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Month: May 2025

The War On Christmas Continues

Published by digby on May 8, 2025

That was in response to a question about this comment from the Mattel Chairman who made the mistake of failing to kiss his feet appropriately as he spoke the truth that everyone knows:

BREAKING: Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz just completely demolished Trump’s talking point on Tariffs, explaining why Tariffs aren’t going to bring manufacturing back to America.

CNBC: “If the tariffs come, would it be cheaper to manufacture toys in the United States?”

Kreiz: “We don’t see that happening. We believe that production in other countries — where we can be efficient and more productive — is the best balance between manufacturing outside of the US and continue to develop product, in terms of design and creativity, in America…

The 80% of toy production globally does happen in China. We have to remember that a significant part of toy creation happens in America — design, development, product engineering, brand management — all happens in America.

Making product in other countries allows us to create quality product at affordable price points.” This is why free, open trade is so important to American companies.

Mattel is the biggest toy company in the world. But that doesn’t matter. Trump wants Americans making those doll parts and until they do nobody can have any dolls. I guess. Who knows what’s really going through his mind these days?

Trump did announce a “deal” with great Britain today, essentially pulling back the UK tariffs to what they were before he lost his mind and carving out some exceptions for auto parts. Oh, and he’s keeping the 10% for no particular reason at all. Justin Wolfers had some choice words on this:

There was one bright spot in the announcement:

That’s nice. Meanwhile Trump once again demonstrates his simple mind:

That’s an interesting way of thinking. I guess if you can’t find any food to buy it’s a good thing because it means you still have your money? And then you’re rich? Except for the people who’ve lost their jobs who don’t have any money. And they’re poor. But that’s ok because sacrifice?

I wish one of the reporters who’ve had the opportunity to interview him in recent days would have just tried to pin him down on this stuff instead of flitting from subject to subject. I’m genuinely curious as to how he makes it make sense in his own mind. Or if his addled brain is just so disjointed that he doesn’t even know or care that it doesn’t make sense.

QOTD: Chief Justice John Roberts

Published by digby on May 8, 2025

In a fireside chat with Judge Lawrence Vilardo of the New York Western District:

“In our Constitution, judges and the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law — and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the President. And that innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent. Its job is to obviously decide cases — but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive. And that does require a degree of independence.”

I’ll bet Stephen Miller had a full blown tantrum when he heard that.

It sounds as though Roberts, and perhaps some of the other members of the Supremes, are not amused by Trump’s assertion that he, and only he, will interpret the law — or ignore it at will.

A Little Sunshine In Your Day

Published by digby on May 8, 2025

Poor Elon, he fucked up:

Tesla sales were down sharply in April in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal, as well Sweden and France, according to monthly sales figures.

Just like in the United States, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s politics has inspired backlash and protests across Europe. Musk has backed some far-right political candidates in Germany and the UK. And given his high-profile role in the Trump administration, anger over the threat to slap steep tariffs on European imports could also be turning off some European buyers.

In the UK, one of the few European markets where Tesla reported stronger sales in the first quarter, April sales plunged 62%, according to UK auto industry trade group SMMT. The drop came even as overall EV sales rose 8% in the UK for the month.

Tesla sales were also down 67% in Denmark, 74% in the Netherlands and 33% in Portugal, according to data from trade groups in each of those countries. Sales were also down 81% in Sweden, and 59% in France, according to Reuters.

This was at a time when more electric vehicles were sold than ever before. People just can’t stand Musk.

I have to say that I enjoyed this as much as the Bulwark guys up top. Couldn’t happen to a weirder guy.

It Feels A Bit 1933ish Around Here

Published by digby on May 8, 2025
One of the dangerous criminals who are polluting our otherwise perfectly pristine society

The roundups are the beginning:

After a traffic stop for turning right on a red light in Dalton on Monday, a 19-year-old Dalton State student is now facing possible deportation.

Friends say Ximena Arias-Cristobal, who has lived in Whitfield County since she was 4, was taken to the Stewart Detention Center wearing chains around her wrists and ankles. There, she’ll wait a little over a month before she appears before a judge. That facility is near Columbus about 3 and a half hours away.

[…]

Dalton police took the teenager to the Whitfield County jail, where a spokesperson says their booking procedure includes asking everyone their residency status. Whitfield County has had a “Jail Enforcement Model” agreement with ICE since June of 2020.The ICE website says that means they can

…identify and process removable aliens — with criminal or pending criminal charges — who are arrested by state or local law enforcement agencies.

… Jones says Arias-Cristobal’s parents came to the Dalton area from Mexico City in 2010, when she was a toddler.

Arias-Cristobal’s father has also been scooped up. He also doesn’t have a criminal record and owns a construction company and pays taxes.

