Month: July 2025

Daniel Dale catches Trump in another delusion:

President Donald Trump told a story on Monday about how he “made a correct prediction” about the outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum while he was visiting his golf course in Scotland “the day before the vote.”

“You remember?” he asked reporters.

They couldn’t have remembered. It didn’t happen.

Trump actually visited Scotland the day after the Brexit referendum, not the day before it. And while he did say about three months prior that he thought the UK would end up leaving the European Union, he made no public predictions in an interview the day before the vote – saying he personally favored Brexit but also that “I don’t think anybody should listen to me because I haven’t really focused on it very much.”

When Trump was running for president in 2016, he hadn’t even heard of Brexit. Michael Wolff interviewed Trump for the Hollywood reporter.

“And Brexit? Your position?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Brexit.”

“Hmm.”

“The Brits leaving the EU,” I prompt, realizing that his lack of familiarity with one of the most pressing issues in Europe is for him no concern nor liability at all.

“Oh yeah, I think they should leave.”

He didn’t know much more in 2018 when he was president:

During a news conference on Thursday ahead of his trip to Great Britain, President Trump was asked an extremely basic question about Brexit.

“You are going to the U.K. — what will be your message on Brexit?” a reporter asked him.

Trump was completely unprepared to respond in any substantial or coherent way. Instead, he began by defensively claiming he has “been reading a lot about Brexit over the last couple days.” But after a few seconds of stammering, he admitted, “I have no message. It is not for me to say.”

The president quickly pivoted to providing a free plug for his private club in Scotland, talking about his family connections to the U.K., and offering platitudes like: “I would like to see them be able to work it out so it could go quickly, whatever they work out.”

After about a minute of Trump’s dissembling, the reporter followed up by trying to get him to be specific about the extent to which he’d like to see the U.K. withdraw from the European Union.

“Hard Brexit?” he asked.

But Trump was barely familiar with what the term means.

“I thought you said it was ‘heart breaking,’” Trump quipped. “I would say that, you know, Brexit is Brexit. It’s not like — I guess when you use the term ‘Hard Brexit,’ I assume that’s what you mean. The people voted to break it up, so I imagine that’s what they’ll do, but maybe they are taking a little bit of a different route.”

Trump finished his “answer” with complete non sequiturs about his 2016 electoral win, and his popularity in the U.K.

I think it’s clear he doesn’t know anything more about it today.

But that’s ok. Treasury Scott Bessent actually had the nerve to say this:

Scott Bessent: The President is probably the most economically sophisticated president we've had in probably 100 years, maybe ever.

Imagine saying this and expecting to be taken seriously pic.twitter.com/dRJNSg1SMh

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 6, 2025

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: "Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are not used to a high-functioning executive president. They are used to perhaps President Obama, who was not as economically sophisticated as President Trump." pic.twitter.com/P1d36fCKJi

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 26, 2025

Trump’s interference in the inner workings of the Brazilian government is the ultimate example of his colossal hubris. It is simply stunning that he thinks he has the right to do this:

President Donald Trump is intensely interested in the criminal case against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of planning a military coup attempt. Trump and his administration have repeatedly accused Brazilian officials of a political “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro and demanded they drop their case.

Bolsonaro, a far-right leader whose supporters stormed government buildings in 2023 following his 2022 electoral defeat, allegedly planned to assassinate Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and multiple others as part of his attempt to remain in power.

How is Trump pressuring Brazil? The Trump administration took two new steps on Wednesday. First, the Treasury Department sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act, a law intended to target foreigners accused of serious human rights violations. (The department alleges violations by de Moraes, including regarding Bolsonaro’s prosecution, but nothing like what the law is normally used for.)

Second, Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil, effective immediately rather than on August 1. Brazil has a long-running trade deficit with the US, something Trump claims to want, which makes the tariffs an especially remarkable step.

