Zoo babies!
"what digby sez..."
Month: July 2025
“According to information my office received, the FBI was pressured to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD) … on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline,” Durbin wrote to Patel.
“This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests,” the letter said.
“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.”
Hmmm.
I can’t imagine that all the loyalty tests and polygraphs being administered to FBI agents had even the slightest effect on their assessments of the Epstein material.
G. Elliott Morris says that there are three issues weighing him down now. The first is the mass deportations:
According to Gallup, only 35% approve of Trump’s immigration policy, with 62% disapproving — one of his worst net ratings of any poll. Moreover, more than twice as many Americans strongly disapproved (45%) as strongly approved (21%) of the way the president is handling immigration.
Opinion is worse on deportations specifically. According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, 59% of adults disapprove of Trump’s deportation policy. Nearly two-thirds of voters (64%) say they prefer giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status, while 31% say they prefer deporting people here without authorization. Over half of all adults, and nearly 1 in 5 Republicans, disapprove of ICE.
Tariffs come second:
Even among Trump’s own voters, there is a lot of opposition to his new tariff scheme. Politico reports:
About 1 in 4 self-identified 2024 Trump voters, for example, said last month that the president’s tariffs are hurting the United States’ ability to negotiate better trade deals with other countries. They’re also evenly divided on whether Trump should have the ability to unilaterally impose tariffs on other countries in the first place, with 45 percent saying he should and 44 percent saying he should get approval from Congress.
And on Thursday, a new Associated Press-NORC poll found that most Americans say Trump’s policies have made them worse off. According to the survey, 49% of Americans feel Trump’s policies have done more harm than good, while only a quarter believe his policies have helped. Twenty-two percent say they have not been impacted by Trump.
Aaaaand:
He goes over the descent of Trump’s approvals on all the major issues since he was inaugurated:
And now, after this Epstein backlash, Trump has hit a fresh low. Averaging across polls, he has a -42 net approval rating on handling the files, with 17% approving of the president’s approach and 59% disapproving. This is the worst issue of his presidency by far.
Here’s the chart of the week:
It’s a problem.
Michelangelo Signorile is spot on. I don’t think he’ll mind if I post the whole thing:
Stephen Colbert announced to great surprise last night that CBS is canceling “The Late Show” next year.
And CBS is claiming that they killed the highest rated late night talk show, and one of the high points of CBS’s entire entertainment division, because of “financial reasons.”
Yes, as senators Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren and others have said, this stinks to holy hell.
Paramount, which owns CBS, settled with Trump in the asinine lawsuit he filed, claiming “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make her look good, or whatever. Legal experts across the political spectrum agreed this case was easily beatable.
But Paramount’’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, had other interests, specifically Paramount’s multibillion dollar sale to SkyDance, which needs to be approved by the FCC, which is now controlled by aTrump-installed chairman, MAGA extremist Brendan Carr. Paramount agreed to pay Trump a whopping $16 million to settle the lawsuit. That was announced earlier in the week.
Colbert, possessing more dignity and integrity than Shari Redstone has ever had in her entire greedy life, took a shot at Paramount on his show that night, calling it a “big fat bribe.”
In what seems extraordinarily brazen, CBS announced just days later the show will go off the air in a matter of months.
You’d think they’d wait a while just so the timing and the optics weren’t so obvious. But it’s quite possible that Trump demanded this announcement as part of his shakedown, even before Colbert criticized Paramount. Or Trump demanded it this week after Colbert’s criticism, telling Paramount the “deal” was off unless they fired Colbert.
Whatever way it went down, Trump surely wanted this announced this this week, the same week the settlement was announced, so that we all knew he did it. Giving Paramount cover to wait a few months and claim they have some new hot talent or whatever wasn’t something Trump was going to allow Paramount.
He wants all of us to know that he not only will use his power to control the media, but that anyone who speaks out against him will be taken down.
Trump bellows on Truth Social, saying “I absolutely love” that Colbert got axxed, and making it clear he’s going after Jimmy Kimmel next.
