?, who gets the payout/dividends?….in other words are they just (likely) in it for the money (ditto the private prisons dotting the land) or are they true MAGA (or?) believers? 🤷🏻♀️
Again the privatization of our penal system has been along time coming. It rides on the same train track as the privization of all things such as community hospitals and ambulance service, parking meters ect ect ect . This started in particular with Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Money and all the isms go together it’s the colonial way. Cervantes Don Quixote begins in a prison.
Totally agree Mary…goes back as well to Reagan as CA governor and then as Prez…. Really, I guess, even further back to all the “movers ‘n shakers” that tried to disable FDR’s New Deal. Sigh….
I tried this morning. It was near impossible… why? If you look under the documents of an ETF at Vanguard you are given a list of (in my case) 14000 companies listed in groups of ten at a time. They are not listed in any particular order, nor is it sortable, filterable, downloadable, etc. So I was faced with manually scanning ten companies at a time, and I forwarded 15 pages before I got bored. It would have taken 1400 page turns so to speak to find Geogroup. In the end they hold less than 0,15 percent of investment in any one company in these most diverse of funds.
I think I would have to sell them all to have a clear conscience! I did see a handful of other companies I would rather not support as well…
There are ways to put some control on your retirement fu ds. I still don’t understand. The Roman Catholic Nuns have done some interesting work with putting truth to power with their donated stock shares. There are also are or where several groups that tried to tie in social justice to stocks. I think Seventh Generation was one. I was constantly asking financial advisers to do this for me. The last one has tried.
Well they created a way to buck the system at times. My old high school principal Sr Catherine Pinkerton left her position to join Network which was part of those type of actions. Inn her last address to the school she read Euxperary ‘s The Little Prince.
You can create your own ETF/mutual fund by buying individual stocks and doing the research on the ethical standards of each company. Moriningstar, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, and MSN Money can be places to start looking. It will take extra effort but your conscience will be clear.
I will look at mine this weekend and circle back. I got out of vanguard because of this issue a couple years ago but didn't look closely at the hold in my fund. I have access still so will pull it and see if it looks like what happened when you searched. It shouldn't be this hard.
He was intentionally confrontational and led squads of agents into a provoking of crowds. Greg Bovino's aggressive field tactics, public clashes with residents, and legal battles over his conduct might have finally gotten him dismissed but he's always shown his fascist white supremacist views by his words and actions.
The Nazi SS officer trench coat he wore during the ICE Metro Surge operation in Minneapolis made it apparent, not hiding it but intentional in his Nazi cosplay gear. "Along with his close-shorn haircut, the media organization Der Spiegel suggested in a video feature that Bovino’s look recalled that of a Nazi officer."
"Another German media outlet, Süddeutsche Zeitung, made similar comments. “Other countries also had these coats, but Bovino’s outfits complete the Nazi look: a closely cropped haircut, as if he had taken a photo of [assassinated SA leader] Ernst Röhm to the barber,” it said."
I am really not okay with Bovino just walking away on our dime. I want full hearings that review his last 30 years, a legitimate attempt to fix damage where at all possible, and the govt to address the current system with the reality of Bovino's past as our blueprint. Nothing changes because we treat our country exactly like this, let them retire and pretend it is a new day.
This has been going on fora long time. Michelle Alexander wrote about it in her book The New Jim Crow. And before that at times throughout our countries history and in the past in and present in other countries. An old name and clouded with issues but Dorothea Dix. Read the history of your states criminal justice systems. It will be an eye opener. Charles Dickens as a child spent time in the older version of the detention center the workhouse.
The book and movie entitled Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon tells the story too. What we now face is called “wage slavery” by some who have studied our system of capitalism and our form of democracy where resistance to increased minimum wage, right to work states, deregulation of environmental laws, OSHA concerns etc. don’t seem to matter.
It’s even more difficult for most of our population when too many of our “representatives” and “justices” are beholden to a network of wealthy people who think CEOs should be gods of the universe instead of “public servants” who care about our “common wealth”.
Professor Richardson -- Many thanks for making sense of yet another overwhelming day of sensational news. As you mentioned at the end of today's post regarding Gregory Bovino, the disgraced former Border Patrol chief, many of the divisions in our country ultimately stem from racism. As an American living abroad, I am embarrassed and dismayed by what is happening back home under the Trump administration. I don't blame my current neighbors for no longer wanting to visit the U.S.—they have good reason to be fearful. I plan to do my part to rectify this sad state of affairs by voting in the upcoming midterm elections from abroad.
I'm going to start sounding like a broken record. Apologies.
Every time you call them "detention centers," you are adding your (substantial) credibility to the administration's euphemism. In a very real sense, certainly without meaning to, you are actually supporting their premise: these places are not what they actually are, so relax. In this case, the cool, detached academic voice we appreciate so much begins to work for them. If calling these places concentration camps is too heated for you, then at least put "detention centers" in quotes.
TBG, even though I agree with you completely, it is unlikely that HCR will follow your suggestion, unless the Trump regime officially changes the designation of these facilities to the nomenclature you suggest.
HCR is, above all, a historian. The best historians are scrupulous about telling the story accurately without adding the slightest whiff of bias. Even journalists, who are supposed to report news neutrally, are given more latitude with their choice of words.
I cringe every time HCR refers to the Orange Menace as "President Donald J. Trump," but whether we like it or not, that is his official title. I'll wager HCR hates typing that, but she is a supreme professional and performs in her role to the highest standards, setting aside her personal feelings. Mostly. Occasionally, she let's an opinion slip, but it's always subtle.
So Bovino wants to remove a fourth of the US population. I have a suggestion: remove the ones who voted for Trump and are proud of it and would do it again. Really, would do it again. Without them we'd have a population much more apt to obey the Constitution and the laws and give their fellows in America decent treatment.
They are not “concentration camps” — a term describing one thing only. People are not being tortured, gassed and shot by the hundred thousand. Insisting they're one and the same just turns all this into caricature. Outrage does not clarify in this case, it obscures.
Neither are they detention centers, however. That much is clear. The proper reference —- as another poster noted —should use quotation marks or say explicitly “what the Administration terms…” There are ways to do this that both pass proper journalistic muster and tell a story that needs telling.
Technically, these detention centers are concentration camps- people being confined without access to a trial or due process. This is by design. These centers have not yet morphed into Nazi concentration camps but with the lack of proper conditions as revealed in Delaney, they’re headed in that direction.
I was alive--just a baby--when "Internment camps" were a thing. They were established by a form of "due process" and confined US citizens against their will. I agree with HCR that the current ICE facilities can and should be called concentration camps. She makes a distinction between what the Nazi's used for slave labor and "killing camps". People were confined together in close quarters without a legal hearing. Let's not get bogged down by arguments about semantics.
David, I agree with your last sentence, although I appreciate why outrage causes us to look for the right words to express it. I live not too far from the Japanese American internment camp at Rowher, AR. As now, the U.S. Government preferred a sanitized name for these facilities and officially called them "relocation centers." How sweet. Sounds like a resort.
"Internment" is probably an accurate word, but I'm not certain that most of these facilities even qualify as camps. My impression is that these warehouses are not even as humane as prisons, because there's no outdoor grounds where the incarcerated can go out and get some fresh air and sunlight. Truly, the U.S. has sunk even lower than the low we sank to in 1942.
I agree with you that the current warehouses for humans are less civilized than the internment camps, but it is still shameful how these citizens were denied their rights in that war driven hysteria.
Not all concentration camps were extermination camps But they were prisons for the political prisoners and unwanted citizens So yes these people are in Concentration camps
As Justice Sotomayor suggested in tonight‘s Alabama racial redistricting ruling, the SCOTUS 6 are upending the rule of law. And the same thing is happening with the newest batch of Trump appointed immigration judges. It‘s Soviet Judges all over again, decisions mandated by political expedience, not Constitutional due process.
Thomas Jefferson equated slavery with holding a wolf by the ears. We equate the “wolf” with names like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Joseph E. Johnson, and Nathan Bedford Forest.
The modern-day version of Jefferson Davis had the opportunity to find his courage and instead found a doctor who could find fake bone spurs. In front of people who risked their lives sitting on giant lit tubes of liquid hydrogen to jump the moon, he bragged about his fake courage. And that was AFTER seashells on the seashore scared him so much, he pooped his pants.
I equate the modern-day "wolf" with names like Steven Miller, Marco Rubio, Bari Weiss, Jeff Bezos, and John Roberts. They shouldn't be over or underestimated, but they also seem much more like a designer poodle pup in need of house training.
While it's hard to believe that Mr. Trump "aced" a test of his cognitive ability, I'm even more skeptical that he could pass the same test that our green card holders take to become citizens.
On another topic entirely, I need to amend what I'd written previously about commenting on the proposed Project 2025 new rule to have decisions on funding scientific research taken over by politicians and political appointees. This correct link will get you immediately to the comments page: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001 so please go add your two cents.
And the really embarrassing thing is him bragging about being able to identify a camel -- or that he knows the word 'dumb' ends in a 'b'. Mensa material? I think not!
So 47 appoints dufus head sycophant Pulte to oversee intelligence in flagrant violation of law, while Markie Mark flouts willingness to defy court orders. All the facades are falling away. Hopefully some of his followers will start to realize this ain’t what they bargained for. As they grasp harder more will slip through their fingers. Woe to anyone they catch though.
The facades are flailing and failing, indeed. Despite the sordid details of injustice we know we must read about, the cracks widen and deepen. Though they succeed in avoiding oversight here and there, they are losing the overall war itself.
To quote Miles Taylor, this past week has actually shown that defiance matters. It doesn’t just make a difference, it’s racking up strings of critical victories in succession. From his own Substack,”karma isn’t just coming out of nowhere to pay an aging autocrat a visit.” It’s being made possible by those who’ve continually refused to kiss the orange ass, who put their money where their mouth is. They’ve done the scutwork, filed the lawsuits, made the critical counter-arguments and put the lie to the lips of all those who say ‘just lie low, and this, too, shall pass.’ They refuse to lie low because they know that without resistance, it will not pass. Consider…
-a federal judge responded to a lawsuit filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), ordering Trump to remove his name from the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in Washington within 2 weeks. (That time is just about up.)