This is nuts. Trump is doing this tariff nonsense based upon the fatuous assertion that we are in an economic “emergency.” How does Brazil’s government indicating their former president have anything to do with that? It’s clearly just Trump trying to do a favor for his buddy.

How has Brazil responded?

So far, with defiance. Earlier this month, Lula declared that “No gringo is going to give orders to this president,” and Bolsonaro’s trial continues. Brazilians appear to be on his side: Lula’s support has risen in recent polls following Trump’s threats.

All the institutions and most of the countries are appeasing Trump with flattery, telling him that he’s a big winner even though he’s a dundering fool. And all it’s doing is making him more drunk with power and full of hubris. People need to step up and say no. If everyone had banded together at the beginning and refused to play his stupid game we’d all be in a different position today.

Good for Lula. I hope he hangs tough.

Jonathan V. Last writes about Luke Farritor, one of the DOGE boys who was profiled in a massive Bloomberg feature last week. He is basically a spoiled, smart, young, jerk who has the blood of millions of people on his hands:

I want to quote liberally from the Bloomberg piece so you can get a sense of what DOGE was like:

The White House’s executive order creating DOGE said it would modernize technology and maximize productivity. “It took a couple of weeks to realize that, despite the stated mission, their main focus would be destruction,” says a current government employee who, like others we interviewed, requested anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak with the media. “That it was less about evolving and improving than tearing down to the floorboards. I think part of what confused everybody was that you had these foot soldiers you were seeing and you assumed that they were there just to support the generals, but they weren’t. The generals had delegated everything to the foot soldiers.”

Deleting USAID seems to have been Farritor’s most important task:

On Friday, Jan. 31, Farritor was invited to an “urgent meeting” about the US Agency for International Development. Over the weekend, Musk called the agency, which provides humanitarian assistance to millions of the world’s poorest people, a criminal organization and a viper’s nest full of radical-left Marxists who hate America. After midnight on that Sunday, he wrote on X: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” . . .

[W]hen a former friend posted an article critical of Farritor and DOGE on Instagram, Farritor replied with a meme of a crying baby and the caption: “When the corrupt elites can’t access USAID anymore.”

And:

DOGE members didn’t identify themselves when they came into an agency, government employees told us, and demanded access to sensitive data but wouldn’t explain why. They communicated on Signal, where they could make their messages disappear. They shielded their work from public-records review. . . .

They were busy—and Farritor may have been among the busiest. “Good God. You’d see him and think that he must be harmless,” says a current government employee. “And I guess he would be if other people weren’t giving him an obscene amount of power and access and telling him to move fast and break things.”

Farritor helped assess, slash or dismantle at least nine departments and agencies after USAID— the Offices of Personnel Management and of Management and Budget; the Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, and Health and Human Services; the National Science Foundation; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—according to interviews with dozens of current and former government employees, and lawsuits and records seen by Businessweek.

Last:

The irony in all of this is that while no one denies Farritor’s genius as an engineer, it’s not clear that destroying the federal government required any special gift. Building requires skill; any monkey can do the demolition work.

Look at DOGE and you don’t see an elite strike force that was needed to figure out how to execute an intricate, novel task. You see a bunch of privileged elites who were granted the honor of unthinkingly mashing the delete button as part of the reward system in their clique.

I’m pretty sure that I could have figured out how to destroy USAID.

But then again, maybe that’s the key: Maybe the point of bringing in geniuses like Luke Farritor is that they’d be so smart that they couldn’t understand what they were actually doing?

I dunno. They just seem like anti-social assholes who could just as easily have become gangsters or concentration camp guards if they’d come up in different circumstances.

This is the quote in the Bloomberg piece that got to me:

The DOGE team wasn’t what I expected,” says a current government employee who’s interacted with Farritor and other core members of DOGE. “Marketed as tech geniuses, yet they could barely keep up with basic tasks. In reality, they were overconfident, drunk on power and utterly clueless. They giggled and asked me how my day was going—right as they hit the keys to obliterate nearly a decade of my work. There wasn’t even a flicker of understanding or care. It wasn’t just the loss that gutted me. It was the audacity of their casual cruelty.”