Yes, this is what fascism looks like, playing out the way it has in history, authoritarian power grabs of media and a squelching of speech. It’s how Vladimir Putin in Russia and Victor Orban in Hungary do it today too.
Trump only succeeded, however, because Paramount caved, just like the law firms that caved, and just like Columbia University when it caved. And just like all of the other spineless politicians and corporate CEOs. Trump is only as powerful as these greedy and fearful bastards make him.
Now Trump is threatening Rupert Murdoch of all people with a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for its story revealing Trump’s really creepy birthday letter to Jeffrey Esptein years ago—complete with a Trump illustration of a naked woman—during the time Epstein was engaged in sex trafficking minors. Trump of course denies it all as “fake news.”
The rumors of this story have in fact been percolating for a while, as have rumors of the threats from Trump, who apparently called the editor of the WSJ before it was published to warn them not to publish it. But the paper went ahead.
Let’s not give Murdoch too much credit here. His Fox News has reported nothing on the bombshell WSJ story as of this morning, a story that is being covered by all of the media. Murdoch is all about making money, and Fox News makes money by cheerleading Trump and suppressing bad news about Trump.
The WSJ, conversely, makes money by competing with the establishment media like the New York Times, ABC, the Washington Post and others, and scooping them. They’re not going to pass on a story like this. Murdoch may know Trump for years and support much of his agenda. But again, Murdoch is all about making money.
And actually, that’s something Paramount—with CBS—and the law firms that bowed to Trump should realize, if they haven’t already. Columbia University did not get Trump off it’s back, as its capitulation has eaten away at its reputation while Trump demands more. The law firms that bowed to Trump have now lost major clients and major talent among their attorneys. The law firms that stood up to Trump—and filed successful lawsuits against him—are getting new business because of it. And Harvard is being lauded for fighting Trump.
So, let’s all give a big “fuck you” to Paramount, which will only hurt CBS, it’s iconic “60 Minutes” and its other brands. Colbert, meanwhile, will soar even higher in whatever he does now.
Yes indeed. FUCK YOU CBS — and fuck you Trump. I am so sick of this asshole.
Oops.
Russell Vought, the once and future Director of the Office of Management and Budget and primary author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, gave a speech in 2024 laying out plans to shrink the federal government in a second Trump term by firing massive numbers of civil service workers. He famously declared that they wanted “the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains…we want to put them in trauma.” That dream has come true.
Thousands of federal workers have been traumatized and the Supreme Court just held that Vought and company can traumatize them as much as they choose. Little did we know that he also planned to traumatize potentially millions of poor people all over the world but he’s done that too, with the eager help of Donald Trump and the entire Republican Party establishment.
This week, on a strict party line vote, the GOP congressional majority officially rescinded the previously appropriated funding for $9 billion in foreign aid, an amount so catastrophic that the medical journal Lancet estimates that more than 14 million additional deaths could occur by 2030, including over 4.5 million in children younger than age 5. This funding for the now defunct USAID had been illegally cut previously by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the DOGE wrecking crew but the administration wanted to have the Republican Congress share the responsibility for this ruinous decision and apparently they were eager to do so. With just a couple of defectors in each house, the allegedly “pro-life” GOP happily signed on to the suffering and death of millions of people around the world. Not one Democrat voted for it.
If you haven’t heard of the process they used for this — “rescission” — it’s because it’s an arcane provision of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (ICA) which was enacted in the wake of budgetary abuse by Richard Nixon, another imperial president, who routinely impounded funding simply because he didn’t like the laws that he himself had signed. He claimed then (as the Trump administration claims now) that the law might say that the Congress has the responsibility to appropriate funds but nothing says that the president has to spend it. This practice was taken to court repeatedly and Nixon lost each time, including one unanimous verdict by the Supreme Court.