-Former FBI agents have launched the FBI Support Network, which offers free legal aid and financial support for agents in jeopardy, being forced out of their positions for defending the Constitution, rather than following illegal orders on the whim of a Manchurian Cantaloupe.
-The $1.8 billion slush fund is on hold, and all but dead, thanks ironically to John Thune and Senate Republicans who couldn’t take it. (Yes, Blanche is trying to walk back his own responses, but they’ve essentially lost that whole battle).
-The attempt to gag the entire civil service by forcing federal employees to sign non-disclosure agreements is going nowhere — as is the attempt to force every government grant to adhere to whatever standards of “loyalty” the Mango Malfeasance demands on any given day. Both are headed for defeat by way of immediate federal challenges, both extremely likely to lose in court.
-CBS’s Scott Pelley, one of the last true traditional journalists of substance and integrity, told Director Bari Weiss — a woman of no integrity whatever — to basically go to hell — all recorded on tape as her mealy-mouthed tech bro deputy tried to change the subject to bagels. Today Bari Weiss fired him, giving us all yet more reasons not to watch CBS now that Colbert is gone and 60 Minutes worthless. Ot-nay, oo-tay, ight-bray, Ms. Weiss….was kissing the orange ass truly worth the backlash?
—Yesterday, Jared and Dear First Daughter’s attempt to bribe the Albanian government into agreeing to their $1.7 billion resort along the Adriatic backfired when angry crowds in Tirana learned about the deal and burned down the Prime Minister’s official residence.
A long post — apologies — but underscoring that a great many things manufactured by Donald Jessica Dump in fear and loathing are now going ka-boom in Donald Jessica’s apricot-tinted, sneering formaldehyded face — and oh yes, the Strait of Hormuz is still being mined and still almost totally closed, with no “deal” on anybody’s horizon.
The shitshow is hardening, but the audience is leaving. Senator Lindsay Pittypat is now drinking himself to stuporous oblivion earlier every day. Soon we’ll have to start fetching the smelling salts and calling for the fainting couch before noon….
And would someone please take orange man to task for referring to "peace negotiations as 'boring"??? What President does that?
But thank you for pointing out all the ways he and his soul-less, wit-less, deranged cabinet are losing this war. The only place I want to see their faces in future is in mug-shots. Will someone please take our country back???
Of course Lindsey Pittypat had to course-correct…🍸🍸🍸🍸
“In a post Tuesday night on X, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wrote that "it is imperative that we allow people with meritorious weaponization claims to come forward and receive compensation through this fund," and proposed to create "a weaponization fund that will be available to those who can prove their claim against the federal government through the Federal Tort Claims Act."
How we created a Rapid Response App (https://makeitfast.org/SiegeOfDelaneyHall) to demand reforms at Delaney Hall including detainees' demands, links to call your elected rep and a free teleprompter with talking points.
Hold VANGUARD accountable for helping finance GEO Group: Follow the money with this map.
Also refuse to let Citizens Bank use your money. De-Ice Citizens and “Not with Our Money, Citizens” are two campaigns collecting pledges to withdraw your money collectively from this once community oriented Bank. At least $20 million pledged so far, and $3 million already withdrawn in steps to make our resolve clear. Citizens has money in both CoreCivic and GeoGroup. Citizens needs to join other banks in refusing to fund either concentration camps or private prisons (which unsurprisingly have lower parole rates and higher Black prisoner percentages)
Again this is good but an old issue. NPR had a report two decades or so ago about a corporation serving penal systems food as a food service entity. They had planned a 3 times a day gruel because inexpensive it was one of those old NPR moments when I had to pull over.
This government, this regime, knows that to break the law and wait for court action works more efficiently than upholding constitutional rights and laws for citizens and noncitizens alike. These are fascist tactics that continue even after court orders to release or to follow court mandates. In another war and time we saw gestapos take away human rights from anyone they deemed unworthy or inhuman. Apologize later even to government representatives. Distract with the president’s medical problems. Or a birthday party. People and governments from other countries no longer look at American life as fulfilling a dream of freedom. That no longer exists.
THE GREAT REPLACEMENT THEORY IS AN AUTHORITARIAN “US vs THEM” HOAX Since the time of Claude Levi-Strauss and before, mainstream anthropologists have suspected the existence of the recent recognition that “race is a social construction” or as anthropologist John H. Relethford somewhat differently states it: Race is a “culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation”. More than 30 years ago the science of genetics/genealogy proved that we are all the same species (sapiens) by tracing single nucleotide polymorphisms in the Y chromosome in men and in the mitochondrial DNA of women (all of your mitochondrial DNA comes from your mother). Men were traced back to a single man in east Africa (“The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey” by geneticist Spencer Wells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQAdPvKG4-U). And women were traced back to a single woman in the same region of east Africa (“The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry” by University of Oxford emeritus professor Bryan Sykes) And by “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari, Professor of history at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So we all have the same ancestors. Race is a myth. The production of melanin in skin cells is regulated by 150-200 genes. All of us have some of them - some more than others. Anthropological studies have taken groups of thousands of people and divided them up into “racial” groups and found that there were more phenotypic differences within each group than there were between the groups. Some cognitive scientists reason that “race” is an error of metacognition - like believing that the sun orbits the earth (a widespread belief in the past that Galileo was imprisoned for contradicting). People argued that because you can see it coming up on the eastern horizon, passing overhead and going down on the western horizon - so it must be going around/orbiting the earth. In any event freedom of travel and “interracial”/intercultural mating is rehomogenizing the perceived “racial” attributes (phenotypic characteristics) of our species. I don’t think “white supremacists” have any chance of changing this. We need to tolerate and appreciate the value of our diversity. Tribalism and cults are self-destructive. We are all part of the same family of ancestors that comprise humanity. To have a democracy we need to come together as “We the People”. E Pluribus Unum.
The appointment of Bill Pulte confirms that there is a kind of 'great replacement' currently going on in federal government. A recent report in Science found that some 10,000 STEM Ph.Ds had left government since Trump returned to office. A similar number of government attorneys have also departed over that period. It seems that Trump is replacing experts with idiots.
Refusing inspections, oversight, and judicial review of detention centers and actions puts DHS beyond the rule of law and using national intelligence to persecute people who offend the President does the same for the rest of the administration. The former ICE head is posturing with international white supremacists. Calling this state of affairs tyranny or fascism is seriously inadequate. Flawed leadership is destroying the integrity, credibility, and reputation of the United States. Contact your representatives and vote Blue.
I had a glimpse of the private prison system and the deportation process by accident. A family that I knew in rural Patagonia had a son who had been recently deported from the US and the son had real estate and other property in the US and they asked me if I would write a letter for the son to a US lawyer who was representing him. The reason they asked me was they knew that I had practiced law in the US. It was a simple request and as I was in Patagonia at the time I met with him and his family. My first reactions to his explanations and some of his claims were not very sympathetic as some of his statements seemed did not reflect the legal system that I had worked in and was familiar. I had no experience in Immigration Law and had only a vague idea of how the system worked.
I wrote the letter for him to his US legal representative and listed claims he had made about his treatment and what he saw as failures in the system. I was shocked as I found that what I knew as the due process requirements were systematically not observed and his immigration lawyer claimed to be overwhelmed and said that what I saw clear violations of his rights were commonly ignored by the Immigration courts.
The one claim that bothered me the most was I asked him why when he was first arrested why he did not contact his lawyer. He claimed that upon arrest he was taken to private prison and they immediately sent him out of state location. The rules of the prison did not grant telephone privileges until you had been there for about a week. He claimed that they would move him to insure that he could not contact his legal representatives and this was a standard practice for the private facilities. I subsequently found that this claim appeared to be true and discussing this with lawyers who practiced in this area it was a common practice.
Thanks, Fred B! It is important that this information gets attention. It explains why people kept being moved around to new detention centers. I understood that it was typical to move a detainee away from family support and lawyers after the original arrest, but I didn’t get why detainees would be shuffled from one prison to the next after that.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had this to say about Pulte's appointment: “we don’t need a weaponized DNI.” It's hard to believe, isn't it, that Trump could have actually appointed someone to this role who is actually even less qualified than Tulsi Gabbard.
In her podcast earlier today Heather analogized two sets of contrasts.
The first was the deliberate effort by Donald’s Department of Homeland Security to remove its tens of thousands in concentration camps all to outside the rule of law.
The second, more recent, larger effort attacks all the U.S.’s intelligence agencies, removing the entire U.S. from the protection of all the laws those agencies have for decades monitored and defended. Criminal Donald’s bid to destroy the latter came today in his nomination of Donald sycophant and rank amateur Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence.
We know from slightly earlier history – criminal Donald’s first term in the White House – that he publicly scorned all American intelligence, saying in Helsinki with Putin that he believed his pal Vlad well over any and all U.S. intelligence.
This is the same criminal, rapist Donald who for years worked in tandem with pal Jeffrey and Russian oligarchs in their money laundering, drug running, arms dealing, and trafficking underage girls and young women. Life is a series of rackets; the law just a nuisance to those profits.
In her Letter, here, after her podcast, Heather ends quoting Greg Bovino -- on the delight from his criminal Donald's fellow far right to destroy the law, and so install their racist, fascist directorate.
In everything I read and hear from Heather, she appears to me to be implying that the power is in the hands of we the people. I agree.
Heather also says that it will get worse before it gets better. Her post today goes into the things are getting worse category. It reeks of Trump's desperation, but it still is adding to the very long list of damage we will have to repair.
The one piece of good news Heather noted was the massive loss rate on immigration cases in the courts. What Heather did not mention was the SCOTUS ruling in the Alabama gerrymandering case, which allowed the new map that reduces the number of Black-majority districts from 2 to 1. The partisanship is sickening, Here is reporting from the NY Times:
"The justices rejected a finding by three federal judges, including two appointed by President Trump, that there was evidence the map had been drawn intentionally to discriminate. The majority wrote that the lower court’s analysis had “departed” from the Supreme Court’s recent Voting Rights Act decision."