They came in with big dreams because they wanted a big future for my older sister. And, you know, my sister goes to college, and she was an honor student since middle school. And she runs. She loves to run. It’s her passion, and the only reason they came is to follow my sister’s dreams.

Arias-Cristobal is a graduate of Dalton High School and cross country athlete, is now attending Dalton State College. Jones says her family has been paying out-of-state tuition.

She was too young to qualify for DACA.

I feel like crying. This person is not a criminal nor a danger to anyone. Neither is her father or anyone else in her family.

The federal government (with the help of plenty of locals) are gathering up anyone they can find on the streets, in workplaces, schools, everywhere, putting them in chains and throwing them into prison for weeks and months at a time before sending them off to god knows where. All so that Donald Trump could get re-elected and his Nazi majordomo could fulfill his life’s work as Satan’s apprentice.

There is a reign of terror happening all over America, menacing every non-citizen no matter their circumstances from tiny children to green card holders to workers to tourists, all of whom contribute more to this country than the entire horde of MAGA ghouls ever have or will. It is a monstrous, unspeakable nightmare for millions of people who live among us.

We are literally a fascist country.

America Gone Mad

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 8, 2025

Please excuse our collective breakdown

Someone needs to issue a formal apology to the world. If it wasn’t official before, it is official now.

Allowing a minor to use nonstandard pronouns is now a “medical treatment.” No, really. Person, am I out of touch (Tallahassee Democrat):

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Republican leaders in 19 other states are urging a federal appeals court to reconsider a decision that backed the Leon County school system in a dispute about a student wanting to express a gender identity and use pronouns the child’s parents didn’t support.

Lawyers in Uthmeier’s office and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office last week filed a friend-of-the court brief calling for the full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear arguments in the case. A three-judge panel of the appeals court in March ruled against the parents, January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, in the lawsuit against the Leon County School Board, Superintendent Rocky Hanna and other school officials.

The child, then 13, female at birth, asked to go by a male name and they and them pronouns. The parents allowed that “J” could go by that nickname at school but disapproved of the pronouns.

The child told a school counselor about wanting to use the name J and the they and them pronouns, the ruling said. Under a school system policy guide at the time, the parents were not informed of the social transition at school. That ultimately led to the lawsuit. 

“Social transition” is a thing? Apparently.

The parents’ attorneys filed a brief in the appeal. Here’s the crux:

“Put simply, parents have a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children, including controversial decisions like whether to allow their children to socially transition,” the brief said. “Purposefully withholding from a parent critical information about supposed medical treatment that a school is providing a student not only violates that right, but does so to a disturbing and constitutionally intolerable degree.”

So allowing a kid to use alternate pronouns and a school agreeing is now a “medical treatment” on par with transition surgery? Is this where the RW talking point about kids going to school and coming home a different gender originates? It makes me nostalgic for the moral panics of my youth. Ah, the days of razor blades in Halloween apples, fingerprinting kids at the mall over “stranger danger,” lurid tales of alleged ritual Satanic abuse at daycare centers, and “super-predators.”

‘Has the world gone mad? It has’: foreign reporters share a view of Trump from abroad

The United States of America is engaged in Mind Boggling Cruelty under Trump 2.0. Sending immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador wasn’t enough. Now it’s Libya. I’m amazed we’re not sending them to Syria to be tortured. The Bushies did that. But give Trump and Trump’s Himmler (Stephen Miller) time.

Do they have a golf course at The Hague? Asking for a future former president. (Maybe Rodrigo Duterte or Radovan Karadžić know?)www.vox.com/politics/412…

— Tom Sullivan (@tmsullivan.bsky.social) 2025-05-08T00:17:23.527Z

Now we’re handing out quack medicines and deep down a rabbit warren of of conspiracy theories.

The Oregon Republican Party is abhorred by two things: 1) antisemitism and 2) the way a cabal of Soros-funded radical left globalists are secretly trying to destroy traditional American civilization.

— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) 2025-05-08T11:45:50.434Z

Five o’clock can’t get here soon enough.

* * * * *

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

It. Is. Finished.

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 8, 2025

Six months and two days later

N.C. Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs is N.C. Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs for another eight years. Judge Jefferson Griffin, her Republican opponent, on Wednesday finally gave up his legal quest to change the rules of the 2024 election after the vote counting was over. Long over. Six months and two days after Election Day, he conceded.

Griffin challenged over 60,000 votes judged valid in every other race on the fall ballot. But Griffin remained behind by 734 votes after two recounts. (I observed ours.) But Griffin, the state Republican Party, and his attorneys would not take democracy for an answer. They pursued threir effort to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters (based on DOGE-level shoddy data mining) through the state courts, saw their challenge whittled down to under 10,000, then even fewer.