The Congress finally decided that the only way to stop this was to formally make it illegal so they passed the ICA which established the Independent Congressional Budget Office to give unbiased, non-partisan budget analysis, defined the procedures by which the President could propose rescissions of funds and deferrals of them to a later date and provided for a process allowing the Congress to override the rescissions and deferrals. A rescission request by the president must be acted upon within 45 days or it dies and historically a lot of them never see the light of day. Congress used to fiercely protect its budgeting authority. Now they seem to be mostly interested in appearing on Fox News and groveling for Donald Trump.
Since the ICA was enacted it hasn’t been uncommon for presidents to submit rescission requests but they weren’t granted very often. In fact the last one enacted until this week was by President Bill Clinton. But, as the Huffington Post reported, this is a favorite hobby horse of OMB Director Vought so you can expect to see a lot more of it. He’s even pushing the idea of so-called “pocket rescissions” an unethical and legally dubious shortcut in which the president submits the request for a funding cut late in the year so the funding expires before the 45 days is up. Vought has been open about using it.
He’s also been open about his willingness to simply ignore the ICA altogether. In fact, he already did that once during the first Trump term when he agreed to withhold military funding for Ukraine which Trump used in his attempt to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky in that infamous “perfect phone call.” It got Trump impeached but that hasn’t stopped Vought from continuing to insist that the president has no obligation under the constitution to follow the law.
The Huffington Post says that Vought commented at a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters that he sees no reason to even try to accomplish anything in a bipartisan manner stipulating that he’ll “only work with House and Senate Democratic appropriators ‘if they conduct themselves with decorum.'” And he knows that the zombies which makes up the GOP Congress will blindly walk off of any cliff Trump tell them to, so it’s not problem there.
The handwriting is on the wall. They passed their massive giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of working families in Trump’s One Big Boondoggle Bill on a party line vote. It adds 3 trillion to the deficit which gives the lie to Vought’s paeans to “fiscal responsibility.” He just wants to cut programs that help people because he doesn’t believe in that. (He told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor event that he’s “having fun” citing the massive cuts to the National Institute of Health.)
Donald Trump doesn’t believe in that either even as he will often try to portray himself as a leader who cares. (Why just this week he announced that he’s making Coca-Cola use only real cane sugar in their drinks!) And clearly, the GOP congress hasn’t even the slightest concern for the millions of people around the world for whom they have just signed death warrants.
The $9 billion rescission in foreign aid they just passed in both houses this week is a travesty. Every last GOP official who voted for it and every member of the Trump administration who pushed it has blood on their hands. And it’s only the beginning. The way they’re going they will soon be drowning in it.
Priorities:
Salon
Hold your ground
It’s hard to tell your so-called domestic terrorists (you) from your functional domestic terrorists (ICE) without a program.
At a Monday sign protest downtown, I rotated over my head a large, two-sided placard that read, ICE IS COMING | ARE YOU NEXT? Some dude drives up, lowers his passenger window, glares at me, and holds up a green Customs and Border Patrol hat before driving off. No uniform. Likely an Amazon purchase. We’re far from any CBP office.
There are at least three such weekly demonstrations here. And they are growing.
Friends reported another guy shouting curses at Good Trouble protesters after last night’s rally. They won’t go quietly.
David Lurie writes at Public Notice:
For Trump and his cronies, the prospect of losing power — or even sharing it with Democrats in the event control of the House shifts in 2026 — could prove to be catastrophic because of their reasonable fear of being held accountable for criminality that dwarfs Trump’s first term. And unlike January 2021 — when the Big Lie scheme failed — Trump and his cohorts will have new tools to carry out a coup, including a massive federal police force with a proven willingness to engage in systemic illegality.
Trump’s brownshirts
From its outset, Trump 2.0 has been grounded on systemic illegality and unilateral executive actions, a course of (mis)conduct the administration has succeeded in pursuing because of pliant GOP majorities in Congress the Supreme Court. It’s all but certain that the administration’s authoritarian conduct will grow in scope and intensity over the succeeding months, in no small part because the GOP reconciliation bill will hand over a staggering $170 billion to the Department of Homeland Security.
The next couple of years are going to get harder than what we’ve seen so far.