Sick, sick, sick. And, I’m sorry, I don’t care if they’re young.

Last wonders:

[H]ow would you describe the moral culpability for a man who casually destroys a program that will result in the deaths of millions without even achieving his stated aims of saving money?

Because that seems like more than just a “mistake,” or a “youthful indiscretion,” or a bad choice.

Especially because the final piece of the puzzle is that it is almost certain that Farritor will never face any consequences for his actions. Hell, his professional prospects will probably be improved by his association with Musk and DOGE. The spigots of the red-pilled tech world will be running full-blast for him.

This is the proverbial banality of evil without any accountability. In fact, it seems to be becoming the norm.

WTF?

Wingnut whisperer Will Sommer:

RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST LAURA LOOMER is still collecting scalps. After purging the National Security Council and the CIA’s health branch earlier this year, Loomer appears to have outdone herself this week, helping to boot two top government officials in less than twenty-four hours.

First, Loomer’s social-media attacks against the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Vinay Prasad, for his previous support for Democrats prompted Prasad to resign. That was on Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday, after a series of attacks from Loomer, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll ordered West Point to fire Jen Easterly, who had previously been the head of the Biden administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, from a chair at the military academy.

Maybe more than anyone, Loomer demonstrates the power right-wing media figures can have in Washington even without actually holding a government job. Even Prasad, whose criticism of vaccines had earned him the support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., proved unable to fend off Loomer’s campaign.

One interesting thing to note here: Loomer is targeting a lot of Kennedy associates. She went after Prasad, and has raged against surgeon general pick Casey Means, even accusing her of witchcraft and highlighting her efforts to find a husband by using psychedelic mushrooms.

Sommer speculates that her fixation is because these people are ex-Democrats which is probably correct. Loomer believes she is the true keeper of the MAGA flame.

Moe importantly, how can it be that this fringe figure is exerting this kind of influence on the presidency? There is very little reason to allow her to have this influence. I sometimes wonder if she doesn’t have something on Trump.

David Frum had written one of the most lucid pieces about Trump’s tariffs policy that I’ve read accompanied by a fascinating interview with economic historian Douglas Irwin that addresses many of our questions. (Gift link)I’ve been very confused by the way so many of the financial elites have reacted to this economic lunacy but Frum may have homed in on the reason someone like Scott Bessent and others of his ilk are going along:

You’re going to see the government having a much bigger role in economic life, picking winners and picking losers. One of the reasons that the United States moved away from tariffs as a way of funding the government back in the early 20th century was because it led to so much corruption as different interests bought their way into protection and favors from the United States government.

It creates privileged winners. And here’s one more thing it does, and this is maybe the most important of all: Once you see a tariff as a tax on those Americans least able to pay, it’s pretty hard to think of it as anything else. When the Trump people boast that they’re on their way to trillions of dollars of new revenue, understand that what they’re talking about is financing the tax cut for the rich that they passed just weeks ago in this one giant, big, boastful bill. And they’re going to offset a lot of those revenue losses that were given to the richest people in America by having a massive tax on the consumption of the poorest people in America. A tariff is a tax on the poorest people because it falls most heavily on goods.

Tariffs shift the burden of taxation onto the goods. They tend to fall most heavily on the least expensive goods, and they impose the greatest costs on those Americans who spend more of their incomes on goods, less on services, less on saving—those least able to pay. What we are seeing here is a massive redistribution of the fiscal burden of the United States, the tax burden of the United States, from those best able to pay [to] those least able to pay. And the whole thing is being mystified and disguised by appealing to people’s envy and spite and ignorance and mistrust of foreigners.

Low taxes and massive corruption? From the point of view of a wealthy robber baron it’s a win-win. Not so much for the rest of us.