"Next came a surprise: When a panel of three federal judges re-examined the state’s map through the prism of the Supreme Court’s April decision, it unanimously agreed to block the map again.
In a 79-page decision issued on May 26, the panel, which included two judges appointed by Mr. Trump, wrote that it had carefully re-examined the evidence and again concluded that the map would be discriminatory. The judges said they could not “see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
The judges added that they were “painfully aware of the gravity of our ruling.” But, they added, “we do not find the issue particularly complex or close.”
Republican leaders then asked the Supreme Court to weigh in and clear the way for their preferred map, arguing that they were under time pressure as they prepared for the elections.
The challengers, including civil rights groups and Democratic state politicians, urged the court to reject the Republican state lawmakers’ request, asserting that overturning the lower court’s finding would allow Alabama to “replace a lawful plan with an unlawful and unconstitutional one” in a move that “would create chaos.”"
SCOTUS rejected the three-judge appeals court findings. Then SCOTUS chastised them. Again form the NYTimes:
"The conservative justices in the majority wrote that a unanimous three-judge panel that had blocked the map in late May after determining that it was racially discriminatory had “failed to follow our instruction” in light of the court’s recent Voting Rights Act ruling."
The judicial win rate on SCOTUS decisions is what is Trump's trump card. That is going to loom over election-interference issues in the midterms, and whatever actions a Democrat-led Congress enacts should there be a blue wave. If those bills survive a Trump veto, Trump will appeal to SCOTUS. As far as I can see, the SCOTUS majority will back him on everything except where it would affect the oligarchs' profit, the notable example being the decision on tariffs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/us/politics/supreme-court-alabama-congressional-map.html
“The judicial win rate on SCOTUS decisions is what is Trump's trump card.” 🎯
We’ve seen what Roberts really meant years ago about “just calling balls and strikes.” And now umpires (at least 6 of them and that’s enough) have been bought, so the strike zone is whatever they say it is.
I agree things absolutely will continue to get worse for a while. The Grump could kick the bucket tomorrow, but there are so many bad actors he has empowered in both high and low profile positions who will continue to do grievous damage. They have become entrenched, surrounding themselves with armed guards, and living behind iron gates and guard towers on our military bases. And their policies, now unleashed, have taken on an inertia of their own which will not easily be stopped.
Not to mention we who resist and the party we look to for resistance in the government have much work to do.
I don’t believe the DNC truly understands the assignment. If they did, they would be facilitating a shadow government, not just sending endless text rants saying “Trump so bad, very bad. Send us money!” This is 1990s-style messaging ill formed to modern communications and utterly naive about the existential threat we face.
And we on the streets and online spaces like Substack need to stop bashing each other. We have one common enemy. One. And he makes no distinction on whether we are centrist, progressive or something else on the left. In his phraseology we are all the same “radical left” who he wants to silence, jail, and quite possibly even kill.
We need to fight harder and smarter.
I agree 100%. The minions are already running the show—they just have to feed Trump whatever the next grievance target should be, and he will spew it forth. The only thing Trump gets to do is pick who is in and who is out at any given moment. Trump enjoys the chaos, thinking it means he is in command, playing Rubio and Vance off of each other while Miller, Vought, and Hegseth seem to be making the decisions.
Rebecca Bennett won the NJ-07 primary after the Republican dirty-tricks fake Progressive PAC was exposed. She has no government experience and is a Mikie Sherrill clone down to flying Black Hawks. Might not be a good thing after Sherrill is blowing her handling of the Delaney Hall protests. But Bennett is visible, which is saying a lot given that her Republican opponent, Tom Kean Jr., still has not been seen for 3 months, secluded in a “place with no cameras.”
The Democrats’ “best and brightest” (at least in NJ) seem to be mostly people who can cough up at least half a million of their own cash to get on the ticket in a primary for a House seat. Bennett was able to do it without staking herself, which I take as a positive sign. I hope she connects with some solid policy wonks to refine her messaging—that is where the real power of a shadow cabinet resides.
Hello Georgia.. I think that DJT likes Chaos because it Hides DJT’s Incompetence….
Yes, it feeds his sickness!!
I agree with you about the democrats, Chris Johnson. We are their bosses, we pay their salary, vote for them to take care of our problems and should be held accountable. Not only will they have to repair all the damage - and its enormous - but they're going to have to work on fair taxes, common sense/sane gun control, health care for all, a living wage, maybe paid parental leave. Their plate will be piled so high!!
The pacifist definition of "harder and smarter" will never -- say again (never) -- overcome the ChristoNazi gerrymandering. The midterms are thus lost even before Trump officially disenfranchises millions -- myself included -- by forbidding mail-in voting.
We on Substack need to stop bashing each other.
I second that motion.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
JD
OH!! Amen about the DNC. I WILL NOT support them because they have allowed this entire debacle to happen. They are stuck using those 1990 political methods on a totally new and ruthless attack on democracy and the American public. What the hell is wrong with these people??? And I point directly at Schumer and all the old farts who think they are being "reasonable", when they are just being blind. I changed my registration to independent-nonaffiliated when Trump was "elected" the first time, because of my disgust with the ineffectual and hapless "leadership" in the Democratic establishment.
Hello Linda…. AIPAC… Epstein…
Yes, Chris, as to your call-out of the DNC being so utterly out of touch.
It's what happens when schools dehumanize, and for decades graduate tens of millions all passive to the conceits of testing, but totally unequipped with any of our tools from novels, histories, memoirs, arts.
Love your take on DNC as reduced long now to only "text rants saying 'Trump so bad, very bad. Send us money!'"
Sigh…. For the umpteenth time, the legally chartered responsibilities of the DNC are:
Organizing and executing the Democratic National Convention held every four years to officially nominate the party's presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
The Party Platform: Overseeing the process of writing, updating, and promoting the national party platform that defines the party's core values and policies.
Fundraising: Raising national funds to finance party-building activities and supporting the campaigns of Democratic candidates.
Data & Voter Protection: Developing campaign technologies, maintaining extensive voter databases, combating disinformation, and protecting
Nowhere in the charter is the power to play Luke Skywalker and raise a rebel army. Or organize a shadow government. We’re not a parliamentary government, and there’s no provision for a shadow government in the Constitution.
Perhaps spend this energy helping to elect Democrats at all levels of government. Or run for something yourself.
Or, as Bob Marley might have put it, six so-called SCOTUS justices need to emancipate themselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds, but I'm not expecting them to sing Marley's Redemption Song any time soon. So, I'll just hum a few bars to myself now and then.
Go Blue Wave!
Redemption Song
Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
[Chorus]
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Ooh, some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the book
[Chorus]
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our mind
Woah, have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them-ah can-ah stop-ah the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the book
[Chorus]
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Unbelievable, isn't it, Georgia, this Long Dong Clarence court.
We all know its pro-corporate side, its infamously 16 years ago waving the magic wand of Citizens United to bless that corruption.
But it's not only abetting dark money. Long Dong Clarence likely fancies himself in Da Big House, enjoying all the luxuries the enslaving class can dish out to its most servile enablers. I guess he doesn't primarily hate those with skin color such as his own -- mainly instead he hates all those not cold-blooded, avaricious, and greedy such as him, his Donald, and all the others whose dehumanized educations produce the cavalcades of easily rationalized predation and corruption.
Or do I err? I assume some decent teacher (or, plural, teachers) might have forced, induced, stimulated Long Dong Clarence and criminal Donald yet in their youths to read "Light in August," "Doctor Zhivago," "Gentlemen Prefers Blondes," "The Makioka Sisters," at least one Dashiell Hammett, and "Cry, the Beloved Country."
Nope? Then what are the percentages -- do they change over time -- of even the most expensive schools having teachers schooling only the mechanization, assembly-lining, packaging of humanity?
Add to the above all the Republican Senators and Representatives who have Law Degrees from Yale and Harvard and Stetson. Those degrees are badly tainted.
Perhaps those law schools should recall their degrees, Mary.
Phil, The Court's lone curly pubic hair is, indeed, despicable, but I think you err in naming The Court after him. Recall that he sat like a bump on the bench for 20ish years as a silent spectator until he was joined by Donald's christofascist appointees confirmed by the McConnell Senate. Suddenly, the racially confused Clarence found his voice, encouraged by his white daddy, John Roberts. The bench is correctly named The Roberts Court.
Should be named "the Robbers' Court."
Yes the long dong Clarance court allied by the great leader himself, Joe Biden, who wanted to save his little white ass at the hearings by tossing Anita Hill under the bus after long dong say “… this is nothing but a high tech lynch mob.” Thereby appointing Long Dong. Ya baby love that ole stumbling stuttering Joe.
I think Biden and others were intimidated and feared being "racist'.
And ,Hey, Anita Hill was only a woman, so she didn't have standing.
I bet that a lot of those men had histories of doing what he did...so, it's got to be no big deal.
Of course. It’s important that we keep perspective of who we support. But so often those in office want to stay there and they will compromise their positions. I wonder if anyone ever asked Biden why he ultimately didn’t object to the worst justice ever.
I don't understand Clarence Thomas. Do you? (not on my jacket yet)
(Corey Robin wrote a book on him- I have not read)
Many of us defy understanding, Potter.
Solution to that: don't even try. Imagine life as without contradictions, entangled contexts, complications, emotional debts, and accident and serendipity.
Imagine life simply as a place where only anonymous others put the questions, always with only the possible answers A)-B)-C)-D) -- and one only is ever correct.
Of course many of us defy understanding even to ourselves.
I can't come up with a rudimentary understanding of Thomas. I think I read one once but it did not stick. There are people who do bad things and are to be forgiven because on balance they are good (sorry to use bad vs good). But then there are people who are really thoroughly bad. Oppositional, defiant. And they get elected or put in high position.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/oppositional-defiant-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20375831
You are in rare form today Phil. I wonder what happened.
Phil, I am just up and I am smiling at what you are calling Thomas. Thank you.
Long Dong Clarence has no mirrors in his house because they would remind him that he's not White.