Mother Jones summarized:

On Monday, however, federal district court Judge Richard Myers, who was appointed by Donald Trump, overruled the state courts in North Carolina and ordered the state board of election to certify Riggs’ election. “You establish the rules before the game,” he wrote. “You don’t change them after the game is done.”

Riggs celebrated the ruling in a statement: “After millions of dollars spent, more than 68,000 voters at risk of losing their votes, thousands of volunteers mobilized, hundreds of legal documents filed, and immeasurable damage done to our democracy, I’m glad the will of the voters was finally heard, six months and two days after Election Day. It’s been my honor to lead this fight–even though it should never have happened.”

“This is a righteous victory for democracy and a clear defeat of political gamesmanship,” added DNC Chair Ken Martin. “For 200 days, Republicans in North Carolina sought to overturn the will of the people, hijack a state Supreme Court seat, and systematically undermine basic faith in our elections.”

Republicans failed to steal the seat, yes. But their effort to “systematically undermine basic faith in our elections” succeeded and continues. They got far enough with this post hoc effort that they may try it again elsewhere.

Ari Berman (“Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America”):

Even though Griffin was ultimately unsuccessful, his six-month effort to overturn the election did a tremendous amount of damage to the democratic process. He got much further than Trump did in 2020, convincing two state courts in North Carolina to throw out thousands of otherwise lawful votes after two recounts had affirmed Riggs’ victory and every other election from November had been certified. That will go a long way toward making election subversion the norm rather than the exception, especially in states, like North Carolina, where Republicans control the top courts and election boards.

Democratic State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls called Griffin’s attempt to steal the election “a bloodless coup.” Voting rights activists referred to it as “a nonviolent version of January 6.” Just like Trump’s effort to overturn the election inspired election deniers to seize positions of power across the country, what played out in North Carolina could embolden other losing candidates to go to extreme lengths to contest future elections.  

One wonders when we will hear Republican calls to impeach Myers.

What Griffin’s concession means is that the NC GOP is cutting its losses. Griffin risked his political life on this gambit. Likely at the urging of Republican strategists like Cleta Mitchell of Southern Pines. He spent months trying to overturn his election loss by throwing out tens of thousands of constituents’ votes from all parties. That effort has raised Griffin’s statewide name recognition, and not in a good way. He’s pissed off people he’d need to vote for him (Republicans included) when he’s up for reelection to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2028. We’ll make sure to remind voters if he runs. Meaning, he’s toast.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Mind Boggling Cruelty

Published by digby on May 7, 2025

I posted yesterday about the Trump administration’s attempt to send migrants to Ukraine. I’m sure they told the Ukrainians to use them as prison labor and everything but it didn’t work out.

But that hasn’t stopped them from finding other dangerous places to send these people. If they are like the ones they sent to El Salvador, you can bet many of them are not criminals, just people trying to make a living and feed their families.

The NYT reports:

The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.

The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.

The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”

The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions. Reuters earlier reported the possibility of a U.S. deportation flight to Libya.

Right. It’s deterrence, kind of like when the Taliban stones a woman for adultery or Putin poisons his political opposition. I think the Saudis like to dismember dissidents or hang them from big cranes over everyone’s heads so maybe Trump can arrange to send some of the migrants there. You know, to send a message.

Update:

A U.S. judge said any effort by the Trump administration to deport migrants to Libya would clearly violate a prior court order barring officials from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first weighing whether they risk persecution or torture if sent there.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued an order, opens new tab restricting their removal on Wednesday after Reuters, citing three U.S. officials, reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration may for the first time deport migrants to Libya despite previous U.S. condemnation of Libya’s harsh treatment of detainees.

Apparently, they were getting ready to do it.

This is par for the course these days. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are determined to deport these people to make them suffer in cruel and inhuman conditions. And they do it not just to send a message but entertain the MAGA cult with the cruelty.

They really do love it:

Trump Thinks He Is Emperor Of The World

Published by digby on May 7, 2025

It’s not just foreign companies, it’s foreign governments too:

An official in Sweden has condemned a U.S. demand that his city apply the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies for contractors dealing with the American embassy.

Jan Valeskog, Stockholm’s planning vice mayor, described as “bizarre” a letter by the U.S. Embassy in Sweden calling for the capital city’s authorities to formally agree to cease diversity initiatives. Valeskog told Newsweek on Wednesday that he expected the U.S. Embassy to withdraw the demand but that the city’s good relationship with the mission would continue.

Firms in other European countries including France, Denmark and the Netherlands have also reported they have received the U.S. request, prompting one Danish official to call for a united EU response.

This DEI fetish is now officially a sign of mass mental illness. To demand that foreign companies and governments adhere to our grotesque racist obsessions is so bizarre that I honestly think it’s fair to make that assessment.

Who in God’s name do these people think they are?