Frum also speculates that one of the reason the markets haven’t reacted more strongly to the chaos is this:

[M]any investors are expecting the courts to strike down the Trump tariff program. In May of 2025, the United States Court of International Trade ruled that Trump had exceeded his authority by imposing all of these many different tariffs on his presidential say-so. And I think a lot of investors are betting that other courts, and ultimately the United States Supreme Court, will agree with the U.S. Court of International Trade that the tariffs exceed Trump’s authority. But if those bets are wrong, if the courts do—as they so often have done—appease Trump, accommodate Trump, go along with Trump, we’re going to be seeing a big shock, and soon and hard.

This is the second time I’ve heard this theory about waiting for the courts to strike down the tariffs. A few months ago I might have thought the Supremes would at least take the idea of blowing up the world economy more seriously than their need to allow the American monarchy to have unfettered power. If the financial and business elites are counting on that they are very likely whistling past the graveyard.

The interview with Irwin is super interesting too. It’s clear that none of us probably really understand trade very well but Trump’s lack of understanding is monumental.

One of the desired effects of the Trump administration’s “flood the zone” strategy of pushing out dozens of executive orders and policy changes as quickly as possible is to make it impossible for the news media to focus on anything long enough to fully capture the attention of the public before the next atrocity is announced. It’s been quite successful so far, although Epstein scandal may have finally broken their rhythm enough to penetrate the national consciousness. Unfortunately, this has led to a sense that some of the worst actions of Trump 2.0 are perceived to have disappeared and it just isn’t true. None of them are creating more human misery on a daily basis than Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s mass round-up and deportation program.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) first started rousting day workers at Home Depots in Los Angeles County back on June 6th, it garnered a ton of coverage, particularly once people started protesting at the downtown Los Angeles federal detention center. You’ll recall that they had the character of a rather normal big city protest handled easily by the L.A. Police Department but Donald Trump decided it was time to flex his muscles and he escalated the situation by going over the head of California Governor Gavin Newsom to activate the California National Guard. Excited by the sight of men in military garb on the streets of an American city he hates, he then ordered active duty Marines to join them for no apparent reason.

It was a big story for a few days, coming as it did around the same time as the spectacle of California Senator Alex Padilla being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed when he tried to ask DHS Secretary Kristi Noem a question at an L.A. press conference. The national media focused on the immigration issue with much concern about the civil liberties issues raised by this ICE and CPB overkill (not to mention all the military involvement) and it appeared that the mass deportation program might get the kind of sustained treatment that could pressure lawmakers and possibly produce a change in policy. After all, that had happened during Trump’s first term when people protested his “Muslim ban” and intense coverage of families being separated at the border forced the administration to back off.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. The national media turned away and after a laughable, staged “show of force” one day, the nearly 5,000 National Guard troops were reduced by almost half and the Marines were quietly released. But the ICE/CPB raids have continued apace, and have picked up in other cities as well. In fact, Noem and “immigration Czar” Tom Homan have promised to step up their presence in New York which may refocus attention on the issue. (New York is the home of the news media and if it happens there it gets covered.)

Los Angeles was always going to be one of the main priorities of this deportation policy with its large immigrant population and Hispanic character. It’s the poster city for everything the MAGA movement hates about America. The fact that it had recently gone through a major trauma with a firestorm that destroyed an estimated 16,000 homes just made it all the sweeter. Dealing with its mammoth recovery effort, the city needed its immigrant labor force more than ever and this operation was designed to force workers, businesses and customers into the shadows, terrified and paranoid. And they have good reason to feel that way.

Sen. Padilla, an L.A. native, has recently tried to appeal to locals to spend money in businesses which are really hurting as a result of the crack-downs:

Trump’s cruel ICE raids aren’t just hurting families, they’re hurting local economies.

In LA’s Boyle Heights, businesses reported losing 50% or more of their customers or revenue over the last several weeks.