While many are currently rightly concerned about the impact Trump’s brutal “immigration crackdown” will have on undocumented persons, the danger of his creation of a massive, non-law-abiding federal police force could extend far beyond the immigration. Congress has just handed the coup leader in the White House new, dangerous tools that he and his cohorts could use in their next attempt to overturn the nation’s democracy once and for all.
At the Black Gate, as “all about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged,” Gandalf the White
lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice:
‘Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.’
Not today.
* * * * *
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
Trump rope-a-dopes MAGA
Donald Trump is feeling the heat over his efforts to bury the Jeffrey Epstein files he promised to release for his MAGA base. The administration’s decision not to has “outraged parts of Trump’s base, which believes the government is shielding high-profile people involved in the criminal enterprise,” the Washington Post reports. They believed Trump was their champion in “a broader fight against what they see as the corrupt elite.”
Podcaster and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes on Thursday issued an expletive-filled tirade against Trump over the Epstein controversy. (I won’t bother quoting him. Better you listen.)
Accustomed to and skilled at making his base believe whatever he wants, Trump is desperately trying “to bury one conspiracy theory under another,” Ramesh Ponnuru writes in the Washington Post. Trump is trying to kill evidence of his own complicity with Epstein’s sex trafficking by claiming the rumors, the files, the investigation’s work products, etc., are yet another elaborate hoax perpetrated by his political enemies. (How many is it now?) Even if the events and evidence they turned up happened during his first administration the way Epstein turned up dead in his cell. A suicide, Attorney General Pam Bondi claims. A “suicide,” MAGA screams back.
Ponnuru, editor of The National Review, mocks Trump’s efforts to steer his conspiracy-addicted base toward this new conspiracy theory:
It’s therefore time, Trump says, to stop talking about Epstein. The lingering questions are a “scam” and a “hoax” spread by the president’s enemies, who he said “made up” the so-called Epstein files and then didn’t release anything incriminating while they were in power for reasons he hasn’t quite yet articulated. Trump’s theory has even less evidence going for it than the one he wants us all to forget (although Democrats, overjoyed at the rift in Trump’s ranks, are certainly fanning the controversy now).
Former Trump pal Elon Musk on his former Twitter platform joked, “Wow I can’t believe Epstein killed himself before realizing it was all a hoax.”
So now Trump thinks he can placate his furious base by asking Bondi to seek release of “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony” in the Epstein case “subject to Court approval.”
The Washington Post adds:
Trump’s announcement came minutes after he pledged to sue the Wall Street Journal over its Thursday evening report, which said that he contributed a drawing of a naked woman to Epstein’s 50th birthday album in 2003. The letter concluded with “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the Journal report.
“President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist.”
Joyce Vance explains why Trump’s attempt to placate angry minions like Fuentes is so much rope-a-dope:
Release of the grand jury material, or as Trump would have it, only the bits that are “pertinent,” isn’t automatic. Federal prosecutors need a court order to disclose grand jury testimony; they can’t just do it on their own.
Federal rules and conditions must be met.
Even if the government can shoehorn its request into one of these categories or another provision of the rule, it will take time. There may be objections from Ghislaine Maxwell, whose case is still on appeal. And, DOJ would have to make a “strong showing of particularized need” that “outweighs the public interest in secrecy” in order for the release to be ordered.
That is, this appears to be a more sophisticated application of a standard Trump tactic for wiggling his way out of a tight spot: delay, delay, delay.
All of the possible impediments to releasing grand jury material may well be the point for Trump. He can say, yet again, that he tried and the courts stood in his way. Even a delay, while lawyers brief the matter and a judge schedules a hearing, could work in Trump’s favor if the fickle public loses interest in the issue and moves on, and he lives to fight another day, yet again. That could explain this strategy.
It might work if the rest of us let it.
Don’t.
* * * * *
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
On Good Trouble day, I’m been thinking about communities and talking to my friend Cliff Schecter about ways we can work together to boost the voices on our side and share the “Good Trouble” we have done. He has set up a new program, The Soundcheck Fund (TSF) to boost and distribute independent media. I’m working on a a bunch of ways to help. Here’s the deal.