Though the regime is losing the vast majority of their cases, are they actually complying with the decisions? It seems to me that they ignore them. If that is the case, then are they really losing?
A valid point. I am not sure how many cases count as outright defiance of a Court order or an Act of Congress. The response to the Epstein files should, but that is because the Republican Congress is letting the non-compliance slide, like with the not-under-oath testimony from Bondi. There is certainly a reliance on foot-dragging to delay, delay, delay.
We must support the judges!
Not the Supreme Court justices, for sure, but those around the country who are taking on the orange man. the very corrupt Trump.
Time to get rid of the Sleazy Six on the SCOTUS.
So much for Purcell...
Yes, James -- but let's add some adjectives or relative clauses to "we the people."
That is, Heather genuinely sees, respects, and celebrates an active, energetic "we the people." She's meditated on "we the people" over the past 250 years who've seen each other -- including gotten well-schooled in the newspapers, magazines, books of history, case law, memoirs, novels, and other arts all well in touch with each other's conditions and contexts on the ground.
We equip, energize, fuel, rhyme, sing each other by our trust in this heritage we've propelled forward.
Good add. I'll add some more detail:
We the people must seek justice by sowing the seeds of truth and reconciliation so we will reap what we sow. To paraphrase Nelson Mandela, justice always seems impossible until it’s done because it always appears to be impossible with foresight ... until it is always obvious in hindsight.
The powers that be believe themselves to be impregnable and do everything they can to make us agree — right up until the moment it…all…comes…crashing…down.
You don't have to read Pema Chodron's book, When Things Fall Apart, to know that "things falling apart" is often nature's way, and it can be a very good thing, but that is the book's message. And I agree.
It's time I read Chodron's book again.
Fair enough but nature doesn't care if humans exist or not. Humans themselves need to do the caring and working to prevent "things falling apart." I don't think "nature's way" really applies.
Wake up, Mr. Carey; history proves that "truth and reconciliation" with Evil is impossible. And capitalism -- the larva of Nazism -- is the most ecogenocidal Evil on this planet.
Wake up, Mr. Bliss. History proves that truth and reconciliation is the only alternative to lies and retribution. When you discard the former, then you might as well stop at the local Unconstrained Ignorance vendor on the way home, buy yourself a MAGA hat, and wear it with pride.
Don't tell me truth and reconciliation doesn't work. Tell Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Best of luck.
Real capitalism is based on Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments (1759). If you're referring to capitalism in name only (based on Milton Friedman's 1962 theory that rich people don't need to be moral), then please stop blaming me for your naivety.
Loren appears to me to be awake. History also proves that authoritarianism succeeds when the "people" let it! The people's representatives in DC are not stopping the takeover, but aiding it. Other than a civil war, since our laws are being ignored by congress and the administration, the people are screwed!
Thanks, James R. Carey. I don't know who originated this, but here's a profound adage that I think is appropriate for this discussion: "Hate can never stop hate; only love stops hate."
Perhaps it's easier for some to understand the term "love" as "compassionate kindness." Consider words from diarist Anne Frank and then those of poet Audre Lorde, which follows Anne's: "We all live with the objective of being happy. Our lives are all different and yet the same." And: "It's not our differences that divide us, but our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
Capitalism is hardly the larva of Nazism. But, like all major components of the modern world, it has proven to be a double-edged sword. At once a builder and destroyer, it has evolved in ways that Smith did see and he both celebrated its potential and warned us of its risks.
Well said, James Quinn. And one can find out more about "PROGRESSIVE CAPITALISM" (similar to that used in Denmark & elsewhere effectively to benefit "the people" and not just the investor class) by reading "THE PRICE OF INEQUALITY" & "PEOPLE, POWER, & PROFITS" by Nobel Laureate ECONOMIST, Joseph Stiglitz, and reading "SUPERCAPITALISM" by FORMER SECRETARY OF LABOR, Robert Reich and visiting his Substack, as well as that of Nobel Laureate ECONOMIST, Paul Krugman (and/or take his MasterClass).
Unregulated capitalism. The Scandinavians have capitalism, but it is regulated. America used to regulate capitalism, then the John Birch Society came along which morphed into the Heritage Foundation.
Capitalism on steroids is what I call it. Capitalism per se isn’t bad; but when it’s unregulated, as you say, and given huge boosts through laws, mergers and political power, it’s really corrosive and destructive. So much to undo if we get the chance.
And again, Rickey, as you previously stated: republicans.... "They are the problem."
I share your disgust, Loren.
If an arsonist burns down your house, or an excavator tears down the East Wing of our house, and a judge ruling months or years later that the laws were ignored--you are still homeless and it only takes about two hours for your home and everything in it to become a pile of ashes.
trump is democracy's arsonist and no matter what the justice system metes out later (usually much later if at all) our democracy is still ashes.
This is the core problem of our justice system embraced by how we practice capitalism. Justice is slow, expensive, and delivers very little actual justice for crimes committed by those with means or power. If only our political arsonists were treated as harshly as shoplifters! Fines, restitution, jail time, and banned from the premises are all on the table.
The ever increasing speed of 'society' for lack of a better word has left our speed of justice in the dust. We have no actually enforceable federal laws that are the equivalent of malpractice in governance. Crooked lawyers get not much more than a judicial tongue lashing. The punishments where some actually exist, are not equal to the seriousness of the crimes.
We desperately need deep enforcement and judicial reforms that focus on the really injurious political crimes. That is the lesson we need to learn from our trump horror show.
I feel fairly confident that you mean well, Loren Bliss, however, I must say that you have overstated the true panoramic big picture. Some are incorrigible and beyond redemption, but many if not most are misguided and may well wake up and join the true patriots...
By and large, Loren, I don't agree with your perception on truth and reconciliation. James, I believe, is correct that this method works as proven by the likes of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. The problem doesn't lie in T&R, it lies in the either perceived notion or the often-proven lack in justice absent to those who committed the offence. South Africa's P.W. Botha was never brought to justice after his tenure. De Klerk accepted the belief that what Botha promoted was damaging and caused death in too many of S.A. population. The real visceral bite in all of this revolves more around all those who escape justice when any party commits to T&R. With criminal deviants like Trump and his sycophants, on this point, I would have to agree that T&R "'truth and reconciliation' with Evil is impossible." With Trump, there is nothing to prove and little for which to hope, when employing T&R in coming to terms and putting finality to criminal conduct such that Trump and co. have committed. The real and only solution for a case or matter such as this, is in fact, the "long arm of the law." This is what we all need to concentrate on and push our representatives to commit.
Thus the pacifist Neville Chamberlain's great success at stopping Hitler.
We have capitalist gains and socialist losses for big business. We don't have actual capitalism.
One may say, Loren, that capitalism has destroyed America, as it has become an authoritarian capitalism, which, in turn, has allowed some - aka the parasitic creatures - to gift or bribe the deity.
Which is precisely why, beyond my agnosticism, I turn ever more devoutly to the Great Mother, the Goddess of my Celtic, Pict and Norse ancestors.
A heritage which is now being denied and destroyed. So...
So ... it can rise phoenix-like (better than ever) from MAGA's ashes.
Led by Abraham Lincoln.
Led by the spirit of Abraham Lincoln expressed in the words of candidates like Jon Ossoff.
Yes, exactly ..eventually at the cost of heavy
It doesn't get much heavier than the Lincoln Memorial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAONYTMf2pk
Thanks, and yes, BUT the trumpian misguided, sometimes murderously brutal minions have been hindering true education and pushing false evil propaganda. Our task is enormous, and we must continue to RESIST & DEFY!
It's a power you can only effectively exercise once every four years and that's why Trump continues to act with impunity. It also doesn't help that a large minority of 'you, the people', continue to support him.
"A large minority" continues to support him?? That's a contradiction. In any event, none of those people are on this forum, so lay the blame somewhere else.
Why is it a contradiction? It is a scale of the size of the minority. A small minority might be 1% of the total, a middling minority 25% of the total and a large minority 49% of the total.
Yes, a large minority of people support Trump, if it were a small minority the kowtowing Republican candidates wouldn't be bowing to Trump.
Ellen, at the risk of "mansplaining," there is nothing incorrect about Netto's use of the phrase "large minority." Any percentage less than 50% is a minority. Of the 152,320,193 votes cast in 2024, Donald got 49.8% of the votes, a minority. But given that it's almost 50%, I think anyone would agree that it's large minority.
It may also help to understand that Netto is not a resident of the U.S. When he refers to the collective "you," he is referring to all of us U.S. residents, not just HCR's readers.
"It's a power you can only effectively exercise once every four years and that's why Trump continues to act with impunity. It also doesn't help that a large minority of 'you, the people', continue to support him."
Are you saying I support Dissembling Don? Really? Help me understand where on God's green earth you got that idea.
See my reply to Ellen.
You're saying I misunderstood, and you're correct. I'll try to be more careful in future. Thanks for the info.
That's what she's pointing out.
So, we all agree about "right." That means we agree that right makes might, and that reveals how we (in Lincoln's words) must "dare to do our duty as we understand it."
For the moment, perhaps, we still have the power to reestablish the democratic process here. Success is not a foregone conclusion.
Years ago I read that "words matter." I can't remember the context. In her report, HCR reports that Rene and Alex were killed by ICE agents. True, they were killed, but more accurately, they were murdered. Words matter.
Let's add, Richard, "in cold blood." Murdered by government officials "in cold blood."
And without consequence for any of the government officials who just lied to cover up the murders.
Indeed, Mr. Sutherland. That is because the choice of words defines the depth and perimeters of the emotional response.
Do words matter? In George Orwell's words, "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Or ... as I like to say, "yes."
He's largely supported Putin over Ukraine since that disgraceful press conference at Helsinki in 2018.
His private meeting with Putin told me ALL I NEED TO KNOW WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING THE CONTENT.
Yes, and later, following a private 2-hour meeting with Putin, Trump confiscated the interpreter's notes and told her never to reveal what was discussed. I have no doubt that Trump committed treason then and that he continues to do so now. It's the Moscow hotel room videos from the 1990's. We can guess what was filmed but it may be worse than we think.