Protest with your wallets. Support small, local, and immigrant-owned… pic.twitter.com/OJZDEdfDsQ

— Alex Padilla (@AlexPadilla4CA) July 26, 2025

Reports like this are happening all over Los Angeles where Latino and Asian immigrants and citizens alike are living under siege from these unidentified, masked men (and they appear to be all men) who are bursting into workplaces, grabbing people off the streets and even waiting outside courtrooms where immigrants appear for their hearings to quickly detain and deport them.

It isn’t just the small city businesses that are being impacted, however. For instance, ICE has raided farms, either detaining workers or scaring them into not coming to work, leaving the farms with crops unpicked, rotting on the vine. Factories are being impacted as well. The NY Times reported this week on a once thriving meat-packing operation in Omaha, Nebraska that has lost most of its work force resulting in a 70 percent drop in production. It’s happening in manufacturing and of all kinds, forcing companies to actually lay off American workers because they have to shut down assembly lines. Nursing Home staffs are around 40% foreign born, many of whom are from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela and have just had their legal status unceremoniously yanked by Trump. Immigrants make up 34% of the construction workforce and aren’t replaceable by Americans who don’t have the required skills.

All across the American economy we are about to see a profound disruption as a major part of the workforce is simply disappeared into camps and then deported which the administration blithely waves away by insisting that the proverbial 29 year old men living in their mother’s basement will be thrilled to work in a meat packing plant or a nursing home so they can keep their fabulous Medicaid benefits.

The economic statistics around undocumented workers are unequivocal. CNN reports this week that a new analysis by Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis is going to” shrink most worker paychecks, erode gross domestic product (GDP) and spike the already-massive federal government budget deficit.” As Kent Smetters, professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School told CNN, the reason is obvious: “the US economy will get smaller as you deport a lot of the workforce.You simply have fewer bodies to produce. Fewer people means a smaller economy.” That’s obvious when you think about it, isn’t it?

It’s also the case that immigrants pay taxes, they are consumers, many even pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems and reap no rewards which means they are actually helping to support American retirees. Economists are very worried that as Baby Boomers continue to age out of the workforce, businesses won’t be able to replace them, a problem that’s going to be made even worse by the lack of foreign born workers.

Between Trump’s inane tariff policy and this draconian deportation operation, it’s only a matter of time before this economy falls apart. I wonder if seeing the suffering of these workers who are being hunted down like animals is going to be worth it to all those MAGA true believers when they see what it’s going to cost them.

Salon

Direct action wherever you are, no matter how small

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and William J. Barber, II argue this morning for more direct action against our “authoritarian regime that threatens anyone who speaks out.” They plan on bringing Moral Monday protests (if I read them correctly) to U.S. Senate district offices across the South during the recess on Monday, August 18.

Citing the Freedom Riders of the 1960s, the pair write:

Authoritarian regimes always depend on the threat of retribution to instill fear and inspire compliance. Jim Crow was a dehumanizing system that denied the humanity of people with Black skin, but it did not ask most people to put on Klan robes and pledge their allegiance to white supremacy. Jim Crow was an authoritarian regime that insisted segregation was normal and dared anyone to challenge it.

The moral witness of direct actions like the Freedom Rides interrupted everyone in a system that was more fragile than it seemed. It didn’t change the minds of Southern governors or Mississippi jailers, but it did force the masses who’d gone along with the quiet violence of the system to decide whether they really believed it was justified.

This is what direct action does. It exposes the moral bankruptcy of authoritarian regimes. It compels everyday citizens to choose a side in a moral struggle.

So direct action it is:

We’ve checked in with our partners and set a date for August 18. If you’d like to get information about how to join a delegation in your state, please register here.

We do not know how long it will take to achieve an America that works for all of us, but we are committed to moving forward together, not one step back. And we will draw on the best of this nation’s moral traditions to guide us as we find our way to the better future that we know is possible.

Direct action is one of the best moral tools we have. It’s time to use it.

Don’t wait until they start arresting people for peacefully protesting. It’s empowering to engage in even little actions.