Blue Amp just launched The Soundcheck Fund (TSF) to elevate independent media voices—by donating five figures out of our own pockets. We ask that you help us grow the fund by simply getting a paid subscription to Blue Amp for .26 per day.
We’ve waited for liberal billionaires. ENOUGH. We’ll build an ecosystem of bold, truth-tellers—commentators, journalists, etc—with grants and promotion.
There’s a link to the app on our main page. Tired of being gaslit, silenced, misinformed? Get A Paid Subscription, join a movement that won’t be stopped.
🎤 The Soundcheck Fund – Micro Grants for Independent Creators
- Welcome to the Soundcheck Fund by Blue Amp Action, where we’re giving creators early-stage support to test the mic and fine-tune your message.
- The Soundcheck Fund is offering $500-$1,000 micro grants to creators, storytellers, and digital voices who are pushing back against extremism, disinformation, and corporate media failure. If you’re producing original content that informs, agitates, or inspires—especially on the issues that define our democracy—we want to help amplify your voice!
- This fund is built for people creating TikToks, Reels, Substacks, memes, podcasts, rants, essays, animations, or any format that breaks through the noise and speaks directly to the moment.
We’re not here to direct the message—we just want to turn up the volume. You’ll retain full creative control. All we ask is that you:
- Include a short “Funded by Blue Amp” disclosure + link to this grant application for 6 weeks
- Let us feature your work on our Substack (if selected for amplification)
No strings. No scripts. Just support.
If you’re ready to speak up, we’re ready to back you!
Behind the scenes I’ve been talking to a lot of people about all the ways that messages to everybody have been changed by right wing media and social media. I’ve been around long enough to see how it is done. I developed methods to use financial pressure on them. ( Spocko Takes On The Mouse – CBS News, January 24, 2007
Right now Substack is hot and they want to grow, so we use that. But Cliff and I both know they will get enshittified, especially when there is money to be made and algorithms to exploit. I’m working with some people to figure out how to use Substack’s live video events to boost our people as a rapid response on news events.
I’ve also learned that the second a platform or method to reach people works, the right will want to take over. They’ll use AI tools, bots and collaborations with anyone, including Russian propagandists.
If I was talking to some rich people on the left who want to help, I’d say, “We HAVE the content. Help us with distribution!” Because I saw RW funders dump millions on the YouTube algorithm to feed us Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson, Stephen Crowder and “The Manosphere.”
Whatever we create, we need to do it from the grass roots by boosting and supporting each other. Communities carry on, even when other platforms become distorted by greed and power. My Eschaton community recently lost a beloved member, I mourn him. Facebook still exists, but they have purposefully worked to suppress “political” content. We have to think about how to share stuff created in one area with another platform, but most platforms want to lock people in. Bluesky has grown but I remain a HUGE fan of Mastodon. I love dances on TikTok, but did you know people get their news there? People in the media still use Twitter (X) but also email exists! Blogs exist! Live protests outside Tesla dealerships and at town halls happen. I’ve met people on Signal.
The right uses social media for their rapid spread of disinformation. I’ve been reading and following Jim Stewartson and have learned how it’s done. In the process I’ve met some AMAZING people in his community. We talk everyday about what we can do. Our efforts to boost our voices are small now, but I’ve found just being in community helps with the feeling of being overwhelmed.
So sign up. I know what communities I want to be part of.
The Wall St. Journal with another bit of evidence about Don and Jeff’s very close friendship:
It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.
Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.
[…]
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
[…]
Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
There’s more to life than having everything but it’s a secret that only Don and Jeff know because they have “certain things” in common.
Here’s what Trump said about this:
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said.
He lied. Surprise. He does this frequently. Here’s one:
He’s upset:
Boo fucking hoo.
Live by the Clinton rules, die by the Clinton rules.
Update —
Trump’s book “Never Give Up” was published in 2008. He talked about his “doodles.
He did a special doodle for his good pal Jeffrey.