All you need to do is to connect the dots Chris. No imagination needed 😌
It's an infinity of dots Ricardo.
It's true Chris, therefore it's an infinite problem....till we finally find a solution. That solution should accomplish and infinite " never again" . Thank You For Replay. 😅
And what was that? I don’t like these little games.
Barbara McQuade has a good analysis of that of a mafia administration (as shown on this Rachel Maddow video).
https://youtu.be/3hZB5NY8J_0?is=P1-nM6gN3kkT5W_9
Super good, Hulit -- I'd already seen it, many here will appreciate it very much.
Barbara McQuade talking with Rachel Maddow -- on how mobster Donald runs his extortions. Elite law. The top universities. The largest of legacy media and social media. Tech giants. So much corruption, over-the-top corruption.
Doncha know, Phil, “when you’re a star and famous they let you do it”….🤮🤬
People can get totally self-infatuated, Barbara.
I've long thought good teachers can break that cycle. Do I deceive myself?
Agree, Phil, but “some” folks (wink wink) seem immune to such teachings or even honest self-reflection.
Hello Phil... Have you heard of Provision 224 in the upcoming Defense Appropriations Bill?....
Unbelievable. Combining the US and Israeli militaries? And I suppose Bibi and Kegsbreath will be running them together?
Hello GJ... 'The Ghost In The Machine' says it makes the Israeli Theft of USA Military Tech Easier... Netanyahu has said that in 3-Years, Weapons from the USA will be un-necessary... OBW: The Israelis sell their Tech to anyone, including the Russians, and Chinese... Indeed the Closest Ally of the Apartheid South African Regime was Israel...
This will be the reason for my calls today.
I'd not known it, Apache.
My search engine results inform me that "Section 224 provides the framework for continuing - and expanding - U.S.-Israel military ties."
Hello Phil... It's okay... Subscribe to 'VoteVets', and 'Defense One'... There Are Scary Monsters Stirring...
The Constitution, But Make It Optional
Markwayne Mullin has discovered a brave new theory of government: obey the Constitution, unless a judge expects you to mean it.
Asked whether DHS would follow court orders, Mullin refused to answer. This was bold, in the same way walking into traffic while yelling “I understand crosswalks” is bold. He insisted DHS would “never break the Constitution,” while declining to say whether court rulings count as part of it.
Apparently, in MAGA civics, the Constitution is not a legal framework. It is a scented candle.
This is the whole Trump project in miniature. Praise the law. Dodge the judge. Blame the courts. Militarize the bureaucracy. Call it freedom with a straight face.
If the administration wins, democracy has spoken. If it loses, the judiciary has been weaponized. If it loses roughly 90% of the time, that is not evidence of lawlessness. That is just hundreds of judges being very unfair to the poor, misunderstood deportation machine.
Mullin’s proposed accountability system is even better: “We’ll hold each other accountable.” Wonderful. Nothing says rule of law like the suspects forming a book club to review their own behavior.
Meanwhile, detainees are begging for due process, inspectors are blocked, lawmakers are treated as pests, and armed federal agents operate like a traveling constitutional crisis with tactical gear.
The new slogan writes itself: No kings, no courts, no problem.
Just vibes, badges, contracts, and a government that loves the Constitution so much it keeps trying to protect it from the people legally authorized to enforce it.
It's not about the Donald. It's about the GOP.
As long as people don't get this, it will only get worse.
Why does the entire GOP support the destruction of the rule of law and claim that only the executive branch has the right to interpret the law, not the judiciary branch of government?
For the same reason that the entire GOP supports what Mike Johnson publicly declared the job of the legislative branch to be, ever since "we the people" gave them full control over DC: merely to "codify the executive orders signed by the president".
The end of the independence of three co-equal branches of government has a name: it's called FASCISM, literally the bundling ("fasces" = "bundle", in Latin) of the power of the legislative and judiciary branches of government into that of the executive branch.
Steve Bannon called this (euphemistically) "governing the way a business is governed". In a WSJ interview, he said that the GOP sees governing as similar to how to private sector businesses merge: first both CEOs meet and negotiate the deal. Then, lawyers come in to put it all into fine print.
The GOP has become a party of neofascist ideologues, and the end of the rule of law in immigration detention camps is merely a rehearsal for what will soon be done to anyone who actively fights for democracy.
It's time to wake up!
It has always been unfathomable to me that people think government should be run like a business. They are not at all the same sort of creature with the same purpose, and most businesses are callous, ignorant and capricious.
It was not always thus, but the move from stakeholder to shareholder primacy, has done much to ruin the institutions.
Exactly, and then there's that (the fact that many businesses aren't that well run in the first place).
That being said, if we go back to the origins of Western civilization, Aristotle was a strong advocate of democracy but Plato, his teacher, actually had quite some good arguments pro authoritarianism. He proposed that an authoritarian regime in which a group of 11 people (who use the majority vote among them to make decisions for the entire community) decide everything guarantees the best possible outcome for society as a whole IF those 11 people are the best among peers. Who are those "aristos" (ancient Greek for "the best")?
Philosophers - in Plato's meaning of the term, so the original meaning of it - in other words those who have trained their minds in rational thinking, in considering all options on the table (including all proposals/views coming from all others), in ethical thinking (having a clear understanding of "the supreme good", after very thorough analysis and without ever imagining that that understanding is a definitive one) and in consulting everyone.
Aristotle's main counterargument is that even the best cannot truly know what is important for all citizens, so they still risk making worse decisions compared to a democracy in which all citizens can vote and where all citizens together engage in constant public debates.
Today, private businesses aren't designed to deliver "the supreme good" for society as a whole in at the first place. That alone already is enough to see how useless this model is, when it comes to governing...
True on every count. Two things in the last day leave me unsettled.
1st, the 'concession' on 'backing away' (sic) from the paramilitary support fund (i.e., $1776 million) leaves the tax-&-racketeering immunity for Trump and his brooding brood in place (sick). What I recall is when we played wiffle-ball as kids. One kid would say that he and A, B, C, D would be one one team; all of the better players. Of course that would never fly. So that captain would "give up" B and C or / and D. Keeping player A is what that captain had sought all along. That manipulation worked in grade school, not in international diplomacy. So, Trump and his gangster family walks away with what they prize most: escapring transparency of, and accountability for, their financial transgressions.
2nd, during the Rubio hearing in the Senate, Senator Kaine pointed out that the murder on the high seas occurs after a vetting process that does NOT include adducing evidence or citing indications of drugs being on board of the boats. Senator Paul made the same observation and added that intelligence of guns being on board of these speed-boats is NOT included in attack criteria. These are small boats; hence not much space to hide things. Interdicting passage of these boats to inspect them makes more sense.
You know, we actually can read virtually everything Heather writes by ourselves, for ourselves. Even summarize it for ourselves. We can even read Greg Bovino’s quote on our own, too — all by our little selves, just imagine. And summon our own indignation afterward.
Did I miss the part where you added something new, funny, or pertinent that wasn’t already there in the original?
why the snark?
Five years ago, laurie, I wrote ICTT under his real name, raising questions he hated.
He'd published a book the previous year dealing with some intransigent nastiness perennial to the rich and powerful. I made the case to him that schools might humanize, could, anyway.
He never answered then, and has hated seeing my comments here about how our using humanities might help us humanize. For him, the Powell memo did its damage to many, to him, too, in ways he cannot admit, will not consider. That is, to rid humanities from schools, K-12 and "higher," the far-right foundations consequent to the 1971 Powell memo spent the entirety of the 1970s asserting all humanities as no more than decoration, ornamentation, all just marginal to the forms of intelligence which -- all normal people know -- testing so easily measures and keeps confined to its such-nicely-rational-only categories.
Those far-right foundations won. Testing took over. And you don't see many public figures or media elites any more citing characters from novels, histories, or memoirs.
Thank you for this, Phil. Ever since I have been a member of HCR's commenter community, I have not understood ICTT's perpetual axe-grinding with you. He often contributes meaningful comments, but the repeated sniping is tiresome.
Lest you (or he) mistake my comment for taking sides, I am not. In all honesty, I think you sometimes see a connection to standardized testing and/or humanities education where there is none. Nevertheless, I am sympathetic; no doubt, some find my connection of bad politics to bad theology misplaced. We all have our passions.
Phil, as a retired teacher myself, I agree just how important it is to TEACH and model humanity at all levels.
Um, no I didn’t, and no you didn’t. First saw you bloviating here about standardized testing. You’re making shit up.
I have copy of the original Feb. 18, 2021 letter I sent you.
Get a life, Mr Balla.
How would you respond if somebody tried to “translate” stuff you’re perfectly capable of reading for yourself? It’s unnecessary and condescending both.
Trump promised America a golden age and delivered the pyrite age: cheap shine, counterfeit patriotism, and glitter over rot. All that glitters is not gold, especially when the con man crowns himself.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/in-trumps-world-all-that-glitters
I am so sickened by these - and actually all of tRump's actions - that I will be quite happy to die at my age of 77.
No, Susan -- take heart from the Hungarians, the people of Minneapolis, & many here.
Well, I've met some bad people, but none as bad as trump and his merry band of henchmen and henchwomen. Not one decent cell in their body existing within a culture of impunity. Daily we are fighting to claim the country instead of the king claiming the world. I haven't written anything new, but I've got a lot of anger in and I've got to let a lot of anger out...
The Nazis made their undesirables stateless; therefore, there was no law to protect their rights. Apparently, we have learned a lot from them and are employing their methods. So very disheartening to think that there are such evil people who spend a lot of time figuring out how to hurt others.
TY Phil…..
They were warned.
You were warned.
Mind boggling ..it was the will of less than half the people , including all who DIDN’T vote…for all the wrong reasons….far from over …numbingly , yet
Such a disgusting reign by this administration! History will both excoriate It (and them) as well as try to explain the confluences of voters who didn’t care about anyone but themselves
What you say of the future will be true, Winkie, if schools change.
Not caring "about anyone but themselves" has featured our schools since they evicted humanities, civics, and essay writing. Restore them and we've got consciences back.