Locally, we’re holding several weekly drive-time sign protests around the county. They are essentially pop-up parties meant to “show the flag” of resistance. It feels good to do something publicly and regularly, even if it’s small. The protests lift spirits of passing drivers and build a greater sense of community among the activists. Occasionally, they piss off a few of the right people.

Okay, holding signs is not exactly a master narrative like Drew Westen wrote about in “The Political Brain”:  If the master narrative doesn’t alienate about 30 percent of the electorate, it isn’t a good narrative. Or as I paraphrase it, If you’re not pissing ’em off, you’re not doing it right.

But when some dude feels the need to roll down his car window and shout, “Get a life, you loser,” I get to smile and think, “Oh, you have no idea!” Guess we’re doing it right.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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Uncle Gruppenführer wants YOU

Author and journalist Tom Zoellner caught my attention with a long Facebook post on his encounters with U.S. Border Patrol agents. It’s worth your time. (I’ve added in the links Zoellner included in his post’s comments and his background links on the Border Patrol here and here):

I got to know a number of U.S. Border Patrol agents after the 2016 election and drank beer with them in various Tucson bars. While these conversations were friendly, they left me troubled. The depth of extreme right-wing and jingoistic convictions of most of them was genuinely surprising to me, as I had expected the measured norms of federal law enforcement to be their public face.

Not these guys. A lot of them had joined in the patriotic fervor after 9/11, thinking they would be going after America’s enemies. They took this vengeful attitude to the generally helpless Central American and Mexican laborers they sought to apprehend. I was also surprised by the overt cruelty of some agents that I met, and the general lack of professionalism.

I had to block one of them on this platform (a rare thing for me) because he told me with some amount of seriousness that I should hang for treason because I supported Kamala Harris for president, and that this would be the fate of other Democrats who were “in on it,” whatever “it” is supposed to mean.

Reminder: this is a federal agent currently serving, advocating the murder of U.S. citizens because of their mainstream political belief.

Studies of criminality among Customs and Border Patrol officers found that protections against corruption are exceptionally weak, and that prosecutions for unjust shootings are rare.

From the Arizona Daily Star last week: “Willcox border agent Bart Conrad Yager, 39, was also charged with six counts of “pandering,” or encouraging someone to engage in prostitution; one count of attempted child sex trafficking; and two counts of fraud, between July 2023 and March 2024 in Cochise County…The investigation found Yager often went home early, at times solicited sex acts for money while on duty, and got reimbursed with government funds for Pima County hotels where the sex acts took place, Cooper wrote. Between 2021 and 2024, Yager paid $42,400 in 231 transactions with women.”

He had been investigated for allegedly raping a woman in 2014. The Tucson police told the Border Patrol about this. Nothing was done. Yager kept working.

Thugs and bullies drunk on their new power

If like me you have wondered if ICE is finding its masked agents on Cragslist and taking them unvetted, and if it seems that they must be getting their training in law enforcement over Zoom or over the weekend, read on:

Hiring standards are going to get even lower. The mega-agency known as ICE now has $45 billion to spend on staff and facilities, plus a mandate to do 3,000 deportations a day, almost all of them the same kind of defenseless people from the countryside who came here to do terrible jobs for low pay. The only type of person who would be drawn to such work either has a cruel streak, or no interest in real law enforcement.

Already packed with the dregs, the rejects from other agencies, I believe ICE is going to be made up of even more thugs and bullies drunk on their new power, with the same lack of oversight that let monsters like Yager run rampant. Their overt loyalty to Trump, which is now the chief or only qualifying principle at the top of most cabinet agencies, will likely be the nudge-nudge criteria for promotion and advancement. And it may may asking too much of this Justice Department or FBI to make a serious attempt to get to the bottom of any atrocities they may commit while masked up and stuffing people into unmarked white vans without identifying themselves.

Those with backgrounds in the Proud Boys or other white identitarian groups will surely be among the applicants. Large parts of our federal police apparatus will begin to resemble the “buffs” and racist deputy gangs that left a lasting stain on the LAPD and L.A. Sheriff’s Department.

With a record of skirting 4th Amendment protections in pursuit of their mission, ICE has the potential to morph into the president’s internal army against domestic enemies.

It already has. They’re just not wearing brown shirts. And they’re starting with the easiest prey.

All Americans of good conscience should protest the expansion of this troubled agency, and be extremely suspicious of anything they say. Because they will lie about you if you get in their way.

From The Guardian yesterday: “US immigration officers made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during the massive demonstrations that rocked the city in June, according to federal law enforcement files obtained by the Guardian. The officers’ testimony was cited in at least five cases filed by the US Department of Justice amid the unrest. The justice department has charged at least 26 people with ‘assaulting’ and ‘impeding’ federal officers and other crimes during the protests over immigration raids. Prosecutors, however, have since been forced to dismiss at least eight of those felonies, many of them which relied on officers’ inaccurate reports, court records show.”

We covered the origin of those supposed “assaults” back in June. (Emphasis below is mine.)

You may think me naive for being surprised by these personal interactions described above, and maybe I was. But I went into it with a belief, based on a few years of covering police as a journalist in the 1990s, that federal law enforcement had reasonable hiring standards for agents and functioning internal affairs departments. I also knew of many compassionate acts by Border Patrol agents during the crossing waves in the early 2000s. Times seem to have changed for the much-worse.

A qualifier or two. I’m not anti-cop. In fact, I’m inclined to like and trust them. Some of the extreme rhetoric around the 2020 protests left me cold. I had several police officers in my family who were good and honest public servants. I interacted professionally with hundreds of them. It is a tough job that, which done well, is deserving of our respect. But what’s happening with ICE is not deserving of our respect.

It has also been pointed out to me that Yager finally got arrested because of an internal Border Patrol investigation. But to me, this is no vindication of the agency. His purported crimes were so blatant and went on for so long (more than a decade) that it seems a grim commentary on just how bad the standards are over there.

You do not need an undergraduate degree. Nor be able to read, comprehend, and uphold the U.S. Constitution. Proud Boys and Jan. 6 insurrectionists welcome.

(h/t RP)

* * * * *

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Lololol:

In 2020, Joe Rogan moved from Los Angeles to Austin after visiting and realizing he didn’t have to wear a mask at a restaurant. Many of Rogan’s compatriots in the stand-up space followed him to Texas to be closer to his “anti-cancel culture” comedy club. For some, it was a desire to escape what they saw as out-of-control homelessness, crime or high tax states like New York and California. But in recent interviews, some of Rogan’s pals seem to have learned that Texas isn’t paradise, either.

Last month, comedian, podcaster and former UFC fighter Brendan Schaub made comments about Austin that were widely noted by YouTubers whose whole schtick appears to be clipping and mocking podcasters. Schaub, who Rogan has had on The Joe Rogan Experience multiple times, moved from Los Angeles to Austin earlier this year, but has said on his show, The Fighter and the Kid, that he misses Los Angeles. 

“I miss my community and my routine,” Schaub said in June. He recalled a conversation with a fellow LA-to-Texas transplant, who told Schaub that Austin “is no LA.” 

Schuab is far from the first. In September 2024, Tim Dillon, a Los Angeles comedian who hosts podcast The Tim Dillon Show, called Austin “a horrible city without a soul” on a podcast with actor Whitney Cummings. Lured to Austin by the promise of low taxes and a “new” experience, Dillon quickly soured.

“It’s a soulless city that should be burned to the ground and everyone that lives here should be summarily executed,” Dillon joked. “It is not the ‘live music capital of America,’ it’s three heroin addicts busking with guitars. There is zero talent here in any capacity. There’s three restaurants that are good and I’ve been to all of them twice.” 