These people who have been WORKING here, deserve PROTECTION, NOT cruelty.
Many fled cruelty, this might be even worse cruelty.
GODDAMN him and his enablers and supporters!
In other words, there’s more than enough reason to protest so do it.
Nazism is on full display in America today.
That's reminded me of Biden's March 26/22 speech from Warsaw in which he quoted Soren Kierkegaard's words: "Faith sees best in the dark."
It's your blind faith in your Constitution and political institutions that has in fact led you down this dangerous path to autocracy. You urgently need to reform your democracy so that it actually protects you from people like Trump.
In any other country a Trump would have been voted out by the cabinet. Why even Margaret Thather was ousted in that manner when it was perceived she was becoming autocratic. I hope the constitution is amended, if and when we return to normal...
" ... when it was perceived [Thatcher] was coming autocratic." Fast forward to yesterday's National Security Intelligence travesty:
BOB PULTE, "Little Trump", who now heads the FHA has been appointed to replace Tulsi Gabbard's attack-hack position. Pulte has no qualifications for any National Intelligence position as in zero, nada, none.
"Acting" positions have a maximum length of 210 Days. So the "acting" Pulte position ends near the end of 2026.
Per Ari Melbar's investigation on "The Beat" Tuesday, Pulte was involved with the FAILED attack Fed Chairman Powell. Ari's guest yesterday, Andrew Weissman, confirms that Pulte has "no experience or qualifications in keeping the Country safe" putting us all at risk. Pulte is an autocratic, crude "Hatchet Man".
Paging Norm Eisen, Democracy Docket, you have a phone call.
Pulte is from Ohio and part of a real estate empire. I could go on but I will refrain.
Pulte is NOT part of a real estate empire.
That real estate empire is his grandfather's. The Pulte organization and the Pulte family have disavowed this fascist and trailer park slumlord.
Don't get me wrong. I'm no Pulte fan. But Bill Pulte is much like RFKjr. Famous name with a completely horrified family.
Russell ... correct me if I'm wrong. Meanwhile, I'll assume you're looking in the mirror speaking to yourself. I do too from time to time. In the words of Viktor Frankl, "When we are no longer able to challenge a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." Have faith that right makes might, but not blind faith.
Absolutely Russell. There is nationalism on both sides that prevents us from seeing the foundational cracks in our democracy. American exceptionalism is the root of this problem.
Yes. Sadly Nazism has broken out across America and the GOP, who may not like the optics of Trump's utter corruption, are willing to fund the ICE/Nazi movement with our tax dollars, to the hilt.
So much work to do. So many Nuremberg 2 trials to hold in 2029 or before. So many places to shine sunlight.
And it's going to get worse with every day passing Herb.
You really need to cut back on that drinking habit. When when you do, pick any of the thousands of books about the Nazis, and maybe even a book about America. And them compare.
I thought Greg Bovino was totally discredited. Now we know he is a White supremacist.
These private prisons have every financial incentive to cut costs and
keep anyone brought in for as long as possible.
They probably move people to different detention centers around the country in order to up numbers and gain more contract fees for all we know - and double up on days held counts.
That is actually very interesting. Someone needs to follow up on that.
The question Emma is how? When Congressional delegations give notice of visits to the detention centers, on several occasions ALL of the detainees (prisoners) have been relocated. And then they are moved back after the visit?
How much are we spending just on transportation costs for ICE because of this human shell game?
I highly doubt they were all moved out of a facility. What examples of that did you see?
It was a story several months ago. I don't remember the details but I believe it was a center in TX where there was another one somewhat nearby??? Sorry.
Ok I will go look for texas thanks. It would be next to impossible for them to do that so I am guessing the reporter didn't understand something.
Probably someone on the inside, or someone suing for being subject to such movement. A US born (hence citizen) with Mexican parents was held for 30 ish days and recently released. She was sent to 5 or 6 detention centers in that period.
Okay third thought. I wish I could edit these comments. I forgot until now that the contracts are for a certain number of beds anyway. So if they are contracted for 170 beds, they get paid for 170 whether 170 are filled or not. I assume it is still this way, I can't imagine that it is not. Jails are basically the same as they budget vendor contracts etc that way as well. Still though, even if this is how it is done, been some years before I have thought about this so I will go look, this is still not an idea to let go. They would argue for more bed space and money by saying they filled beds and need more, essentially that double count, so it ends up the same. Such a perverse system when you need to jail people to meet a prexisting contract. Prisons and jails across the US are the same, especially since prisons are built in areas with little other employment, so shutting one down is political suicide.
I hadn't heard about that case. I will look online. Yes, exactly right, perfect case for that. I really don't want this idea to die, there is something here, I am sure of it. I wonder what software they use. I also wonder if they ghost them, ie take them off the log showing transfer, but then hours or more go by before transfer [separate reasons for that]; or vice versa and leave them on after transfer. I assume they get paid at 12:01. But say they go from one geo facility to another geo facility same day, which was that previous excellent thought. Is geo getting paid twice? I would bet heavily that they are. Sounds like something congress should have access to.
I couldn't edit my last comment just now. Someone should also look at whether those transfers are for example geo to geo or geo to core civic and back etc. Also curious who is doing the transfers - ie ICE or contractors, and if contractors, which company[s].
Thank you. I had not thought of this double dipping.
In the end, it’s all about racism. Or better said, using racism as a tool to gain power over people. It’s always the same old serpent, one could say…
I could make a case it’s more about making money. Racism is certainly the “how” but the end game in everything connected to these awful people seems to continuously involve a money scam of one kind or another.
It’s all about money for sure. American style capitalism and democracy depend on keeping “we the people” divided.
Our nation ended up with skin color as a dividing line because the “aristocrats” were afraid of laborers coming together to oppose the exploitation of laborers. (See Bacon’s Rebellion from the 1600s.)
Now in this century we have too many citizens who are afraid of the “Great Replacement”. They’re so afraid that they voted for a criminal, liar and thief to protect them. Why fear people with different skin color?
If you go back and examine the laws put in place to insure a divided population, you’ll see how white supremacy was designed and implemented to accomplish this division.
It was all about the money. It still
is. Racism is the how, the why and the what we need to fight against. The power is with the people. Hungary showed us that change is possible.
There’s a reason the Confederates made up stories about The “Lost Cause”. It’s the same reason this regime wants to erase our true history. If we could expose more of our history people would understand what a detriment racism is to all of us. It doesn’t just hurt Black and Brown people.
If our politics, practices and policies which are based on white supremacy were eliminated, the wealthy class would lose power-and money.
I keep thinking get rid of racism and income inequality and we may have a shot of peace.
Teach everyone actual history and reality. That is the only path.
In the end it's all about money
Yes yes... And racism is being used to gain more money.
The fact it is "the same old serpent" convinces me our only (rational) hope for Liberation is creation of an overseas shadow government; mobilization of a domestic partisan Resistance as determined as that which hamstrung the Original Nazis in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia and especially the Soviet Union; and a massive, four-pronged D-Day-II invasion by an international humanitarian alliance -- preferably a quadruple envelopment: simultaneous offensives from Canada and all three coastlines.
I say this with profound woe because I am a Regular Army veteran, (active duty 1959-1962 including 16 months in Korea). But when the sociological data about the ChristoNazi rabble is compared to the data about NSDAP membership revealed by the following links, the result is entirely supportive of my frankly horrifying conclusion:
https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/nsdap-membership-1929-1945
https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/NaziGermany443/410NSDAPMembers.html
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/05/who-joined-the-nazi-party/
Even so, the apocalyptic fly that contaminates this ointment of potential rescue is that Trump, like every USian president after Kennedy, is credibly reported to be pledged to follow the "Better Dead than Red" recommendation of Adolf Hitler to destroy the world if threatened by the prospect of defeat. As I have said before, the only possible counter-measure to this policy is a scientific impossibility: the alleged ability of UFOs to paralyze the entire USian war machine.
Meanwhile, our attackers' remain omnipotent, able to escalate their ecogenocidal hatred to ever-more-obscenely sadistic fanaticism..
Ooof - yes! Hard to swallow let alone digest… to be metaphorical. I’ll see if I have the ‘guts’ to read the links. Though I’ve read plenty of history and Robert J. Lifton, Timothy Snyder…
"Better dead than red"... To me, it's more kindergarten level thinking, but elevated to world scale: "If I can't have it, NO one will!" Puzzles me still that the result is the same: if Trump feels he's threatened with defeat, he'll destroy the world; if he is left in office, he'll destroy the world, too.
It seems America truly has elected the Anti-Christ...
Trump has also been totally discredited but that doesn't seem to matter any more.
I hope someone, Phil, does some investigation as to just WHO these people are that hide behind their corporations or LLC’s….private equity? who are the investors?, who gets the payout/dividends?….in other words are they just (likely) in it for the money (ditto the private prisons dotting the land) or are they true MAGA (or?) believers? 🤷🏻♀️
Again the privatization of our penal system has been along time coming. It rides on the same train track as the privization of all things such as community hospitals and ambulance service, parking meters ect ect ect . This started in particular with Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Money and all the isms go together it’s the colonial way. Cervantes Don Quixote begins in a prison.
Totally agree Mary…goes back as well to Reagan as CA governor and then as Prez…. Really, I guess, even further back to all the “movers ‘n shakers” that tried to disable FDR’s New Deal. Sigh….
Anyone with a 401k, ira, vanguard etc should check what they make in dividends off this.
I tried this morning. It was near impossible… why? If you look under the documents of an ETF at Vanguard you are given a list of (in my case) 14000 companies listed in groups of ten at a time. They are not listed in any particular order, nor is it sortable, filterable, downloadable, etc. So I was faced with manually scanning ten companies at a time, and I forwarded 15 pages before I got bored. It would have taken 1400 page turns so to speak to find Geogroup. In the end they hold less than 0,15 percent of investment in any one company in these most diverse of funds.
I think I would have to sell them all to have a clear conscience! I did see a handful of other companies I would rather not support as well…
There are ways to put some control on your retirement fu ds. I still don’t understand. The Roman Catholic Nuns have done some interesting work with putting truth to power with their donated stock shares. There are also are or where several groups that tried to tie in social justice to stocks. I think Seventh Generation was one. I was constantly asking financial advisers to do this for me. The last one has tried.