Dillon, who moved to Austin shortly after Rogan, announced in the summer of 2021 that he would be moving back to Los Angeles. Dillon said that the COVID-19 pandemic and Rogan’s 2020 decision to move to Texas made him want a change of scenery, and that while he had “never loved Austin,” he was willing to give it a chance, even though it wasn’t a “world-class city.” 

“Yes, the taxes are better. 
And yes, there are benefits to not being in LA. And yes, LA is a host of problems,” Dillon said on his podcast. “But I moved here because, first and foremost, I said, something new will be good. I was wrong.”

Another Rogan associate was more direct with his criticism of Texas. “Texas f–king blows,” comedian Shane Gillis said in a June episode of the Andrew Schulz podcast, recalling a storm that left his Austin home without power for three days. “It’s hot as f–k. The second we ran out of power, the house was 90 degrees and bugs came in immediately.”

“They’re on their own power grid, like f–king idiots,” Schulz added. 

I have to give them credit for creative descriptions:

Schuab, Gillis and Dillon are far from the only comedians to not see what Rogan sees. In January, New Orleans-native comedian Mark Normand called Austin’s comedy scene “a punchline.” Normand has also declared that “moving to Texas is over,” and last summer complained about Texas’ weather and Austin’s homeless population. 

“That city is a boiling pot of evil goo, just circling a dish,” Normand said in July 2024.

There’s more. As a Los Angeleno I’ll restrain myself except to say that although I’ve never lived there, I’ve actually always found Austin to be a cool town when I’ve visited. (It’s certainly way cooler than some other places I won’t name…)

But I have to say that this is a leopard face eating situation I can’t help but enjoy. L.A. was hardly an authoritarian hellscape during the pandemic. You could get anything in the world delivered to your door, there was a ton of outdoor entertainment, restaurants and clubs moved into parking lots and parks and on the streets and the traffic and air were clearer than they’ve ever been. The idea that it was so terrible that you had to move to Texas so your could be free was just ridiculous.

Now today, we have unidentified masked federal police rampaging through the city abducting people off the streets because people like Rogan and these guys all moved to Texas and endorsed Donald Trump. So thanks for that.

So what?

G. Elliott Morris analyzed that awful Wall St Journal poll that showed the Democrats are more unpopular than dirt but sees something that may surprise you:

The WSJ reports that Democrats are 19 points underwater in party image compared to Republicans. That’s indeed pretty bad. But does it mean, e.g., that voters won’t vote for Democrats in next year’s elections? In fact, no! The very same Wall Street Journal poll that got branded as the party having its “worst ever” image also shows the Democrats up three in the generic congressional ballot. That’s a six-point swing from their last poll in 2024 and would be large enough for the Democrats to win somewhere around 230-235 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But how can the Democrats have such a poor rating while winning the House popular vote? What’s going on here is that a lot of Democratic voters don’t like the party brand, but still think of themselves as Democratic voters, and will vote for the party above alternatives.

And Democrats loathe The GOP.

This is also relevant:

There’s a related point to make here, and that’s that polling data this early in the cycle has almost no predictive power for congressional election outcomes. I’m going to boot up the historical data now, and run some predictive models to show you just how poorly these early polls predict congressional — and especially midterm — elections. In particular for midterms, the relationship is so weak that you’re actually better betting against the party that has the favorability rating advantage this early in the cycle, historically speaking.

In fact:

There’s a lot more in the post and if you are interested in polling and data analysis, his Substack is well worth a subscription.

I’m not panicking about the Democratic Party favorability. How could it be anything else after seven long months of self-flagellation and endless navel gazing about what went wrong last November? (This is somewhat understandable since it’s unfathomable that the country would return that orange miscreant to the White House.) But Morris’s data should give us at least some hope that we haven’t talked ourselves into a crushing defeat in 206. It’s highly unlikely with Trump’s approval in the high 30s to low 40s and sinking like a stone.

I’m not making any predictions but I’m not feeling hopeless. Yet.