Excellent point, Mary; thank you. (Pagan/agnostic though I am, one of my closest longtime friends is a financial manager for the Dominicans.)
Well they created a way to buck the system at times. My old high school principal Sr Catherine Pinkerton left her position to join Network which was part of those type of actions. Inn her last address to the school she read Euxperary ‘s The Little Prince.
You can create your own ETF/mutual fund by buying individual stocks and doing the research on the ethical standards of each company. Moriningstar, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, and MSN Money can be places to start looking. It will take extra effort but your conscience will be clear.
I will look at mine this weekend and circle back. I got out of vanguard because of this issue a couple years ago but didn't look closely at the hold in my fund. I have access still so will pull it and see if it looks like what happened when you searched. It shouldn't be this hard.
Good Luck.
He was intentionally confrontational and led squads of agents into a provoking of crowds. Greg Bovino's aggressive field tactics, public clashes with residents, and legal battles over his conduct might have finally gotten him dismissed but he's always shown his fascist white supremacist views by his words and actions.
The Nazi SS officer trench coat he wore during the ICE Metro Surge operation in Minneapolis made it apparent, not hiding it but intentional in his Nazi cosplay gear. "Along with his close-shorn haircut, the media organization Der Spiegel suggested in a video feature that Bovino’s look recalled that of a Nazi officer."
"Another German media outlet, Süddeutsche Zeitung, made similar comments. “Other countries also had these coats, but Bovino’s outfits complete the Nazi look: a closely cropped haircut, as if he had taken a photo of [assassinated SA leader] Ernst Röhm to the barber,” it said."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/23/gregory-bovino-coat-german-media
I am really not okay with Bovino just walking away on our dime. I want full hearings that review his last 30 years, a legitimate attempt to fix damage where at all possible, and the govt to address the current system with the reality of Bovino's past as our blueprint. Nothing changes because we treat our country exactly like this, let them retire and pretend it is a new day.
This has been going on fora long time. Michelle Alexander wrote about it in her book The New Jim Crow. And before that at times throughout our countries history and in the past in and present in other countries. An old name and clouded with issues but Dorothea Dix. Read the history of your states criminal justice systems. It will be an eye opener. Charles Dickens as a child spent time in the older version of the detention center the workhouse.
The book and movie entitled Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon tells the story too. What we now face is called “wage slavery” by some who have studied our system of capitalism and our form of democracy where resistance to increased minimum wage, right to work states, deregulation of environmental laws, OSHA concerns etc. don’t seem to matter.
It’s even more difficult for most of our population when too many of our “representatives” and “justices” are beholden to a network of wealthy people who think CEOs should be gods of the universe instead of “public servants” who care about our “common wealth”.
That's because we live in the archetype of all "shit-hole countries."
ICE. What a delightful group of despicable human beings
Don't forget cbp
Professor Richardson -- Many thanks for making sense of yet another overwhelming day of sensational news. As you mentioned at the end of today's post regarding Gregory Bovino, the disgraced former Border Patrol chief, many of the divisions in our country ultimately stem from racism. As an American living abroad, I am embarrassed and dismayed by what is happening back home under the Trump administration. I don't blame my current neighbors for no longer wanting to visit the U.S.—they have good reason to be fearful. I plan to do my part to rectify this sad state of affairs by voting in the upcoming midterm elections from abroad.
Mark Kennedy - Please urge your fellow expats to vote too, and early to be sure your votes are counted.
Thanks for the suggestion. Will do! Check out: https://realgaijin.substack.com/p/attention-fellow-americans-how-to
The fact that Bovino is pontificating from Portugal only serves to illustrate his diminished relevance.
That's true, but I'd prefer to have him out of the public eye completely.
I don't know Mark, in the public eye at least we know what Bovino is doing.
Good point! Maybe you're right. I just want him to do as little as possible other than repent for his crimes.
I'm going to start sounding like a broken record. Apologies.
Every time you call them "detention centers," you are adding your (substantial) credibility to the administration's euphemism. In a very real sense, certainly without meaning to, you are actually supporting their premise: these places are not what they actually are, so relax. In this case, the cool, detached academic voice we appreciate so much begins to work for them. If calling these places concentration camps is too heated for you, then at least put "detention centers" in quotes.
YES TBG! They are concentration camps and this is a regime not an administration.
Another thing - they are LYING. They are not telling mis - truths, they are lying! Language is important and I urge us all to use language correctly.
TBG, even though I agree with you completely, it is unlikely that HCR will follow your suggestion, unless the Trump regime officially changes the designation of these facilities to the nomenclature you suggest.
HCR is, above all, a historian. The best historians are scrupulous about telling the story accurately without adding the slightest whiff of bias. Even journalists, who are supposed to report news neutrally, are given more latitude with their choice of words.
I cringe every time HCR refers to the Orange Menace as "President Donald J. Trump," but whether we like it or not, that is his official title. I'll wager HCR hates typing that, but she is a supreme professional and performs in her role to the highest standards, setting aside her personal feelings. Mostly. Occasionally, she let's an opinion slip, but it's always subtle.
So Bovino wants to remove a fourth of the US population. I have a suggestion: remove the ones who voted for Trump and are proud of it and would do it again. Really, would do it again. Without them we'd have a population much more apt to obey the Constitution and the laws and give their fellows in America decent treatment.
Bovino, Trump, Mullin, Miller, et al should all be removed and sent to a remote desert island where no one is forced to listen to their BS!
Hello Tina.... Excellent Suggestion...
Yes let them all move together and build their wall No one with any sense wants to associate with their hatred and racism
These are not detention facilities. They are concentration camps. We need to use the correct terminology.
They are not “concentration camps” — a term describing one thing only. People are not being tortured, gassed and shot by the hundred thousand. Insisting they're one and the same just turns all this into caricature. Outrage does not clarify in this case, it obscures.
Neither are they detention centers, however. That much is clear. The proper reference —- as another poster noted —should use quotation marks or say explicitly “what the Administration terms…” There are ways to do this that both pass proper journalistic muster and tell a story that needs telling.
Technically, these detention centers are concentration camps- people being confined without access to a trial or due process. This is by design. These centers have not yet morphed into Nazi concentration camps but with the lack of proper conditions as revealed in Delaney, they’re headed in that direction.
I was alive--just a baby--when "Internment camps" were a thing. They were established by a form of "due process" and confined US citizens against their will. I agree with HCR that the current ICE facilities can and should be called concentration camps. She makes a distinction between what the Nazi's used for slave labor and "killing camps". People were confined together in close quarters without a legal hearing. Let's not get bogged down by arguments about semantics.
David, I agree with your last sentence, although I appreciate why outrage causes us to look for the right words to express it. I live not too far from the Japanese American internment camp at Rowher, AR. As now, the U.S. Government preferred a sanitized name for these facilities and officially called them "relocation centers." How sweet. Sounds like a resort.
"Internment" is probably an accurate word, but I'm not certain that most of these facilities even qualify as camps. My impression is that these warehouses are not even as humane as prisons, because there's no outdoor grounds where the incarcerated can go out and get some fresh air and sunlight. Truly, the U.S. has sunk even lower than the low we sank to in 1942.
https://www.astate.edu/outreach/history-and-heritage/heritage-sites/rohwer/index.html
I agree with you that the current warehouses for humans are less civilized than the internment camps, but it is still shameful how these citizens were denied their rights in that war driven hysteria.
But 99% of people do not. Again, not helpful, except to generate outrage.
You’re missing the point…
Not all concentration camps were extermination camps But they were prisons for the political prisoners and unwanted citizens So yes these people are in Concentration camps
Congrats on missing the whole point…
As Justice Sotomayor suggested in tonight‘s Alabama racial redistricting ruling, the SCOTUS 6 are upending the rule of law. And the same thing is happening with the newest batch of Trump appointed immigration judges. It‘s Soviet Judges all over again, decisions mandated by political expedience, not Constitutional due process.
Thomas Jefferson equated slavery with holding a wolf by the ears. We equate the “wolf” with names like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Joseph E. Johnson, and Nathan Bedford Forest.
The modern-day version of Jefferson Davis had the opportunity to find his courage and instead found a doctor who could find fake bone spurs. In front of people who risked their lives sitting on giant lit tubes of liquid hydrogen to jump the moon, he bragged about his fake courage. And that was AFTER seashells on the seashore scared him so much, he pooped his pants.
I equate the modern-day "wolf" with names like Steven Miller, Marco Rubio, Bari Weiss, Jeff Bezos, and John Roberts. They shouldn't be over or underestimated, but they also seem much more like a designer poodle pup in need of house training.
There are risks associated with re-districting on this scale that the Republicans seem not to have considered.
https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-republicans-redistricting-power-grab-might-backfire-262553
While it's hard to believe that Mr. Trump "aced" a test of his cognitive ability, I'm even more skeptical that he could pass the same test that our green card holders take to become citizens.
On another topic entirely, I need to amend what I'd written previously about commenting on the proposed Project 2025 new rule to have decisions on funding scientific research taken over by politicians and political appointees. This correct link will get you immediately to the comments page: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001 so please go add your two cents.
My grand-nephews could identify pictures of animals when they were toddlers. Trump is a chump and he's shown this many times.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aDma0fysoT4
And the really embarrassing thing is him bragging about being able to identify a camel -- or that he knows the word 'dumb' ends in a 'b'. Mensa material? I think not!
So 47 appoints dufus head sycophant Pulte to oversee intelligence in flagrant violation of law, while Markie Mark flouts willingness to defy court orders. All the facades are falling away. Hopefully some of his followers will start to realize this ain’t what they bargained for. As they grasp harder more will slip through their fingers. Woe to anyone they catch though.
The facades are flailing and failing, indeed. Despite the sordid details of injustice we know we must read about, the cracks widen and deepen. Though they succeed in avoiding oversight here and there, they are losing the overall war itself.
To quote Miles Taylor, this past week has actually shown that defiance matters. It doesn’t just make a difference, it’s racking up strings of critical victories in succession. From his own Substack,”karma isn’t just coming out of nowhere to pay an aging autocrat a visit.” It’s being made possible by those who’ve continually refused to kiss the orange ass, who put their money where their mouth is. They’ve done the scutwork, filed the lawsuits, made the critical counter-arguments and put the lie to the lips of all those who say ‘just lie low, and this, too, shall pass.’ They refuse to lie low because they know that without resistance, it will not pass. Consider…
-a federal judge responded to a lawsuit filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), ordering Trump to remove his name from the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in Washington within 2 weeks. (That time is just about up.)
-Former FBI agents have launched the FBI Support Network, which offers free legal aid and financial support for agents in jeopardy, being forced out of their positions for defending the Constitution, rather than following illegal orders on the whim of a Manchurian Cantaloupe.
-The $1.8 billion slush fund is on hold, and all but dead, thanks ironically to John Thune and Senate Republicans who couldn’t take it. (Yes, Blanche is trying to walk back his own responses, but they’ve essentially lost that whole battle).
-The attempt to gag the entire civil service by forcing federal employees to sign non-disclosure agreements is going nowhere — as is the attempt to force every government grant to adhere to whatever standards of “loyalty” the Mango Malfeasance demands on any given day. Both are headed for defeat by way of immediate federal challenges, both extremely likely to lose in court.
-CBS’s Scott Pelley, one of the last true traditional journalists of substance and integrity, told Director Bari Weiss — a woman of no integrity whatever — to basically go to hell — all recorded on tape as her mealy-mouthed tech bro deputy tried to change the subject to bagels. Today Bari Weiss fired him, giving us all yet more reasons not to watch CBS now that Colbert is gone and 60 Minutes worthless. Ot-nay, oo-tay, ight-bray, Ms. Weiss….was kissing the orange ass truly worth the backlash?
—Yesterday, Jared and Dear First Daughter’s attempt to bribe the Albanian government into agreeing to their $1.7 billion resort along the Adriatic backfired when angry crowds in Tirana learned about the deal and burned down the Prime Minister’s official residence.
A long post — apologies — but underscoring that a great many things manufactured by Donald Jessica Dump in fear and loathing are now going ka-boom in Donald Jessica’s apricot-tinted, sneering formaldehyded face — and oh yes, the Strait of Hormuz is still being mined and still almost totally closed, with no “deal” on anybody’s horizon.
The shitshow is hardening, but the audience is leaving. Senator Lindsay Pittypat is now drinking himself to stuporous oblivion earlier every day. Soon we’ll have to start fetching the smelling salts and calling for the fainting couch before noon….
May there be more of these small victories leading to the eventual defeat and expulsion of this Trumpian regime!
And would someone please take orange man to task for referring to "peace negotiations as 'boring"??? What President does that?
But thank you for pointing out all the ways he and his soul-less, wit-less, deranged cabinet are losing this war. The only place I want to see their faces in future is in mug-shots. Will someone please take our country back???
So happy to hear the news from Albania! Thank you!
Of course Lindsey Pittypat had to course-correct…🍸🍸🍸🍸
“In a post Tuesday night on X, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wrote that "it is imperative that we allow people with meritorious weaponization claims to come forward and receive compensation through this fund," and proposed to create "a weaponization fund that will be available to those who can prove their claim against the federal government through the Federal Tort Claims Act."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blanche-doj-anti-weaponization-fund-house/
Revolting, scummy little man… 🤮
How we created a Rapid Response App (https://makeitfast.org/SiegeOfDelaneyHall) to demand reforms at Delaney Hall including detainees' demands, links to call your elected rep and a free teleprompter with talking points.
Hold VANGUARD accountable for helping finance GEO Group: Follow the money with this map.
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/05/24/vanguard-funds-geo-ice-detention-centers/
Also refuse to let Citizens Bank use your money. De-Ice Citizens and “Not with Our Money, Citizens” are two campaigns collecting pledges to withdraw your money collectively from this once community oriented Bank. At least $20 million pledged so far, and $3 million already withdrawn in steps to make our resolve clear. Citizens has money in both CoreCivic and GeoGroup. Citizens needs to join other banks in refusing to fund either concentration camps or private prisons (which unsurprisingly have lower parole rates and higher Black prisoner percentages)
There are so many reasons to stay away from big banks and you mention one more Myra. THX.
Again this is good but an old issue. NPR had a report two decades or so ago about a corporation serving penal systems food as a food service entity. They had planned a 3 times a day gruel because inexpensive it was one of those old NPR moments when I had to pull over.
This government, this regime, knows that to break the law and wait for court action works more efficiently than upholding constitutional rights and laws for citizens and noncitizens alike. These are fascist tactics that continue even after court orders to release or to follow court mandates. In another war and time we saw gestapos take away human rights from anyone they deemed unworthy or inhuman. Apologize later even to government representatives. Distract with the president’s medical problems. Or a birthday party. People and governments from other countries no longer look at American life as fulfilling a dream of freedom. That no longer exists.
None of them are apologizing, and DJT sets the standard of never acknowledging a mistake or wrong-doing. LYING AND RESISTING in a tantrum of ego.
More than that, he turns around and blames it on weaponizing by the Dems who, acording to him, just exist to pick on poor misunderstood him.
Hello Irenie... With the Disastrous War in Iran, and Electoral Losses in the USA, DJT will go more Insane, and Dangerous...
THE GREAT REPLACEMENT THEORY IS AN AUTHORITARIAN “US vs THEM” HOAX Since the time of Claude Levi-Strauss and before, mainstream anthropologists have suspected the existence of the recent recognition that “race is a social construction” or as anthropologist John H. Relethford somewhat differently states it: Race is a “culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation”. More than 30 years ago the science of genetics/genealogy proved that we are all the same species (sapiens) by tracing single nucleotide polymorphisms in the Y chromosome in men and in the mitochondrial DNA of women (all of your mitochondrial DNA comes from your mother). Men were traced back to a single man in east Africa (“The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey” by geneticist Spencer Wells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQAdPvKG4-U). And women were traced back to a single woman in the same region of east Africa (“The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry” by University of Oxford emeritus professor Bryan Sykes) And by “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari, Professor of history at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So we all have the same ancestors. Race is a myth. The production of melanin in skin cells is regulated by 150-200 genes. All of us have some of them - some more than others. Anthropological studies have taken groups of thousands of people and divided them up into “racial” groups and found that there were more phenotypic differences within each group than there were between the groups. Some cognitive scientists reason that “race” is an error of metacognition - like believing that the sun orbits the earth (a widespread belief in the past that Galileo was imprisoned for contradicting). People argued that because you can see it coming up on the eastern horizon, passing overhead and going down on the western horizon - so it must be going around/orbiting the earth. In any event freedom of travel and “interracial”/intercultural mating is rehomogenizing the perceived “racial” attributes (phenotypic characteristics) of our species. I don’t think “white supremacists” have any chance of changing this. We need to tolerate and appreciate the value of our diversity. Tribalism and cults are self-destructive. We are all part of the same family of ancestors that comprise humanity. To have a democracy we need to come together as “We the People”. E Pluribus Unum.
The appointment of Bill Pulte confirms that there is a kind of 'great replacement' currently going on in federal government. A recent report in Science found that some 10,000 STEM Ph.Ds had left government since Trump returned to office. A similar number of government attorneys have also departed over that period. It seems that Trump is replacing experts with idiots.
Yes. Kakistocracy. Thank you for the reply.
Paragraphs are your friend, Fred.
Yes. I agree but there is limited space. Thank you for the comment.
I’ve always thought, Fred, that skin color is the MOST SHALLOW (literally) reason to “other” someone or a group of people.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 well said, Fred!
Thank you for the reply. In the current environment facts, rationality, science, the rule of law, egalitarianism need all the help they can get.
Refusing inspections, oversight, and judicial review of detention centers and actions puts DHS beyond the rule of law and using national intelligence to persecute people who offend the President does the same for the rest of the administration. The former ICE head is posturing with international white supremacists. Calling this state of affairs tyranny or fascism is seriously inadequate. Flawed leadership is destroying the integrity, credibility, and reputation of the United States. Contact your representatives and vote Blue.
Worse: it's influencing groups in every country on Earth.
I had a glimpse of the private prison system and the deportation process by accident. A family that I knew in rural Patagonia had a son who had been recently deported from the US and the son had real estate and other property in the US and they asked me if I would write a letter for the son to a US lawyer who was representing him. The reason they asked me was they knew that I had practiced law in the US. It was a simple request and as I was in Patagonia at the time I met with him and his family. My first reactions to his explanations and some of his claims were not very sympathetic as some of his statements seemed did not reflect the legal system that I had worked in and was familiar. I had no experience in Immigration Law and had only a vague idea of how the system worked.
I wrote the letter for him to his US legal representative and listed claims he had made about his treatment and what he saw as failures in the system. I was shocked as I found that what I knew as the due process requirements were systematically not observed and his immigration lawyer claimed to be overwhelmed and said that what I saw clear violations of his rights were commonly ignored by the Immigration courts.
The one claim that bothered me the most was I asked him why when he was first arrested why he did not contact his lawyer. He claimed that upon arrest he was taken to private prison and they immediately sent him out of state location. The rules of the prison did not grant telephone privileges until you had been there for about a week. He claimed that they would move him to insure that he could not contact his legal representatives and this was a standard practice for the private facilities. I subsequently found that this claim appeared to be true and discussing this with lawyers who practiced in this area it was a common practice.
Well, isn't that slick: make more money by denying constitutional rights. These people are truly evil.
Thanks, Fred B! It is important that this information gets attention. It explains why people kept being moved around to new detention centers. I understood that it was typical to move a detainee away from family support and lawyers after the original arrest, but I didn’t get why detainees would be shuffled from one prison to the next after that.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had this to say about Pulte's appointment: “we don’t need a weaponized DNI.” It's hard to believe, isn't it, that Trump could have actually appointed someone to this role who is actually even less qualified than Tulsi Gabbard.